“Wait, wait, wait a second. You mean to tell me you got us all worked up over a board game? You’re kidding me right?”

San gives Seonghwa his best pouty face, not at all satisfied with how his friend was reacting to his discovery. The game he held in his hand was unlike anything he’d ever seen before and he’d thought that the others would be a little more excited. It was something that looked to be from a completely different time, a different era, one long before any of them were born.

Which to San meant one thing and one thing only: this game could be worth some money.

“Seonghwa this isn’t just some board game, it’s a freaking antique. Don’t you know what this means?” San asks.

Yeosang raises an eyebrow and looks at Seonghwa, “You still wanna drop kick him? I’ll go grab your good shoes.”

Seonghwa shakes his head and puts a hand on Yeosang’s shoulder to keep him from getting up and doing just that. He had to keep the peace sometimes, obviously.

“No no no, let’s let him explain himself first,” he reasons, then adds as an afterthought, “And then we’ll send him on a little trip if we don’t like the answer. Better bundle up San, I hear Pluto’s quite cold this time of ye-”

Wooyoung interrupts with a, “Hey, who said I agreed to that?”

Seonghwa and Yeosang exchange a knowing look, almost feeling bad for the guy at how poorly he was concealing his little crush. Clearly, subtlety was a term that was almost unheard of when it came to their friend group. And if San wasn’t so oblivious he probably would have figured it out ages ago.

“Wooyoung, your gay is showing.”

Before Wooyoung could say something that would cause him to get in another childish argument with Yeosang, someone banging on the door makes all of them go quiet.

“Open up hoes! We’ve got pizza and beer,” their friend calls, a bit too overenthusiastic.

“Speaking of gay,” Seonghwa sighs and walks back towards the door to let Yunho and Mingi into his apartment.

The two walk inside and quickly set everything they were holding down on the coffee table, matching grins plastered on both their faces.

“Good, everyone’s already here. Let the party begin,” Mingi says, already reaching into the plastic bag to pull out a can of their favorite beer.

The rest of them follow suit, leaving San frustrated that they’d already moved on from the topic without giving him a chance to explain. Not a single one of them really had a high paying job, so he couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t hear out his plan to make a little pocket cash. San briefly thought about dropping it and just keeping it all to himself, but he was too nice of a friend for that.

He clutches the board game tighter in his hands, fully prepared to pout like a five year old until the other guys actually listened to him.

“Um, guys?” San asks, pout already in place. “Did y’all already forget what we were talking about?”

They all stop talking and turn to look at San in question, Yunho and Mingi hopelessly confused as they’d not been part of the conversation a few minutes prior. Seonghwa runs a hand through his dyed blonde hair in frustration, knowing full well that San was too stubborn to stop nagging them until they cooperated. Therefore he nor any of the others had any choice but to let him have his way, and so Seonghwa makes a motion with his hand for his younger friend to keep talking.

“Go ahead, say what you want to say so we can get this over with and have fun.”

“Um, did we miss something?” Yunho asks, looking at each of them.

San sits the game down on the coffee table in front of them, and one by one they pick the wooden box up to look at it.

“I found this board game in the back of a drawer when I was helping my grandparents pack. Look at the thing, seems pretty old right? I say we open it up and mess around with it, see if we think it may actually be worth something. You know collectors could go crazy over stuff like this.”

Seonghwa is the last to pick up the thing, running his fingers across the wooden surface in curiosity. San was right about it being old, that’s for sure. As far as it’s worth, well, that wasn’t so easy to tell just by looking at it. It wasn’t like any of them actually knew anything about antiques and the how-tos on judging if something held value. He didn’t know if it would even be worth it to get it appraised, considering they still hadn’t opened the thing up.

However, he didn’t think it’d hurt to try it out and see for themselves. The game might actually be something entertaining and adding something new to their get-togethers wasn’t exactly a bad idea. Seonghwa only hoped that they wouldn’t mess it up if there was even the slightest chance that it would actually be worth any money.

“Well, are y’all in or not?” San asks, looking at the rest of them expectantly.

“It wouldn’t hurt to open it up and give it a go,” Yunho says nonchalantly, shrugging his shoulders as if to say he didn’t care one way or another.

The rest of them half-heartedly agree and they quickly finish off what was left of the pizza before gathering on the floor, in front of the coffee table. San is unsurprisingly the first one to reach for the game and he pulls off the wooden lid to dump the contents onto the floor, in the center of the circle they’d formed. The game’s pieces roll around, a different one stopping in front of each person, almost like they were drawn to them.

It was beyond weird, but it’s also something that not one of them pays much attention to, like complete fools.

“What is this, some outdated version of Monopoly?” Mingi asks, picking up the piece in front of him - a giraffe.

In truth, Mingi was right, it did look similar.

Only, instead of each of the squares on the board being occupied by different places, they were occupied by symbols. Symbols that were in a language that none of them had the ability to decipher. And in each square next to the symbols, an expertly drawn picture of the different game pieces was shown. One for each individual piece, making nine in total.

Since there were only six people playing, there were a few pieces still lying next to the board. Seonghwa picks each one of them up to get a closer look, setting his own dragon piece down for the moment. He turns them over one by one, the first one being a fox, the second being a lion and the third, a human woman with a pointy hat. A witch, maybe? It was the only human piece out of all of them, which Seonghwa found odd.

The weird feeling he’d experienced earlier makes a comeback, something completely unsettling. It was just a normal Friday night, and all they were about to do was play a stupid board game. So why did this feeling make him think he should put a stop to this?

However, he stops himself before he says anything. This was a just a game, he was sure nothing bad would come out of it. Whatever was causing this feeling had to be from something else. Seonghwa didn’t know what it was yet, and he could only hope that he wouldn’t have to find out either.

Following after Seonghwa and Mingi, the others look at their pieces as well: Yunho’s was a bear, Yeosang’s a cat, San’s a dog, and Wooyoung’s a rabbit. Each piece was carved out of wood, just like the box and the board itself. The craftsmanship of it all was exquisite, and everyone couldn’t help but think that San may be onto something here.

The only problem now was that they didn’t have a clue how to play.

Considering how old the thing was, there didn’t appear to be any clear instructions on how to play, not even a name for the game to be found. Wooyoung grabs the box and looks at it once more to make sure there wasn’t anything left in there that would help them figure this out. When he finds nothing, he tosses it back to the ground carelessly, annoyed.

“Hey! Be careful, remember it-” San begins to scold.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, it could be worth something,” Wooyoung interrupts, holding a hand up to get San to stop talking. “But, how exactly are we supposed to figure it out without instructions?”

San shrugs, “Mingi said it looked like Monopoly, maybe we can try playing it the same way.”

There’s a silent agreement between everyone that they’d do just that, seeing as there weren’t many other options other than forgetting about the whole thing entirely. And considering how enthusiastic San was about this, that wasn’t really an option either. One last time, Seonghwa shakes off the bad feeling in his gut before it could take root and nag at him, saying:

“Fine, let’s play.”