A few years later...

“Have fun at school, boys!”, Junmyeon said. He had made three lunch boxes today, checked three childrens´ worth of homework and adjusted three outfits. And now, they were going out of the door, to school.

Junmyeon sighed. After Yixing had started school, he had taken up working again because it was lonely to stay home by himself all day.
However, he wasn´t happy. His job didn´t fulfil him as staying home with the kids had done.

“Are you okay?”, Kris asked, seeing his husband´s unhappy face. The kids didn´t even want to be brought to school with the car any longer, no; they insisted on taking the school bus because they were all grown up now.

“I miss my babies”, Junmyeon said. He didn´t have to leave for work for two more hours and Kris was staying to keep him company.

“They´re still your babies”, Kris said.
“But for how long?”, Junmyeon exclaimed, “Minseok is leaving Elementary school next year!”

Junmyeon went pale. “Oh God, he is leaving Elementary school next year. He´ll go on trips, and date, and get drunk and do irresponsible things and move out for college –“

“Myeonnie”, Kris said gently, “he´s eleven.”

It hurt Kris to see Junmyeon so discontent. To be honest, he was suffering from empty nest syndrome, too.
Just yesterday, Yixing had said he was too old to hold his Daddy´s hand now. Kris would be lying if he said it didn´t make his heart feel uncomfortably heavy.

Instead of playing the tiny plastic keyboard, Yixing was participating in piano competitions at his school. Instead of playing around in their backyard, Luhan was in a real football club, and he was doing well.
Minseok was the best student in his grade and the class president.

Maybe, Kris thought, maybe he missed his babies, too.

That evening, sleep didn´t want to come to him. Yixing wasn´t using his nightlight anymore and Luhan had announced he was too old for bedtime stories and he could go to bed alone. God, they were really growing up, weren´t they?

“Stop shifting”, Junmyeon grumbled, “you´re letting all the cold air in.”

“Sorry”, Kris said, trying to lie still. After a few seconds, Kris realized Junmyeon was staring at him.
“What is it?”, he asked, “I can hear you thinking.”

“Let´s have more kids”, Kris blurted out without thinking. Junmyeon stilled, before he sat up and the light at the bedside.
“Are you serious?”, he asked.
Kris nodded. “You´ve been unhappy”, he started, “I´ve been unhappy. We both miss our babies, so let´s have some more.”

Junmyeon opened his mouth. “Our house isn´t big enough”, he argued.
“Easy, let´s buy a new house.”
“Our car isn´t big enough, either.”
“Let´s buy a new car.”
 

They both knew they had enough money. Money wasn´t the problem. However, completely changing your life was a big step and anyone would be at least a little scared of that.

“Think about it, Myeonnie”, Kris said, “there are so many kids out there that don´t have parents. We have the resources and the time to take care of them. Besides, Lucy was really disappointed we stopped at three.”

Junmyeon smiled when he remembered Lucy, outraged they decided to stop fostering or adopting to focus on the three children they already had.

“Well”, he said, “we can´t disappoint Lucy, can we?”

Kris found a huge house near his parents. It was a bit too big, with a lot of empty rooms they had no idea how to fill.
“It´s better to have more rooms than not enough”, Kris shrugged, “it has a nice yard and the last owner is selling it for a good price. We´ll need to do some construction work, but the overall condition of the house isn´t bad.”

The next weeks were filled with painting, constructing, building and transporting their furniture. To Junmyeon´s and Kris´s surprise, Luhan and Minseok insisted they had to room together in the new house too instead of having their own rooms.

It seemed like some things never changed.

At least their room was bigger now, big enough to accommodate all the stuff pre-teens needed to properly express themselves. Books, posters, trophies and other knick-knacks finally all had a place on the boys´ new shelves.

Yixing´s keyboard had a proper place under the window of his new room instead of the living room (a great relief for Junmyeon, who loved Yixing´s piano playing, but not at 6 am in the morning).

After around three months, all rooms of the new house were renovated and habitable. Lucy was ecstatic when they called her for the first time in years, promising to keep an eye out for any children that would fit into their family.

She called just the day Kris came home with their new, bigger car.

“They´re twins”, she told them, “well, not biologically, but they might as well be. Actually, they are step siblings from the same household, and they´re a bit…difficult.”
“Difficult how?”, Junmyeon wanted to know.
“They´re very energetic. They´re not bad kids, but their parents completely neglected them and they are not used to most rules. They never learned.”

“How old are they?”, Kris said.
“Five years old”, Lucy said, “I think they need a stable home to grow up well, and they might benefit from having the older boys around.”

Five years old. Junmyeon and Kris had gone through three five year olds already. They could handle this.
“When can you bring them over?”, Kris asked.

Kim Jongdae and Byun Baekhyun were tiny. Although they weren´t biologically related, they looked alike a lot; they had the same, dark hair, and the same scowling expression on their faces.

“When can we go back home?”, Jongdae asked, “I don´t want to be here.”
“Your parents are going through a tough time, Jongdae”, Lucy said, “you´ll stay here instead, alright?”

Jongdae crossed his arms. Baekhyun was standing behind him, Junmyeon noticed. Maybe he was the more timid sibling?

“Hello”, he said, crouching down to the boys´ height, “I am Junmyeon, but you can call me hyung, if you want.”
Jongdae´s eyes were suddenly filled with interest. “You´re Korean?”

“You get all the kids with that”, Lucy sighed, “well, you know the drill. Call me if anything goes wrong.”

And once more, Kris took the folder inside, skimming through the pages, while Junmyeon made sure to make their new arrivals feel at home.

Jongdae´s and Baekhyun´s history was sad.

Baekhyun´s mother had been single and pregnant when she had met Jongdae´s father over the internet. She thought he was in love with her, but he was cheating on her the whole time. When she eventually moved to Canada, the relationship escalated into neglect and mutual abuse, with the children at the centre of it.

Kris shook his head at the report that described how Baekhyun and Jongdae had been found: underweight, dirty, and in clothes way too small to them, playing in the unkempt yard all by themselves while their father was out and the mother was drinking.

Their father was ruled too violent to ever regain custody of the children. The mother was sent to rehab and declined seeing them again, voluntarily giving them up for adoption.

With a heavy sigh, Kris placed the folder on the couch table, going up the stairs to check on his family.

“Are these the new ones?”, Luhan asked from his door. Kris nodded.
“They´ve been going through a hard time, so be tolerant with them for a little bit, okay?”

He was lucky all three of his sons were at least kind of able to remember their early childhoods and were understanding towards other children experiencing the same problems.

“Sure thing”, Luhan said, “but they better stay out of my room.”
“You can lock the door”, Kris said. He could understand Luhan didn´t want two unpredictable five year olds in his room.

“Where are your brothers?”, he asked.
“Minseok´s in our room, and Yixing is practicing”, Luhan said. Kris nodded.
“Okay, you can meet the other boys at dinner later”, Kris said, “I am sure they need some time to settle in.”

As a foster parent, you learn to keep spares of everything. Kris fondly watched as Junmyeon gave the twins some clothes and their toothbrushes – green and dinosaur-shaped – all while talking to them in a low, gentle voice.

The twins were not as terrified as Yixing had been when he first came to their house. Instead, they looked rather lost, like they didn´t understand why Junmyeon was telling them all of this.

“When will we go back home?”, Jongdae asked after a while. Junmyeon only smiled sadly.
“Not for a long time, Jongdae-ah. Lucy explained to you that you have to stay here for a while, okay?”

Baekhyun didn´t say anything.

At dinner, the twins inhaled everything that was put in front of them like they would never see food again.

Kris could see Junmyeon wanted to give them more, but they both knew it would be the wrong choice. If they were that starved, it was better to let their digestive systems get used to food slowly.

The other three boys were mainly quiet, exchanging glances once in a while.

“Thank you, Appa”, Yixing said when dinner was done, “it was good as always.”
“You´re so sweet, Xing”, Junmyeon said, touched by the eight-year-old´s words, “you can go and play, okay? It´s Luhan´s turn to help me with the dishes today.”