By artistic liberty I’ll be doing some conversions of nouns to verbs. Unedited.

In a last ditch attempt to savour her holidays before the semester begins tomorrow, Nana promptly conceals all of her textbooks and notes with an old sheet. Giving the sheet a playful glare, she turns to leave before an idea strikes her. A light smirk tugging at her lips, she rushes for the linen drawer. “Sorry Mum,” she mutters before yanking a few large bed sheets out from the cupboard. Pausing to listen out and confirm that the house is indeed empty, she carries the linens back to her bedroom.

Dumping them on her bed, she straightens her posture and spreads out her arms in front of her with her palms facing the carpeted floor. “Verta,” she incants, magic rolling in waves from her belly, through her arms and out to the sheets in response to her call. Nana continues to incant as she moves the sheets up and out, draping them from wall to wall and forming a tent of sorts. Satisfied when the mixture of white and cream sheets are arranged in a loose web above her head, she focuses intently and gives another incantation to freeze the sheets in their position.

Her hands on her hips, Nana critically surveys her work. “Good enough,” she decides. Closing the door and leaving the curtains open to fill her room with natural light, she settles herself on her bed in front of her laptop.

Her anime-watching time doesn’t even last an hour before Lizzy’s pestering her to video chat on Skype. “I’m busy,” Nana says flatly the moment her screen is filled with one of her best friend’s faces instead of the Yu-Gi-Oh! rerun she’d much prefer.

“Please,” Lizzy snorts, an elegant eyebrow rising with her doubt. “You were watching a drama again, weren’t you.”

“For your information I have moved on from that particular phase in my life,” Nana says dramatically, whipping her brown hair back for effect. “I have gone from the arms of Lee Jong Suk and straight into the arms of friendship.”

Lizzy stares at her flatly, her face slowly screwing up with confusion. “Excuse me?”

“Yu-Gi-Oh.” Nana grins at the immediate eye roll she receives. “Felt like nostalgia.”

“You’re such a child,” Lizzy sighs, slouching forward onto her desk. Nana glances at the sparkle of her gold bracelet for a moment before Lizzy leans forward. “Is that a blanket fort?”

“Why yes it is indeed,” Nana sniffs, swaying her legs in the air as she shifts on her belly. “I felt like being fancy.”

Lizzy pauses for a second and then her eyes glint conspiringly. “Shove over, I’ll be there in ten.”

Nana frowns in confusion. “Weren’t you going to a party? You’re already dressed for it.”

Snorting a laugh, Lizzy shrugs and begins untying her blond hair from its neat braids. “Parties are every weekend, you have a blanket fort that’s missing some pillows. Parents out?”

“Yeah, but –”

“Great! I hope your kitchen’s ready because Hurricane Lizzy is about to strike.”

Giving up, Nana laughs and slumps forward onto the duvet. “And does the forecast predict raining Raina and hailing Hyukjae?”

Lizzy cackles and claps her hands before reaching for her phone. “It does now. And keep your brain to yourself!”

Nana smirks and sticks her tongue out at her screen. “You’re just sore I thought of alliterations, lightning Lizzy.”

Lizzy humps and leans back in her chair while she rapidly types on her phone. “Not my fault you’re better at it, nimbostratus Nana.”

“Are you looking terms up?” Nana asks flatly, grinning at the way Lizzy’s gaze instantly shifts to the left.

“No.”

“Liar.”

Lizzy snorts again and leans forward to leer at the camera. “Well see who the smug one is when your kitchen is sullied by us.”

Nana’s eyes narrow. “You’re cleaning up.”

Lizzy’s smirk grows in challenge. “Whoever loses at jenga cleans.”

“But Raina at that game – oh.” Shaking her head, Nana sighs. “You’re evil.”

“You love me,” Lizzy winks. “Be ready because they’re coming too!” She ends the call before Nana can respond.

Reluctantly shutting her laptop, Nana shifts herself up. Not bothering to change out of her track pants and old T-shirt, she makes her way to the kitchen to ensure it’s stocked enough to feed four twenty one year olds with the appetite of a teenage boy.

Twenty minutes and a slightly cleaner house later, Nana opens the door only to be tackled by Raina and Lizzy combined. “Hey, get off me!” Nana complains, attempting to shove them off while the girls giggle and push her back into the house. Hyukjae follows behind them, an amused smile on his lips as he shuts the door behind them.

“So are we eating first or what?” Raina asks, fixing her simple dress from where Lizzy had accidentally tugged it up.

“I thought we could watch a movie,” Nana begins but flinches when Lizzy slaps a hand over .

“Pillow fort!” Lizzy screams before dashing off to Nana’s bedroom, wiping her hand on her jeans as she goes.

“It’s a sheet fort!” Nana screams back, laughing as both Hyukjae and Raina cover their ears in protest.

“You’re in the same house,” Hyukjae groans, rubbing his ears and shooting a glare at Nana. “Move to talk to each other.”

“Pretty sure we’re gonna lose all high frequency hearing by the end of the night,” Raina sighs as they head to join Lizzy.

“You’ll live,” Nana dismisses as she opens the door. “Oh my gosh Lizzy, what did you do.” She feels Hyukjae and Raina peer in behind her to see the curtains melting into the sheets she’d fixed earlier, the thick purple threads fraying at the ends to weave into the pale sheets. Lizzy had evidently brought pillows in her over-stuffed bag because numerous pillows were supersized and stacked about the room to form walls.

“Well it’s a good thing you made this place look like the inside of an insane asylum,” Hyukjae drawls while Raina’s eyes glitter at the sight of the plush room. “Because you’ve clearly lost your mind.”

“Oh grow up,” Lizzy grins, “or down, whatever. I believe Nana has some Yu-Gi-Oh on her laptop.”

“I thought you didn’t want to watch that,” Nana frowns, crawling onto her supersized bed and wondering when Lizzy had gotten so adept at the expansion spell.

“I don’t want to watch it,” Hyukjae says but crawls onto the bed anyway.

Raina giggles as she watches the three shove at each other while they struggle to agree on what to watch. Hopping onto the bed, she scoots to the end to grab a remote. “Nana’s got a projector in here. I’m pretty sure we could watch anything and enjoy it.”

“Except Yu-Gi-Oh apparently,” Lizzy sulks, crossing her arms and glaring petulantly at Hyukjae.

“Childhood best friend, I get dibs on movies,” Hyukjae announces with a smug smirk.

At that, Nana’s eyes brighten with mischief. “I’ve got videos of when you were a baby and ran out into the rain and turned the neighbour’s cat–”

“–Yu-Gi-Oh it is!” Hyukjae says loudly, elbowing Nana when she starts laughing at him. “And then we’ll watch something cooler after.”

“Says the one who cried when Atem left Yuugi,” Nana snorts.

“Shut up,” Hyukjae grumbles even as his ears tint pink.

As boisterous, messy and intrusive into her quiet evening as her friends are, Nana can’t think of a better way to end the holidays.

In hindsight having them over wasn’t the best idea since ‘over for dinner’ translates to ‘stay up messing around until 4am, realise they have to pack and leave in four hours and then kiss sleep goodbye in favour of packing as quickly as they can’. Nana finishes packing her clothes, textbooks, preparatory work and equipment into two suitcases within two hours. Instead of sleep, she’s bombarded with calls from panicked friends and doesn’t get the opportunity to rest until her father is driving her to the only witching university in South Korea.

 If her father were a more mature man, he would have let her sleep until they arrived.

Jihoon is not a mature man.

“I can’t believe you can sleep right now, I mean we’re going back to Ganghan Maeum! I haven’t been there in years,” Jihoon grins excitedly, speaking louder than necessary just to see Nana’s forehead become centred with a frown.

“Dad,” Nana moans in irritation, turning her head to face the passenger window. Reluctantly opening her eyes, she watches lush greenery blur past her as they continue their journey into rural Gangwon. “I’m tired.”

Jihoon chuckles in amusement. “I’m not surprised. When we got home you and your fellow munchkins were still making noise! Mum was pleased to see you’d cleaned up by the time we got up, at least.”

“Thank Hyukjae,” Nana murmurs, “he’s a neat freak. Don’t thank Lizzy, she’s insane.”

“Just as well they have you and Raina to keep them in check,” Jihoon says as he slows down and steers to avoid the flock of birds taking up half of the dirt road. Nana hums in agreement and closes her eyes again. Just when she’d started falling asleep again, Jihoon decides to bug her again. “Did you know that Ganghan was built by Korean and foreign witches? I mean, it’s weird but it’s cool! I suppose the teamwork is necessary since there aren’t many of us. How big’s the school now?”

Nana grumbles and repositions her face against the seatbelt. “A thousand of us.”

“A thousand!” Jihoon exclaims, tapping his fingers along the steering wheel. “In my day there were only two hundred. How the times have changed,” he sighs. “You know, I met your mother there.”

“I know Dad,” Nana murmurs, only half listening. “You’ve told me.”

“Meeting my soul mate in the middle of nowhere,” Jihoon sighs, “so romantic.”

“You’re so mushy,” Nana snorts, “and it’s not that in the middle of nowhere. It’s between Chuncheon and Yangyang.”

“Like I said,” Jihoon says, “middle of nowhere. They built it in the right place, I mean hundreds of years later it’s still rural.”

“What’s the point though?” Giving up on sleep, Nana shifts again and opens her eyes. “They’ve got so many concealment spells. Why didn’t they put it in the city? Or at least close to it?”

“I know I’m old but I wasn’t there,” Jihoon jests, reaching out to shove gently at Nana’s shoulder when she rolls her eyes. “Safety precaution as a just in case thing, I guess. Can’t have regulars finding out about us.”

“That would be dreadful,” Nana says solemnly. She meets Jihoon’s cautious glance with a smirk. “You’d have to throw a circus on them.”

Jihoon snorts and exaggeratedly rolls his eyes. “The point is to avoid a fight, Nana. Just fit in and we’ll be okay.”

“Sounds familiar,” Nana murmurs, gazing out the window to watch the rolling hills in the distance slowly take up more of the sky.

“Band of misfits, the lot of you,” Jihoon says fondly. “When Minhyuk and Yukwon got together they didn’t hide it from anyone in school.”

“That’s because they’re not subtle at all,” Nana says jokingly. “Have you seen how tight uncle Yukwon’s pants have gotten?”

“Hey, that doesn’t mean anything!” Jihoon pouts, “he’s just convinced they look good on him.”

“Well they do,” she concedes. “Seriously though, were they really open even back then?”

Jihoon hums in thought. “Well in general witches live in secrecy to the point where we want to avoid even more secrecy.” Grunting as he arranges his thoughts, he continues, “That said, there’s still a lot of homophobia. And biphobia,” he adds in response to Nana’s glance. “When I said they didn’t hide it I mean they didn’t go to great lengths to be subtle. Around friends they were open and draped over each other pretty much all the time,” he screws his face up at the memory.

“You’d think you’d be used to it by now, Dad,” Nana says, raising an eyebrow at him.

“Cooties,” Jihoon hisses. “They’re gross. Almost as gross as Jaehyo is with Gain.”

“I’ll presume by gross you mean endearing,” Nana says coolly, holding back a grin at the offended expression her father takes on.

“Endearing my arse,” Jihoon mutters before clearing his throat. “But, yes, as I was saying. When they told us they were dating we took it in stride. They’re our brothers, we love them no matter how they love each other. If anything Taeil was a little unsure of how to act, but as the eldest he wanted to take care of us. He was awkward for a little while but he got over it pretty quickly, actually.”

“He’s definitely fine with it now,” Nana recalls with a grin. “Whenever there’s a party he’s always going out of his way to hug them.”

“He goes out of his way to hug anybody,” Jihoon snorts fondly. “At uni… they held hands but otherwise didn’t do much else – other than googly eyes. Made you want to lose your lunch.”

“I bet you found it cute,” Nana says slyly, “and you’re just trying to sound cool.”

“Did not!” Jihoon protests, “and I am cool!” He sulks for a moment while Nana laughs at him. Collecting his thoughts, Jihoon resumes the topic. “Other people usually just ignored it. Some would smile at them, some would look uncomfortable and some looked almost angry. Those who didn’t approve, for the most part, kept to themselves because we were the back then.”

“Sure you were,” Nana drawls. “Next you’ll try to be telling me you were a gang again.”

“We were!” Jihoon says defensively. “We were strong individually and together, we were a team. Other witches didn’t want to target them because target one, target all of us.”

Nana hums and runs Jihoon’s words through her mind. “Even with that…” she murmurs. Jihoon hums questioningly but waits for her to continue. “Did they feel… comfortable? Safe?”

Jihoon is silent for a long minute while Nana fidgets with her hands. She blinks when one of Jihoon’s hands land on top of hers, squeezing them reassuringly. “Yukwon once told me he felt luckier than he knew the regulars to be,” he says quietly. “Not the best, but far from the worst.”

Swallowing against the heavy atmosphere, Nana sighs and leans against the seatbelt. She feels Jihoon pat her hands and move away while she closes her eyes, judging the time remaining to be sufficient to get some more sleep.

Jihoon listens to his CD player, knowing the radio signal will become distorted the closer they get to the school. He waits until Nana looks comfortable before saying casually, “By the way, Zico and Kyung finally got together.”

“That’s nice,” Nana murmurs sleepily. A few seconds pass before she jolts up in her seat to face her cackling father. “Wait, what? Since when?! When did this – how long have you kept this to yourself?!”

Howling with laughter, Jihoon slaps the steering wheel in excitement. “I was waiting for the right moment! They told me a couple of weeks ago.”

“A couple of weeks – I’m turning your hair purple,” Nana glowers.

“Hey, no need for that–” Jihoon protests but splutters as Nana incants a spell he’d known well in his younger years. Slowing down the car as the magic dances over his scalp, he glances up at the rear view mirror to inspect the damage. “Well, twenty years lat