checkmate ; xdinary heroes

18.

❝can this mean we moved here legally?❞ jiseok questioned, as he and gunil walked beside each other out of the house with plastic bags in their hands. they were tidying up the house and the two were placing bags of garbage outside the house to throw them all away at once. 

chuckling, ❝what makes you think that, little one?❞ gunil placed the plastic bag beside a few others and turned to jiseok who did the same. 

❝some people lived here before and now we moved in. technically, we didn't do anything illegal.❞ jiseok tried explaining, as the two walked back inside the house. 

the elder brought his hand up to ruffle jiseok's soft hair. ❝if that's what you want to think, then sure.❞ gunil was still having hard time understanding jiseok's point of view on this, but he didn't mind it much. as long as the younger was happy about it, it didn't matter further. ❝jooyeon and hyeongjun are in the kitchen, go help them. i'll go help seungmin.❞ and with that he walked up the stairs to go to the said boy. 

the younger was in the small attic, the house apparently had. there was a tiny window carved right above the windows on the second floor, below the roof which wasn't seen in the dark and only in the morning jooyeon discovered that there was another small floor, which was the attic. 

there was no way someone who was here for the first time would notice that the attic even existed. because the second floor had no stairs walking up there. there was a small square carved on the ceiling in the hallway and if you pushed it, it would open and reveal an entrance to the attic. opening it would also make the small wooden stairs roll down automatically, for anyone to climb up. 

in the morning when the boys woke up after having a good sleep, they ate the food they had bought the previous day and decided to clean up the whole house. 

hyeongjun and seungmin were cleaning up the kitchen, while jiseok and jungsu cleaned the living room. jooyeon was helping gunil on the second floor and that was exactly when he noticed something on the ceiling which ended up being entrance to the attic. 

to open it, jooyeon was lifted up by gunil, who pushed the square in the ceiling to see what it was and open it. they left it open, went to call the others and all of them went to check what was inside. 

the attic was small and really dirty, small lightbulb hanging on top, which was not working and the only source of light was the tiny window. but it was big enough for all of them to fit inside. if there was something really bad going on, they could all hide there. 

after going back down, they decided to change the lightbulb and actually also tidy up the attic. 

seungmin went there after finishing his work in the kitchen with hyeongjun and was moving some heavy boxed down the stairs, asking gunil to help him with that. 

the whole day was busy. they had no rest, wanting for the house to be as clean as possible, to make it look new. 

they themselves were feeling happy to be able to clean everything up and make this place look like a normal one to actually live in. jiseok even suggested taking care of the small yard in front of it and plant some flowers. 

none of them were tired, at least none of them showed any sign to be so. they just felt so happy about the fact that they would be living in an actual, normal house which was not abandoned ⸺ well, technically it kind of was, but unlike the previous one, it had furniture in it and everything else that was needed for living. 

being able to spend at least some amount of time and live in such house, made them feel normal. it was as if, life finally decided to be fair and make them also feel appreciated, like every single human being should be.