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[thekidultlife]

THE RETURN OF SUPERMAN | Lee Jihoon

Author’s Note: In the last part of TROS Jeonghan, I had mistakenly labeled Yuna as Lee Jihoon’s daughter. Please forgive me! I already edited it to lessen confusion haha. Yuna will be coming out in the next story as another member’s child, as edited. Please watch out for it, and I hope you come to love Lee Jihoon’s family in this AU, too!

NEW SERIES ALERT! While reading this fic, you will have a clue as to what series is coming next on this blog. Please watch out for it and if you see the clue, you can comment it down! :D

HYERI YOU’D BETTER READ THIS ONE!

Genre: ABSOLUTE FLUFF with traces of good ol’ angst but this is definitely a happy story so go ahead and read it!

Word count: 5,896

Lee Jihoon always had a plan. It wasn’t always written on paper or formulated to the dot (you were the one responsible for that end), but it was always there. He felt a lot better if he had things under his control. And so when he decided to enter the Return of Superman show with his friends, he wasn’t going unprepared.

Because, as he stared across at the table (mind you, sudden shivers were coming up his spine as he looked at the young toddler who looked oh so innocent—for now)…

…One could never go unprepared with Lee Yeseung. 

 “I mapped it out carefully, love,” he told you over breakfast. “I mapped out every single activity I am going to do with him. He’s not an easy kid, but—“

“—Who isn’t easy?” you innocently asked, eyeing your son fondly. He had his father’s eyes and the gentleness of your facial features. His pale-white skin was also his father’s, but the color of his eyes, black with a hint of brown in them, were yours. “Yeseung is a good boy, aren’t you?”

Yeseung smiled sweetly at you and giggled his cute, toddler giggle. 

 “You know, this child doesn’t come from my side of the family,” Jihoon taunted you as he ate. “My Yeseung is too much like you. Like mother, like son.” Jihoon was laughing to himself, pleased at making you feel pissed off early in the morning. It was a ritual he was having a hard time to break, even after five years of marriage. But when Jihoon turned his eyes to you, he stopped mid-laughter.

“What?” he said, raising both hands. “It’s true!” He pointed at his son. “Look at him! He’s hyper!”

“You are uncharacteristically talkative today,” you replied to him, your eyes narrowing. “What are you up to?”

Yeseung stared up from his bowl at his father. He was holding the bowl to his face with his hands, doing his best to quietly finish his breakfast as you had sternly told him to do. He had understood your husband’s words, and now he dropped the bowl, cereal flying all over the place as he bawled.

You stabbed your fork at a hotdog and glared daggers at your husband. “Lee Jihoon!”

Jihoon turned back to his meal. “I love you both, and I’m…” he sighed, getting up on second thought and disappearing behind to the kitchen for a minute. “I’m going to get the dishcloth.”

“I wasn’t hyper this time,” Yeseung sobbed, rubbing his eyes and putting cereal on his face. “He called me hyper again. I wasn’t hyper this time.” He wailed louder. “Why does he always call me hyper?”

You sighed and scooped the child in your arms, forgetting your breakfast. You were hoping for a quiet morning, but Jihoon just had to upset your baby again. “No, appa was just joking.”

“Yeseung-ah!” Jihoon deftly scooped up Yeseung from your arms and began smothering him with kisses. “Appa was just joking! Like we always do!”

Yeseung looked up at his appa, with tearful eyes. “I’m not hyper, right? I’m a good boy, right?”

“Exactly. A very good boy who will help appa clean up the table!” 

 “What activity planning were you talking about?”

Jihoon smirked at you and peppered his son with kisses. “I’m nervous, Y/N,” he said quietly, as he looked straight into your eyes, his face going serious. “That’s why I was being talkative. I rarely do this with others, except you.”

You felt your whole face flush. “What activity planning were you talking about?” you repeated your question again.

Jihoon smiled nervously. “It’s for the Return of Superman show.”

INTERVIEW WITH LEE JIHOON, 30: 

JIHOON: Hello everyone, my name is Lee Jihoon. I am known by many as SEVENTEEN’s Woozi. This—(he hoists little Yeseung up his lap)—is my three-year-old, Lee Yeseung. Say hi to the camera, Yeseung-ah!

YESEUNG: (Smiles at the camera shyly and then burrows into his father’s jacket.)

WOOZI: (Smiles at his son’s shyness.) Sorry, he’s still a bit camera-shy. But we’re really looking forward to enjoying ourselves on this show! And—(Laughs self-consciously and hugs his little boy close to him.)—I hope I learn more as a dad!

Q: This was asked to the other members as well: How does it feel to have a child of your own?

JIHOON: (Laughs nervously and pats Yeseung, who was squirming on his lap.) Actually, it’s nerve-wracking. 

(Silence.) 

JIHOON: (Looks down at his son.) You always have to brace yourself with little Yeseung here.

Boy, were we to find out.

NARRATOR: *We are now here at the Lee residence! (Cameras pan around the lavish but minimalistic penthouse of the Lee family.) And it is a beautiful morning, with no clouds in the sky to signal any rainfall. What will this day bring for Lee-appa and little Yeseung?*

6:50 A.M.

A flutter of what seemed like paper floated into Jihoon’s face. Startled, he opened his eyes and struggled to get up quickly out of bed. 

Another piece of paper—no, poorly-made paper plane—floated into his face. 

He closed his eyes. Took deep breaths. Tried to shake the feeling of sleepiness and called, as calmly as he could, “Yeseung-ah, where did you get all these papers?”

A giggle and a high-pitched squeal of delight was all the answer he could get. 

“LEE YESEUNG!!!”

Lee Jihoon jumped out of bed the moment his eyes caught the paper. Groggily, and feeling a little bit off because it was still early, he reached out and snatched a paper plane zooming in toward him. When his eyes had adjusted enough, he looked at the paper. Oh, cool. His baby boy was making paper planes. What an artist! He smiled sleepily, and was about to say a word of praise to his little artist when he looked at the paper again. 

Panic and stress, too early to be felt in the morning, seized his heart. He was suddenly wide awake. 

Aishh, this kid!!!

Lee Yeseung, his son, was making paper planes out of his music sheets.

HIS LIFE’S WORK. HIS MUSIC SHEETS.

His mind going insane, he bounded across the room with uncharacteristic quickness (it was still early in the morning, mind you), and flung the door open. He was already beginning to panic internally. He was sure he had locked his office at the den when he went into bed at 3 a.m. He was very sure. He wouldn’t have forgotten. But he followed the paper trail—Breathe, bruh, breathe, he kept telling himself, not stopping to look at which song sheet got ripped by his little troll—and with utter disbelief, stared at his wide-open office door.

He distinctly remembered what folks kept telling him about this penthouse. “The doors, cupboards and the built-in closets are definitely (emphasis on DEFINITELY) childproof. You won’t have a problem, even if you get quintuplets running around and playing horse.” 

Now, Lee Jihoon knew better. For his kid, even if he just has ONE Lee Yeseung, all the childproofing in the world would not be able to work. 

 “Yeseung-ah,” he gently chided, as he stared helplessly at the door and the little boy on the floor, surrounded by headsets, pens, papers, song sheets, and other stuff that he had religiously put into what he had considered “safe zones”. Now, he would be much more cautious when dealing with his boy. “What did you do?”

“Paper planes!” the kid squealed in delight, throwing another newly-made paper plane into the air. Jihoon forced himself to look away from the plane circling above them; he forced himself not to see that that was his FIRST finished lyric sheet for “Adore U”. This kid knew how to pull triggers to make his dad crazy, that’s for sure. Jihoon was doing his best not to freak out. He loved his little baby more than the song sheets. He kept telling himself that HE LOVED HIS KID MORE THAN THOSE SONG SHEETS THAT HE’D STAYED UP NIGHTS FOR. YEP. NOT FREAKING OUT. 

“That…that was a piece with sentimental value…” the cameras caught Jihoon’s internally-freaking-out-I-don’t-know-how-to-handle-this-mess face, picking up the sheets that he could still salvage. The cameras also panned at the safety latches that were expertly unlatched (some were even unlatched with what looked to be like bite marks and SCISSORS), and the outlet caps that were—you guessed it—uncapped. Nothing closed remained closed. It was a good thing, though, that Jihoon’s treasure chest of other composing mementos was one with a padlock. Nothing beats a good, old padlock, he thought to himself with a sigh of relief. Not even childproof crap compared to it.

NARRATOR: *Oh, no! It looks like little Yeseung has made quite a mess! And with his dad’s most precious music sheets!*

“You won’t have a problem,” they said. “Childproof,” they said. Wow. Even with quintuplets, huh? 

It took only one Lee Yeseung, Jihoon thought to himself, to unlatch three “safety” latches on his office door. Just one, bright, hyper, adorably troll-like little boy with an adorable giggle that was making his heart melt right now, wearing nothing but a T-shirt and his nappie, and holding a ripped-up song sheet entitled—OH NO. 

“LEE YESEUNG!!!”

INTERVIEW WITH LEE JIHOON, 30: 

JIHOON: (Holds his head in his hands for a few seconds before sighing deeply). He tore up my latest work. My little boy tore up my latest work. This is so…(groans and laughs at the same time) Seriously, I don’t know what to expect of my kid anymore. He just keeps doing whatever, and…it’s…(Laughs softly now.) I don’t know how my wife manages to keep him at bay. They’re together basically fifteen hours everyday, right after work, and she always manages to teach him how to do this and that without freaking out. Now I’M freaking out. That song sheet he’d ripped up had taken me hours to write, and I’ve only finished it right before I went to bed today. I don’t know if I’d still be able to salvage it. (Looks at the camera shyly and smirks.) But this is okay for the most part. Kids sometimes do this. (Laughs sheepishly at his excuse for Yeseung’s paper plane incident.) He’s probably doing payback because I called him a “hyper kid” yesterday.

Q: Will you still be able to write that song down because he ripped up that one? We know that you also have deadlines to meet. 

JIHOON: (Nods confidently.) It’s a good thing that I always put files on backup. I never write without saving data, because accidents like this could happen. But still I have to tell Yeseung (Bites back a smile) not to mess with my work again. Even though my heart just bursts when I discipline him, I really have to do it so he learns that it’s not okay to rip up sheets and make paper planes out of them. (Nods again, as if still not quite believing what happened.) Paper planes. Wow. I didn’t teach him that, but he sure knows how to make one. 

NARRATOR: *We are now entering the Lee playroom, where Jihoon-appa is going to talk to little Yeseung! What will happen here? Let’s find out!*

7:00 A.M.

A very repentant little Yeseung was escorted inside the playroom. His eyes, very much like his dad's, were now looking pleadingly at his father, who was having a very hard time keeping a stern face with his son. Because he felt like bailing out on this “scolding session”, as he liked to dub it, Jihoon avoided his son’s eyes, and the cute pleas that followed as he set two little chairs facing each other. 

“Appa,” Yeseung called out to him, his baby voice quivering along with his lip as he spoke. “I’m really, really sorry for making a mess. Appa. Appa.” 

“I know you’re sorry,” Jihoon answered, leaning down to pick Yeseung up and to set him on one chair. Then he tried to look inconspicuous and stern as he sat down on the other one, trying not to mind the cameras and the cameramen who were watching the scene with smiles on their faces. “But we still have to talk about what happened. Now, Lee Yeseung, what did you do? Why is Appa upset?”

There was silence for a while. Jihoon wondered for a few seconds if his kid even knew what was wrong about what he did. 

Then, just as he was about to give up, Yeseung, whose eyes were by this time zooming in on his train set, was scratching his head. “Um…because I made a mess?” He whispered, his lisp making the question comical. He looked at his dad questioningly. 

Jihoon, looking at Yeseung, found the expression so similar to yours whenever you would look up to him to ask a question. The similarity of the expression struck him that he couldn’t help but become benevolent towards this cute little tyke. “Exactly. What kind of mess?”

“I knew it.” Suddenly, Yeseung sniffled. His bottom lip was trembling, and Jihoon was panicking again. He was NOT allowed to cry. He had ripped up his dad’s song sheets, a vital part of his dad’s source of income! Jihoon was aghast as the little boy sobbed uncontrollably. “Did I make too many paper airplanes, Appa?” He began crying uncontrollably now. “I…I thought you would like them. Th-that w-w-was wh-why I…I made them.” Yeseung hiccupped between words, his tears streaming down his red cheeks, his eyes squeezed shut. 

This kid is MISSING THE POINT! Who cares if he makes a thousand of those? I wouldn’t care. I’d love it even. But the material he used to make them…Jihoon took a deep breath. “Don’t cry, Lee Yeseung,” Jihoon warned, an edge to his voice, like he had heard you do whenever you would scold Yeseung. “You messed up Appa’s office. What did Eomma and Appa tell you about messing up Appa’s office?”

“You…” Yeseung looked at him with eyes that mirrored hurt. “You…” Hiccup. “Don’t…” Hiccup. “Like…” Hiccup. “My…” Hiccup. “PAPER PLANES!!!” 

“No! I like them!” 

At that point. Yeseung bawled like the baby he was. “I’m…” Hiccup. “Sorry!!!” He cried again. 

“It’s true. I like them!”

You were supposed to be scolding him, Lee Jihoon, Jihoon could hear you chiding, NOT giving in the minute he cries like this. 

Of course, Jihoon knew that. But he just sat there, speechless for a few seconds before coming down on his knees and consoling his baby. He really couldn’t be upset with this one for long, hard as he might try! “Hey, I liked your paper planes,” he whispered gently, rubbing his boy’s back and scooping him up into his arms, walking to and from one side of the room to the other. “You did great! I liked them.” 

Yeseung looked up from Jihoon’s now-wet shirt where he had burrowed his face in to study his appa’s face. “Really? You…” Hiccup. “Really…” Hiccup. “Liked it…FOR REAL?” 

Jihoon nodded, relieved to see that Yeseung had stopped sobbing his hurt little heart out. “I did. But what I didn’t like about them was that you made them out of my music sheets. What did Eomma and I tell you about that?”

“I…” he sniffled. “I wasn’t supposed to tear it up like I did.” 

“But you did. Now, are you going to do that again?” 

Yeseung, bless his heart, wiped his tears and shook his head.  His eyes, now hopefully alight again, were looking at his father. “Not ever again.”

“You promise?” Jihoon looked at his little boy with a twinkle in his eye.

“I promise,” Yeseung solemnly replied. 

“That’s my boy!” Jihoon kissed him on the cheek. “How about I get the ‘I Love You’ kiss to be sure that we’re friends again?”

Yeseung’s face lit up just like that. Using his hands wetted by tears, he held his father’s face on both and kissed Jihoon on the nose to start. He began to chant this unique family ritual in his irresistibly endearing, sing-song voice. “Appa, appa, I love you!” Left cheek kiss. “I love you!” Right cheek kiss. “I love you!” Nose kiss. 

Jihoon laughed and did the same. “Yeseung, Yeseung, I love you!” Left cheek kiss. “I love you!” Right cheek kiss. “I love you!” Nose kiss.

“There!” Yeseung looked at him cheekily and patted his face, as if consoling him, as if his dad were the one who did something wrong. “We’re friends again now!” Then he burrowed his face into his dad’s shirt and said something that sounded like, “I wuv youuuu”.

Jihoon just stayed like that, as if time became suspended for him. Never had he felt these unexplainable emotions inside him right now. And, as was characteristic of him, he couldn’t say a word. This feeling, with his baby boy tucked into him so snugly, was too precious for words.

Soft laughs could be heard from the cameramen, breaking his awed reverie. He smiled shyly at one camera, and exited the room, still carrying his early-morning troublemaker.

And so father and son became reconciled after the paper plane incident, happily playing around with each other and laughing, the way they always do whenever they are together. 

INTERVIEW WITH LEE JIHOON, 30: 

JIHOON: (Smiles shyly.) I’m really happy that I got to be a part of this show. Being part of an idol group is amazing, and the companionship and the effort each of us put to make SEVENTEEN survive the challenges and achieve milestones cannot be compared to anything…but it’s true that we sometimes miss out on family life. The tours, the training, the endless engagements and other things that work requires us to do, are often at the expense of our time with our personal and family lives. I’m really thankful for shows like this, where the line between career and personal lives could be blurred for a few enjoyable days to show people that we, too, have families, and we want to spend time with them as much as we could. (Shows a picture of Yeseung.) This was taken during Yeseung’s second birthday party. He had just gotten his front teeth then, and you could see that there (points at Yeseung’s grinning mouth in the picture.)…he’s cute, isn’t he? (Laughs shyly again.) But the reason why I was showing this is because I would like to tell you that this was one of the times when I wasn’t able to make it for an important family event. It’s a good thing that my wife understands enough, loving enough, and patient enough to go on and do things even when I am not there. She has never resented me for having less time with them as I’d like. (Smiles briefly.) But here I am, and I promise myself that I will enjoy these moments with my baby.

9:00 A.M.

NARRATOR: *Little artist Yeseung is going to daycare today. Will he enjoy his day with friends today? Let’s find out!*

“THAT’S NOT A STAR!!!” 

Yeseung’s eyes started to water with tears as he looked at Eunha, his girl crush since forever, glaring at him with her tiny arms crossed around her chest. 

The daycare toddlers had been told by their teacher to draw shapes with different kinds of crayons and pencils, all neatly laid out on the tables. The kids, sitting patiently on their chairs and putting their creative minds to work, were seated three by three on each table. But the cameras were zoomed in on Lee Yeseung and Jeon Eunha’s table. They were supposed to have another classmate on their table, but a friend of theirs wasn’t able to come to daycare today. Cameramen smiled as they panned swiftly to Lee Yeseung, whose lower lip had started to tremble, a sure sign that he was about to cry. Again. 

Beautiful Jeon Eunha, Jeon Wonwoo’s bright little baby girl, dressed in a white dress and baby blue cardigan, would not stop telling Yeseung that he had made an unusual drawing of a star. Therefore, it could not be a star. 

A cameraman zoomed in on the artwork in question, and he had to agree. The huge yellow-and-orange blob in the middle of Lee Yeseung’s paper did not look like a star at first glance.

But how could we say that to such a cute little boy who looked even cuter in his navy trousers, cream-colored sweater and round-rimmed glasses? How?

“B-but it is a star,” he sobbed as he pointed at his artwork with a yellow crayon. “See? It--it even looks like it’s burning bright!”

“It’s not a star, Lee Yeseung,” Eunha insisted, her beautiful chin arched up imperiously. “Stars do not look like that!”

Yeseung cried. “Don’t fight with each other, Yeseung and Eunha,” Yoon Jae Eun wisely shouted from the other table where she was also drawing shapes with the Choi twins. “Don’t cry anymore, Lee Yeseung!”

Eunha saw that she had made Yeseung cry, and she stopped crossing her arms and sat down next to him. Embarrassed because he could not stop crying, she awkwardly patted his shoulder. 

“Don’t cry,” she softly consoled, “don’t cry.”

“No I don’t wanna cry,” Choi Seungjae sang from the other table. Soft laughter emanated from the cameremen’s different perches. Seriously, Choi Seungjae? 

NARRATOR: *Aww, the argument between Lee Yeseung and Jeon Eunha is now ending with a warm gesture from Eunha! How cute these two are!*

“I’m sorry for making you cry,” Eunha whispered, her braids swishing as she leaned close to Yeseung. Her pretty, almond-shaped eyes, which shone fiercely a few moments ago, now looked kind. And Yeseung, seeing that his friend was being nice to him again, gave Eunha a wobbly smile. 

“I can show you how to make a better star. May I?”

Yeseung nods, his eyes filled with unashamed wonder again at Eunha. 

Watching from a floor-to-ceiling window facing the tables, Jihoon and Wonwoo stood watching their kids. 

Lee Jihoon groaned and put his hand to his face. “Wow.” 

Wonwoo looked over at Jihoon and grinned. “I told you: let’s match them up.” 

“Stop that! They’re so young!” But Jihoon laughed and pressed a hand to the windowpane, his watchful eyes never leaving his son, who was now coloring with Eunha. “You’re right, though. My Yeseung likes Eunha very much.” 

Wonwoo nodded wisely, very much like his daughter. “I guess he liked her from the very moment he met Eunha.”

INTERVIEW WITH LEE JIHOON, 30:

JIHOON: (Rubs his chin thoughtfully.) When Yeseung was about two years old, my wife and I noticed that he was having a hard time trying to speak. I thought we were just both paranoid parents since he was our first baby, but when we relayed our concerns to our family doctor, he immediately referred us to a speech-language pathologist, who confirmed our fears. This pathologist told us that Yeseung had the beginning stages of a “speech sound disorder”. Yeseung checks the box on the symptoms that this disorder is known widely for: not using consonants when babbling, using mainly vowels or resorting to gestures to communicate even at age 2...we were really--how do I put  this--distraught, that our little boy could have that kind of speech impediment. But the doctor told us not to worry, and said that because we found out about Yeseung’s speech disorder earlier, we could treat it with a higher chance of success. 

(Short pause as Jihoon takes a drink.)

JIHOON: We took him to a lot of individual therapy sessions for the first few months, but there were no changes. We took less hours from work as much as we could to spend more time with him. Yeseung was a bright kid. He knew that there was something wrong and I could see that he wanted to help us make him better, but he could only do so much. 

(Looks lost in thought for a while.)

JIHOON: I remember thinking during that time, “My baby boy is about to attend daycare and then preschool--if we don’t have success in therapeutic treatment, he may have a hard time at school.” (Looks at his hands.) I remember nights when I would carry him in my arms at night, rock him to sleep, and then go to my wife, who would be crying silently. I would hold her close, too. Where words sound empty, gestures fill. (Smiles sadly.) It was a very hard time for her because the both of us had demanding jobs, and there are particularly hard days at work, which adds to the pressure of making sure that our child gets the love, care and attention that he needs. Sometimes, as a parent, you feel so inadequate because even though you love your child with all of your being, it’s...it’s not enough. And you have to learn to accept that you aren’t enough, and that you have to learn harder to wait. I learned that as we helped Yeseung overcome his speech sound disorder.

JIHOON: (Pauses for a while, then suddenly smiles.) Things took a turn for the better when Wonwoo and his family visited on a Monday. My wife was at work and I was the one with Yeseung then, because it was my day off. Wonwoo brought Eunha to Yeseung, and I could still remember Yeseung’s face (Gestures wildly with his hands, eyes smiling.), all bright and cheerful and all smiles--he only had his four front teeth, then! I remember that they played together a lot, and Wonwoo and I talked all afternoon about...dad stuff. (Laughs lightly.) Who knew, right? Who knew that we’d get to this point. We got married at about the same time, we had kids that are separated only by months--it was an amazing conversation that I still recall fondly. 

(The cameraman nods agreement at Jihoon’s comments about how fast time flies. Jihoon gives him a high-five.)

JIHOON: But what amazed me was when we ended the day and I was carrying Yeseung, as we waved goodbye to our visitors, Yeseung shouted out, “Jeon Eunha, bye-bye!” (Looks at the camera, smiling incredulously.) If anyone could have seen my face when he said those three words. He said it clearly, without any sign of the impediment he was being treated with. I tried to make him say it again, but he looked up at me and I knew that I had to wait a little longer for him to speak clearly on his own. I didn’t have to wait longer. During dinner later that night, my wife and I were surprised. He suddenly said, “Jeon Eunha. I like Jeon Eunha.”

(Wonderment from the background of the interview. Jihoon nods, smiling and then shakes his head in disbelief.)

JIHOON: (Looks at the camera again, smirking his FAMOUS SMIRK.) To everyone who is watching, yes, it’s true. Yeseung’s first clear sentence wasn’t about his parents. (Shakes his head again.) It was about how he liked Jeon Eunha.

12:00 P.M.

“LEE YESEUNG!!!” 

Jihoon’s piercing cry of alarm could be heard all around the whole daycare center. Cameras panned at him quickly, standing, distraught and in shock, as he watched his toddler tumble down the supposedly safe slide at the playroom, head first. 

As fast as his feet could carry him, Jihoon was beside his son at once. He cradled Yeseung’s head on his lap and he checked for bumps. His heart raced inside so fast he felt like he was about to faint. He recorded today in his mind: Lee Yeseung’s first slide accident. He wanted no more accidents in the future. 

“Why did you slide down like that?” he chided worriedly. He kissed Yeseung’s head over and over again and hugged his boy close to him. “You’re not allowed to slide that way again, are we clear?” When he did not get a response from the little tyke, he repeated, more firmly, “Are we clear, Lee Yeseung?”

“Hehehe.”

The gurgling giggles that only four-year-old toddlers can produce vibrated in Lee Jihoon’s chest. Surprised, he looked down at Yeseung in his arms. 

Lee Yeseung wasn’t crying. 

Lee Yeseung was laughing. 

As in bursting to the seams with laughter. 

“Lee Yeseung, I didn’t hear you reply to me. Are we clear?” Jihoon intentionally made his voice sound sterner than usual. “Are. We. Clear? Or do I have to make you face the wall like your Eomma does?” 

The little lip trembled again. Jihoon thought Yeseung was about to have another crying session, but something different happened. 

The trembling lip was a moment’s hesitation, in a toddler’s language. 

Yeseung reached up, cupped his father’s face in his small hands, and kissed him on the cheek. 

“Lee Ye--”

--another kiss on the cheek. Followed by a giggle. 

“You look funny when you’re mad, Appa,” Yeseung giggled again. “Funny, funny, funny!”

“Lee Yeseung,” Lee Jihoon groaned. Again, he received a kiss on the cheek. 

“Don’t be mad at Yeseung anymore!”

“LEE YESEEEUNNGGGG!!!”

With that, Lee Yeseung bounded away, towards the direction where Choi Seungjae’s voice came from. His playmates were calling again. 

And Lee Jihoon--while charmed and red-faced by his son’s “kiss-on-the-cheek diplomacy”--still watched worriedly. He had felt a huge bump that he knew would soon grow into a humongous one later. He knew that you would be furious the moment you see that bump on Yeseung’s forehead. 

Sighing and completely resigned to his fate as a worried dad and soon-to-be-interrogated husband, he watched as Yeseung played tag with his hyper friends.

Oops. He had to remove that word from his vocabulary. He mentally slapped his head. Yeseung doesn’t like being called hyper. Yeseung won’t like it if Jihoon described his friends as hyper, too, he knew. 

“I love my son,” he repeated over and over. “I love my son. I love my wife. This will be a great day.” 

And of course it will be!

8:00 P.M.

NARRATOR: *We are back at the Lee Residence! Looks like little Lee Yeseung is telling his mom about his day while they are playing with his Legos. Let’s look at what they are doing!* 

It was a rule in your house that Lee Yeseung will only be allowed to play with his iPad for a certain amount of hours, and with parental supervision. Nights were reserved for non-gadget games and quality time as a family. 

Which is why, after dinner, cameras slowly zoomed in on Yeseung’s bedroom, where you, Jihoon and Yeseung were all sprawled on the padded floor, helping the little one play with his Lego blocks. You, of course, had your face blurred on the cameras for privacy purposes. On his small bed, tidily decorated and loud with Toy Story designs (Woody was Yeseung’s favorite cartoon character), were Yeseung’s pajamas and socks, folded neatly and waiting to be worn by their owner when bedtime approached. 

You helped Lee Yeseung build a ship with his Lego blocks, and Lee Jihoon sat on one side, pen and paper in hand. He had been trying to salvage what he could still remember about his latest work, which had been torn apart and made into paper planes, now hanging on the ceiling above. Yeseung had insisted, and you had overruled Jihoon’s protestations. Jihoon had given in and helped you and Yeseung hang the paper planes onto the ceiling with different colored strings. 

“Eunha and I had a fight,” Yeseung dutifully reported to you as he skilfully attached a Lego to complete the hull of the ship.

“Aww. Now that’s a story I haven’t heard about.” you said consolingly at your son before turning to Jihoon, whispering fiercely, “Was this before or after our baby got a bump on his head?”

Jihoon stopped writing. “Ouch. That hurts. I was watching him all the time when he slid the wrong way, love!”

You made faces at Jihoon and turned back to Yeseung. The ship was almost completed. “Why did you have a fight?”

“She told me that my star did not look like a star.” Yeseung’s face twisted again when he mentioned what happened, but he did not cry. “But it was a star, Eommai! I even made it burn brightly.”

You were taken by surprise at the reason for the fight and decided to be gentle. “Well...we learned about what stars look like, right? Remember? You and Eomma made stars together?”

Yeseung nodded and looked up at you with sad eyes. “I remember.”

“So…” you purse your lips. “What did your star look like?” 

Yeseung immediately got up and skipped to his small drawing table, where he picked up a piece of paper. “Here, Eomma! And I promise you, it’s really a star!”

You looked at the blob of yellow on the paper and could not speak for a moment. Ah. Maybe they were learning about shapes earlier, and to everyone in the classroom, this did not look like a star shape. But you knew how Yeseung was thinking. You glanced at your son appreciatively, smiling at him.

“It is a star,” you confirmed, and Yeseung beamed at you. 

By nine o’clock, after tucking Yeseung in to sleep, cameras were still trained on you and Jihoon, sitting next to your toddler’s bed. 

Jihoon cleared his throat. “So...is it really a star?”

You looked at Jihoon quickly and laughed softly. Then you reached for Yeseung’s iPad on the bedside table where you were leaning. 

“See for yourself.”

You opened the iPad and showed Jihoon a recent video that Yeseung had just watched. It was about the solar system and the stars. 

No stars shown on the video looked five-pointed. All stars shown were balls of fire, burning brightly. 

“Eunha was right when she showed Yeseung how to draw the star shape that we use in art,” you said softly, closing the iPad, “but Yeseung was thinking differently. He was picturing a real star. He knew what they really looked like and he wanted to draw it well.” 

“Hence the blob.” Jihoon was holding Yeseung’s artwork. “He’s a genius.

You laughed again. “Yes. Hence the blob of burning yellow.”

You both laughed, and watched Yeseung’s deep breaths. Then you turned off the lamp. “Let’s go. He’s asleep.”

“Remind me to get padlocks for my office.”

You laughed again.

Cameras panned away from Yeseung’s room as you and Jihoon retreated to your bedroom. But, faintly, just before the scene was completed, Jihoon was heard speaking in low tones.

“Remember those thirty nights we spent together, love?”

“Shhhh! Lee Jihoon!”

Mercifully, the scene had already been completed. Lee Jihoon’s teasing laugh and your noises of protest went unrecorded and your bedroom door closed.

So there ended another night at the Lee residence. 

3:04 A.M.

Or so we thought. 

The soft patter of footsteps and a little figure in pajamas could be heard quietly sneaking into a forbidden part of the house. 

Click. 

“Let’s make boats for Eomma,” a voice sang in the dark. 

An automatic light came on in the forbidden room, followed by the sound of paper being ripped. Rip, rip, rip. And singing! But you and Jihoon did not hear all the commotion happening. The cameras, though, recorded the sneaky action.

You better hope that ripping sound is not coming out of your books…

…because Lee Yeseung is about to make you a lot of boats.

EPISODES | Ep. 1 | Ep. 2 | after-party |  Ep. 3 | only us | Ep. 4 | afterglow

- Admin Leanne

[paulisweeabootrash]

First Impression: Neon Genesis Evangelion

Get in your robots, audience, it's time for Paul is Weeaboo Trash!  And today, I'm finally watching a show it seems like everyone just... assumes I must've seen:

Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995)

Episodes watched: 8

Platform: Netflix

The idea of something being a "classic" may be in decline in the anime fandom, or at least be getting very specialized, since "anime" no longer implies a narrow interest in specific sci-fi and fantasy subgenres like it used to, but certain shows still manage to pervade the pop culture indirectly.  Neon Genesis Evangelion is one such show, enduring in the modern fandom and general internet culture because of its status as one of those old sci-fi anime classics.  It has contributed memes — not just as in image macros or running jokes, but as in units of culture in the form of iconic quotes or character designs or elements of the plot — to the point that you have certainly been in some way exposed to them without any knowledge of the source material.  But despite its reputation as a must-see cultural touchstone, it has been out of print in America for years.  Used copies of the DVDs sell for absurd prices, and I don't think I knew anyone who owned it when I was a young weeb in the mid-2000s.  I'm fairly sure my family did not have cable during the one specific season it was on Adult Swim, and there's no chance I would have been up at 12:30AM on Thursdays to watch it anyway.  I am not much of a fan of media piracy and wasn't even aware of that option when it was apparently everyone else's favorite pastime to ruin their computers with sketchy torrents.  So there was never a reasonable way for me to watch it, only for me to be dimly aware that this was An Important Show I Need To See.  Until now.  Because it's on Netflix.  As if I hadn't already been awaiting it, I was aggressively reminded of it, because social media and geeky news outlets were soon blowing up with retrospectives and Very Serious Analyses — and fans of the old ADV translation were offering hot takes on how Netflix's release compares.  So let me finally check this out for myself.

We start out in the distant future of... 2015, where UN forces are defending Tokyo-3 ("Old Tokyo" is mentioned and depicted later; no mention yet of Tokyo-2 unless I somehow already forgot it) against an attacking "angel", an immensely powerful alien with barely-comprehensible powers.  Meanwhile, an officer of a UN agency called NERV, Misato Katsuragi, brings our main character, 14-year-old Shinji Ikari, to an underground NERV base under Tokyo-3 on the instructions of Shinji's father Gendo, who runs a secret research project.  Shinji has been brought there to pilot an Evangelion, or Eva for short, a giant robot operated by some sort of neural interface.  In combat.  With no training.  He is, understandably, not happy about this.  After seeing how badly injured the other available pilot, Rei Ayanami, is, however, he agrees to do it — and it works far better than he or anyone else expected.  He apparently has an innately great ability to "sync" with however exactly the Eva's interface works.  But this only gets him as far as starting the thing up.  When he actually engages the angel, he has trouble just getting the Eva to walk, and he feels the pain of the Eva taking damage once attacked, a frankly horrifying feature of the interface.  We cut to him waking up in a hospital, but having surprisingly won because his Eva "went berserk", operating on its own.  A flashback later shows what happened when he lost control of the Eva: it fought the angel by itself, but also took heavy damage, and we see its visor? faceplate? sōmen? of the Eva's armor come off to reveal a fleshy-looking face and a very biological-looking eye.  At this point Shinji blacked out, which is really the only reasonable response to this situation.

Over the next several weeks (the time scale is vague, but since Rei apparently fully recovers from the injuries she had when we first saw her before the time she and Shinji are both deployed, it must be at least 3 weeks between eps. 1 and 5), more angels appear, to the surprise of civilians and UN forces alike.  The Evas continue to be excellent weapons against them (though Shinji himself is still, uh, not great at using them), but despite having now killed several angels, the Evas are considered a ridiculous boondoggle by personnel of other UN branches, and Gendo's sinister superiors seem to be losing patience with his project.  In the words of... uh... that UN navy guy in ep. 8, "Shit!  A bunch of kids are supposed to save the world?"  The alternatives are wildly ineffective conventional weapons and a remote-controlled nuclear-powered giant robot that almost had a literal Chernobyl-style meltdown, which was averted by Misato and Shinji.  Although repairs are expensive, injuries common, and pilots in short supply, Evas indeed seem to be the only effective weapon against the invading cosmic horror, the barely-comprehensible aliens that are impervious to ordinary human technology and also don't fit our concepts of life or... uh... possibly physics.  So, instead, in the words of Misato later in the same episode, "This plan may be insane, but I don't think it's impossible."

While this is going on, Shinji has been adjusting to this new life poorly and slowly.  Despite being a pilot, he is still after all a 14-year-old, so he is enrolled into the same class as Rei at a local school whose student body has dwindled as more people evacuate over the initial angel attack.  He also needs somewhere to live, so Misato arranges for him to move into her apartment.  Some of Shinji's classmates think he's incredibly lucky to live with her, and spend a good deal of their screen time drooling over her, but Shinji is highly uncomfortable around her not just because Captain Katsuragi is his commanding officer, but also because she has a tendency to not wear much clothing around the house and is, er, a bit of a drunk and a slob.  Oh, and she has an inexplicable, clawed, beer-drinking penguin.  You know, all stuff that would make a nervous, lonely, scared 14-year-old completely at home.

Neither NERV training nor school guarantee a community, though, and Shinji, isolated and confused, could sure use one right about now.  He seems quite likely traumatized from the first battle.  He keeps ending up in situations that make him wildly uncomfortable while other characters take them in stride.  He repeatedly attempts to quit NERV or at least defy orders before backing out (or... backing back in?) at the last moment.  It would frankly be bizarre that they accept him doing this, except that (1) nobody really seems to take Shinji that seriously anyway, (2) he's the boss's kid, and (3) most importantly, it seems that only a small number of pilots, all the same age as Shinji and Rei, are even capable of using Evas.  (Wife and I are starting to suspect reasons why this might be, especially given the whole cyborgs with neural interfaces thing, but... uh... let's not embarrass ourselves with public speculations about the plot of a ridiculously famous show almost as old as we are.)  He only slowly gains any support or comfort from his new classmates and colleagues.  They don't reach out to him, and he certainly doesn't reach out to them, because who is he supposed to talk to?  His roommate/commanding officer who is twice his age?  His classmates who treat him as a celebrity, not a person, once they find out he's an Eva pilot?  Even if his default state since the very first episode hadn't been basically imploding into despair with no idea how to communicate that anything's wrong, there's nobody that really makes sense for him to try to communicate it to.  Except one person: Rei.  He notices that she's also isolated at school, and especially after seeing her dark, miserable, unmaintained apartment, he attempts to be friendly towards her.  I thought this might be a hint of growth indicating that he understands she is possibly the only person more isolated than him and the only one who might be able to relate to him, but then the next time he threatens to quit NERV after that conversation, he explicitly claims she doesn't know what he's going though, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ maybe he just has bad social skills.

Sigh.

Shinji does start to make friends with Aida and Suzuhara, two of his classmates, though.  And it's interesting because they contrast against him in their reactions to the conflict outside.  Aida roleplays being in the military and finds Shinji's role as an Eva pilot glorious and enviable.  Suzuhara is initially furious at Shinji because his sister was collateral damage — she was injured when Shinji fought the angel — and his mind is changed only after Shinji rescues him (and Aida) from an angel.  Shinji, though, having been thrust into a role he doesn't even understand and about which he is ambivalent and unstable, lacks Aida's optimistic admiration of his role and a full appreciation of either Suzuhara's resentment or gratitude.  He not only rejects their praise, he calls himself a coward during (sigh) one of his attempts to quit NERV.  It occurs to me that this could be seen as indicating different perspectives about the military (ask any American vet who's sick of being "thanked for their service"), or even different perspectives about adulthood itself — I'll bet any millennial who did not achieve their dreams can recognize Aida's "wow this is amazing I can't wait to be a grownup too" roleplaying vs. Shinji's "I am doomed and isolated by the responsibility that has been thrown at me" actual experience in NERV.

Also thanks to the school scenes, we start to learn some backstory, including the famous "Second Impact".  A catastrophic asteroid impact in 2000 melted Antarctica's glaciers, which led to unprecedentedly rapid sea level rise, leading to mass extinction, including that of half of humanity through not only direct climate change impacts like displaced populations and crop failures but also conflict stemming from it.  Or so the official story goes.  It is later revealed that the Second Impact actually involved somehow the previous arrival of angels on Earth, although this has yet to be explained in detail.  (Actually, I accidentally saw spoilers about more detail about this while revising this review, because I went to sanity-check myself about some other detail on one of the fan wikis, so I know part of where this is going, but only part.)

Over the first eight episodes, which must be several weeks at least after the start of the show given that Rei has recovered from her initial injuries (although the time scale is very vague), Shinji fights four angels total and gradually improves, but the biggest improvement comes not from him being an individual hero but from finally working well with others.  For example, the octahedral angel that drills into NERV's base has incredible abilities to detect and counter incoming attacks.  It kicks Shinji's ass on the first attempt, because duh.  But Misato devises a plan to test its abilities and concentrate the power of... uh... Japan's entire electrical grid(?!) at it from a safe distance, and the plan succeeds only because of Rei giving Shinji cover.  An angel attacks a UN ship convoy transporting the third pilot, Asuka Langley Soryu, and her Eva, and she and Shinji fight the angel together in a ludicrous fight that involves both cramming in to pilot the same Eva together (which, interestingly, requires them to give it the same, or maybe just compatible, instructions together in the same language for it to work... yay neural interfaces).  So maybe/hopefully the direction this is going is "the chosen one is a stupid idea and even talented people need both training and cooperation to not suck at things"?

Episode 8 leaves off with Asuka joining Shinji and Rei's school class, and with the dramatic and creepy reveal of an embryo encased in bakelite which is described by Gendo as "Adam, the first human"...  Well.  That comes off as the kind of thing that would drive the future plot, and hopefully all the Biblical imagery will finally start to converge into something coherent instead of just sort of serving to draw extra attention to the fact that the humans refer to the aliens as "angels".  I've been wondering about that since the beginning.  There's the title, of course, but also the sefirot in the opening and on Gendo's office ceiling, the first angel's attacks using what appears to be a directed energy weapon which invariably forms glowing crosses, and the fact that most of the angels themselves are wildly non-humanoid (a choice which echoes the rather... eldritch... classical depictions of angels — see also the seraph in the opening).  NERV's motto is even explicitly, well, monotheistic at least, if not sectarian: "God's in his heaven.  All's right with the world!", which is counterintuitive at best with the idea of calling the alien invaders "angels".

Well.  I'll find out, and I plan to write a followup like I did with Re:ZERO, going into the broad swaths of the rest of the plot and my overall impressions of how they handled things.  Especially given that this show has a famously-controversial ending.  I jumped into this determined to watch the whole series, so I'm not backing out.

I'll just threaten to quit repeatedly then almost immediately come back.

-----

W/A/S: 4 / 3 / I feel kinda bad about this but 4?

Weeb: I mean, anything with giant robots fighting giant monsters deserves a few points just for that, right?  I don't think this requires much by way of Japanese cultural references or assumptions to watch, though.

Ass: Nudity so far has been brief, partial, censored by convenient angles and object placement, and not remotely sexy.  Thanks to another contextless spoiler I happen to have picked up, I expect an infamous later scene that is clearly supposed to be sad and disturbing in context, which is, again, not the kind of thing this scale was originally designed to describe.

Shit (writing): Even though I tend to overall like their plots, I always sort of sigh and eyeroll at the "let's put children/teens in combat and/or experiment on and/or just plain torture them to force them to become powerful" storyline formula that’s been semi-popular for the last few decades, and Evangelion is definitely in that category.  Friends have said the story is confusing or poorly-paced, and I kind of agree but also think some of the confusion is warranted by the choice to enter the story in media res in order to reveal what's going on to the audience at about the same time it's revealed to Shinji.  As for the tendency to have some long shots where literally nothing happens, that does get annoying, and I suspect its primary motivation was to save money, but I think it also usually emphasizes how lonely the whole situation is, at least before Shinji starts to warm up to Misato and Rei to Shinji in the last couple of episodes I've watched so far (which have, appropriately, had much more action and interaction).  Mainly, my writing complaints are actually about translation, because there are some noticeable and consequential differences between translations for the sub and dub.  Yeah, yeah, I've heard of the love vs. like thing everyone on the internet is already upset about, but I haven't gotten to that episode yet.  I'm talking about things like Misato saying "it will work!" in the sub vs. just "okay!" in the dub when Shinji is first able to control his Eva, a choice which suggests very different things about both her level of knowledge of the project and why Shinji has been called on for it at all.  The new dub also feels... uh... too at home as a dub of a '90s anime, as it prioritizes matching lip flaps over flowing like believable speech.  Having not seen the old dub, of course, I can't make any kind of judgement about whether this is a step up, down, or sideways from how ADV did it.  And the sub has many on-screen captions in Japanese are left untranslated — not things like signs in the background, but actual captions the audience is meant to get information from.

Shit (other): Maybe we're spoiled in this age of computer-aided art, but i's surprising to see a show with such limited animation — speech conveyed only with lip flaps, obviously reused shots within the same episode, foreground objects gracelessly sliding against a background to indicate movement — and so I'm willing to give the show a pass on most of that, especially since the characters are distinctive and the setting and aliens and robots so interesting.  Much of the limited animation actually serves to show the vast scale of NERV's facilities and the Evas vs. the humans and/or to emphasize loneliness like the pacing.  But there really are some painful mistakes from time to time in the art: objects and faces that look utterly wrong, like the artists just did not successfully figure out how to draw that particular character or vehicle from that particular angle.  The legendary opening theme is certainly catchy — it’s been stuck in my head almost continuously for the past week — but I just don’t think I enjoy it as much as other people do.  Some of the immediate complaints that were apparently worthy of news media attention were about the replacement of Fly Me to the Moon with a piece from the show's soundtrack as the ending theme.  I understand why people would be upset by that kind of change, but I am willing to take the controversial stand that it's not a bad change.  The piece they chose as a replacement is haunting and tense, which fits in with the mood of most of the episodes so far, while Fly Me to the Moon feels to me like an inappropriate mood change from that.

Content: Actually among the least graphic of the various shows I've covered involving violent or horrifying elements.

-----

Stray observations:

- God it was weird to write this by constantly abbreviating “Evangelion” as “Eva”, considering that Wife's name is Eva.

- A lot of people seem to hate Shinji as a character, but I find him understandable in a way that probably implies uncomfortable things about my own sanity.  I just... I understand that sheer degree of doom and misery and indecision and inability to articulate any of those.  Man.  Ugh.

- I don't know if you've ever seen an undisguised angel, but trust me: they're horrifying.  (link NSFW)

[burning-up-ao3]

20 Penguins Thoughts: The timeless art of hating your friends

JASON MACKEY Pittsburgh Post-Gazette jmackey@post-gazette.com

 NOV 12, 2019

As if playing against his former team wasn’t enough, Dominik Kahun wrestled with another reality last week as the Penguins prepared to host the Chicago Blackhawks.

On the other bench would be Dominik Kubalik, Kahun’s good friend and former linemate. Born in Czech Republic towns located less than an hour from one another, Kahun and Kubalik grew close during their time with Chicago.

Now, Kahun knew it was time to flip that proverbial switch, turning Kubalik from friend to foe.

“It’s fun,” Kahun said of the inevitable reality of sharing the same slab of ice with a good friend. “You usually don’t see them often. You always talk to them a little bit during warmup. I’m excited.”

 Matt Vensel

Injured Sidney Crosby won't travel with Penguins on upcoming road trip

 What transpired Saturday was exactly what one might expect: There was some talk during a close game, a 3-2 Penguins shootout win, and Kahun and Kubalik, without anything overly noticeable, went their separate ways, their second and final meetup this season not until March.

While playing against a good friend never lacks for fun — ask Sidney Crosby, Kris Letang, Evgeni Malkin and Marc-Andre Fleury how those meetings have gone — they usually aren’t overly physical, the opposite of former football teammates occasionally trying to exact revenge.

Well, except for that one time …

2. It was Nick Bjugstad’s first full NHL season, in 2013-14. Early November game, in Washington, and the Florida Panthers would lose in a shootout.

But it wasn’t the result that Bjugstad remembers. During one particular post-whistle scrum, Bjugstad reached for the closest Capitals player he could find and put one of the league’s more talkative defensemen into a headlock.

Turns it out it was fellow Minnesota native Nate Schmidt.

“We didn’t know it was ... each other,” Bjugstad said. “So we both kind of got each other in a headlock. Then I realized it was Nate. He realized it was me. We just kind of laughed.”

 Matt Vensel

Penguins' power play looking for someone to create chaos

 Playing against good friends — Bjugstad has another in Maple Leafs defenseman Justin Holl, a fellow former Minnesota Gopher — might produce some funny moments, and these guys aren’t out to maim one another.

But Bjugstad said playing one of your buddies is hardly approached with a laissez-faire attitude.

“You want to have the bragging rights, so you don’t want to get beat in any way,” Bjugstad said. “It’s fun to get competitive.”

3. For Jake Guentzel, yet another Minnesota guy, his awkward, on-ice confrontation revolves around Brock Nelson, who’s from ... you guessed it.

Whenever the Penguins play the Islanders, things are bound to be a little more intense, with the on-ice chatter always a little more than usual.

“It was a weird time last year in the playoffs when we were going at it,” Guentzel said.

But back home in Da Beauty League, Minnesota’s terrific summer hockey outfit, any bad blood was quickly shoved aside, even if they had wanted to rip one another’s head off just a few months prior.

“It’s just a battle,” Guentzel said. “I think guys know it. It gets intense. After the game, it’s like nothing happened.”

4. There was a fun sidebar to this story that really didn’t fit anywhere else.

In the Penguins dressing room, Bjugstad and Jared McCann are almost always seated next to one another. They’re also good-natured, almost always available and great with offbeat topics such at this one.

After chatting with Bjugstad, I went next door and posed the same question to McCann, who surprisingly wasn’t much help at all.

“I don’t really have one specific story, no,” McCann said. “A lot of my buddies I grew up with don’t play hockey anymore. I’m not from Minnesota, where everybody plays hockey.”

McCann, who does a pretty good Minnesota accent, is from Stratford, Ontario, which is about two hours west of Toronto. McCann’s dad owned his own construction company and literally created a hockey rink in his backyard.

Also, it’s Canada. Can-a-da. Where hockey trails only eating, drinking and sleeping.

5. Anyway, McCann said his best friend on another team was probably James Reimer, formerly of the Florida Panthers and currently the backup in Carolina.

One small problem here, though: There’s very little trash talk that goes on between the two good friends — McCann actually stayed at Reimer’s house to watch his dog when the latter’s wife gave birth to their first child — because they like each other so much.

“Would I chirp him? No, he’s too nice,” McCann said with a laugh. “I would feel so bad if I did. He’s just such a genuinely good person. He’s never chirping or anything. He’s just an honest hockey player.”

6. Speaking of chirping, a few of the Penguins I talked to for this story flat-out stink at talking trash.

“I’m no good,” Marcus Pettersson said. “I just try to stay out of it.”

Added Bjugstad, “Usually when I start chirping, it backfires on me.”

Jack Johnson said playing a good buddy isn’t necessarily about talking trash for him. In fact, Johnson said he’s actually liable to take it a little easy on a good friend.

“You hit each other hard, but he doesn’t get the extra slash or cross-check,” Johnson said.

He also doesn’t get any phone calls or text messages, Johnson said. Both times they’ve met in the playoffs, Johnson and Penguins captain Sidney Crosby refused to talk to one another during the series.

“First time we talked was in the handshake line,” Johnson said.

7. My favorite anecdote from this story wasn’t directly related, unfortunately.

Bryan Rust was the first player I approached, knowing he and Islanders captain Anders Lee — a pair of Notre Dame products — are close.

That playoff series was especially awkward for them, although neither one runs around like an idiot. Just good, hard fun.

“In warmups you try and make eye contact,” Rust said. “You pass each other a puck and have a little bit of fun. On the ice you might say a few things to each other from bench-to-bench.

“I think everyone is pretty good at kind of drawing that fine line between having fun but still going out there and trying to win a game.”

The funny anecdote was this: Rust actually learns other languages to try and annoy players of different nationalities on the ice. Some serious respect there.

“I try and learn a few different languages to maybe say some inappropriate things to guys and catch them off-guard,” Rust said.

Caught me off-guard, too. Definitely didn’t see that one coming from Rust.

8. Moving on.

I’ve beaten this drum plenty before, and I also know it’s early. But at this rate, assuming this sort of stuff continues, I really hope Mike Sullivan gets some love for the Jack Adams Award.

This can be kind of a funky thing. Mike Babcock has never won it, and that, by itself, is absurd. But it tends to go to the guy who has helped his team author the best story or overcome the most odds. Barry Trotz with the Islanders last year was a perfect example.

Sullivan has done that this season. Almost every forward on their roster has been injured at one point or another, including Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Patric Hornqvist. They traded Phil Kessel. Oh, and Kris Letang is hurt, too.

Coming off that playoff loss to the Islanders, Sullivan has adjusted his system to apply more puck-pressure and change how the Penguins play.

If there’s been a better coaching performance around the NHL thus far, I haven’t seen it.

9. The power play should also be factored into Sullivan’s performance this season, but I’m not sure which way to take that.

Obviously it has been terrible, but I’m also fairly confident Sullivan isn’t coaching them to over-pass, over-think or flat-out botch their breakouts. If he is, they should definitely adjust that strategy.

As Sullivan said after Saturday’s game, it’s hardly been one thing. He also admitted his guys are pressing.

Here’s a borderline insane suggestion: While Crosby is out, how about taking Alex Galchenyuk and putting him in the right circle, where he often thrived with the Coyotes?

What’s the worst that could happen, they don’t score?

10. Rust had one of the more confounding starts to a season I had ever seen in 2018-19, when he scored just one goal in his first 29 games, then exploded for a hat trick when the puck followed him all night during a 6-3 loss at Chicago on Dec. 12, 2018.

What a difference a year makes.

In an interview before the season, Penguins general manager Jim Rutherford had some interesting things to say about Rust and others who were a little too content with their success.

“Not that he played poorly, but he’s an example of a guy who I don’t think played at the level he was capable of a year ago,” Rutherford said. “That just gets to contentment. But he’s not the only guy. I’m not trying to single him out or pick on him.”

Rutherford went on to say that, “Bryan Rust was our best player at camp this year.”

After Rust was forced to hit the pause button on that when he was injured blocking a shot in the final preseason game, we’re seeing what Rutherford — and others — saw all through training camp.

11. With his third-period goal on Saturday, Rust extended his point streak to a career-high six games, where he’s scored a total of five goals. All of those since he returned from injury on Oct. 26.

“I guess things feel good,” Rust said with a smile. “I might know better than anyone else that things can turn just as quickly for the bad. I just have to keep plugging away here.”

I asked Rust to describe his approach coming into training camp and what has helped him rediscover his scoring touch.

“Just a fresh start,” Rust said. “Try to put everything in the past behind me. Obviously I felt really good through training camp. Felt great to start the year. Obviously an unfortunate injury with five minutes left in the last preseason game. Kept me out of some games there. I just kept working hard off the ice and kept wanting to play well.”

12. It’s no secret that the Penguins love Rust. Sure, he’s been big in playoffs games. Has scored a bunch of huge goals for the Penguins over the years. He has also played both wings well and has moved up and down the lineup with ease. Recently he’s been very good on Malkin’s wing.

Rust’s game — being hard on pucks and an all-around pain in the butt — has also meshed extremely well with the Penguins’ new identity.

“The biggest thing for me that Rusty has shown since Day 1 of training camp is just a sense of urgency and a certain hunger to his game,” Sullivan said. “When he plays his way, that’s when he’s at his best. I think he’s done that consistently game in and game out, day in and day out, even in practice.”

13. In that preseason interview, Rutherford also said he thought the addition of Brandon Tanev — another versatile and tenacious wing — would be good for Rust. Turns out that was probably right, too.

“We always talk with our players about being a next-effort team,” Sullivan said. “I think Rusty right now probably personifies next-effort play. He’s like a dog on a bone on the puck. He’s relentless.”

With some pretty solid scoring touch to boot.

14. Funny quote from Rust after Saturday’s win: “[Coming back from another deficit] shows a lot of character in this room, but we’re really not making it very easy on ourselves.”

The Penguins spotted their opponent three-goal leads on Monday and Thursday of last week. On Saturday, it was a 2-0 hole they had to erase.

Not exactly a recipe for success, but give the Penguins credit: They’ve found ways to win.

“We have a great group,” Sullivan said. “We’ve got good people. They’re buying in right now, and they’re playing hard for one another.

“I give our leadership a lot of credit. The guys in the room, our veteran guys, they’re leading the way there. And then some of our younger [guys] are bringing a certain level of enthusiasm.

“When you get that combination, for me, that’s a fun combination to be around. And we’ve had that a lot of this year.”

15. The impact of Malkin is absolutely noticeable.

I know it’s hardly a surprise, but similar to Rust, what happened to Malkin last season was hard to describe; at times it was like he suddenly forgot how to play hockey.

That’s in the past now.

I thought Sullivan captured this perfectly after Saturday’s game in talking about Malkin’s game, saying that they don’t want to stifle the star center’s playmaking ability, but they do need to compromise on some things.

“He’s buying in to how we’re trying to play,” Sullivan said. “He’s trying to play a more north-south game even though his instinct sometimes is to play east-west.

“We’re not trying to change Geno. That’s what makes him what he is. That’s what makes him unique. All we’re trying to do is we’re asking him to meet us halfway a little bit, and he’s done that. He’s done a great job since he’s been back.”

16. I thought Justin Schultz quietly bounced back very nicely during an eventful game Saturday night.

His ill-timed pinch, with zero support, led to the Blackhawks’ first goal. A Schultz shot attempt that never found the net inadvertently led to Chicago’s second goal.

But in overtime, Schultz made a terrific play to knock the puck away from Alex DeBrincat on a two-on-one.

It doesn’t show up on the scoresheet, but it was a huge play at the time.

17. Loved the pass by John Marino on Rust’s goal. Such poise for a young kid. Most players Marino’s age would’ve taken that shot, but he wisely took an extra second and found Rust all alone at the bottom of the left circle for a beautiful back-door goal.

“He’s just getting better with every game that he plays,” Sullivan said of Marino. “I think he’s getting more confident every game that he plays. That was a real nice play he made. Just the puck poise, the patience, the vision to see Rusty on the back side. It was just a terrific play.”

It’s pretty much impossible to think of the Penguins’ top-six on defense at this point without Marino. He has absolutely earned a regular spot in the lineup.

18. It’s noticeable that Galchenyuk is lacking confidence.

Three times in the first period Saturday, Galchenyuk had chances to put the Penguins ahead early. Three times, Galchenyuk could not beat Corey Crawford, including one nifty attempt between his legs.

Wrote about this some last week, but the Penguins need Galchenyuk to find it. It’s there, but he’s thinking entirely too much when the puck is on his stick.

19. Number of the week: Plus-12.

That’s McCann’s rating over the past five games, the best on the team. He also has two goals and six points during that stretch.

I’ll admit that I was a little surprised that Sullivan sent McCann out as his third shooter in the shootout, but McCann made his coach look smart by firing high over Crawford’s right shoulder for the shootout-deciding goal.

I’m not backing off my prediction that I think McCann will get 20 goals this season.

20. Non-hockey thought of the week:

I was saddened to learn last week the Wilson’s BBQ on the North Side burned down. Incredible place. My favorite to get BBQ in Pittsburgh. Their spicy sauce was nothing short of incredible.

I’m glad everyone is OK, but I’m also rooting for owner George Wilson Jr., hoping he’s able to build his business back up.

Pittsburgh is what it is because of awesome local businesses like Wilson’s and also Nancy B’s, where I went last week for my birthday. Another have-to-go recommendation.

Jason Mackey: jmackey@post-gazette.com and Twitter @JMackeyPG.