“So, why do you guys call Burning, Burning?” asked Eric as he bit into a smore they had made. 

“Oh yeah, Minhyuk, why do you call him that?” asked Yonghwa.

 “Well, I’ve only known him since he started working there, which was when I began going there, which was a couple of years or so ago. Anyways, you know how he’s so white…  well whenever he trained I would always see him get so red that it’ll look like his whole body got caught on fire or something. That’s why I call him Burning.” replied Minhyuk.

  Jungshin also added to the talk saying, “Well, I once saw him training too during his lunch break and he got so intense that I said, whoa, you’re burning with passion aren’t you? And since I heard Minhyuk calling him that, I thought I should also call him that.”

  “How about you Yonghwa, you’ve known him the longest so why do you call him that?” asked Eric.

 “Well, I’ve called him that for years before anyone else did. It was a long time, back during elementary, while we were still kids you know? We have to go back in time to tell this story… story…… Flashback… back… back…… It was a bright day outside we had just started another year at our elementary school so we were all the more excited when we found out we had neighboring classes. We started the day off with math, then history, and then we had lunch. I had taken some cheesy potato chips, my mom had bought the day before and so we started eating it. Thinking back, I think it was the spicy kind. I remembered it because it was a new, more, spicier flavor. And so we were eating it and as expected it left our hands red, like chips like that do.

  Burning then went to me saying, ”Look, Yonghwa, my hands are on fire. It’s burning! Heh  heh.”

  “That it?” questioned Minhyuk, Eric, and Jungshin with a disappointing look.

  “No, you guys interrupted, now let me go back to the story….. story……. story……… Flashback……… And so after lunch break we had arts and crafts. That was one of our favorite classes, so we were super excited. The teacher said that for our ‘Beginning of the Year’ presentation we would have for the parents in a couple of days we would be building buildings, or any sort of structure for that matter, with matchsticks and popsicle sticks…. You can kinda guess what’s gonna happen next right? Burning and I had decided to work together. We were going to build an imperial palace, like the ones from the Joseon period, when all of a sudden Burning turned to me and said, “Look, Yonghwa I’m the Flaming Torch.” Yeah, at that time we had been introduced to the “Fantastic Five” and he quickly became a fan of the Flaming Torch. He lit the match by rubbing the tip quickly against a limestone he had, for which I still do not know why he would even carry something as random as that around . Anyways after the match had lit, he yelled “Flame On”, but the match had gotten smaller because of the fire and it had begun burning his fingers so he dropped it but his sweater somehow caught on fire.

  I told him ‘Remember, Stop, Drop and Roll. Stop, Drop, and Roll!!!’ He quickly did so, but as he was rolling he was yelling out, ‘I’m BURNING! I’m BURNIIIIIIIIIIING, Yonghwa!’

  It was just a small ember that had landed on his sweater, so the fire was quickly put out; no injuries or any harm to anyone thankfully. The teacher, however, had gotten furious. He told our moms on us and we got in big trouble. The day after that he started saying, ‘Well, hello Mr. Burning. I hope you don’t ever do that again.’ He also separated us and made us do our project with popsicle sticks, which made the project easier by the way, and… who, I mean, WHO would trust children with matches?” said Yonghwa.

  At that moment Minhyuk, Jungshin, and Eric burst out laughing, with Eric afterwards saying, “That’s so embarrassing, you guys are so embarrassing!”

  However,  Burning pointed at the laughing trio and said, “Come here.” He then took them to an isolated place-behind the port-a-potties leaving Yonghwa alone smiling. When they came back, the trio had stopped laughing and had a somber look on their faces.

  The night didn’t stop there though. They had all gathered around the bonfire they had started again, and Jungshin asked Yonghwa, “Wait, I don’t get it. Aren’t you a year older than Burning. I saw your work application, so I know. How were you in the same class as him?”

 “I never said I was in the same class, but the neighboring class. All of the classes of all grades in the school were doing the same project, so I asked my teacher if it was okay and he agreed… but after that incident , I wasn’t allowed to do so anymore.” responded Yonghwa. Yonghwa followed saying, “So what happened to you guys? Why You No Laughing?”

  Minhyuk, Jungshin, and Eric responded, “I don’t wanna talk about it.” as their heads sunk into their shoulders. Wanting to change the atmosphere, Eric asked, “If Burning’s not his real name, then what is it?”

  The 4 in unison quickly responded, “It’s Jo….” But they were interrupted by a familiar voice.

  “Well if it isn’t the girly boys from last time.”

  At that time our boys lifted their eyes to see a group of 6 men. “Really, you guys Again?” Exclaimed all but Eric, to the group standing against them.

 “It’s not ‘You Guys,’ it’s Ukis-I mean SSikU.” Responded the leader of the group.

 “What happened to Xander and your vice leader?” asked Yonghwa.

 “Uhh, those 2 left, something about going solo, or getting a job. I don’t know. I’m Nivek, and Ile here is the vice president. I’m the leader, the president of our gang… You know what? It’s more of an association, like a boy group ‘cuz we can all sing and we perform every now and then… Why am I telling you this? Anyways, you guys know why they call us “SSikU” right, ‘cuz we sic people: You guys escaped last time on…. When was it Ile? Friday, yeah Friday, but you guys aren’t escaping today…. Hold on is that Eric? Hi Eric.” Said Nivek and he then waved to Eric.

  At this, our heroes stood up, and Eric hid behind Jungshin.

“Listen, what do you guys want?” asked Yonghwa in a firm voice.

 “Nothing too much really, it’s just that… Well, we just really wanna’ get u guys back.” Replied Ile with a smile on his face.

 “So you guys wanna fight, that’s gotta be one of the most idiotic ideas. You guys all know that we know how to fight, right? Besides, what would spilling the blood of man do? No one has the right to take another’s life.” exclaimed, Yonghwa.

 “Whaaaaaat? Who said anything about killing? We’re just, you know, wanna’ hurt you guys a little.” Replied Nivek with a giant grin in his face.

  As he finished saying that, Eric pulling on Jungshin’s sleeve, whispered, “These are they whom I told you about.”

  “I figured.” Responded, Jungshin.

 “Ok, no need to be rowdy now. Take us if you must, but let Eric go. He’s the only one not involved. Got7… I mean erhm got it?” said Yonghwa.

 “For once he’s in his own mind and he’s right!” Exclaimed Jungshin, Minhyuk, and Burning. They therefore, stood together in front of Eric, as if forming a barricade in front of him. Yonghwa stood in the center, with Jungshin on his right, Burning on his left, and Minhyuk standing besides Burning.

 “He’s our friend! You must now let him go!” proclaimed Yonghwa.

 “Wait, what? He’s the one we’ve known the longest. Right, buddy? Eric? If anything, he is our friend” asked Nivek in a gentle voice. At this Eric grasped Yonghwa’s shoulder whispering into his ear, softly, “It’s okay, you guys are the greatest friends I’ve ever had, even though we just met a couple of days ago; but nonetheless, I’ve learned much about friendship from you guys.” Eric stood in front of his friends and shouted, “I’ve had enough of you! I don’t care how funny it is to you, but it’s not funny to me. You guys are no friends! Let’s settle this!”

 “Now, Eric, really? I’m sorry you felt that way. Don’t worry though, you’re our friend, we won’t hurt you: only them.” replied Nivek with a slight chuckle.

 “Shut up! What kind of name is Nivek anyways, it doesn’t even sound Korean!” Shouted Eric.

  “Oh, and Eric does? Real funny.” replied Nivek. “ Boys that’s enough, I think we’ve waited long enough.” said Nivek to his gang.

  It was at that instance that Yonghwa saw one of Nivek’s lackies pull out something that reflected the moonlight. He immediately yelled, “Run! It’s a knife! They’re gonna sic us!” and so our five heroes bolted out of there. They all split up: Burning, Minhyuk, and Eric ran together, and Jungshin ran alongside Yonghwa .

 SSikU, however, went after them and Nivek was shouting, “Party Poopers!” as he ran. They gave up the chase pretty quickly, our heroes did not know this, so they kept running. Panting, Yonghwa told Jungshin, ”I, I, I think they stopped following us a long time ago.”

 “Really? Why are you tired already?” asked Jungshin in an aloof manner.

 Yonghwa stopped running lifted up his tanktop and squeezed some of his flabbies.  Jungshin looking at Yonghwa’s ordeal responded, “It’s not that bad it happens… Anyways, should we call the guys? It looks like the sun is about to rise any minute now…. Wait how how far did we run?”  This led Jungshin to call Burning, “Hey you! It’s okay to stop running already. They stopped following us a long time ago.”

 “I know, the three of us went home already. We used your buggy.” was Burning’s response.

 “How, I have the keys….?” Aasked Jungshin in a puzzled voice.

  “Copies.” Responded Burning.

  “Wait didn’t you find it odd how my buggy was still there? You didn’t think something bad happened to us or something???!!” questioned Jungshin,

 “No… you should also watch your tone when speaking to your elders.” responded Burning.

 “Could you pick us up, please?” interjected Yonghwa as he pulled the phone from Jungshin.

 “Uggghhh, fine! Tell Jungshin I deserve a raise though.” replied Burning.

Yonghwa told Jungshin“He says he wants a raise.”  

  “We’ll have to see about that.” responded Jungshin.

  “I could hear that!” exclaimed Burning on the phone.

  “Dude my ear!” Shouted Yonghwa.”

  “FINE, just come already!” replied Jungshin as he retrieved his phone.  After that, Jungshin gave Burning directions of how to get to where the two were.

  “Alright, got it, Imma’ call Minhyuk and tell him to pick you two up then.” said Burning after which he hung up.

 “Oh right, he used his motorcycle to come here… I guess Minhyuk was the one who used my buggy. What was the use of calling Burning, then? I got to talk to him when he comes to work  Monday morning.” told Jungshin to Yonghwa.

 They waited, and while they waited, Yonghwa asked Jungshin, “Wait, did Burning say that he was older than you?”

 “Yeah, that’s why he’s stronger than me, because he had more years of training than I did.” replied Jungshin.

 “So, how did you get the gym if you’re so young?” asked Yonghwa.

 “Eh, it’s a long story. Wanna see something cool? Look!” responded Jungshin.  As he said “Look” Jungshin did a split and said to Yonghwa, ”I could do it too!” Yonghwa thought this as a challenge and also did one.

 “Oh, Yeah? I could do this faster!” Said Jungshin, and that followed a quick split.

 “Is that right, let’s see how many times we could do it until Minhyuk comes!” exclaimed, Yonghwa.

  An hour or so later the sun had begun to rise high above the horizon, and Minhyuk arrived and saw the two straining, whimpering, and grunting, as they made their way to the buggy.

  “I don’t even want to ask.” said, Minhyuk.

                                                               End of Chapter 8 Night 5, Early Morning 6