Minghao smiled gently at the girl while Seungcheol tried asking her again about her parents' whereabouts but then his phone started ringing so he picked up the incoming call.
It was Minghao's turn to ask the girl again about her parents but the girl seemed determined to satisfy her curiosity first and asked Minghao what she should call him. The question made Minghao feel confused at first but in a few moments he realised that she was asking him what she should call him in his own language.
Really the curiousity of children is impressive. Minghao thought while feeling incredible.
" You should call me xiao gege (little big brother)" Minghao answered her slowly so that she could understand the pronounciation better.
He thought she wouldn't be able to pronounce it properly at first try and that's what happened. He repeated it and corrected her a few times before she could somewhat pronounce it properly. It made Minghao feel regretful cause he could have just let her call him gege which was easy to pronounce but because of Seungcheol's presence (as Seungcheol is older than him) the words that left his mouth automatically became 'xiao gege'. By the time Seungcheol was done talking on his phone and focused his attention on the little girl again.
After getting the right pronounciation the girl immediately became very happy and excited started calling 'xiao gege' loudly while hopping around. It made people around them look at her, some of them casting displeased gazes at her but maybe due to this small commotion Seungcheol and Minghao saw a lady coming towards them from another direction, the lady looked frantic with worry written all over her face.
She looked at the little girl and her eyes softened with relief. She took the steps towards the girl and by the time the girl too noticed the lady and started bouncing towards her calling her 'mamma'. The little girl's mother hugged her tightly and thanked Minghao and Seungcheol repeatedly after her daughter started talking about these two big brothers.
Both Minghao and Seungcheol waved bye at the girl when her mother started departing with her.
When the girl was out of their sight Seungcheol curiously asked Minghao what "xiao gege" means.
Minghao looked at Seungcheol and saw that the shine in his eyes is no less brighter than the shine in the little girl's eyes. This made him want to tease Seungcheol a bit so he said, " xiao gege means little brother"
"Do you want to know what we say to call big brother?" To which Seungcheol nodded his head.
" We call big brother da gege (big brother)" Minghao said with a serious expression.
Seungcheol pondered on it for a bit and then asked, " So you are younger than me so you will call me da gege right?" To which Minghao nodded solemnly and then Seungcheol asked, " Then what should I call you? Xiao gege?"
For some reason when Seungcheol called him xiao gege, Minghao felt really thrilled but his mind started cooking up something really quick so he shook his head and said, " No, you are older than me by one year so you can directly call me gege, you don't need to add xiao in front of gege. Just call me Xu Minghao gege"
While trying to say this seriously and with a straight face, Minghao almost couldn't control the curve of his lips from raising. He was hardly being able to control his laughter because of his own's nonsense.
But Seungcheol didn't notice it cause he was busy pondering how to pronounce it. He said, " So I should call you Xu Minghao gege?"
Minghao felt a thrilling current passing through his body after hearing Seungcheol call him gege properly but he still didn't slip up and nodded vigorously saying, " yes, that's right".
But this conversation ended quickly as they took the snacks and hurried back to the school, they had already spent too much time than expected due to the little girl so they went back quickly.
Everything went by just like their daily routine, until Seungcheol, Jeonghan, Joshua, Wonwoo, Jun, Jihoon, Soonyoung's class and Minghao, Mingyu, Dokyeom's class had P.E class together.
Among them, some of them went to play hand ball and other such games while Seungcheol, Jeonghan, Joshua, Minghao and Jun started playing basketball mixing along with both the classes and forming team.
Minghao, Seungcheol and Jeonghan were on same team while Jun and Joshua were on different.
So while playing, the situation became tense, Seungcheol was dribbling the ball and as he looked for whom to pass the ball, he judged that passing it to Minghao was more favourable so to call Minghao's attention to him he suddenly blurted out, "Xu Minghao gege".
He didn't call it loudly so only those who were close to them heard him. At the critical moment when Seungcheol was passing the ball, Minghao froze in place while trying to process what happened.
While Jun who was trying to snatch the ball from Seungcheol burst out laughing after hearing this and forgot about snatching the ball and Seungcheol suddenly felt confused and stood with an expression of, " what's happening?"
Though the game continued and the three of them were cursed at by their teammates for being distracted but these things happened so rapidly as the game continued and Jeonghan caught the ball and took it to score that no one paid attention to them.
After the game was over, when Jeonghan and Joshua came to ask about the incident, all the three people involved were at loss for words. They didn't open their mouth but that day Seungcheol got to know in the end that gege means big brother.
Seungcheol considers it as a dark history. He did go to settle scores with Minghao at that time for pranking and messing with him but then Minghao took out the list of pranks and teasing he has endured due to Seungcheol. This made Seungcheol shut up and not mention a word about this incident again. But it didn't mean that he never pouted and complained about this incident whenever it was just him and Minghao hanging out.
Back to the present, Minghao finished explaining the event from back then to everyone as he was the directly involved party, even Jun didn't knew the whole context behind that incident so everyone including him laughed their fill after hearing about the whole incidents.
Seungcheol felt so shy and embarassed that he couldn't help but pout and defend himself, " I don't know Chinese so isn't it understandable that I would be misled if someone who knows Chinese well wants to mislead me" he said while accusing Minghao with his eyes.
After hearing the little girl calling out xiao gege he just thought that Minghao randomly taught her some chinese words so he got curious and asked for it's meaning. How could he have known that the girl wanted to know what to call Minghao in his own language, if he had known that then he wouldn't have been fooled so easily. Seungcheol thought to himself regretfully.
The upward curves of Minghao's lips refused to go down as he naughtily said, " It's because hyung is so cute that he makes people want to mislead him"
But before this conversation could be continued, Mingyu fell unconscious in Wonwoo's arms.