[Neo Zone] Population: 23 Kids

Art Time!

When Haechan suggested that they decorate the ends of the beds like they do in Snow White with the dwarfs' names, the others didn't think it was that great of an idea. Hendery had also immediately started protesting because he thought Haechan was going to ruin even that part of the movie, so he didn't even hear the suggestion. 

Everyone else was just too lazy to want to decorate them, and they had also assumed that included carving names into the bed like it was in the movie. That would've resulted in death by parents. 

Chenle and Jisung thought it was a great idea, though. They were also bored and weren't allowed to play with the older kids because they were either focusing on work, working in the cafe, or playing a game that absolutely depended on having a certain number of players. So now was the perfect time to decorate. 

Jisung got out all the paper, markers, stickers, crayons, all the good art supplies, and they set up on the floor of the basement. 

"Chenji's," 

"Jichen's,"

"This and that!" Chenle finished, already putting his first piece of paper in front of him and getting ready to color.

 "Are we doing these for everyone else?" Jisung asked, not knowing where to start. 

"I'll do yours!" 

Chenle ignored Jisung's want for some organization, and went straight to coloring a chick on the paper, shielding his work from the other. So Jisung pouted and wrote Chenle's name across his first paper in bright green marker, then grabbed the stickers and decorated. 

"I'll do that side of the room, you do the other." 

Jisung separated the two sides with his hands so Chenle could properly see, and the older just nodded. He wasn't really paying attention, but he knew Jisung wouldn't stop until he acknowledged him. Worst case scenario they accidentally do two for someone.

As soon as Chenle finished doing Jisung's for him, he moved onto Kun's, snickering as he wrote "mom" and decorated it with cooking stickers and all sorts of other things. The majority of the bed signs by Chenle involved nicknames or just pictures, whereas the ones by Jisung had a name written as big as he could in the middle of the paper and was surrounded by other pictures. 

Renjun peeked over their shoulders when he noticed them very focused on something in the corner of the room, and he smiled when he saw Johnny's sign with coffee beans drawn on it. They looked like raisins, but the coffee mug kind of made you assume they were coffee beans. 

"Can I join you?" 

"No, you mean." Chenle muttered, and Jisung smacked his shoulder before moving aside the signs they had already finished and made room for him. 

Renjun sat between the two and grabbed a piece of paper, not from the stack they had counted out, though. That would've resulted in someone not getting a sign. But he sat there with them and worked on his own design for a sign to go on the basement door. 

It didn't take Chenle and Jisung that long to finish all twenty-one signs seeing as they got bored after finishing their third one and tried to finish the rest as soon as possible. Twenty-one people was a lot, but remembering whose bed was whose was harder. They taped the signs up on the ends on the beds, double checking with everyone when they were done to make sure they didn't accidentally put a sign on the wrong bed. 

With some of them in Chinese or with nicknames, it was difficult for an outsider to understand who the sign was for, so they had to explain a lot to Renjun when he kept asking what it all meant. He even tried to convince them to let him color his own bed sign, but Jisung had already done it and drew a pentagram for him along with a voodoo doll. 

"Where's Ten? I have a project for him." Mrs. Suh asked, and she decided to actually go down into the basement when she saw the three of them super focused on something. 

"Oh those look so cute!" She ruffled Jisung's hair and then fixed it afterwards. 

"What's up?" Ten asked once he had a minute to step away from the game he was playing. He was the only one of the kids in middle school who didn't have work to do, but that was because he hadn't technically even gone to class yet. 

"You know how you repainted the cafe sign for us a few summers ago?" Ten nodded. "I was hoping you'd be able to do that again. It's not looking too good right now, and I don't trust Johnny with it." 

"Sure." 

So once she left the basement, Ten finished up the game he was playing and sat down with Chenle, Jisung and Renjun and repainted the cafe sign that he had to go up to get. Ten had actually been the one to paint the sign that hung in the door the first time for them, so almost every year he came down for the summer it was his job to fix it if it needed repairs. 

"I didn't know you could draw, little demon." 

"Yeah, my mom signed me up for art classes when I was little."

Little demon and tiny witch doctor were the two more common nicknames Renjun had been given, but he did have Injunnie that was given to him by Jaemin. That one just didn't fit the mysterious theme he had going on, though. 

"I can draw!" Chenle held up the sign he had up in his hands, Lucas's, which had a stick figure drawing of Bella in the middle of it and Xuxi written in Chinese across the whole thing. 

"You can, good job!" Ten patted Chenle's head before the younger ran over to Lucas's bunk bed to tape the sign on it. 

"How's this look?" Renjun slid his rough design for the sign to the basement closer to Ten, and he set down his paintbrush so he could properly examine it. 

"Neo Zone" was written in bright green bubble letters and they were outlined in a deep purple. "Population: 21 Kids" was written beneath that in the same shade of burn your retinas green. A simple yet effective and classy sign that wouldn't attract too much attention hanging on the basement door. 

"Looks good. What happens if more people join the cult?" 

"We're not a cult!" WinWin hadn't even been paying attention to their conversation or what they were doing, but he knew when he had to correct them. 

"Then I'll fix the sign."