[Neo Zone] Population: 23 Kids

Headband Heist

Jaehyun shuffled through all of his things, trying very hard to find his headband he used when his bangs got annoying. He had been pretty sure he had packed it in his bags, though now he remembered he had accidentally left it on the bathroom counter after a shower.

"What are you looking for?" Jae jumped at the sound of Jeno's voice.

"My headband, but I think I left it in Connecticut." With a defeated sigh he shoved his bag back under his bed.

"Do you think your Mom will send it over for you?" Jeno was trying his best to be helpful, but the look Jaehyun gave him told him it would be better not to.

"That would involve calling her. I'll just steal my Aunt's or something." Jaehyun ruffled Jeno's hair as he walked past him to go up the stairs, but Jeno just followed right behind him.

Johnny and Mark were still eating breakfast before the cafe opened, joined by Yuta and Jungwoo. Sicheng, Haechan and YangYang were still sleeping as any normal kid would on the weekends, and Johnny's parents were busy getting the cafe ready to run in an hour.

"What are you doing?" Johnny asked, his mouth half full of cereal.

"I'm going to look for a headband upstairs since I left mine in Connecticut." Yuta then got up from the table, following Jaehyun and Jeno to the upper living portion of the cafe. Jeno and Yuta had never been up there before, and they looked around before noticing Jaehyun had already left them to enter his Aunt's room.

He went straight to the top drawer of her vanity, trying not to shuffle through all of her things. He did find what he wanted in a pile of headbands, deciding there was no way she was truly going to miss it. It's not like he saw her wearing headbands all the time.

"Yuta, come sit." Jeno patted the edge of Mrs. Suh's bed and Yuta sat down, skeptical of the hair tie in Jeno's hand that he had picked up.

Instead of using her brush, Jeno carefully brushed through his hair with his fingers, pulling it back into a low ponytail just like his Mom taught him. He looked much more like a tamed lion now, but Jaehyun didn't notice with his attention on the picture frame in front of him.

"Is that your Mom?" Yuta asked, pointing to the woman on the left who shared some similar features with his friend.

"Yeah, and that's my Aunt and Mark's Mom." Jaehyun pointed them out individually even though they had already guessed that.

"Why don't you ever call her?" Jeno knew it wasn't that he couldn't. Mark was on the phone with his parents every day even if it was just for five minutes.

"It's not like she's tried calling either. She sent me here to get me out of the way. There's no way I'm calling her first." Jeno and Yuta shared at knowing look with each other because anyone could tell he was trying to hide the fact he was missing his parents.

But they didn't say anything and just followed him back down to the cafe, glad he was at least happy about the fact that he had a headband to keep the hair out of his eyes with. Because who needs a hair cut when you can just ignore it? That was Yuta's favorite thing to do too.

"Did you find one?" Jae held up the headband in response to Johnny, and Mark pulled Yuta closer to him to better see his new hairstyle.

"Cute."

"If you say so."