(40) MUD, SWEAT & TEARS

Sehun wakes up with a stiff ache in his neck. When he tries sitting up, he finds himself pinned to the floor by a leg draped across his stomach. The lanky limb was pale, and after dreaming about a horde of zombies running throughout the city, it wasn’t exactly a pleasant sight. For the moment that he is half asleep, there’s a bit of panic, though it is gone as soon as it had come.

Sure enough, Chanyeol had been the one to have fallen asleep next to him. With one leg now freely lying on the hardwood floor, the other slings on Baekhyun’s body carelessly, just as it had once been on Sehun. Truthfully, Sehun found it a little annoying that Chanyeol still bothered to sleep like he had all the space in the world. What made it worse was that there was a possibility that he would continue to grow even bigger.

Baekhyun on the other hand- Sehun just wished his hyung the best of luck.

The amount of centuries that had passed put aside, Sehun still felt like a child.. He went under Tao’s power trip back in 2011 when he was thirteen years old. After the years passed, he’d been one of the first ones to arrive back in the new world. And from the year since he had regained consciousness of himself, it’s been four more years. Adding everything up now, he was now physically eighteen. Mentally, though…

The years he’d spent in the new world weren’t exactly the easiest of challenges, but all of it was still pretty difficult to accept.

A movement from the corner of his eye made him turn to find Lay unexpectedly staring at him with his hands held up awkwardly.

“Good morning?” Lay muttered nervously, a bit embarrassed that he was caught in the act.

“What are you doing?”

It seems that Sehun wasn’t the only one that thought stuffing two intense practices in the hot sun was too overwhelming for the boys. Lay had done his best to heal up everyone for the day ahead of them and only really succeeded in patching up the heavy sleepers like Chanyeol and Luhan. Other than that, like Sehun, everyone else had woken up to see what Lay was doing up so early in the morning.

Lay’s hands moved up to massage Sehun’s shoulders, his irises blooming mint green as he infused his powers through his palms and to the tips of his fingers.

“Just go back to sleep in case Kris decides to pull another crazy training session.”

Sehun could feel himself relax the more time went on and hadn’t noticed he’d fallen asleep until something yanked at his hair to the point where he’d woken up screaming.

“What the hell?” He gasped, fingers gingerly rubbing across his scalp as it felt like his head was on fire.

“About time you woke up.” Luhan scoffed. Sehun slaps him in the arm angrily, but Luhan only returns it quicker.

He’d left Sehun alone to go and torture another one of the boys, merely obeying the order of Xiumin who had told him to wake the rest of the sleeping ones up. Sehun saw Luhan slowly stop next to Lay who had been sleeping on the floor near Chanyeol.

“Don’t wake up Lay because he had a rough morning!” Xiumin lightly called from the kitchen.

Sehun pieced two and two together that Xiumin was responsible for the sweet scent drifting in through the air. “What’s for breakfast?”

“Dunno, look for yourself.”

Rolling his eyes as Luhan’s helpfulness, Sehun helped drag the blanket with Lay on top of it away from Chanyeol as Luhan began his waking process with the boy.

Standing above Chanyeol, Luhan called his name softly just enough to make it seem like he was genuinely trying to wake him up gently.

“If you don’t wake up in three seconds I’m going to wake you up the hard way.” Luhan was practically singing now, his sweet voice sounding like birds chirping to Chanyeol’s sleepy ears.

Sure enough when three seconds passed, Luhan was finished being nice. He bent down and laced his fingers through Chanyeol’s hair, giving it a big tug before Chanyeol had begun to scream for him to stop, his cries leaving Luhan extremely satisfied with himself. Luhan skipped Lay just as Xiumin asked and continued to bother the others until everyone had woken up.

“Shut up Park Chanyeol!” Baekhyun screamed, his back already beginning to ache before he could register how loudly he was yelling. “You’re gonna wake everyone up with that stupid crying of yours!”

“You too Baekhyun… Please settle yourself down.” Lay groaned.

“Breakfast is ready!”

Xiumin managed to save everyone from a long morning of lectures and petty revenge planning while announcing that there was food ready. Since they were running out of food, Suho thought it was the perfect time for a walk down memory lane, gathering some of the ones that had woken up first for a run.

Together, Xiumin, Kris, Suho, Chen and Lay had gone out to the nearest supermarket to reminisce of their early childhood days. The place was pretty packed and lots of people were already beginning to shop when they had arrived. And of course since they had brought Chen along, someone was in for a boat load of trouble after stepping foot into the establishment.

While they were walking through the aisles, Chen happened to spot a large man wearing a suit that looked like his stomach would break out from his pants if he’d breathed too hard. His suspenders looked like they were almost in pain and the strings were stretched to their max.

Being the kind kid Chen was, he didn’t directly try to do anything too rash. And instead, pushed Kris right into him.

“What the- Watch where you’re going!” The man bellowed, holding up the waistband of his pants as he puffed up his chest to appear bigger than Kris.

Kris gave a sharp glare to Chen who pretended to not see anything, hiding behind the man’s sight of vision near his cart. While he peered in curiously to see what he was planning on buying, Kris was stuck with dealing with the man himself.

“Well? Are you going to apologize?”

The man’s face was red and turned even redder as Kris stood up on his feet, towering over his smaller height with his stoic face. “Right, I apologize for my carelessness.”

“R-Right, well…” No matter how much the man tried to stand up on the tips of his toes, he wasn’t able to come close to rivaling Kris’ height. Eventually he stopped to take a few steps back, bumping into his cart and even stumbling around on his own feet before partially regaining his composure. “Don’t do it again, you hear? Kids these days…”

Now the only thing keeping Kris from killing Chen was the fact that Suho was already starting to get worked up to lecture the both of them.

“Before you can say anything, I have a proposition!”

Chen held his hands out to try and calm the situation, though he was more concerned about whether or not Kris would stop to listen to him rather than drive him ten feet into the ground. “I have a solution for… Getting out of here civilly.”

“And?” Kris grumbled.

“This.”

In Chen’s hand was a small rectangular card. A credit card, to be exact.

Xiumin hummed before plucking the piece of metal from between his fingertips. “When did you get this?”

“From the guy that Kris bumped into.” Chen said smugly.

“You shoved me into him!”

Chen looked at him with a bit more confidence that he wouldn’t be beat up for doing that since he’d done a good deed this time. “Yeah, but at least we can shop and get out of here like normal people.”

Suho seemed more than convinced and lightly pat Chen’s back before rushing off to go and find whatever they needed. He had no idea how much was on the card, nor if they’d even be able to use it in the first place, but he didn’t care at this point. He was one that was against stealing in the first place and he was extremely happy for some sort of civil shopping for once.

“I’ll check how much is on the card. You three go and restrain Suho before he tries to buy the entire store.” Xiumin shooed them away and already began to walk away, looking through its contents for a serial number he could plug until a bank machine.

Lay awkwardly had to drag Kris away first before Chen had began to follow quietly behind, aware of how Kris was trying to keep his anger down to the bare minimum.

“It should be a lot since the guy was rich.” Chen nodded his head, “Did you see how expensive that suit was?”

“The one that looked like it was going to break any second?” Kris muttered unbelievingly.

“It might’ve looked that way, but I’ve seen guys like that come into faction C before.”

Chen explained that they had gotten all sorts of customers for their fast repairing and great customer service, quickly shoving his boasting words aside to continue his observation. What the man was wearing was none other than a Blanc & Eclare microfiber trimmed suit. That stuff meant big bucks where he came from.

“Blanc & Eclare…” Lay mumbled, thinking it sounded familiar.

“It’s Jessica’s company Lay.” Suho rolls his eyes, “Come on we worked for her for two years now.”

“You know the founder?” Chen said amazedly.

“We worked for her, so no.” Chen’s shoulders slumped as Suho revealed the truth, “But Baekhyun did I believe. He was close enough to her to threaten the staff for not recognizing his face when he went to go pick up beauty products for Sunny.”

“What a brat.” Chen scoffed, “Whose Sunny though?”

“Their caretaker.”

Kris seemed all to happy to be able to put that out there and the rest of the boys couldn’t help but laugh as well. Once Xiumin had returned, they’d figured out that Chen had been right on the money and Suho was able to have the biggest buying spree of his lifetime.

With all that money, even the other boys were able to buy what they wanted for themselves. Take it as a little gift for helping carry the bags back. Chen struggled to hold up his bags on the way back and found it strange how he’d been falling behind despite how he was carrying the same amount as everyone else.

“Come on Chen! You’re lagging behind!” Suho called from up front, almost skipping the way home with all of the stuff they’d gotten.

Kris looked behind to see Chen still struggling, a smile smile appearing on his lips as they were approaching a hill. “Looks like someone should've taken training more seriously.”

Behind those words were Kris’ silver lined irises and Chen could only groan as the weight on his arms intensified.

--

“So… Did you really know the director of Blanc & Eclare?”

Baekhyun sat on the couch lazily waving his hand around as his body felt lax after his filling breakfast. “Yeah? And?”

“Jessica was nice.” Chanyeol hummed, popping another croissant into his mouth, the loose flakes getting all over his cheeks and falling onto the floor below. “We always got free samples.”

“And she treated Sunny nicely.” Kyungsoo added in.

The three boys all remembered Sunny vividly as if they hadn’t been apart for a few weeks now. The way she’d smile or slap Baekhyun around for being mean to them. Now that everything’s changed, the only thing they could really do was hope and pray that she’d be alright.

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