"you guys seriously have to check out the hydroshower, it's so cool!" chenle chirps, leaving the bathroom with his mint hair dry as if he wasn't there for a wash. "rather than the usual skit, the water instead goes upwards into some sort of a.. ventilator? and there's this air pressure tube stuff that keeps us from getting too wet! the shower sort of just, does its thing? so all that we have to do is just stand there effortlessly as it cleans us on its own!" he bends down, pointing at his hair. "look, squeaky clean~"

"yah, calm your horses, mint choco, use your trousers on then we'll talk." donghyuck avoids the latter from getting closer to him. "they provided us some clothes for us to wear. jisung came a while ago to grab his. you should get dressed too, i don't want to see a 29th century cheapskates running around butt-naked."

"clothes?" chenle raises his eyebrow. "are they my size?"

"apparently it's an all-size. it changes structure according to who's using it." jeno coolly replies as he puts his hand on jaemin's shoulder who seems to be awfully quiet.

"me and jisung? the same size? that's impossible!" chenle scoffs. "we're so much unalike in terms of size."

"great, you just admitted yourself that you're the size of a pea. now go before i step on your towel... with pure intentions."

"this feels quite comfortable," jisung comes out of the corner, showing off his new look. "jaemin-hyung was right about the clothes being all-sized, i can tell it fits perfectly on me. how do i look?" the giant youngest shocks his elders with the somehow mind-goggling appearance. the sky blue color igniting his strange looking blouse and shorts sets a camouflage for him and the identical wallpaper color. jaemin tries his best to hide his grin. chenle doesn't even try to bulge, he flings his head up for a good laugh. "what?"

donghyuck shakes his head. "you now do look like your age in that set of clothing."

"what, seventeen?"

"no, seven." he stares down the latter's shorts barely even covering his thighs. "you call that a perfect fit?"

"i'm pretty sure it's the design!"

"my cousin likes to use that fit too, and he's a toddler." jaemin squirms. "don't fret, you do look cute in it, jisung-ah. like a cute, baby giraffe."

"baby giraffe, i — hyung!" jisung turns to jeno for his last testament. "does it really look that bad?"

"bad? no," jeno fixes the sides of the younger one's collar. "in fact, in makes me want to baby you even more!"

"stop it, you guys! chenle-yah!" jisung manages to get away from the grip of his outrageous hyungs. chenle has now changed into his fit, and though he did not receive the same kind of subjugation jisung experienced, the lack of subdued mockery didn't make his appearance in the horrendous blue fit any lot better. the two misfits got together again after a proper shower as they explore the many rooms of the dream house they are currently staying in.

"hey, look!" chenle opens one of the odd looking doors, revealing a somewhat misplaced playground filled with miniature slides and most importantly, a playbox filled with tiny, colored balls. "they got us a chill suite! sweet!"

"first one who gets into the playbox wins!" jisung exclaims, and the pair immediately runs to bury themselves into the sea of colorful circular shapes.

donghyuck sighs. "they refuse to be called toddlers yet here they are, acting like the most toddler thing to ever do." he turns around, facing jeno and jaemin who didn't look like they were leaving the bed any sooner. "where's renjun and mark-hyung."

"still in the hydroshower." jeno says as he reaches a towel for himself. "we should go and rinse up too, we wouldn't want crusty mac and cheese coming here seeing us still the same as he left us."

"you guys go, i'll shower later." jaemin replies to him bluntly. "or perhaps never."

"jaemin-ah, what's wrong?" jeno looks at him in concern.

"nothing, i'm just not feeling like doing anything, that's all."

donghyuck, being able to read through all this, sighs cordiantly as he falls back to bed, perfectly beside his contemplating friend. "i'll tell ya what's wrong. our jaemin here is definitely still in shock by the fact that he used to be a somewhat human cyborg in his past life."

jeno glares at him. "donghyuck."

"what? i would be bloody confused too if i were him." donghyuck says, nonchalantly speaking in regards of the latter. "he's definitely thinking whether or not he's allowed to shower in that machinery structure of his."

"okay, first of all: it's the life he ended up not living. this jaemin is a perfectly normal human being." jeno snaps at him for the first time, trying to keep jaemin away from even considering the relevance of donghyuck's conspiracy. "and even if he's a brand new species of human being created by machines, i'm pretty sure he was created compatible enough to at least get a goddamn shower."

"well if you're so damn sure about it, go try to convince the guy!" donghyuck says, gesturing at jaemin who seems like he has his whole existence questioned.

jeno turns to jaemin, his mind going through thousands of ways of trying to convince him that he's .... possibly normal. "jaemin, we still can't exactly prove mark-hyung's hypothesis about you actually supposed to be a part of the dream house. and to be fair, i don't think the life you're supposed to be living here would make a difference to who you really are now—"

"you saw it yourself, in that spare room." jaemin finally speaks up, his eyes staring up the ceiling as he recalls something that happened not so long ago by spirit, but centuries apart from where they are now by theory. "especially you, jeno, you saw me. in front of that mirror. my jacket and all other objects surround me afloat. my eyes graze upon that mirror as if i was in the process of getting sucked in."

"they didn't take you, they took mark-hyung instead." jeno reaffirms.

"yeah, but why was i there in the first place? i do not understand." jaemin shakes his head. "and the floating objects... it simply feels like it was my doing, and i don't know how exactly i was able to do it! nothing about it can ever make sense-"

"do you think this time travelling thing makes sense?" donghyuck pulls back into realization. "no, and none of it has to. all we have to do now is to do our tasks and to go home, can't you see that? whatever happened to you and that mirror, i think it's best for us to not know."

jaemin sighs in defeat. "you know, at these times, there's a part of me yearning to tell mark-hyung about everything that i felt that day, before he left us. i want to ask him what was my role in all of this, he said so himself that he had saved me a long time ago—"

"and let it stay a secret. we can't let him know about what happened, at least this version of him that is definitely way behind the one we saw in chenle's mission." donghyuck points out. "we can't risk it. it'll only destroy the timeline."

"donghyuck is right, jaem, there's so many things in question, but we shouldn't bring it up to mark-hyung just as he tried to hide all the important details of our past missions in his last." jeno says, finally contradicting to his earlier statement. "we mustn't let mark-hyung know."

"not know what?" mark appears behind them alongside renjun, already geared up with their own pair of outfits.

"what's going on here?"

"yah, we waited for you in the hydroshower, what took you so long?" renjun's small stature looks absolutely visible now in the perfectly sized fits that aligns his body structure.

"we were discussing about jaemin's mission." jeno says, quickly changing the subject. "jaem, mind telling us again now that mark-hyung's here?"

"oh, yes." jaemin takes the luggage he took from the museum and shoves it to the bed, showing it all to everyone. "so uh, basically, we can't let them know about the existence of this luggage until the end of this dream. that's pretty much it."

"what's in it?" renjun steps forward in curiousity.

"glad you asked," jaemin smiles as he opens the package, revealing the insides of the mysterious carrier. "it's a year worth of chewing gu—"

"hey, are those euphorals?"

jaemin's grand reveal was interrupted by mark getting awfully distracted by chenle and jisung's discovery. the two boys are now having the time of their lives swimming in a complex of random colored spheres. chenle looks more ecstatic than how he already was before. "MARK-HYUNG, COME HERE AND JUMP IN!"

"euphorals? what are those things?" jeno asks.

"it stands for 'euphoria balls'. these tiny spheres can make you feel extreme happiness until the tip of your toes."

"sounds like it has another frivolous meaning if you put it that way," donghyuck whispers to renjun, receiving a well-deserved punch in the shoulder by the latter.

"all i know is that one euphoral can already boost up anyone's serotonin just by having a short contact with it. swimming in a sea full of them, however, can probably cause a serious case of seizures caused by immense happiness."

chenle hops over the box and pulls mark's hand along with him. "come on markie~ let's go for a ride~ weeeeeeeeeee!!!!" he pushes the older one into the pile of balls without further notice.

"so they're on drugs." jaemin blinks a couple of times. "what's wrong with this place, they're giving us drugs."

"woah, are those.... candies?????" jisung struggles to get out of the box because of his long legs, but once he did, he immediately ran towards jaemin and his luggage filled with sweets. jaemin, knowing for sure this will only ruin his mission, closes the luggage before the younger one can get his hands on it.

"not today, big guy. i have this covered." jaemin tells him off as he puts back the luggage under his bed.

jisung puts on the biggest frown. the tremendous amount of euphorals weren't able to keep himself from feeling the amass grave of disappointment. "fine..."

"hyuck, jaem, let's go shower before the guy returns." jeno says as he lends the duo their towels. "injun-ah, please take care of jisung for me. he's clearly unstable."

renjun nods without looking at him, because he clearly had his attention on donghyuck who looked as innocent as he could ever be for someone who just did a bad deed.

"what?" donghyuck smirks at him. "you want some too?"

donghyuck puts in a pack of jaemin's chewing gum when he wasn't looking, but he made sure that renjun is there witnessing, because he likes to tease him that much. "jisung-ah, here's some to clench your cravings." he slips a pack into the latter's pocket as a gift. "have fun with it, sweetheart."

"yah, lee donghyuck, you're so getting trouble for this." renjun says out of spite, his eyes never leaving the latter's teeth that keep chewing and chewing.

"oh, injunie, there's so many things worth taking a risk in this world, and this happen to be one of them." donghyuck flashes a satisfied grin, hiding the piece of candy by the back of his tongue.

"donghyuck-ah, you're coming or not?!" jaemin yells from the other side.

"yes, wait up, candy!" he glances at renjun one last time. "see ya."

renjun can't help but feel way frustrated by the situation. he looks over jisung who has his mood back again because of the chewing gum his hyung stole for him. "want to try swimming in the euphorals, hyung?"

"no. i'm getting some sleep." renjun stomps his way to bed, not minding mark and chenle's facade of happiness in the other room as they dive into their own sea of euphorals.

—

omg ,,,,,,, i updated something
i hope that my return could mean something for you to perhaps reread the last chaps if you forgot what happened? Dbhshdbdbd I had my own contemplations for this book but I enjoy planning out the branches of plot of it too much for me to abandon it.

in other words: let's just hope author yuehwa have the strength to finish this, and I'm sorry if you find it somewhat boring/slow paced.

- yuehwa