72. Seeing more of each other

This is the Choi Family

Ever since Hoshi took a peek at something he wasn't suppose to see, he was troubled and confused about his next few steps. Even after talking to Joshua about it, he wondered if he should ask Wonwoo directly or to keep his mouth shut. But after seeing how the other was enjoying his way of life, he decided that he didn't need to say anything. 

Picking up after the kids during their nap time, Hoshi cleaned their toys properly and threw their stuffed animals into the washer. Coming over as often as Joshua, he began picking up on Jihoon's cleaning rules and where everything belonged. Currently, Joshua was out with Jihoon to do some grocery shopping while Wonwoo and himself were left to watch the sleeping children. Usually, Wonwoo would insist on helping him clean up despite knowing that he could handle everything, today he had to leave it all to Hoshi. The moment Hoshi knew Wonwoo had a ton of homework for every subject and a project to do, he basically barricaded Wonwoo in his room and demanded he finish his homework before coming out. 

Chuckling at how depressed and stubborn Wonwoo looked before he shut the door on him, Hoshi strode to the kitchen to clean. 

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Wonwoo plowed through his homework in three hours,  he was taking a break before working on the last item, which was a group project. Finally taking off his headphones, he heard no noises from outside his room. Checking the time, he guessed that Hoshi was sucessful in putting the little ones to bed. He got up and left to find a drink and check up on the kids.

And as he had guessed, all the kids were asleep in their beds, even Mingyu who doesn't like taking naps was asleep. Over in the kitchen, he spotted Hoshi washing the dishes. "Hey, hyung."

"Oh? Did you finish all your homework?"

"I finished all of them, just the group project left."

"Good good. If you said you weren't done, I would have carted you off to your room again."

"Stop it mom." Laughed Wonwoo. "So much nagging!"

Putting his gloved hands on his hips, Hoshi pouted and fake scolded his son. "Wonwoo-yah! You have to study well! Don't you know you have to do well in school to make it in this world?!"

It only made Wonwoo laugh harder. "I understand, I'll work harder."

Finishing their skit, Hoshi went back to washing and Wonwoo grabbed a cup of water. "For that group project, the script is due 2 days from now but it's been assigned for about a month."

"Oh! Then you should be pretty much done?" Wonwoo shook his head. 

"The shared document is still blank." Hoshi stared at Wonwoo suspiciously. Wonwoo picked up on the gaze immediately.

"No no! I did work on it, it's just every time I try to reach out to my group-mates, (is that a word?) they say they will work on it 'later today' or 'I will soon' but after checking in on them, nothing changes."

Hoshi sighed at his predicament. "So lazy teammates, they don't care about their grades huh?"

"Nah, I think they know that I'd be anxiously asking for them to participate and diliberately ignoring me. In the end I would do all the work and they would get the credit." Wonwoo explained, remembering how the other students treat him and Jihoon despite doing nothing to them. 

"What about telling the teachers?" Hoshi suggested. Seungcheol had reformed the principal with pressure, should he be able to help?

"Well, even if we punish all of them, won't that just make them even more hostile to us? It's okay, we are doing fine in school." Wonwoo has been defending Jihoon since the beginning, and there hasn't been a serious threat to either of them for a while.

"I'll just write the whole thing, it's no big deal." Wonwoo shrugged. It really isn't; if the others want to take his credit, at least they have to memorize his work to present it better than him.

"Okay, if that is what you want." Hoshi reluctantly let Wonwoo choose. If he had his way, he would have had the teacher changed, the students changed, everything changed! But if he did do that, he would be too overbearing and maybe disturb Jihoon and Wonwoo's peace. 

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Now working on the project in the living room, Wonwoo typed away on his laptop. His project was to write a script in English using the words they learned in the last few lessons. Present tense, past tense, future tense. They were to practice these verbs in a 5 minute skit, each with 15 lines each, 4 members a team. With 3 members not participating, Wonwoo had to type out all 4 roles, translate all of them, have the correct number of verbs required and have enough lines. 

Hoshi finished up in the kitchen and brought some snacks for Wonwoo. "Here, brain food."

"Thank you hyung." Munching while thinking, Hoshi observed Wonwoo's concentrating face. "Don't think too complicatedly. To fill up the lines, its okay to have multiple short sentences."

"Mhm, just a few more left." Hoshi read over his shoulder and was immediately impressed with how fast Wonwoo works. "Wow, you're really almost done."

Suddenly, they heard crying from the other room. "Hansol..." Wonwoo recognized the voice immediately. They both rushed to the boy's side, leaving the project to complete later.

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It took a while to placate the boy, nightmares were harder on the little ones than the older. Hoshi held Hansol until he was sleepy, sitting back on the couch while Wonwoo returned to his project after warming up some milk. It's been a couple hours since Jihoon and Joshua were out so they should be back soon.

Clicking into the shared document, Wonwoo was immediately stunned. "These bastards..." He kept his voice low because of Hansol but he was burning with anger. 

"What happened?" Hoshi whispered. Hansol shuffled in his arms but continued to blink half asleep. 

The brief moment that they had to step away from the laptop, those invisible group-mates appeared and deleted half of the lines Wonwoo wrote. "I was almost at the line requirement! And they went ahead and chose who would say which lines?!" 

Looking closer, the lines with his name on them aren't even lines! They were grammatically wrong and they didn't fit the situation. So they erased half of all the lines and decided which lines he has to say. Hoshi wanted to hunt down these students the moment he heard about them but he had Hansol in his arms and couldn't move. "Choose your role. You wrote all their lines, you get to choose. Just change the roles, assign them as you see fit. You have every right to."

"...These lines... they're so bad..."

"Don't dwell on it, just change it. You're the only one who worked on it, you are the only person who is allowed to change it." Perhaps Wonwoo had some pent up anger, he continued to stare and burn holes in his laptop with his glare. Seeing his unmoving gaze, Hoshi  reached one hand over to comfort him. "Chill. The laptop didn't do anything wrong. Here, if you want me to, I can help you fix it."

Pointing out the edit history, Hoshi guided Wonwoo to recover all the deleted lines and changed the stupid lines they gave him. Shuffling the roles around once more, Wonwoo looked less threatening. "Now, you're going to tell them that if they want to remove something, they have to have something that makes sense before they can change it." 

Shooting out an email to the others stating that strictly, Hoshi gave him a pat on the head before moving to place Hansol on the makeshift bed on the couch. 

"Even better, shoot the teacher an email that this is the final product and if there is any other changes you'd email them the new one. Then if the others turn in a version that they changed, the teacher would know which script is better and learn of what's going on."

"Thanks Hoshi hyung, but the teacher won't do anything about it." Wonwoo smiled bitterly. "It's okay, thank you again."

Hoshi stared at Wonwoo's face for a little longer, determining that Wonwoo really cooled down, he left to grab another cup of coffee. "There's so many bad people out there in the world, but we shouldn't care about all of them. We just have to care for and help those that are good. Don't get angry over these low-lives. Laugh at their pitiful attempt. Got it?" Hoshi chided. 

Wonwoo finally put on a more light-hearted smile. "Yes mom."

 

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Comments

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SmokyShiro
#1
I remember reading this and stopped while waiting for more chapter to pile up. Now it end. I'm head to binge this. What I don't expect is for this story to be this much chapter.
lauriieomma
#2
Chapter 122: I love this story so much and it's sad to see it come to an end. Thank you for finishing it in such a nice way!
leobeullijeu #3
Chapter 112: just binge read this story and i wanna say, bless you and your story<3
Djatasma
#4
Chapter 107: Umm hold up lady.
mj_duckboy
#5
Chapter 105: Cheol hyung is always right
Djatasma
#6
Chapter 104: Love this fluff!! <3<3<3
Djatasma
#7
Chapter 103: Aww. Hope your head is feeling better
mj_duckboy
#8
Chapter 102: Kaksssijjjssksshkskk jisoo!!!....
Is that a proposal owo lskkkkpkskjskosk
Secret_Obessions #9
Chapter 102: This update was so cute
mj_duckboy
#10
Chapter 100: *precious sobs*