The sun was shining brightly. Six people were standing under it, waiting for the referee to blow the whistle, indicating the start of the game. Two pairs of narrowed eyes clashed, flaming with fierce competitiveness. A figure kicked the grass next to the ball, ears perked up, waiting for the referee’s sign.
And waiting.
And waiting.

“Dohyeong? Will you?” Jae Hwa asked, breaking the heated eye contact.

The blond boy blinked sleepily, with a confused look on his face. “Will I what…?”he yawned.

“Blow the damn whistle!”

“Can you blow my whistle, baby, whistle, baby~…” Rae Kyung sang, giggling at herself. Dohyeong, not bothering about anyone around him, lazily blew the whistle and sat down on the spot.

Having quick reflexes, Ae Jin got to the ball first, smoothly passing it to Wei Min. Just as he wanted to pass it back to Ae Jin who was sprinting towards the goal, he slipped. The ball flew the other way towards Rainah. The cute girl wanted to prove that she’s capable of playing football, shooting the ball with all her might. The twists and turns confused Jae Hwa’s team, and the ball slowly hopped to Ae Jin. With a slight flick of her ankle, the ball made its way between the legs of the lying chair.

“Yes! It’s a score!” Rainah jumped around happily, pumping her fist in the air. Choonhee looked at the ball under the chair. She wasn’t quite sure what happened, and neither was Jae Hwa.

“That’s cheating!” he said angrily.

“You just can’t take it when you’re losing, noob~” Ae Jin giggled.

“What’s a noob?” he asked.

“Don’t worry~” Choonhee patted his shoulder. “It’s just someone who’s new at a game, or someone who at it.”

Everyone laughed, but Jae Hwa just glared at her. “You’re supposed to be on my team!”

Dohyeong, a little bit late with his reactions, blew the whistle signaling a goal. He lazily crawled to the chair, getting the ball out and threw it to Jae Hwa. “Your turn, noob,” he laughed and whistled, crawling off the home-made pitch once again.

Before Jae Hwa could react again, Ae Jin got the ball and kicked it with all her might to Choonhee. Needless to say, it was another score.

“Now that is really cheating!” Jae Hwa raged. Dohyeong shrugged, but he counted it as a goal. Jae Hwa stomped over to get the ball, putting it down forcefully. When Dohyeong resumed the game, he was more than ready to take it himself. He slowly passed it to the hyper maknae, who couldn’t wait to get the ball. She ran around with it, warming up, when Ae Jin took it away from her. She couldn’t let her team get another goal, so she tripped Ae Jin over and got away with the ball. Dohyeong, of course, didn’t see anything, so she passed the ball to Jae Hwa. He tried to shoot at the goal, but Wei Min blocked it, so it bounced away to Choonhee. She passed it to Rae Kyung, who used the chance to shoot before Ae Jin got to her, and scored.

“Take THAT!” she laughed, high-fiving Jae Hwa. “And, oh, Ae Jin, I’m sorry~”

“No you’re not,” she grumbled, dusting herself.

“You’re right, noob~” she giggled.

“That’s not the right way to use it,” she rolled her eyes, taking the ball. Hearing the whistle, she passed it to Wei Min. She ran forward, expecting to get the ball back, but it never happened. Instead, she heard Rae Kyung celebrating another score.

She looked at Wei Min sitting on the floor, demanding an explanation. “W-Well, I tripped over, Jae Hwa got the ball and yeah…Rainah didn’t stop it,” he said sheepishly, getting up.

Ae Jin sighed, but smiled nonetheless. “Doesn’t matter, we can still win!” she said, catching the ball and placing it down. Again getting the signal, she made the kick-off, this time keeping the ball for herself. After getting into the position where she couldn’t go on, she passed to Wei Min, hoping he won’t trip again. He caught it perfectly, but Jae Hwa ran past him and took the ball away without much effort. He wanted to pass it to Rae Kyung, but she was being held back by Ae Jin. Rainah wanted to block the ball, but it went between her legs to a score.

“Rainaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” Ae Jin whined. “Can’t you be better?”

“I can’t!” she whined back with a cute pout, but that made Ae Jin even more angry.

Ae Jin got the ball and put it on the ground, her eyes flaming up. As soon as Dohyeong blew the whistle, she kicked as hard as she could. It zoomed past Jae Hwa and Rae Kyung, through Choonhee’s guard and the goal, to the neighbor’s garden.

Her rage was shut off in a second when she realized what she’d just done. “Daaaaamn…” she muttered, quickly running around to get the ball out as soon as possible. As she was exiting their garden, the others simply jumped over the fence because they were too impatient to wait. Rae Kyung tried to take the ball out of the flowerbed it fell into without doing any damage.

“U-Unnie! I’m sorry, it was an accident!” Ae Jin said. Everyone looked up to see who she was talking to.

“Is that…BoA sunbae?” Rainah pointed to the woman who just got out of another fancy house. The girls, except Ae Jin, squealed, and the boys gasped amazed.

“She’s our neighbor?” Wei Min asked. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

“You never asked~” Ae Jin giggled.

“And how come you’re not fangirling? Or anything like that? Do you not like her?”

“Oh, I did fangirl the first…and second time I saw her,” she laughed.

“And third, and tenth and so on…but I guess she got used to it,” BoA laughed at Ae Jin’s grumpy expression after she mentioned another few times.

“Alright unnie, I’m sorry for interrupting and kind of ruining your garden, now let’s get back,” Ae Jin muttered, her pride slightly mashed.

“But can’t we stay a bit more?” Choonhee asked. “I want to-“

“Hey, did you get the ball? Can we continue?” Dohyeong, who hasn’t even jumped over, asked, not even noticing the whole thing about BoA.

They sighed, but complied. After saying goodbye to BoA, they jumped back over the fence and took their previous positions. It was a draw, and both teams were hyped up to win.

However, by the time it took Dohyeong to blow the whistle, it was already too late to continue. Their showdown was interrupted by the soft jingle of wind chimes. All eyes turned to look towards the source of the sound, which was, in fact, their leader. Quite a striking contrast against the other members, and the day itself, his mainly black and red outfit was only softened by the presence of two teal bunnies on his feet. He strode over the makeshift pitch, his eyes following the trail of damaged grass caused by the dragging of the rather heavy chairs. It just so happened that behind Choonhee’s goal was the once beautiful, now ruined, flowerbed and fence. Before he could react, though, Ae Jin tried to dampen the situation.

“Why are you wearing your slippers outside?” she asked nervously, marching over towards him. “I’m gonna be the one who has to wash them, and the floor later! Don’t you ever think before doing something?”

“Oh, do I? Do any of you think before ruining someone else’s property?” he countered in a stern voice. It was quiet, but somehow much scarier than his usual tone.

The other members looked at each other anxiously, all thinking the same thing; does he already know what happened?

“Yes, I know what you did,” he continued. The uneasiness grew even further, as it seemed like he could read their thoughts perfectly.

“Oh yeah? And what did we do?” Ae Jin exclaimed. She wasn’t having any of that – or so she thought.

“Do you need me to state the obvious for you?” Bae said as he gestured towards the backyard.

“Well we only wanted to have some fun, and bond with each other! We never meant to harm anyone,” Rainah mumbled cutely, trying her best to de-escalate the whole situation.

“Yes, we were just playing! We’re gonna fix it, I promise,” Rae Kyung joined in, trying to look as innocent as possible, her competitive spirit completely gone. Their leader just stood there wordlessly.

“Yes, oppa! We can fix it!” Ae Jin continued, shuffling closer to the other two.

“Yeah? What about those expensive flowers in sunbae’s garden, which she had flown in from the Netherlands?”

The girls’ faces dropped slightly at the thought. Thankfully, their fake-leader was there to pick up where they left off. “Oh would you look at the time!” he said, looking at his wrist. When he realized there was no watch, rather just a wrist brace, he quickly put his arm down and started walking towards the entrance. Others quickly followed suit, agreeing and adding comments about how absolutely starving they were, even though it was the last thing on their minds merely five minutes ago.

When the others were all almost inside, Ae Jin was stopped in her tracks. “You’re lucky we have more pressing matters to discuss now,” Bae said in a hushed tone, looking over at Dohyeong who was last to enter the house. “So fix us something to eat quickly. And make it healthy, we have to start thinking about our debut.”

“Yes, oppa,” Ae Jin squeaked, before she ran to join the others inside.

***

By the time Dohyeong returned from upstairs, there were already yummy smells coming from the kitchen. He walked through the dining room, where the others were bickering about who gets to sit where. Deciding it didn’t really matter to him, as long as he got yummy food, he made his way to the kitchen. Ae Jin was there, wearing that same bunny apron, trying to coordinate her cooking, which seemed to be a pretty difficult task. There were three pans on the stove, and some dishes were already off to the side, when he noticed the rice cooker was empty.

“Do you need help?” he offered, walking closer to see the food. To his surprise, there was no meat either. He felt his spirits drop at the thought – has the ‘real thing’ already begun? “Are we going to have meat later?”

“I do need help, thank you for noticing, and no. No meat. Not now, not later,” she mumbled hurriedly, turning around with a hot pan in her hands, almost burning the poor rapper. “Okay, well, maybe later, but I should really hurry now. Can you, I don’t know, cook the rice? Set the plates?”

“I will cook the rice!” he said happily, his face lighting up. He felt that was his specialty, and that probably also meant the food was going to be done sooner. As he weighed the rice for all the members – and just a tiny bit more – he noticed their leader walk in. He seemed to be in a better mood.

“I’ll set the table,” he said, avoiding Ae Jin by a wide margin. He slowly gathered all the plates, bowls and utensils before calmly making his way to the dining area. Dohyeong had just thought how nice that was, when a loud clang pierced his ear drums. Not-so-nicely, Bae had almost thrown all those things onto the table, stopping all the noise.

“Good, now set the table,” he ordered, before disappearing to his room. The silence, however, was pretty short-lived.

“How dare he just come here, order us around and disappear?!” Jae Hwa exploded, following Bae to his room. He knocked, but was met with no answer. Another knock, still nothing. His knocking now turned into banging, still with the same results.

“Hey, hyung, I don’t think that’s going to work,” Wei Min said, peeking out from behind the wall. “Help us set the table, and we’ll talk to him when he comes back, okay?”

Jae Hwa complied grumpily, and with his help the table was set in a minute. It also seemed like they had agreed over the seating, as they were all now chatting happily while waiting for the food to arrive. Their chat was interrupted, yet again, by their leader, who dropped newspapers onto the table.

“Are you going to just leave again?” Jae Hwa grumbled, but to his surprise Bae just sat down.

Rae Kyung got hold of the newspapers first, and this time it was a pleasant surprise. “Somsatang! New group by S.M. ent.! Pages 2 and 3,” she read the front page out loud, before turning the first page over. “New group concept...debut date...teasers will be posted on the webpage...” she mumbled as her eyes scanned over the pages. The others leaned over the table to get a better view of the spread. There were no actual pictures of them, only their silhouettes. The rest of the article was bright, with a sense of urgency to it – the marketing team did a good job.

Their admiring of the newspapers had to end as Ae Jin and Dohyeong made their way over, each carrying two big platters of food.

“Now, we have some business to discuss.”

Next chapter comes in another 6 years on our return anniversary :D

I hope y'all are still alive and kicking :D see you in 2024 or something

Like, share and subscribe :3

*Upvote, it's 2k18 you old fart XD

....