My Baker's Dozen

76

"Appa! Hyung!" Minghao ran through the door and practically tackled them both, completely forgetting his Father's healing ribs.

"Hey! I heard you got into the police force!" Seungcheol exclaimed, taking his attention from helping his grandchildren for only a second as they stirred the cupcake batter.

"Sort of. Officer Jade took me on as her intern so I can help track down whoever attacked you. After high school is when I'll get the training and join the police force as her partner." The sixteen year old corrected, clearly excited for when that will happen.

"Jaehea, please don't like your fingers. Icky." Seungcheol scrunched up his nose to show the four year old how gross it is, and she put her little fingers away from her mouth.

"I'm heading out to go get the pizza, anyone want to come?" Mark asked from the doorway, and Dk hopped up to go with his brother-in-law. They had all collectively agreed that no one was in the mood to cook tonight and that pizza sounded good.

"Someone needs to set the table with Minseo Noona." Seungcheol directed from the kitchen as he tried to make sure Kazen didn't knock the batter everywhere just as they were about to put them in the oven.

"I got you, Noona." Jun offered, and Hansol joined them to make it go faster. Four extra places had to be added to the table tonight so it was extra crowded, but Chan insisted that five be added so their Mom could have a place to sit too. They could all feel her presence a lot stronger tonight, and it just made the whole place feel sweeter.

"Are my polaroids still in the same place or did someone move them?" Minseo asked once her job was done, and Chan jumped up from the couch to grab the box for her. The twenty-seven year old sat down in the middle of the living room and started looking through the box with some of her brothers as they waited.

So many memories preserved forever in the little box. It felt so good to relive when life was simple and when the only problems Minseo had were going to school, helping take care of her brothers and trying to convince Jeonghan to get a hair cut. She found a picture of the boys piled on top of her on the ground, and she passed it around so they could all see. Almost none of them remembered that afternoon, though, since they were so little.

"The pizza's home!" Mark announced when he and Dk walked into the house, and Minseo put back all of the polaroids into the box to save for later.

Once the cupcakes were in the oven, hands washed and pizza sitting the middle of the table,  all eighteen of them sat down. Though any one of them would have insisted that there were nineteen people in the crowded room.

"Can everyone promise no more hospital visits for a long time?" Seungkwan asked, specifically looking at Seungcheol and Jeonghan, but they just shrugged.

"I don't think any one of us can promise that." Joshua joked, but it was very true. They all seemed to be accident prone.

"I think we've all had enough hospital visits to last us a lifetime, though." Hoshi noted, but that only led to the fifteen year old getting playfully and verbally attacked since he was one of those visits years ago.

"We've had everyone's births, Hansol hyung's peanut butter incident at the playground, Hoshi hyung's dislocated shoulder, and then these two." Wonwoo calculated, looking towards his Appa to make sure he hadn't missed any.

"That's eleven total." Minseo added up, and some of the boys did the math on their own to get the same number.

"Four of those I wish never happened, but at least we're all here." Eyes strayed to the empty chair Chan had placed in their Mother's usual spot at the table, all of them swearing they could see her.

"You wish some of us weren't born?" Mingyu questioned, extremely confused and offended by the statement.

"He meant the four that weren't births, Beanpole." Jihoon said with a sigh, and you could see the realization settle over Mingyu's face. Seungcheol laughed slightly at the nickname he hadn't heard before, but Gyu only rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly.

"How have you not heard Jihoon call Gyu, Beanpole?" Jeonghan questioned, but Seungcheol only shrugged. He probably has and he probably laughed then but he just forgot.

"Are there any others I haven't heard?" The boys looked around at each other with slight smiles.

"Well, let's see."

"Bubbly."

"Beanpole."

"I haven't heard Hoshi Bear in a while."

"Dino."

"Baker's Dozen."

"Wonton."

"SeoSeo Noona." Seungcheol smiled softly at the last one, and Jaehea's attention had been taken off of her pizza at the saying of her nickname her Uncles had given her.

"SeoSeo Noona was what I called my sister." Minseo smiled at the mention of her Mother. It wasn't often that anyone had spoken about her, but if Seoyeon was mentioned it was between Minseo and her Appa or her Uncles.

"What's Baker's Dozen?" The boys smiled at Mark's question, and waited for someone to answer him.

"When Minghao hyung was arrested the police officer referred to us as a baker's dozen and it kind of stuck." Samuel explained, and Minseo frowned playfully.

"I see how I'm just left out like that." Samuel sighed at her teasing and Chan picked up on the explanation.

"No, we're a baker's dozen of boys. Our whole title is baker's dozen plus Noona. We're your baker's dozen of brothers." The eleven year old further explained, and the adults smiled at how desperately the boys wanted to make sure she knew she was included.

"I like it. My baker's dozen."

No one could ever break them apart, and no one will. Though life's different paths would always bring them far away, it was only in distance and not in heart.

Everyone knows you can't separate a baker's dozen of boys and their Noona.

It's impossible.