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[INDENT] "Nnngg..."

[INDENT] "Hyung, hyung! Eunmi-noona's waking up! Look!"

[INDENT] Eunmi was woken up by the sound of Dongwoon's voice and refused to open her eyes to the light streaming from the bedroom window. She slowly stretched all her muscles while snuggling into her bed and curling up into a ball. Suddenly, memories flashed in her head, causing her to immediately open her eyes and jolting upright in her bed. Eunmi glanced at the three men before her and when she turned her head, she was startled by the unknown woman sitting at her bedside. "W-who are you? And why are you here?"

[INDENT] "Eunmi, let me explain--"

[INDENT] "No!" Eunmi yelled hoarsely, much to Doojoon's surprise. "I thought we were all starting to get along... I thought that finally, I belonged somewhere... Until your secret was revealed that one night."

[INDENT] "Eunmi--"

[INDENT] "I trusted you... My grandfather trusted you, so I trusted you too... You betrayed me..." She then turned to the woman next to her. "Tell me... who are you?"

[INDENT] The woman quietly responded, "I will tell you if you listen to what Doojoon has to say. Please... let him speak. He and the others have a lot to tell you." She put the tray of rice porridge and water that was sitting on her lap onto Eunmi's lap. "Dongwoon has prepared some food for you for your recovery. Please have some."

[INDENT] Eunmi stared at the bowl, trying to see if there was anything different about it from other rice porridges she had eaten in the past. "Noona, please... There isn't anything in there that'll turn you into... well, us. Trust me; I saved you from the bears int he forest, didn't I?"

[INDENT] The fogginess in her head finally cleared out, and she remembered seeing and hearing Dongwoon before she passed out. "H-how did I even get there? I really don't remember a thing..."

[INDENT] Dongwoon had an alarmed expression on his face when he looked at Doojoon and Yoseob, but Doojoon replied, "It's okay; that isn't important right now. What is important is that we have been keeping secrets from you and it isn't right. So please, Eunmi, hear us out." He had such an apologetic look on his face that Eunmi couldn't help but slightly nod.

[INDENT] "Okay. When did this all... start? Who, or what, exactly are you? How did you... end up like this?"

[INDENT] "It all started when we were orphaned and lived in this town's orphanage." Doojoon said solemnly. "Because of our stories of abandonment, we bonded and stayed together in the orphanage. This woman by your bedside is one of our close friends from the orphanage, but she holds a much more important role in our story." He glanced at the woman before the woman quickly looked down at her feet.

[INDENT] "One day, a strange man came to the orphanage, looking for a few kids to adopt. Like we were taught to do, we behaved well and didn't cause a ruckus. Junhyung, Hyunseung, Yoseob, Kikwang, Dongwoon, and I were picked by this man, and I couldn't tell you how happy I was. I, along with my brothers, found a home. At the time, Dongwoon was still an infant, so he doesn't remember much.

[INDENT] "The man lived in a mansion much like this one. We were all stunned by the lavishness of the mansion and were excited that we were going to be living with a filthy rich man. At the time, I wanted to ask the man if he could buy the latest toys that were shown on TV, but... he was never really there for us. His maids always tended to us.

[INDENT] "But when he was spending time with us, he would always read books full of fairy tales to us. He was so enthralled by these fairy tales... He only read fairy tales to us, and no other genre. That's what he would ever talk about whenever he was with us.

[INDENT] "At one point, Junhyung had asked one of the maids about what our adopter did, and she told all of us that he was a retired medical laboratory scientist and that he had a laboratory beneath the mansion. Curiosity got the best of us, and we wandered around the mansion while the maids were somewhere else until we saw a trapdoor in the mansion. At the time, Dongwoon was just beginning to walk, so we made Hyunseung carry him around." Dongwoon pouted at Doojoon, and Doojoon couldn't help but laugh.

[INDENT] "We slowly went down the ladder of the trap door, and found ourselves in a place completely different from the lavish mansion we lived in. The laboratory was very crudely made and it was very dirty. Papers were strewn everywhere; it was basically a mess. We didn't see our adopter anywhere, so we decided to explore, assuming that he was out of town. Me, being the oldest and the most aware of my surroundings, saw that everything related to fairy tales were everywhere in the laboratory... excerpts were scrawled onto white boards, and there were even some ont he walls because he ran out of space. Fairy tale books were splayed out and were dissected with notes and annotations. There were some papers stating his failed experiments and what should happen the next time he conducted them.

[INDENT] "Yoseob, being the troublesome kid that he is, accidentally knocked a few of the beakers full of chemicals onto the ground. We quickly hurried and tried to leave, but it was too late; we had accidentally woken up our adopter, who was sleeping in a hidden room of the laboratory.

[INDENT] "What do you think you kids are doing here, messing up my laboratory?"

[INDENT] Junhyung whimpered, "W-we're sorry, sir... we just wanted to know what you did when you weren't with us..."

[INDENT] "Does that give you permission to enter my laboratory?!" The man yelled, and Kikwang and Dongwoon hid behind Hyunseung. "Now, who was the one that broke the beakers?"

[INDENT] Yoseob stepped out from the cluster of boys. "I-it was m-me, sir... I'm really sor--"

[INDENT] "Ah, Yoseob? This was your doing?" The man asked, and Yoseob fervently nodded. "Here, come with me, all