He found Jonghyun sitting at the kitchen table when he got back to the dorm. The singer was stuffing himself with waffles.

Onew kicked off his shoes at the entrance and moved over to the table. “Morning.” he said and sat down.

“Good morning, you latecomer.” Jonghyun greeted him with a cheeky smile. “What's up?”

“Nothing much.” he answered and got himself another cup of Coffee. “Taemins late for classes though ...” he added lowly which caused the singer to chuckle.

“Don't let Key hear that.” he indicated at the bathroom door. “If he find out that you dropped Taemin late … He might as well just kill you.”

“I need to talk to him though.” the leader murmured and emptied the cup within one sip.
“Huh? What's wrong?” the singer muffled through his full mouth. He swallowed and asked: “Can't I help?”

Onew shook his head. “It's not that important, hyung.” he put on a smile and thanked him.

He figured it would be best if he'd tell Key about Taemin only.

Maybe Taemin had already talked to Key about his problems at school – he used to call Key his Umma after all. And Onew remembered how he used to tell his Umma if he had any problems, he rarely told his Appa though … but he didn't really know why he didn't.

Jonghyun seemed to buy it a bit, but it was obvious that he'd question Key about this later.

“Where's Minho?” Onew asked when he noticed that the rapper was nowhere to be seen.

“Outside.” Jonghyun simply answered. He was still eating. “He said he wanted to jog before breakfast. Left about ten minutes ago.”
“I see.” he bent over and grabbed a waffle from the plate. “You have a schedule today?”

“No. Do you?”

“Yeah …”

“What is it?”
 

“An interview on some gossip newscast. Gonna be during noontime.”

“Tzz. Working on your birthday and your birth-time … , doesn't it?”

“Pretty much. But I guess it's okay as long as you guys get to have some free time.”

“Awww, thank you, hyung!” the singer patted his shoulder strongly and laughed out loud. “I'll make sure to call you on your birth-time then.”

Onew chuckled and nodded. “Okay, thank you.”

“Onew hyung.” a voice said behind them and they both turned their heads just to see how Key entered the kitchen. “Welcome back.” he wore his usual skinny jeans, a black T-Shirt and some multicolored socks. There was a towel around his shoulders, preventing his wet hair from making his shirt wet. “Did you get Taemin to school without any problems?”

“Uh, yeah, everything's fine.” Onew quickly answered and out of the corner of his eyes he could see Jonghyun smiling mischievously.

They continued their breakfast – Jonghyun just kept on eating more and more – and when Minho came back they had even more fun than before. Though the rapper left after a short while because he had to go and pick something important up from the store.

“Say,” Jonghyun said shortly after Minho had left, “didn't you want to talk to Key?”

Onew blinked in confusion before he actually remembered what the singer meant. “Damn, I almost forgot.” he cursed. “I need to talk to you, Key. In private.” he added, even though it wasn't really necessary. Jonghyun had already gotten up and took his plate away, leaving them alone in the tiny kitchen.

Onew told Key about Taemin and that he was quite worried about the maknae.

He was quite surprised when Key kept his calm and didn't explode because someone might've been mean to his 'son'. “I think Taemin is old enough to handle this himself.” he then said. “He knows he can ask us for help if there's something wrong …”

“What's gotten into you?” Onew asked in disbelief and crossed his arms. “You're his Umma, aren't you. Why aren't you … like … exploding from anger?”

Key sighed and leaned back a bit. “Taemin said I care too much lately.” he explained. “He told me to back off a bit.”

Onew raised his eyebrows – that was not like Taemin. Not at all. Why would he be like that?

“When did he say that?”
“Yesterday after you left practice. He told me and ran after you then.”

“Okay …?” he cleared his throat and tried to focus on the more important subject now. Asking Taemin about that could wait – he wanted to get this bully thing straight now. “Still we should talk to him about that bully subject. It's driving me crazy just thinking about him being bullied.”

“Me too but … maybe this talk can wait until tomorrow?”

“What? Why?”

“Just because. You don't need to know why.”

The four – or more likely, the three – of them spent the rest of the morning at home, doing things on their own.

Key was cleaning the kitchen all over again because he thought it was a mess.

Jonghyun was practicing singing and working on some new lyrics for a song while Minho still hadn't come back yet.

Onew was on the phone again. Their manager had called because he wanted to peruse his Interview during noontime – he didn't want the leader to say something 'inappropriate' or stupid.

“Take notes!” he cursed through the phone. “And learn them so you know them by heart! This is important!”
“Yes, Manager-sshi.” he answered, not writing down anything at all.

“By the way, Onew, I was thinking about giving you guys a week off.”

He almost dropped the phone.

“A vacation would do you some good I think. Especially that insolent maknae needs to cool off a bit.”

“That maknae” sounded like Taemin was some kind of animal – Onew exhaled through his nose and tried to ignore his anger, completely ignoring the word 'insolent'.

How could you hate someone as much as this manager?

“Anyway, if you want I will make sure that a flight is booked and stuff.”

“Sounds great to me, Manager-sshi.” he agreed. “A vacation will definitely do us some good … Where will we go?”

“I'm thinking about sending you off to Austria or Switzerland – not sure yet but it will definitely be in Europe. You haven't been overseas for a while. I need you to get in touch with some European fans!”

There it was. The real reason behind this. He wanted them to work in Europe. Still going overseas again … they've been stuck in Japan during the last month, working twenty fours a day. This was their first day off.

“Thank you, Manager-sshi. It sounds like a great idea.”

They hung up after a couple of minutes and Onew felt quite happy, even though he was mad at his manager. Going on vacation … and even to Europe. He was quite sure that none of the SHINee-members had been to Austria or Switzerland yet. One could ski in both of these countries, right?

The leader chuckled when he thought about Taemin skiing. The only ones who could ski where Jonghyun, Minho and himself, neither Taemin nor Key had ever been on skies …

And that meant that someone had to teach them.

Onew felt his face heating up when he realized that he'd beg for teaching Taemin.