There Are No Secrets in This House

“Appa, can I tell you something?”

“Of course,” says Jiyong. He sets aside his phone and crouches down to be eye-level with his daughter. “What is it?”

“I just want to tell you…Big Appa’s not having a birthday party for you.”

For a second Jiyong takes her at her word and feels the briefest twinge of hurt, but then his brain catches up to his feelings and he realizes what’s going on. His mouth twitches. “He’s not?”

“Yeah, he’s not inviting anyone and...he’s not buying you a present, either.”

“Wow, Big Appa’s not very nice, huh?” Jiyong takes Jihyun’s tiny hands in his own and swings them back and forth.

Jihyun fails spectacularly at suppressing her grin. “Mmmhmm, he’s not nice! He’s...he’s a meanie!” she says, and bursts into giggles.

Jiyong can’t stop his smile either. “So Big Appa’s not buying Little Appa any jewelry?” Jiyong’s been dropping hints about a certain pair of earrings for a few weeks now.

“Um, I don’t know,” Jihyun says. “But he’s not buying you a watch.”

“Thank you Jihyunie,” Jiyong says. “Why don’t you go play in your room while Big Appa and Little Appa get dinner ready?”

“Okay!” says Jihyun, and she bounces off to her bedroom, looking pleased.

Jiyong finds Seunghyun cooking in the kitchen. “Maybe ten more minutes,” he says when Jiyong enters. “You want to open a bottle of wine?”

“What I want,” Jiyong says slowly, “is to know what the watch you’re getting me looks like, so I can coordinate my outfit for the party.”

Seunghyun freezes for a moment, but then his shoulders slump. “She told you, huh?”

“Of course she did.” Jiyong moves in behind Seunghyun and wraps his arms around his husband’s waist, pressing his lips against Seunghyun’s back right along his spine.

“I guess she doesn’t understand secrets yet,” says Seunghyun. “You know, I thought she got it when we talked about it.”

Jiyong lifts his head so he can speak. “Oh, she understood that it was secret. That’s why she told me Big Appa was not planning a party and not inviting friends and not buying me a watch.”

“Hmm. So she sort of followed my instructions, then,” Seunghyun muses. He rests the turner he’s been using against the edge of the pan and puts his hands over Jiyong’s, swaying a little as he tilts his head back in thought.

“I don’t know why you thought you could trust her with this.”

“I didn’t plan to,” Seunghyun insists, “but she’s only at school for so long, and I had to take advantage of you being at work during normal human hours when it happened. I can’t exactly make arrangements with the caterers at three in the morning.” He turns around in Jiyong’s arms and wraps his own around Jiyong.

“But why did you tell her it was a secret in the first place? She wouldn’t have told me all that if you hadn’t made a big deal of it.”

“Yeah, she would’ve. She tells you everything. You know the number one thing I hear most often when you’re out? ‘I can’t wait to tell Little Appa about this’.”

Jiyong smiles bashfully, trying to contain some of the pride that makes him feel. Jihyun always rushes to greet him when he comes in the door with a thousand details from her day to share. It’d been such a relief to find their daughter liked him; he’d been so worried she wouldn’t.

Seunghyun squeezes Jiyong a little. “You’re a good father,” he says, as if reading Jiyong’s mind. “I think she likes you best.”

“Nah,” Jiyong says, not entirely out of modesty. “Most of the stuff she wants to tell me is about you. ‘Big Appa made a funny face and I laughed so hard… Big Appa carried me on his shoulders at the park… Big Appa sang with me in the car…’” He snuggles into Seunghyun and sighs. “Thank you, though. For planning a party. Even if it’s not a surprise.”

“You still have to pretend to be surprised, okay? I put in a lot of work.”

“I know,” says Jiyong. “It was a lot easier when we had managers to help us with this kind of stuff, huh?” He can’t keep the note of bitterness out of his voice. They’re hugely lucky – the fact that Jiyong’s still working at all is a small miracle – but they did lose things.

“It’s not so bad,” Seunghyun says. “And...to be honest...I did get some help from Soonho.”

“What?” Jiyong pulls back to glare up at Seunghyun. “Hyung! Don’t do that to him! He’s not getting paid for that anymore!”

“He offered!” Seunghyun insists. “You know he still loves you even if he’s not your manager. He’s our friend! And anyway, he’s better at this stuff than me.”

Jiyong furrows his brow. “Okay, but make sure he doesn’t try to get me a present. Helping is the present.”

“I’ll make sure,” Seunghyun says, pressing a kiss to the top of Jiyong’s head.

They stay in their embrace a minute or so more, enjoying the comfortable silence, until the various pans Seunghyun has on the cooktop start making suspicious noises and the dog comes in and headbutts Jiyong’s calves and they hear Jihyun’s footsteps thumping down the hall. Seunghyun turns back to the stove and Jiyong heads for the door to let the dog into the little yard. As he holds the door open, Jihyun enters the kitchen and tugs on Seunghyun’s shirttails. In one smooth motion, he leans down and scoops her up so she’s resting on his hip while he continues to cook with his free hand. “Appa,” she whispers into his ear, so loud that Jiyong can hear clearly from across the room. “Little Appa still doesn’t know about the secret party!”

Jiyong has to step outside to laugh.