"So the pool is done, lights are done, kitchen is all done. Eomoni stocked it with basic groceries. Your furniture will be delivered in three parts by this week. For now all your mail is being forwarded to the office. And for the love of Voldemort, feed me!"

Jaejoong shoots Changmin a look and goes back to fiddling with the super amazing brand-new high-end oven.

"It's broken!"

"No, your gas line isn't up yet. Wait till tomorrow."

"That means the stove is not usable yet either. On what basis were you asking for food?"

"There's a microwave that hasn't seen your underwear yet-" the glare Jaejoong throws at him makes him hold a finger against his lips with an essential sense of self preservation. He instead goes over to the large fridge and opens the freezer to a giant bag of pork strips she's pretty sure he kept in there.

"And how am I supposed to cook that?"

"Hwang Ajhumma lent the electric stove and this!" Changmin drags a sack out from the gap between the fridge and the wall. Jaejoong can tell it's a bag full of charcoal and she knows there's a grill built into the wall outside the kitchen door opening to the short strip of garden. Jaejoong excitedly grabs the pork and they skip out to the garden.

Upstairs there's an army helping set up the study in the smallest room. Which also means it's a little cramped with everyone.

"Hey, Yunho is is there a box of like 5000 underwear?" Seunghyun enters with a giant box formerly for an expensive dress Jaejoong had to wear to an event and was now a makeshift house to a lot of underwear.

"I told you to get the box labelled ‘computer,’’" Yunho says without turning around from organizing all the documents in the cabinet.

"And it's 2000. I picked out half," Minyoung states as if that's completely normal.

"I would say that some of these count as half underwear," Geunseuk quips when he takes a look at the contents of the box.

"It's getting crowded in here. Let's go set up one of the bedrooms." Minyoung pushes Seunghyun and Geunseuk out of the door. The only reason they were all in one place anyway is because they were narrating everything that happened to the people who weren't there.

When they enter the master bedroom, Seunghyun goes straight to the closet to drop the box in there. But Jihoon and Hyekyo who were there were surprised at the sight of Minyoung.

"You're still here?" Hyekyo's frown grows when she notices Minyoung hasn't changed out of the suit she was wearing to the police station either. "Your parents have been waiting all day. Aren't you going to talk to them?"

Minyoung thought she'd be sheepish or scared. But she's more tired than anything else. "I need a lot of mental preparation for it. My mother is good at understanding. But dad tends to lose reason when he gets panicky."

"I saw that. And it's understandable because of what happened with you. I would've been as bad if I was your parent," Hyekyo glares at Jihoon who quietly mumbled "you'd be worse" only for her ears.

"I've been told he vocalized his fantasy about Yunho and me again. I'm sorry about that." Minyoung sighs when Seunghyun and Geunseuk poke their heads out of the closet as soon as the conversation took an interesting turn. "That's precisely why I don't want to talk to him till he's calmed down. God knows he's going to flip when I so much as say the name that cannot be said."

"That's unavoidable. He's a dad!"

"Excuse me!" Jihoon argues on behalf of the dad association. "You're the lunatic between the both of us. You scolded the damn skateboard when Yunho got hurt."

"Of course!" Hyekyo places a delicate hand on her chest because she's back in her Gossip Girl fancy phase. "I'm the mom of two idiots. I'm supposed to be crazy. We don't have a girl so you're relatively normal. And don't act like you haven't been on edge since the first time you met Jaejoong. You even ordered houseplants that suit asthmatics." Hyekyo made a shooing motion at him and turned to Minyoung, "The point is Minyoungie, be like my sons and give up expecting normalcy from me-... er... your father. Besides you kids have known us all your lives. You should've noted some strategies by now. Like Yonghwa. He lets me call him Yo-Yo in public for a week in return for something."

"I do have a strategy. But my strategy has a concussion and is unfiltered and has no idea what he's saying."

There's a silence for a stretched out second that's cut off by Geunseuk snorting. "That's the dumbest strategy ever."

"Excuse me?"

"Seriously, it is. If I was in your exact situation and my parents are also crazy - Like look at me - I'd be invisible in their tirade because I've got a little lamb, or concussed scapegoat if you will, for slaughter."

"I hope Jaejoong's cousin knows what she's getting into," Jihoon whispers to his wife who is cringing on behalf of Yoojin.

"He has a point, I never thought I'd say this." Seunghyun throws in a wink when Geunseuk scowls at him before returning to what he was saying. "Changwook would get the heat. And let's not forget his mother is there too and you don't want her to lose it. Apparently when Chang was 10, she beat up some high school kids with an umbrella because they took his mechanical pencil."

"Didn't you do something similar?" Jihoon squints at Hyekyo in suspicion, almost convinced Seunghyun has mixed up the real protagonists of the story. "No I beat up that stupid Hyunsoo with a pencil because he always bullied Yunho. And he stole Yunho's Pikachu umbrella."

"I'm not even going to question the physics of a pencil trashing. Moving on to the matter at hand. Minyoung," Jihoon pins her with the stern dad look, "You got to do this. And we'll be with you."

"Oooh! Take Jaejoong too. She'll just have to make her eyes extra wide to melt anyone." And Seunghyun mimes the size of her large doe eyes with two fingers. "Just make sure she's not wearing footwear. Damn! I can't believe she did that again and I missed the chance to record it. Seuk-ah do is a favour and annoy Jaejoong so she'd throw her shoe at you."

"Did the guys tell you we didn't record it?" Jihoon pulls out his phone and fiddles with it. "I even double checked with Minyoung it's not on selfie mode before I whistled. Here. Send it to your phones." Jihoon tossed the phone into Geunseuk's hands who is quickly sending the video to his phone.

"Tell me again why did you whistle for the first time since you whistled at me in school?" Hyekyo asks because she knows why he did it the first time.

"Well like I wanted that time, I wanted to get his attention so he'd turn around. And also because I thought he could do with a sloppy warning."

"It's decided then." Seunghyun claps his hands together and rubs them, "we're all staying for dinner. We can stand in for Wooks."

"Yeah, honey. You go find Changwook. He shouldn't be left unsupervised in his state." Hyekyo has a point. If only Minyoung knew where Changwook wandered off to.

~~~

"Stop bothering him." Jaejoong tells the Changmin that's annoying Changwook by blowing the paint blower on his neck. Changwook isn't fighting back because it's not much from that distance, he's got heaps of delicious grilled pork, and the paint blower is really his which Mrs. Hwang lent to them to fire up the grill.

She's also said that the air is tense between Minyoung's parents and Changwook's mother but the three of them couldn't do much given that Changwook has to lay off the stress for a while.

"Stupid bamboo ate the entire first batch!" Changmin huffs when he directs the paint blower to the grill for a minute and is then back to Changwook.

"What's the problem? We've got enough for three more batches."

"You talk as if you don't know how much I eat."

"You talk as if you're not on a diet to meet your New Year's six pack resolution."

"Nuh-uh! I'm on an all protein diet." Changmin flips one strip of pork he had been grilling to perfection solely for himself. "Protein."

"Whatever makes you sleep at night." Jaejoong speaks while a little distracted by the lights of a car in the front of the house. "I think they're here."

"Chunnie~ Joongie~!" Junsu can be heard from beyond the little gate with dried climbers on it. "Over here!" Jaejoong hops over the overgrown itchy grass and unbolts the rusty gate. Junsu and Heechul dodge the weeds as they enter with the wide paperbags with The Dessert Room logo and other takeout bags.

 "We picked up some rice dishes for dinner and there's leftover desserts." Heechul shakes her head before completing her sentence seeing Changmin do a dance at the sight of more food. "Also what's your cooking situation? I can send over enough meals tomorrow morning."

"We're counting on the gas line working tomorrow and Hwang Ajhumma was going to take care of our meals till then. But if you're sending your famous stuffed chicken then I'll marry you," Jaejoong says the last part in a whisper in case Yunho's wolfish hearing picks it up.

"I always give my famous chicken. That's why it's famous. I like a princess cut in my rings."

"Okay this is interesting but I just came out off a double shift." Junsu waves her hand between Jaejoong and Heechul till they're two feet apart. "Joongie, I need a hot shower. Any working ones? I don't need soap. Just hot water."

"Haven't tested them out yet but I saw a heater in the groundfloor bathroom. Through the kitchen, only door behind the stairs. If it's not working I'm sure you can go over to our neighbours. They're friendly."

"I'll try this one first." Junsu passes her shares of the bags to Jaejoong and jogs over to the kitchen door, greeting Double-Chang before entering the house.

 "Mr. Food Monster has arranged for a lot of piggy." Jaejoong leads Heechul to the grills because only she can shoo Changmin far away enough to spare some food for the Muggles. "Care to fill me in on the dramatics today?"

"I could write a book and make money off it."

"Sell it to some drama producer. I like that medium," Heechul says before cursing at a particularly rough weed brushing against her leg. "You need to do some serious landscaping."

"I know right. I don't know how they fixed up the pool and got it fully functional but didn't even remove the weeds." Jaejoong says more to Changmin when they step on to the porch.

"The maintenance facility in this neighbourhood leaves more to be desired," Changmin piles on. "Hwang Ajhumma says because there's not many occupants here. Yunho Hyung insisted the pool and the house need to be ready but looks like they've ignored the outside of the house."

"What's with that one?" Heechul points at Changwook who's staring at them quietly from his spot on the plastic chair they set up for their grilling session. He's not blinking or looking away, just chewing on a lettuce slowly.

"Concussion. I'll get to that in the story." Jaejoong opens the kitchen door, "want to leave the food inside first?"

Heechul passes the bags to Jaejoong who takes them inside while she snatches the tongs from Changmin to take over the grilling. Changmin starts narrating the story till then which conveniently keeps him from stealing grilled meat.

Barely few minutes in Heechul feels something hard under her foot. This tiled porch is remarkably intact and smooth, save for a little gravel blown in from the garden.

But this isn't too rough under her foot to be stones. It's smoothed and shaped and more than one item sliding against each other. Heechul moves her foot and sees the somewhat shiny item under her sandals. "What's that?"

Changmin took a second to see them and he winces internally. He hasn't seen them up close before but he can figure what they are since he saw Yunho pick up a chain rather quickly and discreetly from Jaejoong's box of things at the police station.

He also Jaejoong hold it tightly in her fist in the car after Yunho slipped it in her hand. She was nearly interrupted hiding it when Seunghyun and Geunseuk arrived and he saw her keep her clenched fist in her dress' pocket for the better part of moving the boxes in.

When Heechul picks it up, it's the first time Changmin sees them up close and thinks Yunho's choice is generic and not creative.

It's also when Jaejoong returns and sees the rings entangled in the chain in Heechul's hand. Her brain is in overdrive to come up with a reasonable lie or a way to give Heechul amnesia. The concussion Changwook has seems very viable right now. But before Jaejoong can convince herself that it's not attempted homicide, Changmin suddenly blurts. "It's mine!"

Heechul and Jaejoong stare at him with confused eyes. "It's yours?" Heechul looks at the rings again. "You got engraved couple rings?"

Engraved? Changmin should’ve predicted Yunho would do something tired like getting the rings engraved with something just because he is possessive about Jaejoong. Nevermind that he doesn’t know Jaejoong got the first letters of their names engraved after they got back from Jeju because she thought it would be sweet.

"For a prank," Changmin is adept at lying with a straight face. And really everyone knows he can go overboard on his prank budget even though Yunho has cut it down by 3/4th of what it was in Changmin's meticulously drawn personal contract.

"These are obviously Jae and the boss' initials. What kind of prank are you planning? Because you know I like a little practical joke but a fake proposal is where I draw the line." Heechul rubs the metal, deciding they are real, and glances at the gawking person behind him. The deer in headlights look on those doe eyes are so cute she could coo. "Aren't you busted? She found out."

Changmin doesn't look behind to know Jaejoong is there. He heard the door open and her gasp. "She's in on it."

"Should've known. You know I kind of feel left out I'm never included in your plans. Minyoung and I are pretty into this stuff too."

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