The House by the River

Chapter 1

A/N: The image above does not belong to me. It belongs to the person who uploaded it on the internet.

Third Person POV

"Your turn to roll the dice," Mean said, pushing the three small cubes in Plan's direction, but Plan suddenly stood up.

"I need to get some fresh air," Plan declared.

"You can't leave yet!" Mark protested. "What's your problem?"

Mark received a gentle kick under the table from Gun. Gun seemed to know what was going on with Plan.

"I guess we will have to shelve the game and see how Plan feels tomorrow, or maybe even later tonight," said Mean in a resigned tone.

"Or maybe in a few minutes when he comes back," Mark said hopefully, because he really didn't want the game to end just yet. He was, among all eight of them at the table, the one with the highest score so far.

"I have a feeling he won't be coming back in just a few minutes," Earth said, not addressing any one in particular. He seemed to be talking to himself.

Title was the first one, after Plan of course, to stand up, and without a word, to start walking away.

Both Perth and Saint who had been quiet all this time, also stood up. Perth motioned to Saint to follow him to wherever he was going.

"What do you want to do now?" Mark turned to Gun.

"I'm thinking of going through stuff in the fridge and seeing what I can put together for dinner," Gun declared.

"Yeah, like you know how to cook at all," Mark said, not bothering to hide a smirk.

"I do, too," Gun said emphatically.

"The last time I was at your place, you burned the omelet," Mark said.

"That wasn't me," said Gun, "that was Earth."

"Oh," said Mark and turned to look at Earth who was smiling sheepishly.

"Tsk, tsk, you're losing your memory at such an early age," Gun said, already making his way to the kitchen.

All eight of them, Mean, Plan, Mark, Gun, Title, Earth, Perth and Saint, were at Gun's parents' vacation house far away from the city.

Just a few distance from the house was a pristine river where one could enjoy a swim at any time of the day or night.

Gun had gotten permission from his parents to invite the rest of the cast of Love By Chance to spend a few days at the vacation house just before they were to start their workshop in preparation for their upcoming season two of the series.

The vacation house was a modest one story bungalow with two large bedrooms and two full bathrooms, and a master bedroom with a full bathroom inside it.

Mean, Plan, and Mark shared the smaller sized bedroom while Title, Earth, Perth and Saint shared the bigger bedroom. Gun of course had the master bedroom all to himself.

Mark and Earth followed Gun into the kitchen to help him take out all ingredients available in the fridge.

Gun took out two large packs of frozen jumbo shrimps from the freezer and placed them under running warm water in the kitchen sink to hasten the thawing process.

"What are you planning to do with those?" Mark asked Gun.

"I was thinking of cooking them in coconut milk," Gun replied.

"Okay," said Mark, "is there anything you want to add to them, like some vegetables or other stuff?"

"What vegetables have we got in the crisper?" asked Gun.

"I saw two bunches of spinach leaves, and a large bunch of string beans," Mark replied.

"Let's use those," Gun said.

"We need to cook some rice," Mark suggested.

"I'm on it," Earth spoke up, "I'm one step ahead of you, nong. I have rinsed the rice already. I'm getting ready to place it into the pot and measure the amount of water that it needs before plugging the rice cooker into that outlet in the corner."

"Good job, P'", said Mark, "just please don't burn it."

"There's no way I could burn the rice," Earth protested, "it has a sensor that will automatically change to warm mode once it is cooked."

"Mark, will you please check the crisper once more and see if you can find some ginger roots and some garlic and onions?" Gun asked.

Mark obediently went to the fridge and took out a plastic bag containing some fresh ginger roots. He also took out a small netted bag containing a combination of garlic and red onions.

Gun handed Mark a kitchen knife.

"Please take care of crushing the garlic cloves and cutting up the red onions," Gun instructed Mark. "I will take care of crushing and cutting up the ginger roots."

Again, Mark dutifully did as he was told.

Gun went through the kitchen cabinets to look for cans of coconut milk. He took out two cans and used the electric can opener to open them and then poured the contents into a large pot. He then started to cut up the ginger roots and crushed them to have some of the root juice squeezed out before dropping them into the pot.

He instructed Mark to drop the cut up garlic and red onions into the pot after which he turned on the stove. While waiting for the coconut milk to boil, Earth and Mark helped Gun to rinse the spinach leaves and the string beans. The string beans needed to be cut into shorter lengths and Gun took care of cutting them to his desired length.

Mark went over to the kitchen sink to check if the jumbo shrimps had thawed. Thankfully, they had already been peeled and de-veined so they were ready to be dropped into the pot once the coconut milk started boiling.

As soon as the coconut milk started boiling, Gun dropped the two packs of jumbo shrimps into the pot. He waited a few minutes before dropping the string beans and then after less than a minute, he dropped in the spinach leaves. Then he sprinkled the desired amount of Himalaya pink salt into it and dropped three whole green Anaheim peppers before placing the lid on top of the pot.

Gun turned to Earth.

"Is the rice cooked?"

Earth had no chance to answer because at that exact moment, Perth stormed into the kitchen yelling, "All of you! Come to the river's edge! Mean and Plan are taking turns punching each other's jaws and Saint and Title can barely keep them apart!"