Their last few days in Pyeongchang were spent skiing (except Jinyoung and Sooji who insisted that she would stay with him), taking sleigh rides, building snowmen for a competition, building gingerbread houses, and – on their final evening – roasting marshmallows for s’mores. However, while it felt like they could live everyday like that forever, all good things come to an end. With happy smiles and warm hearts, the five Lila friends returned to Seoul to resume their normal lives.

No one in the Bae family was happier than his mom when he returned home. Now that Jinyoung was back, she no longer spent hours at work worrying about his younger siblings that were left at home. That was one of the many perks about having multiple children with different s: the eldest often served as a free babysitter. Which is exactly why Jinyoung was currently heading downstairs to keep an eye on his siblings. Stacked in his arms were his textbooks and binders, wobbling every so often whenever he took a cautious step down the stairs. However, his careful treading did him no good when his younger brother, Jinhwan, rushed past him at the sound of the doorbell ringing. Jinhwan – though half-dressed in a sweatshirt and boxers – knocked over Jinyoung’s school books as he ran to grab the door while yelling, “Move, hyung! Jaemin’s coming over to play today!”

Jinyoung watched his younger brother take a sharp turn away from the front door and into their laundry room. He emerged not long after with a pair of wrinkled jeans that were slightly dark in some areas as they hadn’t completely finished air-drying yet. Shaking his head, Jinyoung kneeled over to collect his books and headed over to the low table in the middle of the living room to set his books down. He was just about to settle down in his favorite spot on the sofa when Jinhwan passed by, hopping to pull his pants up, while screeching, “No, hyung! You can’t sit there! We’re going to play games!”

“Why not just go to the entertainment room?” Jinyoung asked, pointing down the hallway, “Dad repainted that room for a reason, you know!”

“The TV in the living room is bigger!” Jinhwan argued, buttoning up his pants and brushing his hair into place with his fingers, “Please? Can’t you just go somewhere else to study?”

Jinyoung rolled his eyes and sighed deeply, gathering up his things once more and entering the kitchen. When he turned the corner into the dining area, he saw that his younger sister, Heejin, was already there reading something on her tablet. Since there was an empty bowl beside her elbow, it seemed she had already finished eating breakfast and was simply too preoccupied with the page she was on to bother getting up. Jinyoung took the seat across from her after putting her bowl away in the sink so he could wash it later. Heejin mumbled a blunt, “good morning” before swiping across the tablet screen, flipping to the next page.

“Is that a new series?” Jinyoung asked, noticing that the illustrations on the screen were different from the illustrations he had seen on the covers she had borrowed from Sooji. He would know; he was the one who acted as their mailman as Sooji lent Heejin her copies. If he hadn’t given Sooji Heejin’s Kakao Talk ID, he probably would have been delivering messages for them too.

“Yeah, it’s different. Sooji unnie recommended it to me and sent me digital copies to read.” Heejin unconsciously tapped her finger on her bottom lip, brows furrowing as she exerted more effort into comprehending what she was reading while conversing with her older brother.

“You shouldn’t bother Sooji so much,” Jinyoung clicked his tongue as he opened his math workbook to their first assigned homework page.

Heejin shrugged, “Sooji told me she doesn’t mind.”

“Still…” Jinyoung trailed off, not really wanting to argue with his sister. Girls were girls and they weren’t something he wasn’t trying to mess with.

Jinyoung returned to his math homework and groaned upon seeing the first problem. Just from the first problem alone, the rest of the page didn’t make sense anymore. Still, staring at the problems weren’t going to make them solve themselves. With an audible sigh, he reluctantly retrieved his accompanying math textbook from the giant pile of supplies beside him and turned to the corresponding chapter. The next few minutes in the Bae residence were more or less quiet thanks to Jinyoung and Heejin; the only sounds coming from the television Jinhwan and his friend, Jaemin, were making as they played their games at a fairly low volume as to not disturb the other two.

Soon enough, Heejin’s attention was finally drawn away from the tablet once she completed the manhwa volume. Turning her head in the direction of her elbow, she was pleasantly surprised to find that the bowl she had eaten from earlier was put away. She turned her tablet off and crossed her arms to lean against them on the table as she observed her older brother across from her. For the most part, this was how Jinyoung was like all the time. It was rare she ever saw him doing something other than hunched over his schoolwork. Admittedly, she felt bad knowing their mom would make him spend his winter vacation indoors babysitting her and Jinhwan.

“Jinyoung oppa, why don’t you go out with your friends instead of staying inside?” Heejin suggested, catching Jinyoung’s attention. She frowned when he shook his head, saying he couldn’t, “I promise I won’t tell mom.”

“You might not tell, but let’s be honest – Jinhwan would,” Jinyoung laughed before looking back down at his reading.

With a dramatic sigh, Heejin rested her cheek on her hand without breaking focus from her brother, “You should hang out with Sooji. I like her.”

A toothy grin crept onto her face when she saw Jinyoung’s hand stop scribbling in his notebook – she had caught him off guard. It took an insane amount of effort to keep herself from giggling when he cleared his throat loudly and stuttered out, “W-well… I don’t really see why I should hang out with just her… a-and if I wanted to it isn’t like she can anyway. She’s volunteering at her dad’s hospital. I’d just be bothering her… and I mean, honestly, why would she want to hang out with me?”

What Jinyoung didn’t want to say aloud was that if he sked Sooji out to hang out with him – just the two of them – that would be a date.

For any high school student trying to stack their college resume, any type of lab experience is god tier. Dongbin was basically handed his opportunity by his dad thanks to his job at a university’s biological science research facility. So, every day for the past two days, Dongbin accompanied his dad to work. While his dad went to his own office, Dongbin would head over to where the university’s undergraduate students were conducting their experiments. There, one of the professors would assign him different tasks to work on or instruct him to help a student with their research. Or at least, that’s what he thought he would do. The first part was true: Dongbin did ride with his dad to work and he did split off once they arrived. However – despite the fact he was actually here to volunteer in the lab – Dongbin hasn’t as so much stepped into the lab even once. Today was no different.

With his hands and arms full, Dongbin barely twisted the door handle to Professor Kim’s (the professor leading the team of students) office before forcefully pushing the door wide open with his shoulder. Her office was a rather large one since it was shared with about five other professors during the regular school year. Instead of the other four professors; however, there were about seven undergraduate students in the room huddled together around a large circular table (that Dongbin had wheeled in on the first day). Dongbin assumed that since they all had papers and laptops that were open to Excel sprawled all over the table, they were reviewing their data for the past few days. Skillfully weaving his way through the oddly placed furniture in the room, he approached the table and started going around it clockwise.

“Large decaf iced mocha and banana nut muffin, Dongbin recited the student’s order, placing her drink down before reaching into the paper bag he was cradling in one arm for her muffin. The student didn’t say anything; she simply lofted the straw to her lips to take a quick sip of her drink before returning to the papers she was analyzing.

“Small dark roast – no milk or sugar – and two breakfast wraps,”

“Large pumpkin spice Frappuccino and poppy seed muffin,”

“Medium salted caramel latte and double chocolate chip muffin,” Dongbin confirmed on the sticky note given to him by the pink-haired student. He crumpled the sticky note and stuffed it into his back pocket before placing her items on the table.

The pink-haired student peered up from the packet she was reading and raised a questioning brow. She hesitantly took a sip from the cup before grimacing, “I wanted a vanilla latte, not salted caramel- ugh, whatever.”

Dongbin opened his mouth to respond, but shook his head and decided to just let it slide. There was no point in arguing with someone older than him even though he had concrete evidence that she wrote down ‘salted caramel’. Once he finished making rounds at the table, he headed to the back of the office to where Professor Kim was hunched over her own books and papers. In her hand, she was twirling a purple pen that flew out of her hand in surprise when Dongbin called out to her. Like with the students, he confirmed her order of a large iced coffee with milk and a blueberry muffin and set it on an empty spot on her desk. However, as he was retrieving the muffin from the bag, she held up a hand and said she didn’t want the muffin anymore and that he could keep it for himself.

“Oh, Dongbin, before you go I need you to do something,” Professor Kim called out after him when he turned to walk out of the office. Dongbin’s ears perked up at the thought of finally escaping minion duties. Flipping over to the next page of her packet, Professor Kim said, “The equipment from yesterday’s experiments are dirty. We have an extra set to use today, but I want you to wash those for tomorrow’s lab. The sink is in the prep room across from the lab.”

Of course. Dongin’s shoulders slouched in disappointment; mentally kicking himself for getting his hopes up. He simply nodded before walking away as if Professor Kim would even see. Once he exited the office, closing the door behind him, he headed towards the lab, reading the placards on the walls beside each door to find the prep room. Just as Professor Kim had said, it was directly across the lab. He used the security clearance card given to him by his dad to enter the prep room. Like most research facilities, there were certain rooms inaccessible to the public. Dongbin liked being in possession of a badge because that meant if he wasn’t doing anything, he could wander the building and watch the other research teams at work from behind the glass.

Inside the prep room were racks of aprons and lab coats as well as bins of goggles, gloves, and haircaps. There were also shelves and cabinets filled with beakers, graduated cylinders, and other glassware. In the very back, there were two fridges; one had a toxic sign plastered on the side. Dongbin assumed that chemicals and probably weak bacteria strains were being kept inside. There were a few blacktop lab tables in the room where some organisms were thawing out, leaving the room to smell like some pungent mixture of death and alcohol. The smell made Dongbin gag a little, but eventually he got used to the smell and it didn’t bother him anymore.

Dongbin wandered to the far side of the room where there was a giant white (well, it was yellow now, but he could tell it was once white) bin full of beakers, cylinders, a few droppers, and several petri dishes. After rolling up his sleeves, he grabbed a pair of gloves from one of the boxes and got right to work. He picked up the petri dish sitting at the top of the pile, and scowled when his fingers contacted the film on the dish. It was cold and slimy just like how you would imagine alien life forms to feel like. Still, he brushed it off and ran the dish under scalding hot water, making sure to angl