“Yah LuHan, you sure okay?”

            “Aniya, I’m fine XiuMin Hyung.”

            “Aish, those bastards really… Always playing the ing dirty way… Thank god we came in time. Just another minute late and you would’ve been a goner,” SeHun added.

            LuHan sighed in distress, understanding how severe the situation was. This wasn’t just any childish game they were participating in—it was a game with no ‘restart’ button, a game that only allowed you one life, one chance, one shot. And what happens if you lose it? It’s game over.

            The brothers sat down onto their usual lunch table and began digging into their delicious homemade lunches. As usual, they’d make small talk and such amongst themselves. However, today, BaekHyun was unusually quiet—as observed by SuHo. Curious to see what was floating around in his brother’s troubled mind, he secretly allowed himself to use his telepathic powers.

            “Yah BaekHyun, who the hell is April and why are you thinking of her?” he finally asked after receiving all the information he needed from his brother’s brain.

            “W-What?” BaekHyun stuttered as he snapped out of his daze and soon came into realization that his brothers held the ability to read others’ minds. Frowning, BaekHyun felt his cheeks heating up as he barked, “Y-Yah, stop invading my privacy Hyung!”

            “BaekHyun, you seriously need to get yourself together. You’ve been acting so weird and distant from everyone lately... I don’t know what you’ve been doing, but stop associating yourself with useless matters and focus more on what’s important,” Lay scolded.

             BaekHyun quietly looked around his circle of brothers, hoping for one of them to back him up. Unfortunately, all of them contained the same expressions on their faces and seemed to agree with one another. At the very corner of his eyes, he felt KyungSoo’s hard glare on him. BaekHyun awkwardly cleared his throat and stuffed a spoon of rice into his mouth in order to avoid making further eye contact with his brothers.

            “They’re right. Stop worrying about the trivial things. She’s just a human. Who gives a crap about what she thinks?” he told himself.

            However, he found it quite impossible to believe.

            “Good morning everyone,” Mrs. Son greeted.

            “Good morning Mrs. Son,” the class answered back in unison.

            The professor rolled her eyes at the lack of energy and enthusiasm within her pupils, but brushed it off her shoulders when she realized that she was just as tired as they were.

            “As you all know, a carnival will be held near the downtown activity center this Saturday, and we will be needing some volunteer students from each class to help out at the game booths and such. I will first ask for volunteers. If no one wants to help, then I will randomly pick using a randomized number generator. You will be earning community service hours—which is obviously a bonus for college—along with a few extra credit points for this class if you enlist yourselves in this activity, so you really have nothing to lose,” she explained carefully. “Alright. Any volunteers?”

            “I will,” SeonWoo—the top student—expectedly volunteered.

            Mrs. Son smiled at the boy’s eagerness and jotted down his name before she asked, “Anyone else? We need two more students.”

            The professor inspected the dead silent classroom, scanning past all her students’ exhausted and pale faces. Simply based off of their frightening complexions, she came to a conclusion that none of them were going to be volunteering. Therefore, she quickly opened the randomized number operator on her phone and allowed it to pick two different numbers ranging from 1 to 30. Mrs. Son then looked for the numbers on her attendance sheet and aligned them to the corresponding name of the student.

            “Alright, you guys asked for this,” she sighed heavily. “The remaining two students will have to attend and help out at the carnival unless they have a reasonable excuse. Lee April and Kang BaekHyun, you guys will be working at the balloon booth along with SeonWoo.”

            April’s mood slightly deteriorated at the sound of her name, but soon rotted when she heard the name that came after hers.

            “Out of all the others, why him?”

            April lazily slung the small canvas backpack over her shoulder and walked towards her assigned booth. She found BaekHyun already there—slightly leaning back on the chair he was sitting on with his legs carelessly crossed on top of the counter. His eyes were closed and his mouth was slightly ajar. Usually, April would’ve been instantly into his extraordinary beauty; however, she was still upset from the project incident.

            Already displeased with his lack of manners, April roughly pushed his legs down to get through the cramped up space. She threw her backpack onto the counter and sat herself down beside him—still refusing to look at the boy.

            “Oh. You’re here,” he said quietly.

            April rolled her eyes at his obvious statement, but kept shut.

            SeonWoo soon emerged from the storage room with a few extra stuffed toys and arranged them onto their designated podiums. April began pinning up the balloons with BaekHyun’s help, and the three finished the booth’s setup within half an hour.

            As the sun reached its heights, the crowds of people began to expand and the balloon booth received a greater amount of customers at a faster rate. The three were forced to work quickly to fit their clients’ needs. As soon as their lunch break started, April hastily left the booth to find something to eat.

            She returned with three hotdogs, a large container of fries, and a tray of sodas. She handed SeonWoo his portion—receiving a kind ‘thank you’ in return from the boy before he left to hang out with his group of friends.

             To his surprise, BaekHyun found April placing the remaining portion down before him before returning to her own seat and diving into her own lunch.

            Deciding that it was a good time to break an apology to the girl, he finally spoke up, “Hey thanks for the lunch, and uh—about last week. Sorry. I honestly didn’t mean to flake out on you. Something unexpected came up with my family, and I wasn’t able to make it to the presentation. Hope you understand.”

            He waited for a response but none came. After a while, the boy gave up.

            “It’s… Okay. I should be the one apologizing, actually... I was being completely unreasonable. Truce?” April suddenly whispered out of the blue as she leaned over and offered him a hand.

            He gladly shook it.

            The sun had completely set, and it was finally time for the long-awaited shift changes. April stretched towards the night sky as she and BaekHyun split up with SeonWoo. The two continued to walk on—enjoying the cool night breeze as they passed by the rows of dimly lit booths. The area was slowly emptying, and there were only a few scattered groups of people remaining.

            Given the advantage of a volunteer’s free admission, April stopped by a few booths to try her luck on some of the childish games. BaekHyun carefully watched the girl’s movements, filled with her own unique characteristics and individuality—noticing the way she bit her lip in focus as she aimed the dart at the board, noticing the way her eyes lit up when she made a good shot, noticing the way she smiled at him when she finally won a stuffed animal. He felt himself warming up more and more towards her as the two shared innocent conversations and laughter with one another throughout the night.

            The two reached the very last of the booths, and BaekHyun finally decided to give the game a try. He aligned the water gun up with the small hole that read ‘SHOOT HERE,’ and with precise aim, he pulled the trigger—allowing water to shoot linearly out of the nozzle. The blaring alarm rang—indicating that he had won—and BaekHyun received a dainty phone charm with an adorable chubby bunny hanging at the very end of it.

            BaekHyun’s ears slightly twitched at the sudden sound of an extremely familiar howl from the distance and instantly recognized that it was his father calling him home.

            “April, I gotta go. Good night,” he whispered as he shoved the charm into her palm and ran off into the darkness.

            She watched him until he was entirely consumed by the shadows before she peered down at the delicate charm. She felt a smile playing on her lips as she looped the chain onto her phone and walked home.