“Jingle bells! Jingle bells! Jingle all the way~!” Kihyun sang, skipping in front of Daehyun and Youngjae as they crossed the street. His eyes lit up when he spotted two familiar faces. “Minhyuk! Hoseok!” He ran to his friends when they approached the daycare entrance.

The two boys were stood outside the building with their families. “Kihyun!” They waved t him.

Youngjae and Daehyun bowed to the parents greeting them with early good mornings.

“Thanks again for remaining open today.” Mrs. Lee thanked them.

“Of course.” Daehyun shared a friendly smile.

“Make sure you’re a good boy today Hoseok.” The 6-year-old’s mother reminded as Youngjae unlocked the front door. “Yes Umma.” The young boy promised. The two of them said goodbye to their parents before all of them entered the small cozy building.

Jaejoong kept the daycare open the day after Thanksgiving so that parents could drop their kids off while they went Black Friday shopping. He always assigned his sons to watch the daycare while he also took advantage of the deceivingly good deals. This year, Youngjae and Daehyun watched the daycare while Jaejoong forced Jaehyun and Yunho to help him carry and fight for his purchases (a task that Daehyun was glad to have gotten out of).

“Are you guys hungry?” Youngjae asked after he and Daehyun finished setting up the daycare for the day.

“Yes.” Daehyun was the first to answer.

Youngjae looked at him only to earn a cheeky grin.

“You already ate!” Kihyun pointed at him accusingly.

“My Umma says if you eat too much, you’ll get fat.” Minhyuk stated matter-of-factly.

Daehyun paused, finding something familiar about the attack. Youngjae laughed, noticing this. “Okay, is anyone other than Daehyun hungry?” He rephrased his question.

“No thank you Mr. Youngjae. I already ate.” Hoseok declined kindly.

Youngjae nodded, “You don’t have to call me Mr. Youngjae, Hoseok. You can just call me y-,”

“Yeah, his name is hyung and Uncle Youngjae. So, you can call him one of those names.” Minhyuk informed knowingly.

The elder made an ‘o’ shape with his mouth slowly nodding in understanding. “Can I call you hyung, Mr. Youngjae?” He asked after thinking deeply about it.

“Sure.” Youngjae smiled.

“Can we play now?” Kihyun asked anxiously. He was already getting tired of all the talking.

“Knock yourself out.” Daehyun granted. With that, the three boys ran off to play.

“This isn’t how I imagined our first date would be, but it’ll be fun.” Daehyun noted to himself.

Youngjae’s eyes slightly widened, “Date?” He ghostly repeated, they’d only been dating for a little over a week.

“Uh, Yeah. It’s just the two of us so, I figure that it was basically a date.” Daehyun shrugged, at least his cousin, Jongin, convinced him that it was some form of date. He slowly began to doubt his cousin’s words seeing Youngjae’s expression.

Youngjae felt his cheeks heat up in both embarrassment and guilt. “Um…” He laughed uneasily. “I’m not sure this would b e considered much of a date. I was kind of planning on working a little on my homework before the rest of the kids came by.” He confessed apologetically.

Daehyun’s eyes slightly widened, “Oh no! It’s okay. It’s my fault for assuming and letting Jongin get in my head.” He laughed embarrassingly.

Youngjae gave him an assuring smile, “It’s okay. There’ll be a lot of fun things we can do today. I planned a bunch of activities we can do together.”

Daehyun couldn’t help but smile at how excited the younger seemed about the things he planned for the kids.

The two of them entered the play area to watch the kids.

Youngjae sat at the small table to do his homework while Daehyun played with the boys, rowdying up early in the morning. The two of them stopped what they were doing every now and then, to greet the other four kids that arrived later. After about an hour passed Youngjae and Daehyun concluded that no more kids would be coming and therefore moved onto the next order of business. They sat the boys down for their morning snack prepared by Jaejoong, consisting of diced fruit and a choice of carrots and ranch.

“Hyung, what are you doing?” Hoseok leaned over Youngjae’s shoulders, munching on is baby carrots. His eyes widened at the strange symbols on his teacher’s paper. “You’re doing math with letters?!”

His exclamation garnered the attention of the other school-aged boys who soon gathered around them.

“My hyung is smart. He can do math with letters.” Kihyun announced proudly.

“What is A2 plus B2?” Hyunwoo asked pointing to the expression at the top of the page.

“A^2 (A-squared) plus B^2 (B-squared) equals C^2 (C-squared).” Youngjae stated the Pythagorean Theorem.

Hyunwoo blinked a couple of times, scratching the back of his head. Youngjae chuckled, tickling the 6-year-old’s tummy, causing him to laugh out of his confusion.

“Don’t think too hard about it. You’ll learn it when you get older. But it’s not that difficult.” He assured him.

“Tch…compared to everything else you’ll learn, that’s nothing.” Daehyun remarked, not missing his school days at all.

Youngjae chuckled in response, knowing well that the elder hated math, even when they were kids. In fact, Daehyun was interested in everything else but school. Youngjae laughed a little harder at the memory.

“You can do math with shapes?!” Hoseok asked in amazement.

Youngjae stopped to think for a moment. They really did include a lot of shapes in math outside of just geometry. He began to slowly nod, “Yeah. Pretty much.”

“Wow! What’s circle plus triangle?” Minhyuk asked.

Youngjae paused, not expecting the question.

The group of boys watched him expectantly. Even the two youngest boys waited to be amazed by his answer, though they didn’t completely understand what they were talking about, since they hadn’t reached the school age just yet.

“Ice cream cone.” Daehyun answered before Youngjae could even think.

“Ice cream cone?” Changkyun repeated in thought, registering the answer in his brain so he could tell his parents what he learned, and impress them with his adult-level knowledge.

Daehyun nodded confidently. “You put the circle on top of the base of the triangle and you get an ice cream cone.” He simply explained.

Changkyun and Jooheon scrunched their brows deeply before slowly nodding, understanding and agreeing with his logic. However, the older boys weren’t convinced and turned back to Youngjae, completely ignoring the eldest member.

Youngjae looked amongst the young boys. “I don’t know. We haven’t learned that.” He confessed. “But I’ll let you know when we do.” He promised.

The boys nodded before returning to their seats, more satisfied with his answer than Daehyun’s.

“After you finish your snacks, we’ll do crafts.” Youngjae said getting somewhat excited about the next activity.

Daehyun raised a curious eyebrow, even he didn’t know what the younger had planned.

“I’m done!” Jooheon announced proudly, soon creating a domino effect of the rest of the boys announcing the finishing of their snacks.

Youngjae quickly went to the small kitchen at the back of the building to get the supplies. He grabbed two large rolls of paper towels, paper plates, a large box of rice crispy cereal, 3 bags of chocolate chips, M&M’s, and candy corn, a bag of pretzels, and a large bowl of a mix of butter and marshmallows that he mixed earlier that morning, along with a few extra utensils.

“Candy!” Jooheon exclaimed when Youngjae returned with arms filled with paper utensils and sweets.

The boys’ eyes glistened as they waited for the 21-year-old to start handing out the sweet treats. However, instead, they were instructed to wash their hands.

Daehyun took them to the restroom while Youngjae set up the table. He placed long strips of paper towels in each of the empty spots on the table and put large paper plate on each towel. He poured the pretzels, M&M’s, chocolate chips, and candy corn into small plastic bowls, placing them in the center of the table. When Daehyun and the boys returned, he was in the middle of mixing the cereal into the butter-marshmallow concoction.

The boys gathered around the table sitting in their respective seats. The 8 of them watched Youngjae curiously as he scooped a large mountain of the sticky cereal into each of their plates.

“Today we’re gonna make snowmen out of cereal and candy. I thought it would be a fun and tasty craft we could do.” He finally announced once everything was set up.

The boys were elated by the delicious craft idea.