[Neo Zone] Population: 23 Kids

Battleship

"C6."

"You've got to be cheating!"

"Am not!"

Chenle snickered silently to himself. Jaemin was most certainly cheating. Every time Jeno wasn't paying attention, Chenle gave Jaemin the coordinates of one of his ships. Occasionally he'd give him false intel, but that was just to keep it interesting.

It was just the three of them down in the basement today, some of the others working in the cafe while everyone else was dispersed throughout the city for varying reasons. So they were on their fourth game of Battleship, and Jaemin purposefully lost the third one so Jeno wouldn't know for sure he was cheating.

"I2."

"Miss."

"C7."

Not wanting to admit Jaemin had just sunk his last ship, the patrol, Jeno took off his glasses. If he couldn't properly see where the point was, Jaemin couldn't win.

"So... again?"

"You're worse than WinWin."

"You guys playing Risk?" WinWin asked as he came down the stairs, Jungwoo right next to him.

"Battleship."

"I won three out of four games and he's salty."

WinWin took one look at Chenle sitting on Jeno's lap, trying to hide his mischievous smile, and he already knew what had happened. Chenle had been his accomplice a couple of times when no one was looking.

"I'll play with you if you want in a minute. I've got to ask Mrs. Suh something."

WinWin went back upstairs leaving his backpack in the basement. Jeno put his glasses back on so he could properly see the white and red pegs, taking them off his board. There weren't many though, since Jaemin had ended the game very quickly.

Jungwoo sat behind Jaemin on the floor, wrapping his arms loosely over his shoulders and basically just leaning against him.

"How was your day, hyung?" Yes, Jaemin had been told the rules of the "cult," but they weren't stopping him from using honorifics like he had been taught.

Jungwoo gave him a thumbs up, but then remembered something and started digging through his backpack to find it. Chenle peered over his shoulder to see if there were any snacks in there to throw at someone, but Jungwoo was zipping the bag back up before he could thoroughly investigate.

"Mrs. Teacher lady told us to draw ourselves." He showed them what he had drawn, fully knowing they wouldn't understand the whole meaning of it. But he wanted them to.

On the slightly wrinkled paper he had drawn a pretty good puppy face, tongue sticking out of course, but then he circled the head in red marker and drew a line through it. He wasn't a dog, and that was the only thing he thought to draw when drawing himself.

"That's awesome, Woo!" Jeno gave him the brightest smile, and Jaemin pinched his cheek with a coo.

Jungwoo was right, they didn't fully understand. He almost did explain, but he didn't want to repeat the story to everyone else. So he smiled and put the picture back in his bag, pushing away Chenle who still wanted to know if there were snacks.

"Alright, who's ready to lose Battleship?" WinWin came back downstairs, plopping down to the side of Jeno and Jaemin.

"Are you kidding me? I'm ready to win." Jaemin knew he couldn't win if Chenle didn't help him cheat, but that didn't mean he couldn't hype himself up a bit.

"I've got all night to beat you, child."

"Are you spending the night?" Jeno slid over his Battleship board.

"Yeah, my Dad's sick so Mom wants me to stay out of the house so I don't make it worse."

Jaemin furrowed his eyebrows, placing his ships along the edges. Except for the patrol, he put that in the center. "How would that make it worse?"

"You've got a lot of bad parent stories to catch up on. So for now, try not to cry when I obliterate you." WinWin then leaned over to whisper in Jeno's ear. "How do you play this?"