Chapter Text
Chan groaned as the sunlight began to filter into his bedroom through the thin curtains, rolling over in an effort to get even a tiny bit more sleep. It was in vain, however, as the birds in the tree right outside his window soon began chirping and singing. He listened contently to the songs, imagining all the little chicks fluttering around now that summer was upon them.
Eventually, Chan picked up his phone from his nightstand and began to check through all the messages he had missed while he was asleep. There weren’t many to clear, just a few updates on his social media timeline, so Chan spent the next hour or so just scrolling mindlessly on his phone. It was the kids’ summer break at the moment and he was all caught up on his producing projects, what was so wrong with spending a lazy Monday morning in bed?
After a while, there began to be the vague sounds of movement from a couple of the bedrooms. Chan assumed that it was probably Seungmin, his second youngest and a notoriously early riser. It was a wonder how Seungmin got up so early when everyone else in the house liked to sleep until well past noon. Chan would love to do the same but insomnia prevented him from staying asleep for very long when he did inevitably crash. He was just glad that none of his kids had inherited that from him, it was practically torture living in a body that forced you to stay awake. But, hey, that’s why caffeine was invented.
Mustering up the energy to finally crawl out of his bed, Chan didn’t even bother to pull on a hoodie as he headed out onto the second floor. The weather was so warm at the moment, with it being the middle of summer and all, that it was almost painful to exist in just a T-shirt and shorts, let alone more layers.
When he made it to the bottom of the stairs, Chan was met with Seungmin standing in the kitchen, chewing on a piece of toast as he stared at his phone. The boy glanced up briefly when he heard Chan enter the room, but otherwise paid no mind to him.
“Sleep well?” Chan asked as he filled up a glass of water. Seungmin just hummed, taking another bite of his toast. Chan let out a small huff of laughter before draining the glass he was holding.
“Do you have any plans today or were you just wanting to have an at-home day?” he tried again to strike up a conversation with his son. Seungmin finally put down his phone, taking a deep breath as he thought about the question.
“I wasn’t planning on meeting up with anyone, most of the team is away at the moment so there’s no point in trying to do practice.” Chan nodded. Seungmin’s middle school baseball team were pretty much the only friends he had at the moment, or at least the only ones he spoke about, but he wasn’t worried in any way. If Seungmin just wanted to stick with a smaller group of teammates, that was completely fine with him. The boy had never been a big fan of larger groups anyway.
The two of them stayed in comfortable silence for a while as Chan made himself some breakfast with a slightly larger-than-average cup of coffee. If it kept him awake throughout the day, it was worth it.
Once Seungmin finished his own breakfast, he rather quickly disappeared upstairs, either to shower or crawl back into bed and watch videos on his phone. Chan couldn’t judge, though, he was probably going to do the same, just on the couch. Their summer break wasn’t exactly exciting this year.
But mindlessly scrolling on your phone could only occupy your mind for so long, so after a little while, Chan got up and began to fill his time with household chores. The clutter left in the kitchen was tidied away, the laundry on the line was folded and put in front of their respective rooms, and the bathroom was given a little touch-up because why not?
By the time Chan made it back into his room to put his laundry away, the sun was shining brightly and noises were beginning to be heard from inside the kids’ rooms. Even though it was their summer break, Chan hoped that his kids would at least be awake by midday, even if they were still wrapped up in their beds.
Heading back downstairs, Chan was met with Hyunjin practically crawling out of their room in the vague direction of the downstairs bathroom.
“Afternoon,” Chan greeted, jokingly trying to rumple up Hyunjin's bird nest of hair. Although seeming as if they were still half asleep, Hyunjin managed to duck out of the way and slip into the bathroom before Chan could attack again.
Slowly but surely, all of the kids had come out of their rooms for one reason or another, assuring Chan that they were at least awake. Not wanting to spend another day holed up in the house, Chan began to devise a plan for the rest of the day. The weather was so nice, he thought that they might as well take advantage of it.
He went upstairs and called out to the kids.
“We are heading to the park soon, make sure you're all up and dressed in about an hour.” There were a couple of exaggerated groans in reply and a few ‘yup's, which Chan was satisfied with. He quickly relayed the message to Hyunjin, who gave a very similar response to the kids upstairs, and Chan went back off to his own room to change into some slightly more weather-appropriate clothes. He didn't think that an oversized t-shirt and pyjama shorts would earn any good looks from the local ahjummas taking their afternoon walks in the park.
As he went into his room, Felix and Minho were standing in front of the bathroom door, almost as if they were about to fight.
“Ready or not…paper, scissors, rock, shoot!” Minho said, holding out his fist while Felix held out an open hand. Minho celebrated by sticking his tongue out at his brother before slipping into the bathroom, an evil grin on his face. Felix let out a frustrated sigh, throwing his head back in annoyance as he made his way back to his bedroom, towel scrunched in his hand. Chan couldn't help but laugh.
Most of the kids were down in the living room on time, but there always had to be a few stragglers, didn't there? Chan had to go up the stairs and collect a very preoccupied Changbin from his room.
“No, Appa, my hair doesn't look right, it's a mess, I need to fix it, just give me a few more minutes,” the boy complained as Chan stood in the doorway, watching him sit cross-legged on the floor in front of the mirror.
“It looks okay, Binnie, I promise, it's not noticeable,” Chan attempted to reassure. Changbin shook his head, turning back to look into his mirror, pushing a piece of hair there and fluffing another bit there.
“I don't know what it is, it doesn't look right.”
“We’re just going to the park, bud, you're probably going to run around and mess it up again anyway. Come on, the others are waiting downstairs.” Changbin sighed.
“Fine,” he said, pushing himself to his feet and following Chan down the stairs.
Now with all of the kids downstairs, they were able to finally head out of the house, Chan making sure to grab a couple of water bottles and put them in a bag. It was so hot, they would surely get thirsty at some point.
The walk to the park was pleasant, the group walking in pairs or threes and chatting as they went. Jeongin had picked up the football as they walked out the door, occasionally kicking it along as he walked. There were a couple of times that Jisung got annoyed at him for practically kicking the ball under his feet, but there thankfully weren’t any lasting arguments among any of the kids.
At the park, the air was filled with the sounds of birds chirping and the occasional car driving past. It was extremely peaceful as Chan sat down under a tree, closing his eyes as he enjoyed the feeling of the sun on his skin.
Most of the kids pretty quickly ran off to play football, and Felix sat with Chan making daisy chains as they watched the game.
Hyunjin and Jeongin, being the two best football players of the kids, had been dubbed the leaders of the two teams. They were then able to choose which other players they wanted through a very professional game of rock paper scissors to decide who chose first.
In the end, the teams consisted of Hyunjin, Minho, and Seungmin versus Jeongin, Changbin, and Jisung. Chan thought that it was a pretty evenly matched game, but only the scores would tell.
Felix chatted idly to Chan as he made his chain of daisies longer and longer, telling him everything from what classes he was looking forward to to what people he hoped he would be sitting next to for the next term. It was really nice for Chan to hear his son talking so much. Although Felix hadn’t struggled much with Korean in recent years, being perfectly fluent, there were still times when he had come into Chan’s room on the verge of tears because he felt his Korean wasn’t good enough. The boy then usually went pretty quiet for the next few days before regaining his pep.
Throughout the game of football, Chan only had to step in a couple of times to dissolve arguments about fouls or goals. If he was being totally honest with himself, he made it up most of the time, basing his answer on who he had sided with the last time. He didn’t want the kids to feel like he was favouring one team over the other so tried his best to keep it consistent.
In the end, the score of the game was 4-6 to Hyunjin’s team. They went around gloating to the others, doing a victory lap of the field arm in arm as they stuck their tongues out teasingly at their brothers. Thankfully, none of the kids were sore losers, especially when it came to games between siblings.
By the time all of them were sitting under the tree, Chan handing out water bottles to the panting kids, Felix’s daisy chain was taller than he was. It was honestly impressive how fast he had managed to make it in such a short amount of time.
They stayed sitting under the tree for a little while longer until Jisung had the fantastic idea to get ice cream from the nearby convenience store. Just sitting outside was getting a little unbearably hot anyway so some ice cream would do them some good.
Chan put the water bottles back into his bag and Felix slung his insanely long daisy chain over his shoulders as the rest of them got to their feet.
It thankfully wasn’t a very long walk to the convenience store so they were there within a couple of minutes.
The kids crowded around the freezers outside the front door, grabbing the ice cream they wanted and then arguing with the next person saying they were copying their choice. As they headed inside, Chan even grabbed himself an ice cream as a little treat. It was summer, after all.
Chan greeted the man at the counter who looked extremely overheated despite the weak air conditioning next to the till. The kids all placed their ice creams on the counter, a couple of Melona here and there, a red bean ice cream sandwich, and even a couple of typical Lotte choco bars.
Chan paid for the ice creams and they left, walking the rest of the way home as they munched happily on their cold treats.
It was a simple day out, but it was certainly an enjoyable one.