i'm feeling rather melancholic today, but that has nothing to do with this so…

um i didn't proofread much, i'm sorry :/ tell me if there's something wrong and i'll have it corrected for the next update.

!tw: underage drinking.

Staying true to their words, the sisters send ten baskets with nothing but the most expensive and juicy meat of the city, bread so warm it seems it's been just taken from the oven, and enough lemonade to make a river out of it by lunchtime.

Sunggyu asks the children to help arranging the tables to eat together, passing cutlery and glasses. Woohyun, dragging his leg towards their shared room, announces he's going to see what he can find. The oldest of the house shakes his head, thinking he might have left to let everyone else do the job even though it's silly; that wouldn't be proper of him.

He turns a couple of minutes later as Sunggyu unhooks one of the baskets from his bad arm, bottle in hand and a gramophone looking difficult to carry under his armpit.

"Found this suitable for our celebration." He holds the bottle higher with his eyebrows raised. "And this,"--he motions the gramophone--"to set the mood."

He struggles to put the device in a table on the hallway adjacent to the dinning room where everybody is working. Sunggyu takes the bottle from his hand and passes it to one of the kids, warning him not to drink ("Yet." Woohyun winks). After that, he helps bringing the discs that were left on top of the closet where the younger boy found the device, placing them with gramophone while Woohyun tries to make it work.

Nothing happens at first, but after polishing the stylus and cleaning one of the cylinders that reproduce the sounds, they manage to fix it. Although Sunggyu only directs and passes the rag whenever it's needed, Woohyun thanks him anyway with a smile as natural from his lips as a breath, brushing his lips close to his cheek before leaving for the kitchen.

"Are you really going to leave the kids to prepare the meat alone?" he says.

Preparations done, music playing softly in the background, and food steaming warm from the middle of the table, Woohyun nudges Sunggyu to say something before start eating. Unconsciously, Sunggyu nudges back without paying much attention.

"Not that, you…" He doesn't finish the insult because of the glare sent his way. "Say something, a blessing, an announcement, whatever. Just say something so we can start."

Sunggyu furrows his eyebrows. "Why me? You're the one who's good with words."

"Because you're the leader." A smile plays around Woohyun's lips for a while before disappearing.

He never thought their situation was like that.

As flustered as he can get, he ends up stuttering whatever comes to mind thanks to Woohyun's stubbornness encouragement (a hand massaging the back of his hand placed in the table for support with a touch as soft as the porcelain he's been working with, if that can be called encouragement). His ramblings of how well everybody worked and the promise they will improve for next Sunday get lost among the cheers growing louder from the children. The words falling from his mouth start making less sense, but the kids clap anyway, and Woohyun pulls him back to his seat to start eating.

The afternoon goes spent between music, food, and occasional sips of the fine liquor Woohyun's served. Everyone has taken at least a sip, even the youngest ones, but no harm has been done. Sunggyu feels light in the heart and warm in the cheeks by the time he's done spinning around with one of the girls who's shy a hand like him, probably younger by a couple of years; they laugh the loudest for no reason. The blush on her face sends a wave of strange happiness towards his chest, but also strange melancholy for time that has yet to pass.

But then Woohyun's laugh echoes somewhere in the room (he's not quite sure where) before announcing everybody should go to sleep and nothing by the idea of finding the younger boy invades his mind.

Squinting his eyes to look at the clock, Sunggyu realizes it's way past twelve, and hurries to send the kids to bed, claiming tomorrow all of them will help to clean. Woohyun appears next to him sometime after he's sent all the kids from the west wing to sleep, dragging his bad leg and exclaiming rowdy profanities like a drunken sailor. The younger boy puts so much effort in his acting he overdoes it, but it puts a wider grin in Sunggyu's already smiling face.

"Too much party for today?" he questions, feeling dizzy himself.

Woohyun nods too eagerly. "Damn that old guy had good booze."

They manage to pull themselves into the room with the same fashion of a pair of drunkards, tripping over thin air and laughing afterwards in the process. Woohyun closes the door and leans against it with a smile still stitched to his face. It looks like it will stay there for a while. Sunggyu doesn't even know what are they laughing about anymore, but does the same.

"I think you're pretty wasted," he points out, fumbling with his belt. "Oh, it. I'll just sleep like this."

"I think you're pretty. But then again I don't know what." Woohyun pulls himself out of the door and drags his leg towards the bed. Sunggyu laughs louder at his words. "Maybe we should leave it in that."

"What, pretty?" He exclaims, but covers his mouth afterwards, leftovers of his common sense telling him they must be the only ones still awake. Then, in a quieter voice, "I can't be pretty. Leave that for the girls. When they grow up they'll be beauties."

"Speaking of which," Woohyun adds with a tone lower than his, taking off his prosthesis, "I had no idea you went for the petticoats living under the same roof."

Sunggyu climbs to the bed, where the younger boy is already lying without pulling out the sheets to cover himself. He figures it doesn't matter much and lies next to him. "Going for them? You can't be serious. It's like going for my sisters. We're family."

"Am I part of your family too?" Woohyun still has a smile plastered on his face, but it doesn't quite reach his eyes. Sunggyu blinks, seeing the darkness surrounding them leave in a flash.

"Yes, you are." He means it in the good way. After all what could be bad about being as close as siblings? But then the younger boy's lips quiver a little, like the smile wants to disappear, and Sunggyu thinks back a couple of minutes ago (or seconds, hours, who knows? when he thought that grin was permanent.

He realizes not many things are.

"That's good to hear." Woohyun palms the pillow to make himself comfortable. The movements of his hand, quick and small, make the older boy dizzy, while he turns to lie on his bed. His smile disappears for a while, but when it comes back as he faces Sunggyu again, it's wider than ever. "We did a great job today. You were awesome."

"Of course, I had the master of manipulations next to me. Something's got to rub off on me."

"Not only that, you've been directing the kids like a leader and taking care of them like a father. I'm pretty sure everybody looks up to you. I know I do."

Sunggyu gives him a confused look, slightly flustered. "What's up with the compliments? It's like you're sweet-talking me."

"Would you want me to?" He's hit with a pillow for that, same that the elder proceeds to hug. Despite the odd conversation about their family--Sunggyu disregards it as alcohol speaking--that night he goes to sleep with worries long forgotten and after a while, his arm wrapped around Woohyun's shoulders without anyone noticing.

The golden era, as kids start calling it, goes more or less like this:

Before, Old Grinder used to wake up the ones in charge of breakfast at four am. When everyone was already up and ready to go, the ones at the head of the table would cut hard bread given away from bakeries a day or two ago in supposedly equal parts (Sunggyu, exempted from the duty due to his missing hand, had seen favoritism appear more than once) and pass it, along with some milk lowered with water. Then, everybody would leave to beg at the parts of the city indicated by the Grinder and come back once they reached certain quota.

Now, the children of St. Angie's wake up at the hour they prefer and make their own breakfast. When they finish, some go to play outside, or simply laze around. Some others stay indoors to work in new crafts to sell. The old tools and machinery, all given from masters either kind enough or guilty enough to help them with rehabilitation (they said working again was an important step to get back a piece of their lives, and it was hardly a lie) help enough for the children to build more and buy more, and after a while to bring cash into the asylum.

The Grinder becomes the second option for the ones who aren't working in new crafts, with Woohyun leading the project. The boy, along with a group of assemblers and ex-apprentices of Computermen, build a computer system to put the automaton to walk.

Like most of things, this doesn't go smooth at first. The machine stands up, walks two steps, and then collapses on its own feet. Woohyun, controller in hand and face full rust and oil, grinds his teeth in frustration, but says nothing further. The kids hurry to pick up the pieces and put them back on the table at the studio-turned-workshop while Sunggyu sighs.

"That porcelain was my best work." Sunggyu eyes the rosy red taint of a broken cheek lying at no more than three steps from them.

"I know. That wasn't supposed to happen." Woohyun looks more frustrated than ever. "I was planning it could walk up to receive the sisters."

"What were you going say, 'Here, have some tea. Why don't we start a conversation while I'm precariously stumbling in the entrance’?" He scolds the younger, but decides to stop once he sees the disappointed frown in Woohyun's face.

They try to put the pieces back together and by Sunday, Grinder II has to receive the sisters while sitting on a couch that has been stripped off its back side to fit the ones manipulating it. The same situation repeats itself for the following weeks, with their trial and error routine flowing.

"We'll get it by next Sunday," Woohyun promises.

Surprisingly, they do.

Most of the time it goes like that, with the group trying out a new improvement (which goes from a smoother movement of limbs to Woohyun trying to make the automaton speak) and then failing and succeed only with a minor advance.

Sunggyu retreats quietly to the part of the workshop where the artisans work with clay for the porcelain skin to glue and decorate once the new one breaks. He can't blame the mechanics for destroying their craft. He convinces himself it doesn't matter if his work breaks, it's as if porcelain were flesh that tears with minor accidents and him, the surgeon that repair it--replace it.

When Woohyun is not busy working on Grinder II, he's busy on a secret project on the desk-slash-worktable put in the corner of their room. Sunggyu understands his itch to do something useful, after all, he can relate to it. When something's missing from you there has to be a way to replace that void. What irks him is that the young assembler is hiding whatever he's working on from him.

"Doing fine?" he asks, pretending not to be too interested in Woohyun, who doesn't look up from his place sprawled over the table, focused on his work. The boy nods. "You look like you could use more light, do you want me to bring you another lamp?"

Woohyun nods again, but then replies, "No, it's fine. I'm almost done with this."

Sunggyu shrugs and goes to his closet, convinced with that response. He changes into his sleepwear with skill gained over the years of dealing with just one hand. Meanwhile, Woohyun hums a song he's never heard before while working on his piece. He has the rough edge of a voice that's changing, with abrupt stops out of tune here and there. Despite that, Sunggyu won't deny the sound is still pleasant to his ears.

"Where's that from?"

"What, the song or what I'm working on?"

He turns to see the distracted smile barely illuminated by the dim light of the oil lamp. Woohyun doesn't bother to look up. "Both."

"Dunno. I was making it up as I go." Sounds like you, Sunggyu thinks. "And this other thing…" he trails off, screwdriver in hand, and bronze egg full of orange and white rhinestones shining under the light. “ I just finished it. Wanna see? C'mere."

While the elder follows his command, Woohyun places the screwdriver on the corner, abandoned next to journal pages full of quick sketches growing yellow with age and decadence. He puts the egg in its base on the center of the desk and tries to clean his hands with a rag.

Sunggyu crouches down next to him, at the sight of no extra chair in the room. "What's this about?"

Despite his former life as the apprentice of an artisan who watched masterpieces on a daily basis, he thinks he's never seen something as pretty as the piece covered in (fake, he knows, but it doesn't matter) details, not only in the egg but in the base and the key embedded on its side.

"I call it a wind-up Faberge egg. You're gonna love it." The excitement on the younger's voice manages to scare the tiredness on Sunggyu's eyelids away. "Just look."

He takes the egg and winds it up, to later put it back up on its base. At first nothing happens, but Sunggyu swears that, in the silence of the night, while everybody sleeps and his world consists of nothing but Woohyun's breath and the small desk shining under orange light, he can hear the gears turning, twisting in a promise that whatever comes out will fascinate him.

And it does.

The egg opens in half, allowing him to see a small man in an equally small platform, wearing a white suit like the ones in the militia wear every time the local troop march in a parade. He makes two turns and stops right at his front. Then, if Sunggyu thinks this can't be better, he's wrong because the little man says, "thank you," with a voice that seems familiar (Woohyun's) but at the same time distant, mechanized. It also bows, and later, gives a military salute.

After it stops, the egg starts closing back down. Sunggyu pries it open again, despite Woohyun's protests of hey watch out, you're gonna break it. He observes it from close, and before he knows it the older boy has his nose pressed against the mahogany surface, analyzing every detail on the man's attire. From the engravings on his golden belt to the friendly grin on his face, every minor detail is taken care of.

"Did you do it all?" he asks, still in awe.

"Not really," Woohyun admits behind him. "I worked through the gears and helped with the decorations on the egg, but some of the kids who work with you helped me with the minor details. Everybody wanted to give you something."

His chest tightens at the younger boy's words. "Why?"

" 'Cause you're our leader."

"I didn't—I mean, what—Why are you always—" Sunggyu stutters. He tries to calm down, but there's nothing better than the pleasant feeling of the appreciation from his family—not the one who sent him to the city to get rid of him but the one here, now. Not even the feeling from that day when he understood they were free.

He means to turn to Woohyun and thank him while looking straight to his eyes. What he ends up doing instead is bumping his nose against the other's and getting lost on Woohyun's dark eyes. That is not in his plans.

(And neither is pushing himself just a little bit farther, just a little bit closer and press his lips tightly against Woohyun's softsoftwhyaretheylikethatsoft lips that taste like oil would. Or scrambling off his feet and running to the bed, mumbling how it must be so late and how they should sleep, nervous when he feels the extra weight on the bed shifting close to him with tension reverberating in the air.)

Sunggyu forgets to tell Woohyun he liked the tune he was humming.

A young boy with a peg leg painfully stitched to his knee and a lost look on his eyes arrives at St. Angie's some weeks after, when winter is withering away and spring gives place to life to breathe. The sisters have him held by the shoulders with the same loving grasp Sunggyu had dreamed could protect him from his nightmares one time, many years ago.

Now, they had been lucky all this while without the Grinder, for the governor had announced some implements for work at the factories, resulting in less injured children and not a single one turned to St. Angela's door during their so-called golden era. Still, the new kid's appearance didn't come as unexpected either; Sunggyu knew this would happen eventually, and the sisters also sent a letter beforehand.

Woohyun, the same boy whose voice has changed—and overall attitude around him has changed too all because of Sunggyu's foolish mistake—has everything concerning the Grinder II prepared. The automaton can even walk up to the main door by now, thick mustache hiding the fact his lips don't articulate words. The mechanic punches a couple of keys on his table from the room adjacent to the entrance and that makes the trick. It speaks a few generic words and leaves the rest to Sunggyu, who fumbles with his own works to lead the sisters out.

The newcomer, a boy from Busan with a thick accent called Lee Howon, looks at them with his big, astonished eyes when the kids dismantle the automaton and Woohyun comes out of his hiding place. Sunggyu jumps to an explanation; anxious by the way his eyes grow wider. At the end of his words, the boy is already attempting to make a dash for the door.

Woohyun blocks the entrance. "Easy there, boy. We don't want to force you to anything, but think about this for a second. There's no one who can stop you but yourself in here. You'll have a warm bed, a better leg, a family."

"I already have my family."

The hostility in Howon's words hurts more than it should.

"We can take care of you here. We treat each other like brothers here." For a second, Woohyun's eyes flicker towards Sunggyu with that unreadable glint that makes him swallow hard. It disappears, however, as he continues saying, "This can be your home, but it's in you to decide."

Despite the braveness reflected on them, tears pool on the boy's eyes, streaming down his cheeks in silence shortly after. Sunggyu remembers the feeling of coming to an unknown place and not knowing what to expect. His first time at St. Angie's was like that too, except that after the sisters left and the Grinder started to unbuckle his belt, he knew he was on his own.

He takes a tentative step towards the Howon with the intention of hugging him, but the second oldest of the house, despite his bad leg, beats him to it. That makes him doubt if he wants to be that close to Woohyun after what happened. Before he has the time to retract, though, children who have been listening to the conversation jump from their places and rush towards the boys hugging, pulling Sunggyu with them in the process.

They end up huddling in a mess of tears and cheers, but the only thing Sunggyu feels are his own wet cheeks and Woohyun's oily scent, characteristic of those who work close to machines, close to him as they hug. It may be okay after all; despite he doesn't know where they're standing right now.

Howon accepts to stay, trying to wipe his tears after the sobs have stopped. His face is twisted with relief, even though there's a clear frown between his eyebrows fighting to disappear. "This will be my home now, then."

Greetings, Mr. Lee.

ugh. i can't believe this. seriously, what's wrong with those two in the middle of the night on their room?

i mean sure, they can build an automaton, but they still use oil lamps. i mean come on.

also, i apologize if the dialogue comes across as too modern. i didn't thought much about it until now and it's too late to change it, haha ^^;

there's one more to go! (and the short epilogue [>1k] which i don't know if stick to the chapter or put by its own.) anyway, thank you for reading!