| 13 (1/2)

. . thirteen . .   “I need to get going, I’m late already. How doesn’t a man know how to cook porridge?”

Hyukjae listens to Donghae’s distant nagging, watching as Jaemin takes another spoonful of her breakfast the nurse just made up for her ten minutes ago. He scoffs, but his leg trembles under the table. Donghae appears around the corner between the kitchen and the space where the two person table is set. He takes a hurried breath and shifts his shoulder bag. The black, long jacket, neat jeans and a light blue collared shirt makes him look like an adult. His brown fringe is tossled neatly upon his head, out of his forehead.

“There’s the leftovers my mom gave in the fridge for lunch. Just remember to make some snacks. I can cook something when I come,” Donghae rambles. He looks Hyukjae in the eye for a long minute.

It’s 8:21 am and Hyukjae’s eyes are still lousy after being forcefully kicked awake. He has a red, way too big hoodie over his torso and gray college pants. The hair sticks out to every possible direction.

“You can call me if it’s really important.”

Hyukjae stirs on his chair. “I don’t have your number.”

Donghae gives him a look of disbelief and annoyance, grabbing a pen from the table and scribbling his number on the front page of yesterday’s newspaper.

“There you go! Now I really need to get going,” Donghae keeps rambling on a hurried tone. He checks the time from his wristwatch, gritting his teeth. “Try not to blow up things while I’m gone.”

Hyukjae snorts. “Just go.” He doesn’t want him to go.

Donghae leaves the kitchen, and in three seconds he’s out the door. The man stares towards the door, even if a wall impedes him from seeing straight to it. As if waiting for Donghae to suddenly come back. He turns to eye his daughter, and sees her watching him closely. She lifts up the smallest mug they found from the cabinets.

“You want more milk?”

She nods, eyes clear.

Hyukjae pours the mug halfway full, and puts the carton back on the table.

“I guess it’s just the two of us for today, huh?” he notes cautiously, and Jaemin gives him a shy smile.

He hasn’t been able to have a bite of anything solid. He’s not hungry, he’s scared to death.

How is he supposed to not fuck things up?

There is two socks lying on the floor in front of him; they’re not a match. The other is pink and the other dark blue. He gives a frustrated look towards the pile of clothes on his other side. They were running out of Jaemin’s clothes. The girl sits on the edge of the bedroom’s mattress, looking at her father curiously. She has a red hoodie with a bear printed out front. Hyukjae thinks that at least their hoodies match, both red and both sleeves too long.

He remembers Donghae’s text message where he promised to go pick up his brother’s kid’s clothes from his house (after Hyukjae’s despairing message that Jaemin was running out of things to wear).

“Put the socks on, please,” he mutters quietly. He has a washing machine.

Pulling out his phone, he texts Donghae: Do I use softener or detergent if I wash the clothes in the machine?

Jaemin has a blue sock on the left foot and the pink on right.

His phone vibrates.

Have you never washed your clothes before??? Donghae replies.

Yes, but I used to have only one bottle, now there’s suddenly two and I don’t know which one to use! He texts back.

He leans against the wall. Jaemin watches him intently, her head tilted to the side. He realizes her pants are wrong way round.

Put the detergent in the left locker, the softener in the right. Wash in 30 degrees!

Hyukjae stands up.

“Let’s do some laundry, okay? How hard can that be,” he mutters to the girl, and grabs the used clothes on his arms. They go to the bathroom, and Hyukjae throws the clothes inside, pulling some of his own shirts from the hamper. He looks at one of the shirts and wonders when was the last time he actually looked there. Or washed any. The closet was so full of his clothes he didn’t need to do that very often.

Hyukjae shuts the hatch. His phone vibrates again, but before he looks at the message he pours the stuff into the lockers and cliks the right temperature. The washing machine starts pumping water. He opens the text message.

You’ve been “washing” your clothes with a softener, btw. I bought the detergent yesterday…

Hyukjae snorts at the message. Of course. The machine keeps rolling.

He takes a look at the girl standing beside him; both so clueless, neither of them don’t know how they would get along. What the heck are they supposed to do? How does he entertain the girl for eight hours? Or for the rest of his life?

“What do you want to do now?” he asks.

She shrugs. Very helpful.

“Well… What did you do with...mom?”

Jaemin blinks and bites one of her fingers, clearly thinking. Suddenly she turns and walks away, and Hyukjae follows her to the kitchen table. She climbs up the chair and takes the pen Donghae used, drawing on air.

“You want to draw?” Puzzled look rises to his face. She nods.

“Wait a second, I’ll have to check if we have those things… Meanwhille, you can just draw on the newspaper.”

Did he even have any printing paper? Crayons any less? He used to draw when he was young, but he hasn’t really touched a pen in years for that. But he knew he was pretty good at drawing, back in the days. Is that his inheritance or did all kids like to draw?

Moving off to the bedroom to look for the crayons, he can’t stop thinking how the day would turn out. Would he eventually do something stupid? Forget to feed her?

Jiah had managed to raise her so far. She definitely wasn’t an angel or Mother Theresa, so how had she made it through? Or was it some kind of free parenting? Maybe she didn’t do much else but put food on the table.

Jaemin knows how to dress, she knows how to wash her teeth, she doesn’t need help with the toilet, if someone just came after her to flush because she was too short to pull the plug up by herself. Are all four year olds like that? Only thing she lacks is words.

The closet full as ever, Hyukjae eyes the shelves until a box draws his attention. He takes it and opens the cover, and with a smile returns to the kitchen.

“Found some!” The man puts the box on the table and starts spreading some wooden pencils on the table. There isn’t much left, but he thinks ten different colors might be more than enough for her. A big sketchbook is underneath all the other stuff, and he gives a clear page for her. He also finds some ink pens, blue, red, green and yellow.

The girl’s eyes are wide as saucers as she takes a red pen on her tiny hands.

Hyukjae exhales and slumps down on the chair opposite to her. He feels exhausted and it’s only nine in the morning.

Jaemin draws something that distantly looks something like a flower.

Hyukjae’s been watching the kid draw for almost an hour. It’s the third paper she’s working at the moment, and absent-mindedly the father has tried to figure out what they are actually picturing. Few flowers here and there, a box that looks distantly like a house, few stick figures. A barrel with two stick and squares on top. A dog? A cat?

He swallows and clicks his phone’s screen on. It’s just 9:58. No icons to show that anyone would’ve texted him. He opens Facebook. Nothing new there either. Taehyung has posted a picture of himself and a girl—wait, the post says his sister? He has a sister?

Putting the phone away, he sighs. Taehyung probably didn’t even know he has a daughter. They only met about a year and half ago, in a bar. Hyukjae had dared the man for a billiards match. He’d lost, but Taehyung had offered him a beer. An odd friendship, he thinks. But it’s the only one that’s left. Everyone else have just… drifted away. Just like Donghae.

Hyukjae bites his tongue, standing up to pour himself a glass of apple juice.

“Kid,” he hollers behind the fridge, “You want some?” He shows Jaemin the bottle, but she shakes her head.

“Alright. Just say when you’re hungry or want something to eat.”

He sits pack on the chair, but his gaze wanders to the view outside the window. It’s a gray day. He knows it rained last night, and some drops are still falling down the glass. It’s not a nice weather, but Hyukjae’s starting to feel claustrophobic inside his small apartment. In his previous life, he would’ve called Taehyung and asked him to come play some Xbox, or grab a drink, or just hang around somewhere. Now... there’s no way he could leave the girl.

Outside, there’s a lone dog walker with his retriever beside him. He stares the surrounding buildings, and he remembers there’s a bigger playground back there. And a pond.

Jaemin finishes the last drawing, and puts the pencils neatly on a row. There’s a look in her eyes, but Hyukjae doesn’t know what it means.

“Pee-pee.”

Oh.

“Uh, go ahead...” he grunts and scrathes his head. She jumps down the chair and goes. Hyukjae tries to listen if everything’s alright, and after a few minutes he stands up. The bathroom’s door is open, but he doesn’t dare to peek. Maybe he should, though. Just so she wouldn’t, like, fall down and crack her head open.

“You okay there?” His voice sounds like dog’s squeek toy.

“Ready,” she says and meets him at the door.

“Did you wash your hands?”

She shakes her head. It was probably too high for her. Hyukjae looks around, and finds a small footstool that would give her enough height.

“Use this, so you can reach the faucet.”

She steps on it. Hyukjae opens the water, and she starts washing her tiny fingers.

“Soap,” he mutters, pressing the bottle. She automatically puts her palms under it and massages it to her hands. She knows what to do, she just wasn’t tall enough.

Hyukjae smiles a little.

“Should we go outside?” He knows it might still rain, but he just needs the fresh air. The walls are falling over him. He’s so used to being alone, that even sharing the apartment with someone felt strange. Not the least that it’s his daughter. She gives him the wide eyes, the curious ones.

“We can go see if the playground’s any good?”

“Okay,” she replies after a minute of thought.

Then a new matter hits him. What’s she supposed to wear? Is the hoodie enough under her jacket? Would she need a rain jacket? Dungarees? They probably didn’t even have those. How much a kid that age needed clothes to keep her warm?

“Do you mind if it rains?”

A shake of head again.

Okay. Deep breaths, some common sense. He thinks he saw a beanie and some sort of mittens in her backpack this morning. A good start.

The hospital is surprisingly quiet that Tuesday afternoon. A biker who had fallen, an older man with chest pain, woman with stomach pains that ended up her being pregnant, a kid with a burn… It hasn’t been nothing out of the ordinary for Donghae. Expect the fact that his coworker keeps following him like a hawk. It’s finally his break, and Donghae goes to the breakroom to eat his lunch.

He clicks the coffee maker on, and sets a plastic box on top of the table before taking a seat.

Jessica pops into the room, and Donghae groans. She has that look on her face; the annoying one. She pulls a chair for herself and sits directly towards the man with a smirk on her lips.

He opens the lid of his lunch box.

“So, who was the guy with the kid? The desperate one?” The dyed, light brown hair frames her face. She looks young, but she’s actually the same age as Donghae.

Jessica and him actually went to the same high school, but they were in different classes. Even in college, they had seen each other, but never had they been any friends until now. Donghae’s still not sure if he would call them that. She just happens to be nosy and way too interested about his life, although she’s still somewhat nice of a person. Most of the other women were old hags, or young and even more annoying than Jessica. There were guys, but he wasn’t one to get friendly with anyone easily.

“He seemed kinda familiar.”

“We went to same high school,” Donghae mutters, knowing that she would keep pushing and pushing if he kept his mouth shut.