Started school somewhere totally new! Cried a bit! Now watch as I write about a foreign school system/university life which I have zero experience in! Sorry if this chapter is extra crappy, I was only halfway through when someone (cough-KawaiKonekoChan-cough) started pressuring me to update tonight! Party hard!

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"So, like, I've just been hanging out with a bunch of new friends these past few days. Eunmi and the guys asked if I wanted to go somewhere with them today, actually, but I wasn't just going to leave all you of behind! I mean, I have known Luhan and Lay a day longer!" Chanyeol laughed boisterously, drawing little chuckles out of the seven people who were the current keepers of his company.

His shoulder-shaking laughs dying down, the oversized child clapped his hands on his knees. Exhaling in a serene manner that only someone truly sweet could, he went on:

"Honestly... I've been really social this week, and for the first time I haven't been uneasy about meeting so many people. We came together for some pretty weird reasons, and things will probably get crazier from here on out, but I really do like all of you." As he finished up, he met everyone's eyes with a mousy smile.

A couple of his older friends, whose names started with "Baek" and "Jong" and ended with "Hyun" and "In" puffed out their chests and widened their smiles in an undetectable degree. His newer friends, Luhan and Lay, along with Sehun simply returned the warm expression. The newest friends, Xiumin and Chen, felt equally as proud as Baekhyun and Jongin.

Following the eternity that was two days, what had been a tense acquaintanceship between the majority of them had exploded into a bubbly mess of support and adoration. They each had little subsects of their favorite people, but all together they managed to get along just fine. Well, most of the time.

Luhan and the youngest two had taken to joking around like they were the same age. Lay liked to talk to everyone one-on-one or in a group, but his and Chanyeol's cute natures clicked best. Chanyeol liked everyone too, but his interest was currently in Chen and Xiumin. According to Chanyeol, one little talk after he had first met Xiumin was all it took for the younger to warm up to the elder. Tuesday, Wednesday, and earlier that night the three of them had hung out in D.O. and Chen's rooms and went back and forth encouraging one another to talk about themselves.

On each and every occasion, there would be moments where one person had to juggle conversations between himself and everyone else there. If they could handle a conversation among three people, the fourth person was likely to be entirely left out. In what could only be described as a depressing blessing, the humble Chanyeol was used to being excluded and had no qualms about it, and Kyungsoo was too tired to care about being a part of the endless chatter.

The more pressing parts of the conversation were never done with Kyungsoo present, anyway. A couple of days ago, following Chen's nonchalant reveal and the super trio's short chat behind closed doors, Chanyeol had proposed that his schoolmates visit the home of a certain pair of pretty Chinese boys and thus be among more people who were similar to them.

Just as the initial gathering of Baekhyun, Sehun, Kai, and Chanyeol had gone, the addition of two more college kids resulted in a whole bunch of drinking and mindless small talk, not the plans to save the world that most would expect from the union of young folk with super powers. But, to everyone there, budding friendships were just as well.

Not.

Luhan clapped his hands and made to remove himself from the leather recliner he had previously been sinking into. "That was wonderful and all," he said, "and I'd love to hear more about this Eunmi and Jaejoong and whoever-"

"Jaesoo and Kyungjae?"

"-but honestly I'm really hungry and we have a grill outside, plus that cafe down the road, so I'd really like to head out right now."

Some of the visitors were more polite about turning their gazes expectantly to their friend, and some looked ready to launch themselves out the door as soon as Chanyeol opened his mouth to reply, but they all understood that letting him talk for a few seconds wasn't totally going to ruin their chances of having some food, so they waited.

"Good idea!" Chanyeol gave an unnecessary thumbs up which Luhan returned with no second thoughts. Just like that, the building emptied out and the excited eight split up in the back yard. Though it was Luhan's idea to use the grill, and Lay owned the grill and the house for that matter, the young guests made sure to keep those two away from the fire as well as sharp kitchen utensils, because they had taken in a considerably greater amount of alcohol than anyone else.

It was nothing extreme, and the Chinese men were still fully functional, but everyone thought they might as well hand the grill over to Chanyeol. Of course, he couldn't do much all by himself, so Baekhyun, Kai, and Sehun took it upon themselves to help out. That left the oldest four alone to get to know one another.

At the orders of the experimenting cooks, Luhan stopped hovering over the food and ambled over to Xiumin and Chen, who were standing off on their own. Lay picked up on the movement and followed a moment later.

With his hands deep in his pants pockets, the blond greeted the newbies with an offhand, "Zen me yang?" It basically meant "How's it going?" and he said it the same way someone would say "What's up?" but, for all the average Korean knew, he could have just cursed them out.

Everyone's reaction was different. Chen's face broke into an offended sort of sneer, as if to say, "Really? You're going to speak Chinese out of nowhere?" and Lay's expression was a friendlier yet no less judgmental version of that. Xiumin was startled at first, his eyes going a little wide and his lips pursing. A choppy laugh was the next thing they heard from Luhan as he looked at the ground.

Struggling not to laugh with a satisfied smile on his face, he opened his mouth to speak.

Xiumin, who had been staring off to the side thoughtfully for a bit cut him off.

"Hen hao." breathed the smooth-skinned young man as he tipped his chin down to affirm the statement. He did so with a bright-eyed smile, the three men around him noted, but Chen was certain Xiumin was just making sure to be polite- there was no way the boy could be very happy chatting with strangers instead of him.

The pair of foreigners ate it up, anyhow.

The Mandarin words for "You speak Chinese?" spilled simultaneously from each of their mouths as they both took a step forward. They were staring Xiumin down with awe-filled eyes, unaware of Chen's not-so-awesome gaze at them. Xiumin looked down and nodded, his eyelashes fluttering in a nervous way that everyone found adorable as he stumbled over the pronunciation of an affirmative phrase.

Noting the boy's struggle with complicated sentences, Luhan and Lay decided to provide him with a bit of coaching, simple questions about him, and plenty of compliments right off the bat. Standing there but not being included as the conversation took place, Chen made use of his high school and college Chinese lessons and picked out certain words they were throwing at Xiumin, like "interesting," "talented," and "handsome."

The corner of his mouth twitched when he heard "You're so cute! Do you know how to say 'big brother' in Chinese?"

Quite literally stepping into the conversation, Chen leaned slightly in front of his small friend. There was an unsettling grin on his face when he made it known in his own personal dialect that Xiumin wasn't the only one who was learning Chinese.

The gibberish that flew from his mouth was close enough to "I know how to say big brother" for Chen to be satisfied and the others to understand.

He could see the light in Luhan and Lay's eyes dim as they looked from Xiumin's soft face to Chen's angular one. It was clear whose Mandarin they would rather hear, but they both straightened up and offered Chen smiles as fake as the one he was aiming at them.

"How nice," said Luhan in Korean, batting his eyelashes in a notably less cute and more curt fashion than Xiumin. The small student behind Chen couldn't clearly see the tall trio's expressions as the tension grew between them, so they weren't shy with their glares.

"Thanks," replied Chen, closing his eyes with his smirk for just a moment until he felt his friend shift at his side. Xiumin leaned from behind him and took a look at each of the other men before putting them at ease with the first real smile of the meeting.

Having seen nothing but their faces relax when all eyes were on him, Xiumin concluded that they would all get along great.

An outburst of whines and a cloud of smoke cut the sweetness short. The chatty four curiously turned to face the wailing four. Chanyeol and Baekhyun were covering their faces, the former looking utterly ashamed and flabbergasted while the latter seemed to be doing a dramatic rendition of the "face-palm" known to the online forums he inhabited. Sehun's scratchy laugh was somewhere between a witch's and a hyena's, just barely loud enough for the others to hear, and Kai looked like he didn't know whether to laugh or fall down and cry. All of them were staring at the charred mess that used to be a working grill.

"Was that my meat?" Lay questioned with blank eyes. None of the younger guys even laughed at how that sentence sounded. They all just nodded their heads very slowly and Chanyeol croaked out an "I'm so sorry."

Lay's eyes fell. There was no noise as the delicious-smelling smoke swirled around them.

Luhan was the one who ended the silence.

With laughter.

"Ahaha! Oh gosh, me too, man, me too. And, like, I haven't been out in a while, so why not, right? It'll be nicer and more expensive than just staying home, but who says we have to pay?"

Looking at the seemingly delirious eldest member of their group, the words on the edges of their tongues were less clean versions of "What in the world?"

When Lay's face broke out into a smile and he and Luhan started off toward the house, the remaining six remembered what Luhan's ability was and put two and two together. While they still weren't wholly on the same page, the words "out", "nicer", and "expensive" had them hurrying into the building as well.

"Are we going out to eat? Can I invite some other friends?" Chanyeol followed Luhan up the stairs. He sure went from being ashamed to having no limits quickly.

"If you want to pay for friends," was Luhan's smug reply.

Kai was close behind them and he apparently had a habit of listening in to other people's conversations. "Can I invite some too, then?" he spoke up, "Suho, Kris, and Tao were telling me how I should find restaurants in the area, plus I want to get to know them better."

Deterring these boys was not something that would come easy, Luhan realized. He hummed in thought as they followed him to a closet. He was not sure how well an evening with handful of normal humans plus a bigger handful of abnormal ones plus alcohol would go, but the more people who came, the more likely it was that he wouldn't have to pay for anything.

Luhan was feeling a little stingy.

"Sure!" he said, "Of course, of course. Did you think I would say yes to one of you and no to the other? Go down and ask Lay where we're going, and wash up, too. You'd better hurry!"

And so they did. Listening to their hastening steps, Luhan was surprised they didn't trip and hurt themselves. There were only a few years between his age and theirs, but the baby-faced blond found himself shaking his head at the "overexcited children" like a grandpa. He set about rearranging the messier parts of the house and helping the boys fix their clothes and figure out how to work the faucet, and they were ready to go just before dark.

The raindrops falling seconds apart from each other as the eight men arrived at their destination told them that they may have gotten ready for nothing.

"Really? It wasn't even cloudy!" Luhan sniped, drawing everyone's attention as he glared up at the sky. Lay, Chen, and Xiumin kept their belts on, just waiting for him to crush them and say they'd have to head back where they came. What he actually said was a welcome surprise. "Whatever, it's barely sprinkling and I'm hungry, so we're not going home."

No one was going to say that some of them were basically dancing their ways into the restaurant, but they were basically dancing their ways into the restaurant.

The place was small enough for them to see everyone else there, and out of the small amount, Kai and Chanyeol's friends were not included.

"Think the others are going to make it?" Chen asked, making use of the tall windows that lined the front of the building.

Only after he asked did Chanyeol think to mention how "Jaesoo and Kyungjae actually already had plans, ehe... but Eunmi and D.O. said they could come down..." The conversation had to pause shortly when a young lady came to see them to a table. They still needed to know exactly how many people would be there, so they looked to Kai.

"Suho and them said they could make it, too," he said. They were asked to wait a moment more so tables could be arranged to accommodate thirteen people. Just as the woman began to walk off, a group of three came through the doorway with a crack of thunder serving to announce their entrance. Everyone but Kai was a little startled. He turned to greet the couple of towering blonds and the significantly smaller brunette, and the rest of his friends tried to guess who was who based on descriptions he had shared during story time earlier.

That, too, was interrupted when the young woman came to get them. She guided them to their table and left them with the indication that they'd be served shortly. Chanyeol checked his phone and told everyone that Kyungsoo and Eunmi were both on the way. There were enough introductions to be done with two people missing, anyway.

No one knew how or why, but they all seemed to really hit it off. Maybe it was the alcoholic drinks they ordered with appetizers, or maybe it was the mellow mood that came with the storm, but all eleven men were chatting enthusiastically when the entire building began to shake.

The vibration lasted maybe two seconds, but it was more than enough to shock everyone there into silence.

"Was that thunder?" Suho asked. Most of them just shrugged. "Huh." he said, "I didn't even hear a crack or see lightning."

Luhan watched as nine out of eleven nodded and hummed to agree with and move on from what Suho had said, but he couldn't help but notice how Xiumin had suddenly gotten a dark look on his face. The now pouring rain could be heard through the chatter in the restaurant, but there was another noise below that.

As the weakened rumbling from what they thought was thunder went unnoticed by everyone else, Luhan watched the gears turn in Xiumin's head.

Something was wrong.

When Xiumin finally looked up, he found a pair of eyes staring back at him. Luhan tilted his head and opened his mouth.

"What was that?" he asked, causing everyone to look over to him.

"That," Xiumin said quietly but steadily,

"...was Kyungsoo."

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If you like this story, check out asianfanfics users KawaiKonekoChan and mikiunni's Cataclysmic Symptoms! If you could drop a review encouraging them to work hard on both their studies and their works of art, that would actually increase my drive to update Vivarium as well. Their happiness and wellbeing affects mine, and my mood determines how hard I work on stories. Is that messed up? I don't know, but it's how it is! Thank you for reading!