“CHOI SOHEE, OPEN THIS UP RIGHT NOW.” Yerin screamed as she furiously banged her fist on the door. Its thin wood (probably only made out of three layers of plywood no more than six centimeters wide combined) was no match to her angry outburst. No one messes with her precious apartment.


[Precious: Something that means a lot to someone. The thing’s actual condition of upkeep does not intervene with how much worth it holds inside the owner’s heart. Example: Yerin’s run down apartment complex.]


“Hee-Jin caught a very contagious disease Yerin-ssi! I CANNOT let you in for your own safety!” Poor Sohee had to keep the door from breaking in half with her own back, betting all of its healthy and unbroken state on keeping a roof on top of their heads for another night.

Lucky for her, that morning’s main news was talking extensively about the dangers, morbidity rate, and symptoms of ebola. And Yerin was not feeling the best that day.

“C… contagious disease you said?” Her previously sharp voice was reduced to mere echoes as she miraculously jumped half a meter away from what she thought was the only barrier from a certain viral death.

Sohee was speechless for a moment in regards of the sudden strike of luck, as she’d experienced enough extreme highs and lows of coincidence that would last her for the rest of her life. And it was just barely lunch time.

“Yes! Yes she’s been coughing and sneezing all morning, everything is covered in green slime here.” She was quick to catch on Yerin’s current fearful obsession and spun it into exaggeration. Even adding a few coughs and loud sneezes herself. “An I thig ihm cobinnh dawd with subthig byself.” She lied again, now through tightly pinched nose and hoarse voice.

“O… okay then. I will leave you two… To recover…” Her voice, which was already far away at the start of the germophobic conversation, started to drift away even further. “I will call the health department if you don’t get better in two days!” She managed to yell back one last slightly caring statement before Sohee heard her footstep dashing down the set of stairs.

“Yay! Good job Sohee you’ve done well!” She mumbled excitedly to herself before turning over and meeting 4 sets of eyes staring at her in shock mixed with amazement.

She promptly ignored it and began to point at the bunch of strangers inside her home, which made them even more strange than ever before, “you. You should be thankful that I saved your assess. Don’t underestimate the granny Yerin she will wre-… YOU TOLD ME YOU’RE NOT GOING TO DO IT AGAIN YOU LIAR.”

Seeing that Hee-Jin was once again standing dazed on the middle of the living room, Sohee went livid and threw one of her socks to the vicinity of the weirdos (because she will never threw her shoes inside her house. In her opinion, it’s way dirtier than a sock that hasn’t been washed for a week). Although, something happened that finally made her quiet, which would never happen when Sohee was angry. But hey, seeing a fluffy sock defy gravity and hover gracefully in the middle of empty air was not something that you’ll see everyday, isn’t it?

Like making an angry Sohee quiet…

The flying sock was a miracle.

- - - - -

“Let’s try to be civil, shall we?” Hee-Jin awkwardly tried to sound cheerful as her voice cuts through the thick tension that was hanging low in the air. At her right was Sohee, eyes squinted, lips pouting, and arms crossed in the ultimate combination of body language that said ‘I don’t like you.’ And sitting at the opposite side of their dining table was the band of weirdos who’d started to smell like sweaty mops left out on the sun for too long.

“How can you say that after what they’ve done to you.” Sohee hissed while still keeping her almost unblinking eye (only achievable because her eyelids were squinted so hard they were almost touching) trained on the four men.

“We told you we have to do it for all of our sake.”

“All of our sake?! More like you own ’ sake!” Sohee didn’t show even a hint of fear when she retaliated to the weirdos leader’s measly apology. His face instantly turned sour. She didn’t care.

“Sohee, it’s ok, I’m ok. I’m serious.” Hee-Jin had to push her friend’s shoulder back to prevent her from jumping onto her sworn enemy. When Sohee looked at her with a worried look, Hee-Jin sighed and with a stern note said, “believe me.”

Only when she was sure that Sohee was calm (or at least ‘calmer’ than before) did she averted her attention back to the core problem at hand.

“We want your money.” She bluntly stated her want, need, and desire. “We are okay with you all staying with us ONLY if you have enough money to sustain all of living fees.”

With the mention of money, and a logical reasoning, Sohee’s ears perked up in positive anticipation.

What would they do? What were they whispering about? The one with the mesmerizing jet black eyes seemed to be not that happy when his boss began to point at his rucksack.

“That’s not fair!” He hissed while trying his best to protect his precious cargo from the desperate stares of his friends.

“Sehun. I’m only telling this once. WE NEED IT.” The one with the most sense tried to knock some of his own sense into the youngling’s thick skull, but his attempt of grabbing the bag was met with a sharp slap on the back of his hand.

“But… IT’S MY PERSONAL SAVINGS.” By that point he was hugging his valuable little bag, shielding it from three pairs of hungry hands.

“We will return it back to you with 10% interest.” The mind bender one pleaded and suddenly, that Sehun boy stopped moving. His eyes glinted against the juicy sounding compromise and he decided to try his luck even further.  

“30%”

“15.”

“Deal.”

Using the young padawan’s last bit of vulnerable spot (read: money), they managed to struck gold. Literally. Opening up his rucksack, which jingled animatedly when it was tossed across the table into the open hands of their leader, Hee-jin and Sohee’s eyes were met with a pile of glistening gold coins.

“Is this enough?” It was about ten, thirteen to be exact, yellow gold coins that carelessly tumbled out from the rucksack made from old dirty linen. One will never imagine that a bag that looked like it was ready to decompose at any moment would worth so much.

“Yes. Yes this will be more than enough.” For the first time in what she felt like impossibility, Sohee smiled at them. More like grinned. The point is, she was ecstatic.

“But Sohee, we don’t use gold coins anymore, we’re not in the medieval age.” Hee-Jin leaned in and whispered to her the worries of her financial heart. Sohee in return, stayed silent and only looked at her with a combination of shock and embarrassment.

“We… take these to the pawn shop and… pawn them… for paper money?”

If Hee-Jin could choose to let the ground open and let her drop to the center of the earth, she would’ve done so. But she was glad when Sohee started laughing, which was effectively contiguous, because now she didn’t have to show how she’d just made a very silly mistake in front of these intimidating young men.

“Hey!” Sohee suddenly exclaimed toward the group when her laughter had subsided. Her apparent civilized way seemingly stemmed from the lessened tension around the room, “we don’t know your names yet.”

“I’m Hee-Jin,” said the girl who caught on quickly with the hospitable mood and started the introduction with a warm smile on her face. “And this is my friend, Sohee.”

She complimented Hee-Jin’s introduction with a brief wave and a thin smile.

“And you?”

The boys exchanged look for a while, as if trying to silently decide on who should be the first to go. At the end their leader aka the tallest one (who still towered atop the others even when they were sitting) relented.

“My name is Park Chanyeol and I’m at all means in charge of them,” he proceeded by pointing at his friends, “thankyou so much for doing this noble cause. We swear in all the gods that we won’t make any hassle.”

There was a small pause as Chanyeol wiggled his eyebrows to the one sitting beside him, an encouraging gesture for him to continue the chain of introductions.

“All right,” the boy sighed in defeat and sheepishly raised her open hand towards the girls as a way to show peace. “Byun Baekhyun, and I once again apologize for our reckless behaviour. It won’t happen ever again.” His downturned gaze slightly met Sohee’s disapproving one. Their body language almost gave an illusion that they were engaged in a silent conversation. Not to say that it was impossible, after looking at their astounding list of ‘super powers’.

“Yea, at least not to you guys, but we can’t guarantee for others, right? Right?” As he broke the preceding silence by playfully nudging at his sleepy looking friend, the black haired boy found himself being the center of the room’s attention.

“I’m Sehun. Oh. Oh Sehun. Nice meeting you and… Thanks.” Seemed like he was the ‘all talks no guts’ kindda boy.

And that left everything down to the mind bender guy. The one with untidy light brown hair and hooded eyes seemingly masked only with the sight of a comfortable place to sleep.

“I’m Kai.” He only mumbled while waving his hand just once. It didn’t even look like a wave, only like a passing window wiper.

“Wait, wait wait a second. How come everyone of you have an obviously Korean name and his is just… Kai.” Hee-Jin protested, and beside her Sohee was furiously nodding her head.

With that, the rest of the group sneered.

“Yeah Kai, tell them how it came about.” Sehun continued his previous nudgings on his arms by using the sharps of his elbow.

“Hasn’t it been only a week? Wow, you sure settle in quickly huh?” At the side, Baekhyun gave a quiet remark.

And Kai, the odd one out, could only sigh, “Kim Jongin. Kai is my… you know what, it’s a long story.”

It did seem that the girls had too many questions in their mind to keep track what story they wanted to hear and which information they decided to ignore. Poor Kai’s ‘long story’ was the latter.

“Where are you from? What are you? Runaway government experiments? Aliens? Superheroes? Do we have a top-secret esper center around here?? Explain.” Sohee quickly bombarded them with a slew of enquiries. Looking at the slight hesitation on Baekhyun’s face as he opened his mouth, Sohee added in a slight threat to spice things up. “We have the right to kick you out if you didn’t answer truthfully. And don’t you even try to fool us. We know.”

She was absolutely bluffing. They were actually the duo that could be easily called as the worst ever people at detecting lies. But hey, it’s fun to play as the bad cop sometimes.

Chanyeol once again looked around with worried eyes. If Sohee and Hee-Jin were trying to decipher the silent conversation, it might’ve sound like this.

‘Should we tell them?' Asked Chanyeol, deep inside their minds.

‘Why not? But then we have to kill them afterwards so our secrets don’t come out.’ Sehun reasoned.

‘Naah, the government agents would’ve taken care of them before we have to.’ Kai, or Jongin, disinterestedly mumbled.

But the real answer that came out from Chanyeol’s mouth exceeded their wildest expectation.

“We’re just… your neighbors…?”

“… Neighbors.” Sohee repeated the word in slow motion as she tried to digest the nonsensical nature of everything. “Since when are neighbors a sufficient explanation for a question regarding your obviously super human abilities.”

“Neighbors from another galaxy,” Baekhyun added with a tired sigh, staring at Chanyeol with a disapproving look that said, ‘I thought you could’ve done better’.

“Certainly it has to be so far away for us to not know about it…” Hee-jin hummed to herself while her chin. Too deeply submerged inside the informational muck of her mind that it took her another full minute before the revelation hit her. Like a tow truck it hit her.

“YOU’RE ALIENS!” She suddenly stood up and sending the dining chair a few dozen centimeters away with just her sheer force. “ALIENS. Living breathing aliens!”

“That looks, sounds, and smells just like human beings. How creative.” In contrast to an over excited Hee-jin, Sohee seemed to be completely unamused. She sat there on the table with her head plopped lazily on her palm, mouth turned down into a frown and shrugging when the aliens began to look at her weirdly. “I mean, you’re not even green. And you don’t even have a complicatedly impossible to pronounce name!”

“But they’re still aliens.” Hee-jin started to shake Sohee’s shoulder in an attempt to rub off a little bit of her excitement to her rather sleepy looking friend in the face of possible wonder and new scientific discoveries, even though none of them were true blue scientists to begin with.

“Or maybe they’re not.” The frown on Sohee’s face was further downturned, so much so that her upper lip was almost touching the underside of her nose.

“I’m calling a bluff,” she nodded her head toward the boys while giving Hee-jin a confident grin. “Pretty sure they’re some kind of escaped scientific wonders or something.”

At the side, Hee-jin snickered at Sohee’s stubbornness. “I’m still betting that they are really from outer space.”

“Are we betting on this?”

Sohee’s challenge was met with an open handshake, “bring it on. Two weeks of grocery shopping, yes?”

Making light of the situation was the only thing these two humans could do to possibly bring their lives back to normal, however different that normalness might’ve felt right then. In one side Hee-jin was surprised how easy she accepted the fact that they were not alone in this universe. But well, considering how infinite the galaxy seemed to stretch, nothing is impossible, right? And on the other hand Sohee was surprised how aloof she acted in the face of super-powered individuals. She imagined she would squeal more and act less icy. Even possibly fumed out her wonder and admiration onto their faces.

But when you were really faced with the things you wanted to know most, sometimes the scenario you’d been imagining in your head won’t play out like they way you expected it to be.

“What is that?!” Baekhyun suddenly jolted off his chair when sharp pinging sounds suddenly pierced through the calm apartment loft. The harsh beeps instantly brought back the traumatizing memory of their recent emergency landing, and rightfully so. Because even the owner of the beeping device also jumped on her seat as she quickly grabbed her phone from her back pocket and swiped off her alarm clock.

“Calm down, it’s just a reminding device.” Chanyeol tried his best to shush his friend away while he was trying this best to eavesdrop at the two girl’s muted, seemingly super important conversation regarding the continuation of their survival in this planet.

“I don’t want to leave you here with them.” Sohee hushed at Hee-jin

“No, no! I don’t want to be alone with them!” Hee-jin frantically whispered back, taking quick glances at the group as if it could help them get into a final decision much more quicker.

“But I also don’t want to leave them alone in our apartment,” Sohee’s other jab at a solution was quickly debunked with both Hee-jin’s head firmly shaking and the possible horror of finding their apartment burned down to the ground, or worse, robbed clean by the weird supernatural boyband.

“There’s only one possible answer then.” Sohee reluctantly said after she realized that there was nothing more to do but to settle on her last straw.

“And that is…?”

“I’ll take them to work.”
 

A/N: Sorry for the long update... I felt like I had to climb through this mandatory 'interrogation' section before I could go on doing weird funny stuff with these jedi apprentices of earth. WHEEEE more weird stuff ahead!!