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“Hansol!” Seokmin beamed as he waved as he was dismissed from school. His son waved at his friends, Seungkwan, Minghao, and Chan, as he headed to his father, pushing up his glasses.
“Hey, dad,” he smiled, feeling his hair being ruffled. He was buckled into his car seat as Seokmin started the engine and drove to their humble abode.
“What’d you learn in school today, kiddo?”
Hansol shrugged as he began doodling on the condensation filled window. “The usual first grade curriculum… Weather, snow, holidays..”
“Sounds like fun!” Seokmin grinned as he looked over in his rear-view mirror, sharing a smile with Hansol. He pulled up to their garage, parking in their usual spot, before Hansol hopped out holding Seokmin’s hand. They were walking to the elevator, greeting the doorman as they entered their apartment lobby.
“Is daddy almost done with decorating?” Hansol asked, pushing the seventh floor button as the doors soon began to close afterward.
“I think so.” Seokmin hummed, Hansol smiling and giggling as he tried to match his father’s tone. He did so all the way down the hall to their door.
As soon as the door opened, Soonyoung looked up from the fireplace as he hung the last stocking. “Oh! You’re back earlier than I expected!”
Hansol ran over to Soonyoung and grinned as he was greeted with open arms, a warm embrace, and plenty of kisses. “Daddy, what are you doing?”
“I’m about to light the wood in the fireplace so we can make s’mores!” gleamed Soonyoung. “Why don’t you wash up and get into your jammies while your dad and I set everything up!”
“Can I wear my proton jammies?”
Seokmin sat nearby and rested his feet up on the ottoman. “You can even bring your periodic table blankie if you want!”
Hansol squealed in delight, quickly rushing to his room as his parents instructed.
“Sometimes, I think we raised him to be too smart,” Seokmin chuckled.
“Tell me about it,” Soonyoung sighed, slowly getting up and heading towards the kitchen to get the chocolate, graham crackers, and marshmallows. He headed back with the skewers for the s’mores along with a few plates. “I tried to tell him about finding a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow the other day when it rained.”
“Really? You know he loves talking about weather.”
Soonyoung began placing the marshmallows on the skewers and nodded. “I’ll say…” he looked up at Seokmin and scrunched his nose. “He told me that there is no such thing as the end of a rainbow because it’s just water droplets refracting sunlight.”
Seokmin couldn’t help but laugh, almost spitting the tea that Soonyoung made for him out. “Our Han said that?”
“He’s too smart for his own good,” Soonyoung shook his head.
It was quiet for a minute, the only sound being the fireplace burning and the faint radio playing holiday music from the kitchen. “Soon,” Seokmin sat up straight, “I think this is the year we tell him about Santa.”
With wide eyes, Soonyoung looked up at his spouse. “Hun.. are you sure? We’re talking about Han here.. you know.. our son who tried to convince us that angling our pillows at a certain level will decrease the risk of us dying earlier.”
“But he’s still a kid, love,” Seokmin commented. “Who knows? Maybe we can convince him.”
-
Hansol soon came back, glasses still in tack, as he wore his science footy pajamas and dragged his periodic table blanket into the living room. He sat in Soonyoung’s lap as Seokmin started breaking the chocolates for the s’mores.
Seokmin looked over at Soonyoung and they shared a gaze, telepathically arguing with raised eyebrows and pouty lips as to who would tell Hansol about Santa.
To Soonyoung’s disadvantage, and he blames the fact that he pouted too much with his facial expression, he was to do the honours.
He handed a skewer to Hansol, his offspring excitedly holding it up to the fire with the two of them and humming the different types of periodic elements song he learned a few days ago.
“H-Hey Han?”
“Yes, daddy?”
Soonyoung looked helplessly at Seokmin. “I can’t do this!” he mouthed.
“Hun, just try,” Seokmin mouthed back.
There was no use fighting it, so Soonyoung just had to wing it. “S-so.. have you talked about Santa Claus with your friends?”
“Mhmm!” Hansol responded composedly, not letting the marshmallow out of his sight. “Chan’s been talking about how Santa is going to bring him presents at his chimney and eat the cookies and milk he puts out for him.”
Eagerly, and with a bit of hope, Soonyoung and Seokmin smiled at each other. “Great!” Seokmin cheered, pulling his skewer out of the flames. “So then.. you know that means he’s going to come to our house to give you presents too, right?”
Hansol pulled his marshmallow out as well, blowing on it as he watched the ember-coloured marshmallow let out steam. He looked up at Seokmin and blinked. “Ah.. no.. I don’t think Santa exists.”
“I told you!” Soonyoung mouthed to Seokmin, raising his eyebrows.
“Just convince him!” Seokmin silently communicated back.
“H-Han.. why don’t you believe in him?” asked Soonyoung, taking his marshmallow and placing it on top of a graham cracker.
Hansol handed his marshmallow to Seokmin as he watched his father assemble the sandwich cookie and handed it to him, his eyes twinkling in delight. He took a bite out of it and smiled to himself, swallowing his bite before he answered the question. “Well.. it doesn’t make any sense logically..”
“Logically?”
With another bite, Hansol nodded. “Well, first off, how can a man, an old one at that has a fifty-inch waist line slide down perfectly a chimney, which by standard is about twenty inches in diameter?”
The two adults blinked at each other, appalled by their son’s question.
“Maybe.. he just sucks in..” Seokmin answered, a bit hesitant.
“And how could Santa survive, for over five hundred years, in an environment of minus twenty degrees Celsius?”
“He has a really thick, red jacket that he wears,” Soonyoung added, getting a thumbs up from his partner.
“What about the reindeer?” Hansol looked up at Soonyoung, wiping the crumbs off of his small hands. “With the aerodynamic potential of the average reindeer, and the laws of gravity, there’s no way that they, or Santa himself, could fly through the air without crashing into pieces. And the fact that he can travel to every house in the world in one night?”
The two adults were speechless. Hansol placed another marshmallow on his skewer and held it to the fire, humming his science song to himself, blocking out the conversation his parents were having.
“Not as easy as you thought, huh?” Soonyoung snickered.
“Okay, I didn’t realize Han was so good at speaking,” Seokmin scratched his neck.
“When he was six, he kept telling you that a tomato was a fruit and not a vegetable!”
Seokmin groaned. “Okay, don’t remind me! It’s not my fault that the tomatoes are near the other vegetables in the grocery store…”
“Love,” Soonyoung sighed, “listen. The only way to get our Hannie to believe in Santa is to fight fire with fire.”
“Which means…”
“Prove Santa exists with science…”
“Dad,” Hansol chimed in, holding his skewer of toasted, fluffy sugar to his father, “can you make another for me, please?”
A small smile crept on Seokmin’s mouth as he patted his lap. “Sit here, I’ll teach you how to make it.” Hansol gasped cheerfully, crawling over to Seokmin’s lap and sitting there as he watched the s’more sandwich being made. Soonyoung reached over and laid the periodic table blanket over his son’s lap.
“S-so.. Hansol?” Soonyoung inquired.
“Yes, daddy?”
“T-There’s some science behind Santa’s existence too.”
Silence, one full of tension, filled the air as Hansol paused and looked up at Soonyoung, quite surprised. Seokmin peering over with an almost anxious gaze.
“There is?”
“Y-yeah…”
“Like what daddy?”
Soonyoung thought for a good moment. “W-well… you know how you said that Santa has a fifty inch waist?” He scratched his cheek. “He actually doesn’t… Santa wears a special thermal coat that protects him from the North Pole temperatures. But he actually isn’t as wide as most people seem. It’s just the jacket.”
The two of them were holding their breaths, waiting for Hansol’s reaction.
“Really? Wow, that’s interesting! What else is there?”
Seokmin let out a huge, silent sigh of relief. Motioning Soonyoung to continue.
“Uh… well… Santa gives his reindeer special feeding pellets so that they can withstand the pressures of gravity…”
“Oh! They have something like that?”
“Yes,” Seokmin joined in. “And Santa’s sleigh… it can travel faster than light speed!”
Hansol gasped, truly in awe at his parents’ words. “How is that possible? There’s no way!”
“Why, Santa has a hyperspeed module that he connects to his sleigh,” Soonyoung laughed. “He just needed to realign the quantum overdrive–”
“To compensate for the hyperspeed inversion!” Hansol gasped, continuously eating his s’mores. “Wow, of course! That makes senses!”
“It does?” Seokmin mouthed.
“Yeah,” Soonyoung sighed in content.
“How does he deliver all the presents?” Hansol curiously asked, gripping his blanket and leaning back in Seokmin’s chest, looking up at Soonyoung.
“Well, he has this hypercube–”
“You mean the geometric figure in four or more dimensions that is analogous to a cube in three dimensions? He has that?”
“How does he know this?” Seokmin baffled as he looked at Soonyoung.
His spouse shrugged in response. “Santa certainly does have a hypercube! That’s where he stores all the presents!”
“Oh, it all makes sense now,” Hansol giggled, squirming around in Seokmin’s lap. He looked up at Seokmin and smiled eagerly. “This is exciting! Why didn’t I hear about this sooner?”
“We didn’t know if you were mature enough to handle it,” Seokmin snickered, making Hansol puff his cheeks to which his dad kissed.
“So he’s coming to our house, right? Santa?” Hansol drew his breath in sharply. “We need to prepare him cookies and milk!”
“We will, we will!” Soonyoung laughed. “We still have four days to go, Hannie! Plenty of time to prepare!”
“I can’t wait!” Hansol jumped off of Seokmin’s lap and began to run around with his blanket as a cape, increasingly telling himself about all the possibly gifts that Santa could be giving him this year.
“Holy shit,” Seokmin stared at Soonyoung in awe. He leaned over to kiss his partner’s cheek. “How the hell did you do that?”
“I have no idea,” Soonyoung admitted. “I took one semester of physics and public speaking back in college and that’s about it.”
They high-fived and expressed amusement as they watched their son excitedly pace around the apartment, repeating to himself the wonders of Santa.
“He’s going to find out we’re lying though,” Seokmin mentioned.
“Yeah,” Soonyoung shrugged as he began to clean up the plates and skewers. “But we’ll find a way to convince him when the time comes.”
“How?”
“With science and logical reasoning, of course!” Soonyoung smiled.