My Seven Stepbrothers

Chapter eighteen

"Done!" I shouted, putting down my paintbrush and staring proudly at our finished mural.

Jihun and Ari looked up from where they were playing tic tac toe. "Wow, Jia, it looks good." Ari smiled at me while Jihun quickly cheated his way through the game.

"Personally I wouldn't have drawn that but you do you." Jihun finger gunned me.

I looked at my painting again, wiping the paint off my hands. "It defines what I believe in. Not all bad people are bad and not all good people are good." My drawing was none other than my seven brothers and me. I drew the sillouthets of my brothers in black paint and myself in bright white. Inside of my brother's sillouthets, was a bright white circle and inside of my silhouette a black circle. THe background was painted like the night sky with little stars around us. My brothers were seen as bad people but inside of them they were good people. I was a good person on the outside but inside I had darkness, which over the past weeks seems to be growing.

"Did you get permission to leave yet?" Mina asked from where she was flipping through a magazine.

"Working on it." I muttered, signing the bottom of the mural.

Mina looked up at me with raised eyebrows. "Working on it? If you haven't realized, today is the last day of the month."

I glared at her. "I have realized that, thank you very much. I'm just trying to figure out how to ask."

"How about this? I'm going out with my friends, deal with it." Haneul suggested.

"And get a one way ticket to death? No thanks." I threw the paint towel on him.

"Don't be scared, Jia." Sunhee comforted me from where she sat with Minjun and Sungjae playing cards. "They love you and trust you so they won't hurt you." She then gasped, "UNO!"

Minjun tilted his head at her. "We were playing uno?"

Sungjae laughed lightly. "I think we all lost that round, I've been playing Go Fish."

Sunhee groaned and threw herself on the ground. "It's impossible to play with you people!"

The bell soon rang and we all collected our belongings. "Good luck, Jia." Jihun saluted at me before getting chased out of the room by an angry Ari, realizing just now that he had cheated in the game.

I quickly ran towards my locker where I saw Jimin already waiting for me. "Hi oppa!" I greeted him happily, gathering my belongings.

"Ready?" he asked, taking my bag from me.

"I can carry my bag by myself you know? How many times do I have to remind you guys that I'm not a baby?" I asked with folded arms.

"How many times do we have to remind you're our baby sister?" He asked with a playful smirk.

I started arguing with him all the way to the car that I wasn't a baby, although I probably looked like a baby throwing a temper tantrum. "And that's why I'm not a baby!" I ended with a small but definite foot stamp.

Jimin looked at me with raised eyebrows. "Done now?"

I took a deep breath. "Yep."

"Good, you broke your own record of longest argument." Jimin ended his stopwatch.

"Did she do it again?" Taehyung's voice asked as we reached the car.

Jimin nodded proudly. "About ten minuets of her yammering about how she's not a baby."

"That just makes you more of a baby." Yoongi ruffled my hair, causing me to slap his hand.

"Stop it!" I whined causing them all to laugh. Through the corner of my eye, I could see my friends watching, waiting to see what I was going to do.