checking in, I suppose
I am having a life guys, and it's really quite exciting, you see. (Actually it's mainly just stressful and busy but I am not complaining!)
Here are random things I wrote in the past...urhm, I don't know, and, OH GOD, ISAMI WE NEED TO TALK. ALSO YOU WILL PROBABLY NEVER SEE THIS, SO MY SCREAMING IS POINTLESS, HM.
(random a/n: in the last thing, I feel like Eeteuk would be that teacher who wants to be your friend so he lets you call him hyung like the age difference isn't that extreme. so...yeah.)
-
“I’m sick,” Andy whimpers, “Don’t any of you care? Enough to, at least, I don’t know, not go out for drinking?”
That said, he’s pretty much set on killing Hyesung, Dongwan, and Minwoo when they come back and when he can find the strength within him to get out of bed for more than two seconds. His vengeful thoughts are abruptly ended when he has a coughing fit that concludes with a sad, pathetic, little, “…ow.”
Eric nods sympathetically without looking up from the magazine he’s reading and nonchalantly turns a page. Junjin, on the other hand, throws a pillow at Andy’s already aching and congested head and screams at the top of his lungs, “TOUGH LUCK MAGNAE.” He obviously is bitter over being forced to stay home from group bonding drinking in order to make sure that their inattentive leader doesn’t unintentionally give Andy too much medicine in one dose and very nearly kill him (again; no seriously, Andy probably would have had a seizure and died if Hyesung hadn‘t noticed Eric absentmindedly pouring out a handful of various pills in the living room and coming back from his trek to the bedroom with absolutely none whatsoever).
Andy cringes and whines pitifully.
***
Ryu goes out to check his mailbox and lo and behold, there is a boy with wings curled up in his front lawn.
“What?” Lio asks, disbelieving, when Ryu runs back in to tell him, “What, are you are drugs?”
“No.” Ryu insists, a little irritably.
***
Eeteuk would like to lay down on the pavement and die now. Really. With the screeching of children with their parents (I WANT ICE CREAM NOW, one girl with pigtails close by screams and Eeteuk feels like crying because it reminds him of Heechul, traitorous-horrible-influence-on-young-minds-Heechul, who abandoned him at the start of this field trip, what, couldn‘t he have had the courtesy to wait more than five minutes?) and chatter of the monkeys in the background, he feels that it would be a peaceful conclusion to his all too difficult life.
Kill me now please?, Eeteuk pleads to higher powers unknown as he spots Donghae hanging over the enclosure wall and, while he’s sure it could be worse, (i.e. lions. Or tigers. Or Heechul flirting with Han Geng. Oh my.) Eeteuk isn’t willing to wait and see if monkeys enjoy mauling small children.
As he plucks all fifty three pounds of furiously wriggling seven year old flesh off the wall, he spots Kibum picking up Donghae’s shoes a few feet away - wait, why doesn’t Donghae have shoes on?
“I love the zoo!” Donghae chirps happily.
“Great.” Eeteuk says, a bit morosely, but at least someone is having fun, “Yeah, so, Hae, why aren’t your shoes on? Remember, we talked about this? There are things on the ground and - remember? We had this talk.” Donghae looks up at him with a blank stare, like none of this is registering, so Eeteuk ends up just feeling a little desperate for help, because Mr. and Mrs. Lee were very explicit about this, and after the rusty nail on the playground incident - that ended in a tetanus shot and a violently bawling Donghae - Eeteuk doesn’t want to get any more onto their bad side, and how does Donghae not remember this? “Donghae, shoes.” And then, “Kibum, you’re in charge of Donghae keeping his shoes on.”
Donghae shrugs dramatically, Kibum plods up past Eeteuk and bends down to start slipping the shoes on Donghae‘s socked feet, and Eeteuk has to remind himself that little kids don’t ever make sense, normally.
“I personally wanted to see the elephants, but Donghae’s pushy and mostly won‘t ever shut up, so.” Kibum explains to Eeteuk very professionally as he finishes up the Velcro, and then he folds his little hands under his chin and hums wisely, inspecting his work. And, not for the first time, Eeteuk finds himself envying the much too apparent maturity of a six and a half year old and that in and of itself makes him feel small and insignificant and like his degree in child psychology means nothing.
“I hate my life.” Eeteuk nearly wails, but he catches himself in time and sniffs his tears away for later because he doesn’t need any of his wards to go home and tell their parents he was crying again. Siwon’s parents have already threatened to pull him from the daycare if he comes home with wet spots all over his shirt from being nice and patting Eeteuk‘s cheek while Eeteuk weeps into his little shoulder again. (His. Life. Is. Hard.)
Eeteuk then hears from somewhere behind him, “Yo, Teukie!” and he turns around in time to see salvation.
Okay, well, to be honest Kangin isn’t exactly salvation per se, he cusses a lot and smokes, but only during his breaks, and he is Eeteuk’s reliable teacher assistant and also is less prone to crying and being completely inappropriate than both Eeteuk and Heechul respectively, and therefore is a pretty good thing. Also, he speaks Korean very well and isn’t constantly being sexually assaulted by Heechul, unlike Geng, so that’s another plus.
“Sorry I lost you, it - it got hectic after Heechul starting being a total biiii - ” he catches sight of Donghae and Kibum, knows Donghae is notorious for repeating curse words, “…Floozy.” He finishes lamely. “Anyway, are these the only two you’ve got? I think the other, what, five million, are dispersed everywhere. Fuuu - goshdarnit.”
Eeteuk nods listlessly and groans. “Okay, let’s get started then. Call Heechul on his cell phone, it’s always on, see if he’s at least still in the zoo at least.”
Kangin grumbles under his breath as he whips out his phone and Eeteuk ushers the two little boys along with the promise of sweets at the end of the trip.
“The little shhh - GRAAAH, HE’S NOT ANSWERING HIS PHONE.”
Eeteuk distinctly feels that urge to cry coming back.
-
They find Zhou Mi first, which sucks, because technically Zhou Mi isn’t even one of Eeteuk’s kids, he kind of just started coming after ‘Bring Your Pet To School’ Day when Kyuhyun had brought him in as his pet (“This is Zhou Mi,” Kyuhyun had said, “He‘s practically my pet, he‘s always following me around and bugging me, so whatever, isn‘t it the same thing?” and Zhou Mi had positively giggled and snuggled into Kyuhyun’s arm before Kyuhyun had rolled his eyes and walked off, with Zhou Mi tagging after him, and Eeteuk had worried that this nonchalance towards other human beings and their emotions had spawned from Heechul abusing everyone all the time and being evil and he had hyperventilated all through snack time, because Kyuhyun was only six and he was already just like Heechul, oh god, with Kangin insisting, “No Teuk, it‘s Kyuhyun‘s personality, he‘s just like that already, we can‘t do anything about him, oh fu - oh godda - oh geez, anyone have a paper bag?”) so Eeteuk is mostly sure that Zhou Mi’s parents don’t care what their son does, since they’ve never even shown up at the daycare to check out where he spends most of his weekdays.
“Where is Kyuhyun?” Eeteuk asks warily, because Zhou Mi loves Kyuhyun and never goes too far without him if he can help it - much to the displeasure of Kyuhyun - as Zhou Mi presses his face against the glass of the reptile display with a blue lollipop half hanging out his mouth. “…And where did you get that lollipop?”
Zhou Mi says something that is muffled with the combination of the glass and the sucker, so Kangin roughly yanks him off the glass and snatches the lollipop out of his mouth. These, Eeteuk thinks wearily, are the reasons why Kangin is never allowed to handle Ryeowook or Henry or Eunhyuk.
Zhou Mi however, who is immune to negative energy, grins and points at the candy currently being held hostage. “That’s Kyuhyun’s, I’m keeping it safe for him while he goes to the bathroom.”
Oh great, that means Kyuhyun’s ditched Zhou Mi, and Eeteuk would feel a lot better if he knew that the children were at least staying in pairs, at this rate his pairing them off and telling them that there was safety in numbers ‘so remember the buddy system!’ was all in vain.
“I hate kids.” Kangin grunts out, then repeats it a few more times as a mantra, “I hate kids, I hate kids, I hate YOUR kids, and I really hate Heechul.”
-
“YOU ARE ELEVEN,” Kangin shouts, “I RAISED YOU TO HAVE MORE COMMON SENSE THAN THIS.”
Shindong is rather unperturbed by Kangin’s towering rage, as are Kyuhyun and Sungmin, so. Yeah.
“First of all,” Shindong responds in that know-it-all-pre-preteen way that Eeteuk isn’t used to dealing with, “You didn’t raise me, my mom did. And I’m only here because it’s summer vacation and you dragged me along and you know that I have friends my own age, right? Can I at least get paid minimum wage or something for having to babysit during my school vacation?”
Behind him, Sungmin reaches out into the giraffe paddock to try and catch the giraffe’s tongue on his fingers as the animal grazes from a nearby branch and Kyuhyun watches him in awe because everyone knows that Kyuhyun absolutely loves Sungmin and Zhou Mi, completely clueless to this fact or maybe just in denial, bounds over to Kyuhyun, lollipop in hand, trilling, “Kui Xian, Kui Xian, I saved it for you!”
“I hate you.” Kangin says to Shindong, “You are eleven, you aren’t allowed to be a smartaaa - ” Donghae peers up at him curiously while clinging to Kibum, who sighs sagely and looks out into the distance like none of this applies to him, “Ugh, to be a you-know-what, until you’re at least thirteen. I’ll tell your mother on you.”
“And I’ll tell your mother on you.” Shindong counters, “Auntie likes me better, I’m not an unruly ingrate who’s still living at home after graduating from the college that she paid for.”
“HATE.” Kangin declares vehemently.
“Nononono!” Eeteuk screeches, “No, Sungmin, we don’t feed giraffes blue lollipops!”
-
Eunhyuk is crouched behind an abandoned hot dog vendor, sniffling over his skinned knee. Eeteuk only happens to notice him there after his far too soft calls of, “hyung, hyung…!” because Eunhyuk falls over and scrapes his left palm when trying to stand and run to them.
Eeteuk fusses over the scratches on Eunhyuk’s knee, hand, elbow, and cheek, asking, “What have you been doing to get all these?”
Eunhyuk mumbles half coherent explanations of, “I fell and got this one, dropped my brochure in some bushes and got scratched crawling through them for it, got this one from running into the edge of the bathroom stall door - it was stuck and got unstuck all of a sudden…”
Sungmin digs in his pocket and pulls out a Hello Kitty bandaid, brandishing it proudly before handing it to Eunhyuk. “Use it!”
Kyuhyun stares adoringly at Sungmin and Zhou Mi, observing and not to be outdone, digs in his own pocket and comes up with an old piece of gum that seems to have been leftover in the pocket of his overalls when they were washed. He also hands it to Eunhyuk before beaming at Kyuhyun.
Kangin is obviously feeling useless, he’s not good at the mothering injuries part of the job, so gruffly bumps his cousin with his shoulder to assert his manliness and orders, “Go get us and the kids some lemonade. It’s hot today.”
Shindong mostly ignores him, though that has a lot to do with how he’s listening to his mp3 now and ignoring the world as a whole.
-
They do eventually get lemonade as a group and keep searching, but have to put it on hold when Eunhyuk spills half his cup all over himself and throws a temper tantrum when Sungmin tells him that he‘s a huge klutz.
After that incident, they check the petting zoo with Ryeowook in mind, because he’s quiet and easily scared and petting zoos seem like his type of thing, and find him carefully holding a guinea pig.
“Ryeowook!” Eeteuk says, completely startled to see Ryeowook alone and by himself, “Oh my god, where’s your partner, Yehsung is useless on his own!”
Ryeowook jumps probably four feet in the air, an impressive feat for someone of his small stature, since they have sort of just walked up behind him and abruptly started talking, and he accidentally throws his guinea pig halfway across the pen. The animal shrieks bloody murder as it bounces once and skids, and then is silent as it rolls to a stop, head lolling awkwardly to one side. Ryeowook gasps, flushes, and bursts into tears.
“Oops.” Shindong comments unnecessarily and, as Kangin threatens him with choking and death by asphyxiation if he does not ‘for the love of god shut the fu - JUST SHUT UP.‘, Eeteuk takes Ryeowook, sensitive, shy Ryeowook, into his arms and lies to him about death.
“He’s just sleeping.” Eeteuk insists tenderly.
“No, I’m a murderer.” Ryeowook wails quietly. “And Siwon said his dad says murderers go to hell. So this is pretty much just a very bad day.”
“For everybody involved, pretty much, yes.” Kyuhyun agrees cynically, and Kangin turns on him too with ‘oh my god, stop acting like Heechul, you are six, I will not hesitate to kill you too.’ Kyuhyun just makes a face like he couldn’t care less.
At the word ‘kill’, Ryeowook starts up again and Eeteuk is considering that whole laying down to die on the pavement thing again.
-
Siwon is with Yehsung, and they are doing a zoo tour. Why, Eeteuk suddenly questions, didn’t they do a zoo tour? It’s pre-organized. It would have been perfect. His whole class wouldn’t have gotten spread all across the zoo. He hates his life.
Unfortunately, when Donghae flails crazily and yells, “LOOK SIWON AND YEHSUNG IN A JEEP.” No one takes him seriously because Donghae has been known to say things like that and it not mean anything. But then a little safari jeep speeds by and, sure enough, there’s Siwon and Yehsung sitting neatly in the last two seats, listening intently to the tour guide on her megaphone. Why, Eeteuk wonders lightly, do they never listen to him with that sort of intensity? (he reasons that it must be because Yehsung is always too busy trying to make Ryeowook do things he‘s too shy to do and Siwon is always too busy telling someone the right way to do something or what his parents say about religion to really pay attention to him.)
“I’ll chase that jeep down.” Kangin assures Eeteuk before Eeteuk has a chance to realize that, oh wait, two of his kids just went by at probably nineteen miles per hour to who knows where in the zoo, and sufficiently work himself up into a fit. Then Kangin takes off.
“…Wait.” Eeteuk says to no one in particular, and only Sungmin looks up at him with any kind of interest (Eunhyuk has fallen over, or maybe Sungmin pushed him down, who knows, and Zhou Mi has his face pressed up in the nook of Kyuhyun‘s neck and is just, just breathing there, Kyuhyun is completely ignoring him and holding loosely onto the sleeve of Sungmin‘s shirt while telling Ryeowook that he isn‘t a murderer, if anyone‘s going to hell it‘s Eeteuk hyung, who not only scared him into chucking his guinea pig to its death but also gives these looks to Kangin hyung that, according to Heechul hyung, mean he‘s a great big faggot and that means for sure that he‘s going to hell because Siwon asked his mom what a faggot was and that was what she told him - what, Eeteuk thinks, how dare Heechul say those things about him because yeah, yeah, okay, if Eeteuk‘s a faggot for these supposed looks he’s giving Kangin, then Heechul’s a freaking rapist for - ) “Wait, Kangin just left me alone with all of you and we still have to find Henry and Geng and Heechul. I have no one now.”
He thinks that over.
“I’m going to die.” He states calmly.
“You still have me.” Shindong offers levelly, reaching over and pulling Donghae’s fingers out of Kibum’s nose.
“I don’t understand you, you’re eleven, you scare me.” Eeteuk lets him know.
“Oh thanks, oh way to make friends, oh nice.” Shindong says a bit moodily now, picking Eunhyuk up and dusting him off.
-
Park Eeteuk, your guardian is looking for you, please come to the Information Center, the building with the huge koala bear on the roof, Park Eeteuk, please come to the Information Center. Thank you.
All the children he’s managed to collect up to this point at him and hiss out a foreboding, “ohhhhh.” like he’s in trouble after the intercom shuts off with a crackle of static. And Eeteuk actually doesn’t know why he’s being called to the Information Center, but maybe Henry found his way there and told them who he was looking for, because Henry’s the smart one. You know, after Kibum of course, but then again, Kibum sometimes just can‘t be bothered with others, so doesn‘t always do the smart thing. Maybe he’s just selfish, Eeteuk realizes, but anyway, if it’s Henry, then why did they say it’s Eeteuk’s guardian?
Well, that’s because it’s actually Heechul at the Information Center, Eeteuk comes to find out, and Heechul is a jerk. However, Eeteuk is willing to overlook that because he also has Geng (no, really? He only grabbed the Chinese man and ran off with him the moment they set foot in the zoo and that‘s what started the whole crazy getting split up thing in the first place, because Donghae had run away with Kibum in tow because he had thought it was a game and Eunhyuk had wanted to follow Donghae and had tried his best to keep up before getting hopelessly left behind and then lost and Sungmin had figured that it was everyone for themselves by that point and wandered off and, basically, it had just degenerated further from there on out) and Geng has Henry, so it’s all good.
“Urghhh.” Eeteuk exhales uselessly, sinking into a plastic chair, “Heechul. Our field trip was ruined, thanks to you.”
Heechul actually looks offended. “Me? You should be thanking me for something, since I got you all in one place. And they’re calling for Kangin at this very moment. Last time I do something nice for you, then.”
Eeteuk feels the pounding behind his eyes building up into the first spike of a headache, a little belatedly after such a long day, and he has to raise his voice some to be heard normally over the noise of the children amusing themselves with each other. “How many times do we have to go over this? Geng is our foreign influence over the kids so they’re exposed to culture at a young age, SO,” he emphasizes the word because he can see Heechul working out an interruption, “So you two are co-workers and there are ethics you need to keep and follow. Plus, the kids don’t need to see you molesting someone, it’s bad for their psyche.”
Heechul draws little circles on Geng’s chest as he leans in to the man, “But he’s foreign, he doesn’t even know what I’m doing, probably.”
“It’s not even about him, really.” Eeteuk tries again, exasperatedly, at the same moment that Shindong snorts disbelievingly, Geng says, “I’m just foreign, not retarded.” and Kangin stomps into the building with Siwon and Yehsung in his arms.
“You are a fucking bitch Heechul!” Kangin shouts upon discovery of Heechul‘s presence, dumping Siwon and Yehsung unceremoniously onto the floor.
“Language!” Eeteuk shouts back.
“Fuck fuck fuck!” Heechul sings out playfully and Eeteuk curls up into a ball in his chair and decides that he’s officially done with this day.
“Fuck!” Donghae parrots happily, “Oh, and by the way, Kibum was tired when we were coming over here, so he sat down along the way and took a nap and now I don’t know where he is!”
Eeteuk whines low in his throat and gives in to crying piteously.