Chapter Text
“Thank you so much for coming here on such late notice,” Junhui tells Wonwoo as he hurriedly fixes his tie and slips on his loafers. “I just found out I had an early meeting at work, and Minghao needs help getting ready for school.”
“No problem, Mr. Wen,” Wonwoo mumbles, his voice still ragged from sleep. He’s calculating in his head, it’s 7:45 am right now, and Minghao’s elementary school bus leaves at 8:30, so there should be plenty of time for Wonwoo to make it back to campus before his 9 am class.
“Minghao’s still in bed right now. Make sure he has his lunch box and his shoes. His are the small shoes, with the strings,” Junhui says distractedly, gesturing towards the shoe rack. The explanation is somewhat redundant, since the only shoes lined up there are Junhui’s large dress shoes and Minghao’s tiny sneakers right next to them.
“Got it,” Wonwoo yawns.
“Here’s….$12. Is $12 okay? That’s all that I’ve got on me in cash right now,” Junhui apologizes, handing Wonwoo a crinkled stack of bills, mostly ones.
“That’s more than enough,” Wonwoo says. He usually babysits for $8 an hour, so this tiny bonus means that he’ll be able to indulge in a self-pity latte from Starbucks today. “Thank you so much. Have a great day, Mr. Wen.”
Pain streaks along Wonwoo’s temple, a reminder of the near all-nighter he pulled to finish his programming assignment. He needs an Advil or a nap. Preferably both. But it’s time to help Minghao, his favorite little first grader, get ready for school.
“Minghao-ah,” Wonwoo murmurs, gently shaking the six year old by the shoulder.
The boy’s mouth parts slightly, letting a thin strand of drool trickle out, but his eyes stay closed. Wonwoo can relate.
“Minghao baobei,” Wonwoo tries again, using what Junhui calls his son. “Time to wake up.”
This time Minghao’s eyes slowly blink open, but he just glares at Wonwoo with an angry little baby pout. Wonwoo pouts back at him.
“Life’s tough, kiddo. I wouldn’t be out of bed right now either if I had my way. But we have to get you ready for first grade.”
Scooping Minghao into his arms, Wonwoo carries the boy from his bedroom to the bathroom and back to his bedroom and then to the kitchen, as he brushes Minghao’s teeth, washes his face, dresses him, and then pours milk into a bowl of cereal for the boy.
Minghao sits at the breakfast table, still half asleep, with his spoon curled in his tiny fist. He doesn’t make a move to eat the cereal, which is quickly becoming soggy.
“Work with me here, buddy,” Wonwoo pleads. “You gotta eat your breakfast so you can be big and strong. And so you can make it through your day without fainting.”
At the word fainting , Minghao tilts his head curiously.
“ Fainting is kind of like when you fall asleep, but you don’t really mean to,” Wonwoo explains. Then he frowns. “Except it’s terrible. You don’t want it to happen to you, trust me. How about some cartoons? Will you eat your breakfast if I put the TV on?”
Minghao nods excitedly, and Wonwoo chuckles, reaching down to ruffle his hair. Though he can be a handful sometimes, Wonwoo doesn’t mind babysitting the kid. Minghao is pretty cute for a little brat. Plus, Wonwoo likes helping out Junhui, who has it especially tough as a single dad.
The first channel that crackles on screen is a news channel showing scenes from a hurricane in the south. Noisy winds and flooding, buildings destroyed and cars drifting away. Minghao shuts his hands over his ears and screams until Wonwoo flips through the channels and finds a children’s station.
“Okay, okay, that was scary, but you’re okay now,” Wonwoo says, feeling especially sorry for Junhui if this is what he has to deal with on a daily basis.
When it is time to wait outside for the bus, Wonwoo watches nervously as Minghao and his friends play a little too close to the curb for comfort. A few of the other moms waiting at the bus stop greet Wonwoo, he’s taken care of some of their kids before. They ask him if he’ll be around to babysit during winter break.
“Probably,” Wonwoo shrugs. “I might be helping out a professor with a research project, but I’d love to babysit Seungkwan, or Hansol, or Chan. “
There’s also the simple fact that Wonwoo isn’t sure if he’ll be able to afford a plane ticket back home to Korea just for winter break. He could, of course, ask his parents but they’ve sacrificed so much to pay for his tuition that Wonwoo tries to be as self-sufficient as possible in every other regard.
“Bus!” Wonwoo calls out to Minghao and Seungkwan, who are racing each other down the sidewalk. “Come back or the bus will leave without you guys!”
The bright yellow school bus rumbles to a halt, and Minghao spares Wonwoo a quick hug before clambering onto the bus. Once he’s seated, Minghao waves to Wonwoo through the window.
Wonwoo glances down at his watch, 8:34. The bus was four minutes later than usual, but there should be plenty of time for Wonwoo to leisurely return to campus. He climbs into the driver’s seat of his car, a used Camry with a dent on the side. It’s a little ugly, but reliable and has served him well during the three years he’s had it.
But today, the engine only sputters when he turns his key in the ignition. “Please don’t do this to me,” Wonwoo begs futilely. “Please, not today.”
It’s no use. The car stubbornly refuses to respond, and Wonwoo has no choice but to call a tow truck. At this point it doesn’t even matter whether or not the school bus was four minutes late. At this point, Wonwoo doubts that he’ll even make it to class at all.
“Tough day?” Soonyoung asks when Wonwoo returns to their apartment that afternoon sulky and silent.
“Yeah,” Wonwoo answers curtly.
Soonyoung plops down on the ratty sofa they dragged out of a dumpster their freshman year. He offers Wonwoo a seat next to him and asks, “How bad?”
“Very.”
“I know you’re not an English major, Wonwoo, but I think you can do a bit better than that.”
Wonwoo lets out a deep groan, tilting his head back against the sofa cushion. “Car broke down, and my emergency fund was $300 too short for the repairs,” he explains. “Had to dip into my food budget. I got my car fixed, but I’m probably not eating for the next month.”
“Shit, I’m so sorry. That sucks, man. Anything I can do to help?”
“Got any suggestions for making $300 before the fridge runs out?” Wonwoo asks sarcastically.
“You could sell weed,” Soonyoung offers.
“What? No, that’s illegal.”
“You could sell your internal organs?”
“That’s even more illegal!”
“How about becoming a rental boyfriend?”
“I don’t know what that means, but it sounds illegal.”
“No listen,” Soonyoung insists, sitting up straighter. “It’s completely legit. You get paid to go on dates for like, $100 an hour. And your clients aren’t allowed to ask you to do weird stuff.”
Wonwoo frowns, suspicious of his roommate’s enthusiasm. “You seem to know a lot about this.”
“I tried to apply to be a rental boyfriend, but I didn’t pass the initial screening.”
“Because you were too sketchy?”
“No!” Soonyoung protests. “I wasn’t tall enough. They like their rental boyfriends tall and handsome apparently.”
“ They as in?”
“Ummm, the clients?”
“I still can’t believe that anyone would pay $100 an hour for what, companionship? What kind of person would have that kind of money, or need?”
“I don’t know, rich, lonely people? I’m sure there are plenty of them out there who are too embarrassed to go to their rich people parties alone. I promise you, it’s not dangerous or illegal or anything. I’m just worried about you, Wonwoo. I don’t want you to end up starving. You’re so thin already that if you lose any more weight, you’ll diet yourself out of existence!”
“Okay,” Wonwoo sighs, touched by his friend’s concern. “I’ll try it out and see what happens. And just….don’t tell my parents, please. I don’t want them to think that I’m doing weird stuff to just pay for food.”
Soonyoung grins crookedly and says, “When have I ever told any of our parents about the weird stuff that we do?”
“Don’t get your hopes up too high either, who knows if anyone will even want me.”
“Of course they will. You’ve got a nice face, that sex-me voice, and you’re like, idiotically tall, so it’s perfect.”
Wonwoo ignores the backhanded compliment and says, “Thanks, man. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“Make a lot of better decisions, probably.”
“Probably,” Wonwoo agrees with a grin.
So this is it , Wonwoo thinks later that evening when he’s holed up in his bedroom with a private tab open on his laptop. He pastes the link Soonyoung sent him, which takes him to an elegantly designed website featuring many photos of attractive young men. It at least appears legitimate, but Wonwoo isn’t sure if he entirely trusts Soonyoung’s perception of legitimacy.
Name. Date of birth. Height. Weight . Wonwoo feels like he’s filling out paperwork for a doctor’s appointment, rather than a profile for a companionship website. These are the easy items, no room to overthink. It’s the open-ended questions that are harder.
Wonwoo stares blankly at the words Hobbies and Interests , uncomprehending, for a solid five minutes, wondering if there’s even a difference between the two. Under Hobbies , Wonwoo types “music, video games, and movies,” and then under Interests , he types “music, video games, and movies” again. Wonwoo frowns. That can’t be right.
After laboring over the rest of the profile for another half hour (with the help of Soonyoung because Wonwoo can’t, for the life of him, think of words to describe himself), Wonwoo looks for a photo of himself to upload to his profile. The one he finds is a photo that Soonyoung took of him when he wasn’t looking; a three-fourths profile in natural sunlight that makes Wonwoo’s skin look luminous. Unsmiling, Wonwoo looks much more serious than usual, his eyes cold and sharp.
It doesn’t feel like him. Even though the lighting in the photo was perfect and Soonyoung assured him that he looked sexy, Wonwoo has the nagging instinct that it doesn’t capture him . It’s rare for Wonwoo to look that serious in real life, and he doesn’t want to give off the wrong impression online. Wonwoo searches through his camera roll for an older photo and finds one where he’s actually smiling, the corners of his lips curling upwards gently to reveal his entire top row of teeth.
“Kinda dorky looking,” Soonyoung comments. “But it’s your choice.”
“It’ll do.”
Within twenty-four hours, Wonwoo’s profile is approved by the rental boyfriend agency. Within the end of the week, he receives a request for a video call from somebody named Min .