[Neo Zone] Population: 23 Kids

Friendship Bracelets

Jisung had rolled his eyes subtly when his teacher had announced they were going to the library to make friendship bracelets for the last two classes of the day. I mean, come on, they're eleven. Do they really need to be spending their time making friendship bracelets?

That was his attitude before he got there and realized that it wasn't only his math class participating in the torture disguised as fun. Chenle's science class was there too and so was Sungchan and Shotaro's English class. Apparently there were several teachers who didn't want to teach anymore.

Sungchan and Shotaro were already sitting at a table together since they had been in the same class before being forced to come to the library, so Jisung took a seat next to Sungchan after dragging Chenle away from the group he had been talking to. He could socialize later.

Shotaro jumped when he noticed Chenle sitting down next to him, which is when he realized Jisung was at their table too.

"If I can't hear you it's because I turned off my hearing aid. It's too loud in here." Shotaro explained, the two of them nodding.

For a library, it was pretty loud in there. But that's what happens when there's three whole classes in there on top of regular people who come during a free period. The librarian was also never one to enforce the whole absolute silence thing anyways.

"So what are we doing? I wasn't paying attention and followed the class down here." Chenle admitted.

"We're making friendship bracelets with the string on the table. There's instructions on how to make different designs in the packet." Sungchan pointed out the pack of colored strings on the table and held up the packet. Neither of which had been looked at before hand.

"Since this is kinda dumb, why don't we make this a challenge." Jisung suggested, Chenle scoffing.

"This isn't dumb, you're dumb."

Before the two of them could start bickering, Sungchan butted in.

"What kind of challenge?"

"Well we're going to be here for almost two hours and there's twenty-three people we can make bracelets for, so why don't we speed run this and see if we can make twenty-three bracelets?"

"Are we allowed to make that many?" Chenle asked, and they looked around the library just to notice their teachers weren't even in the room anymore.

Jisung shrugged. "There's no one to stop us."

"I caught half of that. What's going on?"

Sungchan gave Shotaro a brief explanation of what was going on while Jisung and Chenle started looking through the directions. The four of them were very quickly picking out certain colors for each of their non-blood brothers, making sure they also weren't going to make two for someone by accident. They also found beads they could add to them, and it took several fails and beads rolling halfway across the library to figure out how to put them on.

They only had three minutes left in the school day when they finished the last bracelet, leaning back in their chairs in exhaustion as they stretched out their hands. Almost six bracelets per person was a lot to make in two hours.

"We should all be at the cafe tonight. We can give them to them then." Shotaro mentioned as they put the bracelets into Chenle's bag.

"Are we even going to remember who's is who's?" Sungchan asked, Chenle and Jisung shrugging.

"Hopefully."

...

"Alright, everyone needs to pay attention to us because we're adorable and you love us!" Chenle shouted once they had made sure everyone was gathered in the basement that night, backpack in hand.

"We have presents!" Shotaro shouted once Chenle's announcement didn't get a reaction, and the older kids immediately started paying attention.

"We know these will probably end up lost or forgotten about, but we made them with love so please be nice." Jisung added.

"Oh what'd you guys make?" Taeyong asked, and Chenle tried to add a sense of hype by slowly unzipping his backpack.

He was going a bit too slow, so Jisung unzipped it faster and started putting the bracelets on the floor so it was easier to see them. The older kids started gathering around the four of them as they untangled the bracelets and tried to remember who they belonged to.

"Why does one of them say Yoyo?" Jaehyun asked, holding up the bracelet he had picked out of the pile.

"Oh that's Doyoung's. We ran out of a lot of letters." Sungchan explained, so Jaehyun threw the bracelet in Doyoung's direction.

The four of them had done pretty good at getting the size of the bracelets right, only needing to adjust a few of them. They did manage to remember who was getting which bracelet, probably a feat harder than making twenty-three of them.

"You guys did really good." Johnny praised, ruffling each of their hair in turn.

"I still don't get why mine says 'moo.'" Taeil half complained, Haechan snickering because he knew they used the last 'n' to spell out 'sun' on his.

"We told you it was supposed to say moon." Shotaro explained for the second time, questioning if he should just turn off his hearing aid again.

Surprisingly, the bracelets didn't end up lost or under a bed or dresser within a few days. Even the ones with strange nicknames on them in beads didn't end up lost. Instead, no one took them off unless they had to for gym class or to shower. Other than that, you never saw one of them without it. Ever.