Gone To Hell | Seventeen

XXI.

I was startled awake by a knock on the bedroom door. I was quick to open my eyes, but it was a surprise that Hoshi and the kids were still sleeping soundly around me. Samuel sat up in the bed from next to me, scratching his hair. He looked at me, confused.

"Get up! It's my birthday!" The knocker yelled in, confirming it had been Seungkwan who woke us up.

"We're up. We're up." I said back, and I heard him skipping away in happiness.

Today was January 16th. We were now into 2017, and we had been counting every day up until now. We had officially been in the apocalypse for 115 days, counting today. A couple days ago, the 14th, was Mijeong's birthday. She was now 8 years old. Tomorrow, the 17th, would be Samuel's 16th birthday. It was sad, he wouldn't get to spend it with his parents. But he had grown close to us, so he'd hopefully be okay celebrating with us.

Samuel helped me wake up the rest of the room, and then we all put on our winter clothes to go outside. We had to put a canopy over the fire when it began snowing. Luckily, this winter wasn't too cold, so we weren't completely blocked in with snow. There was still enough snow that there was trouble walking, including slipping, falling, and even sometimes faceplanting. I would estimate that our area had about 6 inches of snow at the most.

Once we were outside, we all split up. Samuel, as well as Mijeong and Jeongsoo, headed to the canopy to warm up by the fire. Hoshi headed to our supply room (we had put all of our collected food into room 104 when the snow started) to get a drink. I stood and observed as other members began pouring out of their rooms, some groaning, while others held each other to keep warm.

Seungkwan stomped into the center of everyone, and instantly said, "Can I have a day of acceptance, with no fighting and no issues?"

"We can try, but there's no guarantee." Vernon patted his back, laughing. "Raejin and I talked last night, and we didn't know what we could do for your birthday, so we decided you could be the leader for the day."

"Really?!" He was gleaming in excitement, "I'm in charge! This is a new feeling!"

We laughed at his overwhelming reaction, and Choah smiled, "Well, what's your first order?"

Choah had grown a bit of a belly over the past few months. It was so adorable, and Minghao became even happier with each day she grew. Over the time, we had also passed multiple birthdays and holidays. Jeongsoo had turned 6 in October, Minghao and Choah both turned 21 in November, as well as Jihoon turning 22 in November, and just on December 30th, Joshua turned 22, while Chaeji would've became 21. I really missed her.

We had passed over Halloween, Christmas, and New Year. We didn't do much for any of them, except drink on New Year and eat a little extra for Christmas.

"For my birthday, I want to have a snowball fight!" He declared with certainty, "I want the whole shebang! No chicken shit, we need snow forts, masses of snowballs flying, and I want it to be so intense that I cry a little when it's all over."

I didn't expect Seungkwan to look forward to that kind of thing, I thought he'd ask for us to pamper him or do all his work, something along those lines. Instead, he just wanted to have fun.

"I like that idea! Can we do it tomorrow, too?" Samuel requested, a large smile on his face. We all assured that we could handle a second battle.

Seungkwan added on to his previous statement. "I would like to choose teams in our old fashion way, choosing names out of a hat. There's 20 of us, so we'll do 4 teams of 5. Vernon, you still got your straw hat, right?"

"Of course." Vernon ran off instantly, heading to their shared bedroom. Meanwhile, DK went and got a tablet out of one of the trucks and began the process of ripping it into multiple tiny pieces.