Chapter Text
The weather was warm and the sun was just starting to shine through the windows, illuminating the previously shadowed rooms. Chan didn’t particularly want to get out of bed but he needed to get the kids ready for school.
Seungmin, the morning person he was, was already up and about when Chan knocked on his bedroom door. Some of the other kids, however, weren’t anywhere near as prepared as Seungmin. Minho in particular wasn’t much of a morning person and was very against waking up at 6:30 in the morning for a day of classes.
It took quite a lot of convincing and arguing, but eventually, all of the kids were out of bed and getting dressed for school.
Chan went downstairs to start preparing breakfast, double-checking that Hyunjin hadn’t crawled back into his bed on the way.
Technically, he didn’t need to make the kids a cooked breakfast every morning, but it was definitely something that he liked to do. Sometimes if they were running late, the older kids would grab a muesli bar as they were rushing out the door, but generally, they all ate together in the mornings.
Seungmin was the first one downstairs, loading his plate with scrambled eggs and some pajeon that Chan had decided to make that morning. He sat at the table and ate silently as the others joined him one by one.
The last to arrive at the table was Hyunjin, the one who enjoyed mornings least out of the kids. He was already dressed, something that Chan didn’t usually see, and his hair was nicely combed. It had grown quite long over the past year or so, almost reaching his shoulders at this point, and the boy absolutely refused to let anyone cut it. The school wasn’t very happy about it, being quite strict on the whole “girls have long hair, boys have short hair” rule, but Chan had already proven to them that he was willing to argue as much as he needed to. After a while, the teachers realised this and gave up trying to get Hyunjin to cut his hair.
“Hyunjin,” Minho whined as the boy sat down opposite his brother. “We need to leave for the train in 10 minutes and you’re only just having breakfast? You’re gonna make us late when you start middle school next year.”
“10 minutes is plenty of time. When have I ever made us late?” the other boy retorted, cheeks full of food.
“Would you like a list?”
“Boys, don’t argue, just go and get ready if you’ve finished eating,” Chan cut in, not wanting to have any big arguments this early in the morning. Since the nearest middle school was quite far away, the older kids had begun taking the train to school every morning since starting there, while Chan still dropped the fifth and sixth graders to school by car. The train had definitely caused some fights and meltdowns but they seemed to be getting into a routine. Minho just rolled his eyes, putting his plate on the bench and following Jisung upstairs.
God, teenagers could be moody sometimes. Chan definitely wasn’t looking forward to having so many of them in the house soon.
Chan and the younger kids said goodbye to Minho and Changbin and enjoyed their little bit of extra time in the house before they had to leave themselves.
“Appa?” Jeongin called from the top of the stairs. “Do you know where I put my maths homework from yesterday?” Chan looked up at the boy, frowning.
“You put it in your bag, didn’t you?”
“I thought I did but now I can’t find it!” Jeongin replied, becoming a little bit panicked.
“Go and ask your brothers, see if any of them have seen it.” Jeongin sighed and vanished from the top of the stairs. Chan could hear his footsteps as the boy walked from room to room.
A couple of minutes later, there was the sound of rustling paper from the second floor.
“Found it!” Jeongin called.
“Good job, put it in your bag now so you don’t lose it again.”
“Yup.” Chan shook his head as he cleaned up the last of the dishes from breakfast. Losing homework or school books was a regular occurrence in their house. It was bound to happen with so many kids but they still panicked whenever they lost anything, usually accusing one or two of their siblings of stealing it, even though it was in the same place each and every time.
Chan called up the stairs, telling the kids that it was almost time to leave, and Jeongin and Seungmin came bouncing down first, walking over to the front door and pulling on their shoes in preparation, Hyunjin following behind much less enthusiastically.
Felix and Jisung look a little longer, balancing a science project between the two of them as they carefully made their way down the stairs. They had been working on it for weeks and the semester was finally coming to an end, meaning that presentation day was upon them. Hyunjin and Seungmin had both partnered up with other kids from their classes, meaning they did the majority of the work at school, but Jisung and Felix just had to bring the most extravagant model home to work on. Chan wasn’t really complaining, though. He had really enjoyed helping his sons out in the evenings, the three of them laughing about paint-covered hands or a slightly misplaced popsicle stick.
Finally, the five of them walked past the seven adoption certificates that were proudly displayed on the wall as they stepped out of the front door.
The drive to school was pretty mundane, Jisung and Seungmin debating over some game or other that Chan hadn’t even heard of while the other kids stared idly out the window, chipping into the conversation every now and then. There were a couple of times when Chan had to remind Hyunjin, who was sitting in the front passenger seat, to stop turning around so his seatbelt would sit properly.
They pulled up outside the front of the primary school and all four of the kids jumped out, saying hurried goodbyes to Chan as they began making their way across the courts in front of the school building.
Chan stayed in the parking spot for a little longer than usual, watching as his boys greeted their friends, chatting and laughing as they disappeared through the front doors. They were growing up so fast and he wasn’t sure if he would be able to keep up. It felt like just yesterday they were all little babies, showing up on his doorstep for the very first time.
He was brought out of his thoughts by another car honking at him to get out of the way. Hurriedly pulling out of the park, Chan began to make his way back home.
Disposing of his keys in the bowl next to the front door, Chan walked over to the kitchen table and opened his laptop. He had begun doing some freelance music-producing jobs to bring in a little bit of extra money and he was really enjoying it. It seemed like a lifetime ago that he had given up his job to become a full-time dad but now his kids were getting older and didn’t need him 24/7. It was a sad realisation but it was his new reality.
Plus, working on music filled the time that he would otherwise be spending doing absolutely nothing productive.
The morning flew by, filled with replying to emails and suggesting new backing tracks for the artists he was working for. Before he knew it, the clock on the wall was reading 1:30 and his stomach was growling at him.
Pressing send on the email he had spent the last however many minutes writing, Chan closed his laptop and walked towards the pantry.
Deciding to treat himself a little, he decided to make himself some instant ramen for lunch. Sure, it wasn’t the healthiest option but he was craving the stuff, let him live.
As he waited for the water to boil, Chan scrolled through his phone, replying to a text that Minho had sent him about an hour before.
Minho
Can I go to Seonghwa’s house to study after school?
Read 13:45
Appa
Of course, just be home by 9
Read 13:56
[Minho reacted " 👍 " to your message]
Appa
Don’t go on your phone in class 😡
Read 14:01
[Minho reacted “ 😔 " to your message]
Chan shook his head and put his phone back into his pocket, ripping open the instant ramen packet, placing the noodles into the now boiling water, and heating up a separate pan. Adding a fried egg to his ramen made him feel a little fancy.
Soon enough, his ramen was ready and he carried his bowl over to the couch, flicking on the TV to watch some random Youtube videos as he ate.
Only about five minutes into the video, Chan’s phone began to ring. He paused it and answered the call.
“Hello?”
“Hi there, Chan, how are you doing, love?” Chan couldn’t help but smile.
“Hi, Eomma. I’m doing good, the kids are at school at the moment so I was getting some work done. How are you and Appa?” His mum sighed. Chan could just picture her sitting in her favourite chair, adjusting her position as she prepared to talk to her son.
“We’re good, we’re good. It’s been getting a little lonely in the house now that your brother lives so far away. Hannah still visits quite often, though, so it’s not too bad.” Chan hummed, feeling a pang of guilt in his stomach. He hadn’t visited his parents in…years. Yeah, they talked often enough but it wasn’t quite the same as being there in person.
“I miss you,” he said, not really thinking about it.
“Oh, Channie, we miss you too. We miss you so much. Not to mention the kids, we miss all of them too.” Chan chuckled.
“They miss you. Jeongin is always asking to talk to you and Appa. Every time something happens at school he wants to tell you all about it.” Chan heard his mum laughing through the phone.
“And we love to hear about it, just as much as we loved it when you did exactly the same thing.”
“I didn’t tell you everything, I kept a little to myself.”
“That’s a lie, you told us every little detail, down to what your friends had for lunch.” Chan smiled sheepishly.
The two of them talked for a long time, updating each other about the tiniest details in their lives.
Chan felt a little sad when he finally hung up the phone, staring at the wall of photos hung up in their living room for a while before actually getting up off the couch.
As he cleaned his dishes from lunch, he couldn’t stop thinking about his mum’s little comment about the house being lonely now that his brother had moved out of Sydney. His guilt was only growing the more he thought about it.
Chan tried to distract himself a little by replying to a couple more emails and listening to a possible backing track before it was inevitably time to go and pick up the kids from school.
Felix and Jisung climbed into the car first, chatting animatedly with each other, barely even saying hello to Chan.
“How did your science presentation go, boys?” Chan asked, looking at the two of them through the rearview mirror.
“It went really well!” Felix told him. “Ms Park said that we had one of the best models she’d ever seen ever!”
“See, all that hard work paid off, didn’t it?”
“Yeah, she said that we should get the grades for it next week because not all of the people got to go today,” Jisung told him.
Before they could say too much else, Jeongin arrived in the car. Chan turned around to greet him but paused, raising one eyebrow at the boy.
“Innie, why?” he asked in a stern voice. Jeongin grinned guiltily, bringing a hand up to flatten his rat’s nest of hair. This wasn’t the worst part, however. No, the boy was covered in dirt. His face and clothes were streaked with brown, including his poor shoes that they had only just cleaned a week prior.
“I slipped?” he attempted. However, once he saw Chan’s unimpressed facial expression, he sighed, admitting defeat.
“I was playing football with Beomgyu and Heeseung at lunch and…it got a little messy.” Chan shook his head.
“How did your teacher even let you back into the classroom like that?” he asked.
“I dunno,” Jeongin said, shrugging. “We were just watching a movie since it’s the end of the semester.”
“Just have a shower when we get home. And try not to get dirt on anything.” Jeongin giggled, probably proud of the fact that he had gotten away with being so filthy.
Not too long after that, Seungmin and Hyunjin clambered into the car, and they were ready to go. As Seungmin was doing up his seatbelt, he looked over to Jeongin and froze.
“Why are you so dirty?” he asked. Jeongin scratched the back of his head.
“I was playing,” he told his brother. Seungmin looked like he was going to question the answer but decided against it, clipping up his seatbelt and turning back to face the front.
Just as Chan had told him to, Jeongin took off his dirty sneakers—outside the front door, Chan didn’t want to have that in the house, thank you very much—and went straight upstairs to hop in the shower. Chan was left with the job of taking the kids’ empty lunch boxes and cleaning them out, ready to be filled for the next day, while the kids went up to their rooms. It would be at least two hours until Changbin got home seeing as the middle school finished at 4:30 rather than 3:00, so Chan pretty much had the entire downstairs to himself.
He packed the kids’ lunch boxes full of good food, making sure that they had plenty to eat in case they got hungry at any point during the day. He even added little notes for each of the kids to read when they opened their lunches, just as an extra something. Chan’s mum had done the same for him when he was in primary school, so he wanted to continue the tradition in a way. Of course, since he had grown up in Australia, none of his classmates could read the notes and were therefore unable to understand the full extent of the embarrassment Chan had felt at that moment. His kids didn’t quite have that same luxury. However, it didn’t matter, he was still going to write the notes. Was he even a good dad if he didn’t embarrass his kids every once in a while?
Once all the lunches were finished, Chan didn’t quite know what to do with himself. He had finished all of the work he had for that day, and replied to all of the emails in his inbox, now he just had to…wait? Dinner wouldn’t take too long to prepare considering they were just having cold noodles, so he needed to fill the time somehow.
Then, he got an idea.
“Boys?” he said, pushing open the door to the twins’ room and poking his head inside. Seungmin and Jisung were sitting on Jisung’s bed while Felix was hanging upside down over the edge of his top bunk. Felix looked over at Chan with a bright red face.
“First of all, Felix don’t hang like that, you could hurt yourself.” Felix giggled and flipped himself back onto his bed, hair sticking up in all sorts of ways. “Second, how about we make do with this nice weather? We could go to the park and spend some time outside for once.” The three boys agreed and headed downstairs while Chan went to ask Jeongin if he wanted to come. Of course, the over-energetic boy agreed, drying his hair as quickly as humanly possible before flinging himself down the stairs ahead of Chan to join his brothers.
Chan decided that they would walk to the park that day. It was likely to be quite busy due to the fact that it was still quite soon after school ended for everybody. Even so, the kids were still excited to get out of the house and get some of their pent-up energy out.
Jeongin, of course, had to bring “his” football to the park with them and kick it along the path as they walked. Technically, it was a football that he had stolen from Hyunjin, who had played football for a while but ultimately decided that he was more interested in dance. Even then, it wasn’t actually Hyunjin’s football. It belonged to the school and they had sort of just kept it. They hadn’t asked for it back so Chan didn’t really see the problem.
Just as they had predicted, the park was full of various different families who had had very similar ideas to them. They still managed to find a quieter area of the field where they could kick the football around, laughing and yelling in the process. Chan even decided to join in with the football game, showing off his super cool tricks (he tripped over the ball the first time he tried to kick it and landed flat on his face).
Okay, so maybe Chan wasn’t the best football player but it definitely got some laughs out of the kids and that was all that mattered.
In the end, Jisung and Jeongin emerged victorious. Chan wasn’t quite sure what the scoring system was, but he decided to just take their word for it.
Tired and out of breath, they began walking back home through the quiet streets.
When they approached the local convenience store, brightly coloured and illuminated in the afternoon sun, Felix looked up at Chan, puppy eyes ready.
“Appa,” he said, tugging at Chan’s wrist as they walked.
“Yes?” Chan replied, knowing what question was coming.
“Could we pretty please get some ice cream from the convenience store?” The other kids looked around, immediately interested at the idea of ice cream. Chan smiled.
“I guess so, as a special treat. But only if you get some for your brothers to have when they get home.” They all agreed immediately, rushing through the front doors of the store and over to the freezers.
Chan paid for the ice creams, thanking the owner of the store as he took the black plastic bag off the counter.
The second they were out the door, four sets of hands were trying to pry open the bag to locate the ice creams they had each chosen. Chan chuckled, taking out his own ice cream as he watched the kids rip off the wrapping and begin to enjoy their treats.
Later that evening, after they had all eaten dinner, Chan was sitting on the couch when he received a text from Minho saying that he was on his way home. It was 8:30, which meant that the boy was on track to be home by curfew, which Chan was happy about. He had never been super strict on curfews for his kids, but it was still nice to know that they were going to be home at the time they agreed.
Scrolling through his Instagram, Chan came across a post his sister had made a couple of hours ago. It was a photo of her and their parents outside the Sydney Opera House with the caption “Playing tourist with the parents for the day”. Chan smiled, liking the photo.
As he continued to scroll, his mind kept going back to his sister’s post. So many things that day had been reminding him just how much he missed his parents and Australia. Honestly, he felt about five minutes away from just buying a plane ticket for a few days away. However, Chan knew that, realistically, he could never do that. He had seven kids to look after, he couldn’t leave them.
Opening his messages with his mum, he began to type.
Channie
Missing you and Appa a lot right now :(
Read 20:36
Eomma
Aww missing you too! Sending lots of hugs!! 😘 🤗
Read 20:37
Channie
Sending you hugs too ❤️
Read 20:39
Eomma
You should come visit us sometime soon!
Read 20:40
Chan paused for a while, staring at the message his mum had sent.
Channie
But what about the kids?
Read 20:43
Eomma
Bring them too! We’ve got plenty of room for all of you! 😘
Read 20:43
Channie
Are you sure? There are quite a few of us haha
Read 20:46
Eomma
Of course!! We’d love to meet all of our grandbabies in person
Read 20:47
Chan’s conversation with his mum was interrupted by the front door opening.
“I’m home,” came Minho’s voice. Chan frowned. Minho wasn’t supposed to be home for another 10 minutes at least.
“You’re home earlier than I thought,” Chan told him, turning around to look at his son. Minho shrugged.
“I got to the station earlier than I thought so got the early train.” Chan paused for a few moments, watching as Minho walked towards the stairs, clearly very tired from his long day of work.
“Hey, Min?” Chan called. Minho stopped at the bottom of the stairs and turned around.
“Yeah?”
“How would you feel about going to Australia?”