"Your middle name is 'Niall'?" Alex asked, curiosity studded in his eyes.

"It is," Tate said proudly. "Fancy right?" Alex nodded in agreement.

"Fancy schmancy. Get on with the story already," Lev goaded.

Tate flashed a sour look, though he turned his head away so Lev couldn't see it. "All-right. Soup-to-nuts — the short version. If I remember correctly, it was just about a week after Ziro and Lev met Syn, when my mom told me she and my dad were getting a divorce. As you all know my dad wasn't about the bug life, so he decided to split. And I guess you could say that at the tender age of eleven, we can be desperate for acceptance or whatnot from our parents. I was a bit too desperate, and angry, so much that I...took the life of an adult long-tailed Silverfish."

Alex tried to picture the gruesome scene. "That's a bug?"

"It is," Tate sighed. "She was. I regretted it the second I saw her pulverized body. The last thing I wanted to do was take out all my unhappiness on a helpless creature that I adored so much. Then my mom came in, saw what I'd done, told me the usual 'that everything was gonna be okay'. So I took a self-imposed time-out at Riviam Point, and that's when it bashed me over the head."

"What?" Alex asked worry glazing his eyes.

"An idea," Tate revealed.

In an instant, the worry had vanished from Alex's eyes, replaced by sheen amazement. "You don't say."

"But I do say, A.P. And let me say, it was stupid, yet ingenious. So the next day, last period, math pop-quiz...I unleashed a swarm."

Alex was at the edge of his seat. "Of what?"

Tate's splayed grin was gratifying. "You name it. Roaches, beetles, caterpillars, centipedes, spiders — a whole army rising from the bookshelves, cabinets, desks and drawers — it was a ball. It brings a tear to my eye that you weren't around then to witness it, A.P. You really had to see it...beautiful, bug-filled pandemonium. Maybe one day-"

"No," Evan suddenly said.

"Oh come on Eva, it wasn't that bad. You weren't even afraid of them, remember?"

"You were there?" Alex asked Evan.

"Unfortunately. Class six-five was a catastrophe," she said.

"A very fun catastrophe," Tate grinned. "My brilliant idea led to the fateful meeting of five — Ziro, Carsyn, Lev, Evan and me. And you have no idea how touched I was when Evan told me just how 'brilliant' I was for pulling that off."

"Shut up. Puberty was being an asshole," Evan groaned.

"Details, details. Anyways, after things calmed down and I was sentenced to a three day suspension, Ziro came to me, also impressed by the bug-rager, and asked me two questions: about my affection for insects, and whether I'd ever hurt them. Short answer for the second one — never again. And, Eva?"

"Uhm, yeah. So, Ziro found me later too. I was the only girl besides Syn who wasn't freaked out by the whole bug chaos, so he asked me if there was anything I was scared of."

"...swimming," Alex softly noted, recalling his and Evan's conversation from weeks ago under the drizzling and drab sky.

"Swimming," Evan confirmed.

"How'd you know that?" Lev asked Alex.

"Blue gets me is all. And I get him," Evan teased. Alex threw an arm around Lev and pulled him close to soothe his likely vexed state. "Ok, that was fun. Remi, sigues tú."

Jeremi hummed again as he gulped down the last of his sandwich. "Kay, finally. So, like two weeks after that, my dad and I moved to Moonhaven. We didn't have much stuff then, so unpacking didn't take long. The day was still young so Frances and I decided to do some exploring."

"You had Frances back then?" Alex asked.

"Yeah, since I was ten. I begged my dad for a whole year before I finally got him. He's my partner in crime."

"Ehem," Tate grunted from one spot over.

"Oh yeah, and Tick is my second partner in crime." A stir of laughter erupted through the group, while an irked Tate resumed eating his grilled cheese. "So off we went, Frances and me. Before we knew it the sun was setting and we were definitely lost. When the sun was totally gone, we found ourselves in front of the spookiest looking house we'd ever seen — Umbramoor Manor. The daring explorer in me convinced me to check it out, but before I got to the front door, this kid comes out of nowhere."

"He thought I was a ghost," Ziro added, amusement in his tone.

Alex chuckled, "w-what?"

"Hey dude, as you sow, you shall reap," Jeremi intoned, glancing at Ziro with mock skepticism, to which Ziro shrugged his ignorance. "Anyway, after he played his little ghost game on me and I introduced myself, he asked me a few things. Somethin' about...hmm, uh what was it again?"

"Are you now feeling anxious that you might not be able to find your way back home? Have you ever gone on any adventures before this one?" Ziro phrased.

"Yeah, that was it! Go-mahb-da (Go-mab-da), amigo!"

Carsyn giggled, as did Alex, and even Ziro grinned to himself. "Close enough..." he said.

"So, my answers: call me a mainstream commonplace main character, but I had hope that if I couldn't find my way back, my dad could definitely find me. Cuz we're family, you know?"

"Mainstream commonplace main character," uttered the rest of the group in bland unison, before rapturous grins broke out all around.

Jeremi scoffed, ignoring them as he went on. "And, that was actually the first adventure that Frances and me have gone on, and I planned to go on a bunch more. And then, there was even a third question."

"Seriously? What was it?" Alex curiously asked.

"He asked if Frances tagged along wherever I went. Of course I said yes. Never leave anyone behind is my motto, you know?"

"I thought your motto was 'all play and no work'?" Nyne said.

Jeremi chuckled to himself. "It is. I have many mottos. I'm a pretty all-rounder guy. Get that from my dad. But anyway, later that night Ziro offered to let me come to his place and call my dad to pick me up. When we got inside, that was when I came face-to-face with five other kids."

"He thought they were all ghosts too," Ziro commented again, gesturing around at the rest of the group.

Alex laughed, "dude, Remi..."

"Well can you blame me? I heard so many freaky rumours about Moonhaven before getting there, and they all had this fetish for playing ghost games on me. But when Lev slammed me so hard my forehead that I realized they weren't members of the undead after all."

Alex rotated himself partway on the bench to stare at Lev. "Have you no mercy?"

Slouched forward with his arms leaning on the tabletop, Lev fiddled with the spike-bead earring on his right ear. "Not when someone calls me a ghost."

Jeremi chuckled again. "Hey, the ends justify the means, or something like that. So I decided to stay a while, get to know the new people in my life. Ms. Acera called my dad and let him know that I was hanging out there for a while, and before long it became a regular thing. Even all our parents started hanging out together a lot. Weird, but that's life, you know?"

Alex laughed along too. "Noted. But hey, Nyne, you and Six must've met the group before Jeremi came along then, right?"

"Yes, I think it was the week after Tick's bug-bombardment that we met Ziro. Fortunately though, Six wasn't in class six-five, but six-nine instead. Oh the odds, the memories! We should do this more often, recount the tales of how we came to know one another. Doesn't it bring a rush of nostalgia? I got chills just listening to you all."

"No thanks," Lev mumbled.

"Blech," Evan grumbled.

"Nah sis," Jeremi muttered through chewed up potato chips.

"절대 아냐! (Cheolt-dae an-ya)" Carsyn protested.

"Yeah, hopefully this is the last time we'll ever have to do this. It gets really annoying, even with shortened versions," Tate concluded. There was a round of concurring head-nods from Lev, Evan, Jeremi, Carsyn and Tate.

Both Alex, and even Ziro broke out into an ebullient fit of laughter. Nyne scowled, but soon joined in the round.

A shrill bell melody then reverberated throughout the auditorium, and one by one students began their slothful treks out of the room and onto their classes. The group rallied their belongings and got up to do the same thing, albeit, much slower.

"Lex," Ziro called.

Alex paused midway from getting up, lunch tray held by edge in one hand, and looked over to Ziro. Lev took the tray from Alex, making him glance over and see that Lev had also taken hold of his backpack. He nodded once as some kind of confirmation, but Alex thought that was meant for him until he glanced back and saw that it was really meant for Ziro, who returned the sole nod.

After the exchange, Lev ruffled Alex's hair before turning away and setting off past the auditorium doors. The rest of the group aimlessly followed along, quietly waving a brief farewell to Alex as they wandered towards their classes too.

Ziro ambled around the table and gave Alex a slack pat on his shoulder. "미안해 (Mianhae)."

Alex blinked a few times, bemused, before finally processing the foreign word. "You're...sorry? For what?"

"With everyone else...I asked them the questions separately, in private. With you, I just pressured you into telling everyone something personal as soon as you walked into Halcyon."

Heat stirred in Alex's cheeks as he uttered an awkward laugh. He hadn't known Ziro for long, though it still felt out of the ordinary for someone as resolute as him to apologize for anything, at least to Alex it did.

"W-what? N-no — hey, not once have I felt pressured to do something that you asked me to do. Usually it was just more like 'intense on-the-spot moments'. And it all worked out so far, so don't worry about it, Z."

"Despite that, it wasn't cool. I don't want to do that again."

An elated grin crept onto Alex's lips. "Again?"

A gruff sound of dismissal. "...nevermind. I've said what I had to say. Go to your class." Alex kept his grin plastered on as Ziro marched off, but he stopped in his tracks after a few steps and turned back. "And don't call me 'Z'."

"Aw, why not?"

"Just, no."

"Okay, okay, how about... 'Zero'?"

Ziro blinked a few times, confused. "That's just my name."

"Nope. It's with an 'E' instead of an 'I', our own inside joke." Alex winked at him, his grin escalating.

Ziro shook his head, a grin of his own appearing gradually. "See you after school." He turned away yet again, definitively this time, his backpack thrown on, and waved goodbye without a glance back, and Alex waved to him too despite Ziro looking away.

"Goodbye, Zero!" he yelled just as Ziro had made it to the exit and bumped wrists with Lev who'd been waiting by the door.

Still shaking his head, Ziro left amused as he disappeared from sight, and Lev met Alex halfway as he headed for the doors too. Alex didn't retrieve his backpack from Lev, instead wrapping his arm around his neck, while Lev managed to swing his own arm around Alex's waist, and they finally started down the path to class, waist-to waist. The two had Home-Economics together, and though they both agreed that it was a strange time for the subject to take place, Alex couldn't deny the opportunity to attend a class involving food.

"What was that about?" Lev asked him.

Alex realized he'd meant the goodbye with Ziro. He shrugged looking innocent, his grin still full-blown. "It's an inside thing."