"Jay Holder!" I screamed, the face outside of the window staring at me creepily.

Champion Tremaine had shoved a contract into my hands and claimed he would pay for any mental, physical, hospital expenses if needed. He ­­­­­urged me to sign it right then and there – to which I did, under the pressure of the six men staring at me.

To be housed with four (or five, to which I haven't men the fifth yet) men was supposed to be daunting, but the moment I was given a day to "rest before tomorrow's chaos" I went straight into the given room and pushed my cabinet in front of the door.

I placed all the papers on the bed and fell back onto the mattress, sighing. I had to do it for the experience. This was my dream, wasn't it? I loved comics and heroes and now I was granted the opportunity to live and manage them! Oh, won't I be living a real-life comic book journey?

I spent the next hour staring at the papers and trying to memorize them to no avail – too many details. 135 grams of protein. Wait, was it 135 or 1350 grams of protein? Is 1350 grams of protein even possible in a day? How many chicken breasts do they have to eat to gain that—

I saw a quick flash of movement in my peripheral vision and when I turned, I saw a face press up against my window. His stretched-out body was from the rooftop, and I jumped out of the bed with a bunch of bad exclamations before I screamed out his name.

Going to the window, I crossed my arms and tilted my head at him. He tapped on my window twice with a finger and I shook my head, rejecting his request to come in. He frowned and I sighed. Unlocking the window, I slid it open, and he broke into a small smile, his pink hair dusty and dirty. He crawled into my room and slid down onto the ground.

He pounced up, smiling ardently. "I'm bored!"

"Ja—"

"Nana," he corrected, stalking around the room before pointing at the cabinet. "What's that for? Why are you making yourself a prisoner?"

"That was so you guys won't come to bother me, Nana," I said shaking my head, my pigtails shaking.

"Well..." he began, his gaze travelling from the floor to the ceiling of my room. "I'm bored! Chester is playing games with Andy. Royal is practicing his singing. I have no one to play with!"

"How about that guy? The fifth member? Was it Arrow?"

"Arrow with a single "R" and no "W"." Jay smacked his lips, placing his hands on his waist. "He is the most boring one. So, what should we do?"

I probed the back of my teeth with my tongue. I wasn't that tired.

"Hm... Oh, oh, oh!" I raised a finger in the air when an idea popped up. "Let's decorate the room!"

"What room?"

"My room!" I jiggled excitedly before stopping as Jay stared at me. "What? Do you not like art?"

"No..." Jay blinked before saying a statement robotically, as if he was reciting it from mind. "Room decorations are prohibited. Dangerous items such as scissors, cutters, and staplers are to be kept locked away in the storage room due to—"

I made a face. "What are you going to do? Kill me with scissors?"

"Why would I!" Jay yelled out, glaring at me for asking a rhetorical question. "I am a good man!"

"Exactly. Are you going to skin me alive with a cutter?"

Jay took in a deep breath, his cheeks puffing out animatedly. "I believe in God! I am a God-fearing man and I will do no evil!"

"So... where is the storage room?"

Jay's eyes lit up and I asked him how old he was, to which he replied 'twenty-seven, but with a heart of seven!'. For someone who was an adult, he was no where as serious as Champion and Max put together.

"I'm twenty-three, but with a heart of five," I told him, giving him five fingers. He quickly hit my palm with a high-five. "Shall we start?"

After tiptoeing to the storage room because Jay said it would be our little secret, I unlocked it with the code that was in the file given to me from Champion. Grabbing colored papers, markers, and the dangerous stuff: things that could cut and pencils, we headed back to my room.

Closing the door, we began our project. Jay was happily trying to draw a bird that came out looking like a boar while I faked a wow! I sat on the floor, cutting out his drawings when he looked at me eagerly.

"Should we put glitter?" he asked, and I nodded enthusiastically.

Jay had a smile that took up half his face – it was hard to even fear him and it was hard to imagine why anyone would. He would constantly compliment my drawings of flowers though it looked like bobs of obese circles drawn together by a magnet.

"Oooooh," Jay sounded, pressing the big bird (boar) onto my wall to see how it'd look like. He added cuckoo eyes and whiskers.

"Wow, it's a bird with whiskers!" I said and he frowned at me.

"No, those are feathers."

Sitting on the floor, we began talking about what should be the color of the wall. Jay said white was boring, but he wasn't very surprised because the house was boring. Jay used the word boring a lot.

"Royal Blue is Royal's color. Green is Andy's. Yellow is Chester's. Black is Aro's. Mine's pink," he said proudly, ruffling his pastel pink hair. "Like my hair."

"Are your walls pink?" I asked and he said only his blanket was pink, which was sad. "I like pink, too."

His jaw dropped and he grabbed my arm. "Let's color your walls pink!"

"But then you'll be so amazed by how pretty it is and steal my room!" I complained, Jay guffawing.

"You can choose an ugly pink color," he said, beaming even though I was sure there was no such thing as "ugly pink" for him. "This one!"

We did not have any room paint, but we did have watercolors. I told Jay that we didn't have to finish it today.

"I'm glad it's a long-term project – I typically have nothing to do around here."

"So, what do you do when you're bored?"

"I watch Netflix. Most shows are boring. I go do my trainings which is what you must make me do tomorrow, which is also boring. I do the same things over and over again. Stretch, roll, jump, stretch some more. Even food is boring. We each chicken breast. I try to cook pasta, but Champion said it's bad for health."

"Champion seems like a control freak," I commented, and Jay gasped. I panicked for a second, thinking I said something wrong when he punched my shoulder.

"I know right?" he asked, making me realize he had a gossipy nature. "But we're his cash cows."

"How'd you guys meet?" I asked, Jay frowning at the question. His hand froze above the white wall before he shrugged.

"He found me," he said simply. "Seven years ago. Champion has always had a purpose and I think his was to find people just like him. Give them a life."

The door of my room swung open, and we both turned around to see Andy standing by the doorway. He gasped, pointing at us.

"Traitors! You did not invite me!"

Jay dropped his paintbrush, rushing to Andy just as I cried out his name.

"Andy! We didn't mean to—"

"It's not even fun, I promise!" Jay added, patting Andy on the shoulder whose eyes were bouncing back and forth between me and Jay before he smiled. Closing the door behind him, he began observing my messy room.

"This looks like so much fun! We should put some green on there!"

Jay's shoulders slumped and when his eyes met mine, it was certain that our secret was now shared with the youngest of the Superhumans. Having Andy did make things easier, the youngest putting his speed to good use and in no time half the wall was a mix between pink and green.

"Will you look at that!" Andy motioned to the wall proudly as Jay clapped his hands twice. "Are we putting more stuff—"

"Wha—You guys are breaking the rules!" Chester said and we turned to see that we did not notice the newcomer who was wearing a luxury bathrobe over his pajamas. "Scissors, cutters, penci—How dare you three! Royal! They are breaking the rul—"

Andy zoomed up to Chester, covering his mouth and whispering to him about how he was a tattletale. Chester shook him off just in time for Royal to arrive, hands in his pockets. His mouth did a small "o" before he calmly moved closer to us and sat on the floor.

Royal did not say anything, picking up a pair of scissors and cutting the paper, music from his headphones playing loudly. When we did not move, he lifted the right side of the headphones and looked at us.

"What are you doing? Aren't we decorating her wall?"

Before I knew it, it was no longer a secret but a group project. Jay took it well and he was laughing with Chester, admitting that his bird looked like a mythical creature that was a mix between a cat and a pig.

"If only Aro was here," Jay sighed, drawing his animal that was supposed to be a fish but looked like an ostrich.

"Aro doesn't like these kinda things," Andy said sadly. "We don't get to spend time with him."

"Why not?" I asked, adding glitter to Jay's decorations. We ended up making a factory line.

Jay would draw one of his animals, Andy would cut it, I would put glitter, and Chester would stick it up on the wall. Royal, who everyone claimed to have the most artistic ability, was redoing my whole wall.

"He's an introvert. He's also always very stressed out since if he... forks up," Andy whispered the word. "It messes up with our missions. Last time, my suit ripped on a field mission, and it messed with my speed. He doesn't even eat dinner with us anymore."

"I'm sorry to hear that, Andy," I said, and Andy made a sad face. I patted his shoulder. "Maybe I should talk to him sometime? Will he kill me?"

"Most probably. He doesn't like being interrupted." Chester turned back to grab more glue. "All these security cameras and systems are implemented by Aro. The signals you hear in the morning? He installed it. Our system? Completely unhackable."

"One would be stupid to even try to break in, however," Jay said, chuckling.

"Did someone try to break in before?" I asked, Jay nodded.

"Andy tied him up and we hung him from the chandelier," Chester interjected.

I looked up just then to see that the wall was beautifully painted in blurred painting that had pink and purple skies (from me and Jay's attempt), shadowing black mountains, a yellow sun and a stream with trees and forests.

"Royal, you're a natural painter..." I breathed. "It's beautiful."

Royal turned back and blinked at me before breaking into a shy smile. He scratched his nose, green paint smudging on his nose.

"Thanks," he said shyly.

"You're welcome," I said back, turning back to putting more glitter when a thought came to mind about how their dinner was preprepared. "Dinner is at nine, right?"

"Yes," they chorused, none of them looking up since they were so engrossed with what they were doing.

I checked the clock. It was a five in the afternoon. I grabbed my phone, searching the location through an app before finding what I wanted.

"How about we," I began, all of them looking up slowly. "order some pizza?"

"Yes!"

"Pepperoni?"

"With pineapples on top!"

"Only if the crust is crispy, crispy, crispy!"