The next day, Jin-kyu woke up to the sound of loud ringing. It served only to jerk him from another nightmare where Sammy had been doing a 'Lady Godiva' impression on top of a reindeer.
Okay, it maybe wasn't a nightmare per se but it had certainly left Jin-kyu in a cold sweat.
"Jesus, Sammy are you burning the pancakes again?" Jin-kyu groaned wretchedly as he swung his legs off the couch, swearing loudly as his big toe came into close contact with the coffee table.
"I think it's your phone," a voice helpfully replied from somewhere over near the kitchen. Jin-kyu blinked groggily, his eyes focussing on Sammy, who was sat eating toast covered in what Jin-kyu really hoped was grape jelly and not chilli bean paste again.
Sammy's taste buds evidently hadn’t come to life like the rest of him.
"It's on the table," Sammy nodded towards the vibrating cell phone, "it's been doing that for a while."
"And you didn't think to wake me?" Jin-kyu muttered.
"Last time I woke you up, you told me you were going to make me into a sculpture again using the technique as illustrated by the film 'House of Wax'. It didn't sound pleasant," Sammy shrugged at him before sticking his tongue out and licking long strips of jam off the toast.
Jin-kyu blinked and tried to figure out where he went wrong in life to deserve this cruel and unusual punishment before reaching for his phone.
"Hello?"
"Oh thank the gods you're up!" a high-pitched man's voice garbled down the line, "I've been trying to reach you all morning!"
"Lebedev?" Jin-kyu frowned, "did the pipes burst in the studio again?"
"No, no at the school!" Lebedev garbled hurriedly.
"The school," Jin-kyu repeated, wondering if this would all make more sense when he had woken up more.
"Yes! At Suzy's school, we got there this morning and they've closed the school for the day. But Linda's working today, she's showing some clients from Tokyo around the city and I have to drive to the airport to pick up her mother who's coming for Christmas and then I've got about one thousand errands to run, they're mainly Linda's but if I don't get it all done on time..."
"Lebedev," Jin-kyu groaned, rubbing the bridge of his nose in circles to try and ward off the oncoming migraine. "Do you need me to look after Suzy for the day?"
"Yes!" Lebedev cried out, "thank you Jin-kyu - you're a champion, I owe you one. We'll be there in around forty-five minutes, might be a bit longer with all the snow."
Jin-kyu frowned, "It's snowing?"
"Jin-kyu seriously - have you not looked out the window yet?" Lebedev tittered nervously before hanging up.
Jin-kyu placed the phone back on the table before getting up and walking over to the sash windows. Sure enough, a crystallised shower of snowflakes was peppering down across the city.
"Hey Sammy, come look at this," Jin-kyu murmured before freezing in place,
Sammy.
Sammy and Suzy.
"Crap," Jin-kyu bit out before rushing over to his phone to try and tell Lebedev that he could't babysit today, (because he was already babysitting someone else, someone...difficult...to explain). Unfortunately, he could only seem to get hold of Lebedev's ridiculous Darth Vader-voice answering machine message.
Groaning, Jin-kyu chucked the cell phone down on the couch, narrowly missing Galatea's head, she meowed at him indignantly.
"Damn it, okay I'll just have to figure this out," Jin-kyu said urgently, running a hand through his hair.
"Sammy, I have to look after a friend's kid today. It shouldn't be too difficult, she's pretty well behaved and as long as you don't act too weird or anything...Sammy?"
Jin-kyu glanced up to see Sammy leaning as far as he could out of the window. When the younger man drew back into the room, his face was flushed and his eyes were wide like saucers. There was a delicate dusting of snow on top of his hair which Sammy touched tentatively.
"What are you doing?" Jin-kyu asked with a confused gesture.
"What is it?" Sammy whispered, his head tilting towards the open window, which was letting in gusts of cold air and quickly melting snowflakes, creating a pattern of water droplets on the floor.
Suddenly it clicked and Jin-kyu chuckled. "It's snow Sammy, I forgot it's your first time seeing it."
"Can...can we go outside?" Sammy asked, licking snowflakes off of his lips and making them shiny with spit.
"Later," Jin-kyu nodded, swallowing hard, "as I was saying there's a little girl called Suzy who's coming to hang out with us today, we can go out in the snow with her. We'll go to the park or something and...what are you doing Sammy?"
Sammy froze from where he was hunched over the sink. "Um...showing Darain the snow?"
"Of course you are," Jin-kyu replied with a nod before turning to walk into his bedroom and heading straight for the shower.
Maybe he would be lucky and manage to drown himself.
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