Chapter Text
They left the fish market, their breath steaming in the crisp air. The walk from the Vismarkt to the Grote Markt was short but revealing. Unlike the fluid, water-lined streets of Amsterdam, Groningen felt solid and grounded. It was a rugged mix of medieval brick, 1950s reconstruction, and sleek glass.
Bicycles were everywhere, but they didn’t swarm like angry bees; they flowed like a school of fish.
“It’s young,” Bamby observed, watching a group of students cycle past with backpacks or hockey sticks strapped to their backs. “Everyone looks like they’re late for a lecture.”
“It’s a university city,” Yejun recalled. “The average age is significantly lower here. I think that explains the energy. It’s… bouncy.”
“We could have gone to Keukenhof,” Noah murmured, adjusting his scarf. “We could have been looking at tulips arranged in color-coded rows. Or Zaanse—what’s the name again? To see the windmills. That’s what normal tourists do.”
“Zaanse Schans,” Yejun corrected softly.
“Or Utrecht,” Bamby added, framing a shot of a leaning brick facade. “Miffy the Rabbit is from Utrecht. I could have bought merchandise.”
“But are those places authentic?” Eunho countered, leading them into the vast expanse of the Grote Markt. “Are they the World’s Healthiest City? No. Leo was very specific. He said this place clears the lungs.”
“Who is Leo?” Yejun asked again.
“Look!” Eunho deflected, pointing upward. “We’re here.”
They stopped. Looming over the square was the Martinitoren, or St. Martin’s Tower. It was a weathered giant of grey sandstone and brick, scarred by lightning and wars, standing 97 meters tall. It didn’t look pristine; it looked like it had seen things.
“It’s majestic,” Hamin said, tilting his head back. “It looks tired. I relate to it.”
“That’s Martinitoren. The old,” Eunho nodded. “But the future is hidden behind it. Follow me.”
He led them away from the open expanse of the Grote Markt, guiding them through a narrow gap between the buildings on the eastern side.
They emerged into a smaller, enclosed square—the Nieuwe Markt.
In front of them, rising out of the cobblestones was a monolith.
“What,” Noah asked, craning his neck back so far his spine popped, “is that?”
The Forum was a jagged, soaring shard of sandstone and glass that looked less like a cultural center and more like an alien spacecraft that had parked illegally in the middle of the 17th century. It cut fierce angles against the sky, its sharp lines mocking the traditional brick buildings around it.
“Item Number Three,” Eunho announced, consulting his dossier. “The Forum, ‘The Living Room of Groningen’. It has a library, a cinema, a museum, and…” He scrolled down. “The highest public roof in the city.”
“It looks like a spaceship that got stranded in ancient time,” Bamby whispered, awestruck. “I love it.”
“We climb,” Yejun decided, adjusting his backpack straps. “We secure the high ground. We survey the territory. It’s the most efficient way to see the city without walking through it.”
They entered the building. If the exterior was imposing, the interior was dizzying. A vast, white atrium stretched upward, crisscrossed by a complex web of escalators that sliced through the air like lasers.
The acoustics were far from a library whisper. The central core filled with a chaotic energy—the echo of student chatter, footsteps, and the mechanical whir of the escalators bouncing off the stark white angles.
“It’s loud,” Hamin murmured, looking up at the dizzying height.
“It’s productive noise,” Noah corrected, leading them away from the central void and into the stacks. As they stepped deeper into the book-lined corners, the roar of the atrium faded into a studious, cushioned silence.
Noah took a deep breath of the air, which smelled of paper, conditioned oxygen, and roasted coffee. “Modern civilization. No raw fish. Just knowledge.”
They rode the escalators up. And up. And up.
Bamby turned it into a cinematic sequence, leaning over the rail while Noah gripped his belt loops to prevent him from falling, to film the dizzying drop.
“We are in a sci-fi movie,” Bamby narrated to his camera. “And we are currently ascending to the mothership.”
When they finally reached the rooftop terrace, the wind introduced itself personally.
It wasn’t a breeze. It was the North Sea greeting them with a tackle.
“MY HAIR!” Bamby screamed as his perfectly styled hair was blasted into a vertical spike.
“Stable base!” Hamin shouted over the roar, planting his feet wide to avoid being blown back into the automatic doors.
They shuffled to the glass barrier. The view, however, silenced their complaints.
Groningen lay spread out below them like a toy village. The red terracotta rooftops glowed in the afternoon sun. To their left, the Martinitoren rose majestically, its grey stone weathered by centuries of storms, standing guard over the city like a tired old knight.
“It’s so flat,” Yejun shouted over the wind, pointing at the horizon where the city dissolved into endless green fields. “You can see the curvature of the earth!”
“We made the right choice,” Bamby yelled, pointing at the horizon. “Eindhoven is just technology! Den Haag is just politics! This… this is perspective!”
“You can see the cows!” Yejun corrected, squinting. “Eunho was right. The cows are real.”
Yejun leaned against the glass, shielding his eyes. He looked at the chaos of the medieval streets below, now organized into a neat map from this height. He looked at his friends—hair blowing in their faces, shivering, but smiling.
“This,” Yejun shouted over the wind, “is optimal sightseeing! Maximum visual coverage! Minimum effort!”
“I’m cold!” Noah shouted back, hugging himself. “Can we go to the quiet place now?”
They descended from the windy summit and headed for the quietest stop on Eunho’s friend’s list: The Prinsentuin.
If the Forum was the future, the Prinsentuin was the past frozen in amber.
They walked through a small arched gate and entered a Renaissance garden that seemed to exist in a vacuum of silence. The wind died instantly, blocked by high brick walls. The air here was damp and smelled of wet earth and old boxwood hedges. Perfectly manicured shrubs formed geometric mazes, and tunnels of rose vines created green hallways.
“Oh,” Hamin exhaled. The tension left his shoulders instantly.
He walked to a white bench nestled under a trellis of rose vines, currently dormant for winter but still architectural. He sat down. He stared at a perfectly square hedge.
“This is it,” Hamin said softly. “This is the frequency.”
“It’s a hedge maze,” Eunho noted, looking for a snack vendor that didn’t exist. “Where is the food?”
“There’s no food, honey,” Hamin said, closing his eyes. “There’s only photosynthesis here.”
Yejun sat next to Hamin. He opened his binder, not to check a schedule, but just to use it as a coaster for his water bottle.
“We did it,” Yejun whispered. “We actually executed a plan. We traveled to a new city. We saw art. We ate culture. We saw a view. And nobody died.”
“The day isn’t over yet,” Noah warned, sanitizing his hands after touching the garden gate. “But… statistically, the probability of disaster has dropped significantly.”
“Hyung,” Eunho sat on the grass, ignoring Noah’s gasp about dampness. “My friend was right. This city is healthy. I feel… reset.”
Yejun looked at his watch. It was 15:30. Technically, they should head to the train station now to return to Amsterdam for dinner.
He looked at Eunho, who was rolling in the grass. He looked at Bamby, who was filming the light. He looked at Hamin, who was practically asleep.
“Change of plans,” Yejun announced.
The group froze. Hamin opened his eyes at the speed of a sloth crossing the street.
“We’re extending the mission,” Yejun declared. “Eunho-ya, check the suggestions. Is there a dinner or nature protocol?”
Eunho scrambled for his phone, grinning. “We haven’t done the Eierbal yet, hyung. Or the scenic walk.”
“Then we walk,” Yejun stood up. “Train is pushed to 22:00. Lead the way, Eunho-ya.”
Eunho led them west, following the curve of the canal that bordered the city center.
“Noorderplantsoen,” Eunho announced as they reached the edge of a tree-lined perimeter. “It’s the big park. Leo says it’s where the students go to contemplate their existence—or just drink cheap beer until they forget it.”
“Noorder— How long did you practice saying that word?” Noah asked, walking past Eunho to the park.
Yejun didn’t hesitate, letting out a loud, unashamed dad laugh. Hamin pursed his lips, his shoulders shaking as he fought to keep a straight face, while ignoring the disappointed stare Eunho was drilling into the back of Noah’s head.
They entered, and immediately, the city noise fell away, replaced by the crunch of gravel under their boots and the rustle of wind in ancient branches.
It wasn’t just a park; it was an English landscape painting come to life. Because the park was built on the remains of the old 17th-century city walls, the ground actually rose and fell in gentle, rolling hills—a topographical shock after aggressive flatness just a day prior.
Curving ponds, remnants of the old defensive moats, wound through the park like dark ribbons. Massive weeping willows dipped their branches into the water, and centuries-old oaks created a high, cathedral-like canopy that filtered the late afternoon sun into dappled pools of gold on the grass.
“It’s organic,” Hamin noted, stopping on a small wooden bridge. He leaned over the rail, watching a mallard duck drift silently across the glossy, dark surface. “The Prinsentuin was geometry. It was control. This… is flow.”
“It’s the diffusion,” Bamby whispered, his camera raised. He wasn’t filming his team members; he was filming the way the afternoon sun pierced through the high canopy of the oaks, creating visible shafts of light in the mist rising from the water.
“The leaves are acting like a giant softbox,” Bamby murmured, adjusting his ISO. “Hamin-ah, turn your head left. Catch that light beam. Yes. Melancholy. Give me ‘lost poet’.”
They walked deeper into the park. Despite the chill, the grassy slopes were dotted with students. Groups of young people in denim jackets and oversized scarves sat in circles on the grass, surrounded by open textbooks, bicycles lying in heaps, and bottles of wine.
“They look so… unbothered,” Noah observed, side-stepping a Golden Retriever that was happily chasing a stick. “They’re sitting on the ground. In March—no, early April. Do they not fear hypothermia? Or ants?”
“They’re young,” Yejun said, adjusting his backpack. He watched a group of students laughing as they tried to balance a slackline between two trees. “They have thermal immunity.”
Yejun took a deep breath. The air here tasted different than the city center—it smelled of damp earth, decaying leaves, and fresh water. It was a heavy, grounding scent. For the first time all day, he forgot about the spreadsheet in his bag. He forgot about the train schedule. He just felt the cold air in his lungs and watched the light shift on the water.
“Leo was right,” Yejun admitted quietly. “It does clear the lungs.”
By 18:00, the sun had begun its slow, lazy descent, casting long shadows across the city. They looped back toward the center, but Eunho stopped them at the canal.
“Item Number Five,” Eunho checked his phone. “Hoge der A. The aesthetic cooldown.”
If the Forum was the future, this street was the past. They walked along the canal, lined with tall, stately warehouses from the Hanseatic era. Ships with wooden masts were moored in the dark water, their rigging clinking softly in the breeze. The brick facades were warm and weathered, glowing soft orange as the sun began to set.
“This is the shot,” Bamby whispered, framing a picture of Hamin walking under an old streetlamp. “The light here… it’s softer than Amsterdam. It’s less aggressive.”
“It’s quiet,” Noah added, walking close to the building wall to avoid the water’s edge. “I like that the boats aren’t moving. They are responsible boats.”
By the time the sun vanished, the cold had returned with a vengeance, and with it, a primal hunger.
“Okay,” Eunho rubbed his hands together. “Now, we execute the culinary challenge. Phase One: The Eierbal.”
They looped back to the corner of the Grote Markt, to the glowing yellow beacon of Snack Hoek.
Yejun stopped on the pavement, mesmerized.
It wasn’t a counter service. One entire wall was lined with rows of small, glass-doored cubicles, glowing under warm heat lamps. Inside each little box sat a snack—frikandel, krokets, and the legendary eierbal—waiting like prizes in an arcade game.
“It’s… an automatic,” Yejun whispered. “What a pinnacle of human efficiency. No small talk. Just coin, open, eat.”
They tapped their cards. Click. The little glass doors popped open. They pulled out the hot, heavy, breaded spheres.
“It’s a planet,” Bamby whispered, blowing on his fingertips. “A deep-fried planet.”
Hamin didn’t wait. He took a massive bite. A puff of steam escaped his mouth, smelling of spices.
“It’s an egg,” Hamin mumbled, eyes widening as he chewed. “Inside ragout. Inside a crust. It’s breakfast and dinner in one sphere.”
Eunho bit into his own, wincing as the molten filling hit his tongue. “Curry,” he wheezed, fanning his mouth. “It’s curry ragout. Hot. Very hot.”
He swallowed, wiping the golden crumbs from his lip with the back of his hand. “But effective. I feel my energy restoring.”
They walked out of the cramped corner, stepping onto the open cobblestones of the Grote Markt to let their snacks cool in the evening wind.
“That was merely the appetizer,” Eunho announced, crumpling his napkin. “Phase Two is waiting.”
He turned and pointed to the massive, sprawling building that dominated the entire southern side of the square. From this angle, the vast terrace, fortified by high glass windbreaks and a canopy of massive cream-colored parasols, stretched out like a luxury bunker.
“De Drie Gezusters,” Eunho declared.
“It looks like a mansion,” Yejun squinted at the rows of windows.
“It’s a pub,” Eunho corrected. “The biggest in Europe, allegedly.”
They entered. The transition was immediate. They went from the biting wind of the square into a warm, dim labyrinth that smelled of spilled beer, rich stew, and centuries of conversation. Dark wood, stained glass, velvet booths, and winding staircases created an atmosphere that was half Harry Potter common room, half 19th-century salon.
They found a circular booth in the back. They ordered steaks, stews, and local beers (and a sparkling water for Noah).
“To Groningen,” Yejun toasted, raising his glass. “The city of wind, fried eggs, and surprisingly good parks.”
“To Leo,” Bamby added, clinking his glass against Eunho’s. “The imaginary friend who actually has good taste.”
“He’s real!” Eunho insisted, cutting his steak. “And you’re welcome.”
They ate until they were stuffed. The warmth of the pub, the heavy food, and the exhaustion of the day settled over them like a weighted blanket. It was 20:30. The train back to Amsterdam was at 22:19. They had plenty of time.
“We should move,” Yejun suggested weakly, sinking deeper into the velvet booth.
“One more drink?” Hamin asked.
“No,” Eunho stood up. “I hear something.”
Drifting down from a private room upstairs came the faint, off-key strain of Mr. Brightside.
Bamby’s eyes lit up. “Karaoke.”
“No,” Yejun said firmly. “Bamby-ya, no. We have a train.”
“Just one song, hyung!” Bamby pleaded, already moving toward the sound. “We need to digest! Singing burns calories!”
Ten minutes later, Plan B Creative was inside a private booth that smelled faintly of lemon cleaner, stale pilsner, and bad decisions.
“One hour,” Yejun negotiated, loosening his scarf. “We have a train to catch at 22:19 sharp.”
They sang randoms.
Eunho rapped Eminem’s Lose Yourself with terrifying intensity, veins popping in his neck. Noah sang Bohemian Rhapsody with so much vibrato he had to hold onto the table for stability. Yejun and Hamin did a duet of a Backstreet Boys anthem, complete with the finger-pointing choreography.
And then, Bamby took the mic. He selected She’s Gone by Steelheart.
“Bamby-ya, no,” Noah warned. “That’s a lung-collapse hazard.”
Bamby didn’t listen. He climbed onto the sticky leather sofa. He closed his eyes. He hit the high notes with such piercing clarity that the Dutch students in the hallway stopped walking and pressed their faces against the glass door to watch.
The room exploded. Eunho was jumping. Hamin was headbanging. Yejun was playing air guitar on a spoon.
The song ended. They collapsed on the sofas, sweating and laughing.
“That,” Yejun wheezed, wiping his forehead, “was cathartic.”
“What time is it?” Noah asked, reaching for his water.
Yejun glanced at his watch. He froze. He tapped the face of the watch, hoping it was broken.
It read 22:07.
“RUN!” Yejun screamed, leaping over the table.
The transition from “Rock Gods” to “Sprinting Athletes” was instantaneous.
They burst out of the bar. They hit the Grote Markt running.
“Ten minutes!” Yejun yelled.
“Hyung! I’m too full!” Hamin groaned, clutching his stomach where the steak and Eierbal were currently warring.
“Ignore the physics!” Eunho shouted.
They sprinted down the Herestraat. The shops were dark, and their footsteps echoed like gunfire off the brick facades. They flew past the closed clothing stores, dodging the occasional confused cyclist.
Noah was already lagging. “I hate this,” he wheezed, his perfectly styled hair now a total disaster. “I’m a strategist. I’m not even a marathon runner. Why are we always running?”
“Because you insisted on singing the opera part of Bohemian Rhapsody twice!” Bamby yelled back, clutching his camera bag like a football.
They burst onto the Hereplein, lungs burning. Ahead lay the final stage before the station: the Herebrug.
It wasn’t the artistic museum bridge they had admired earlier. It was just a wide, flat span of asphalt and stone over the black water of the canal. Across the bridge, the station loomed like a fortress.
Its massive red-brick façade was glowing under the floodlights, a 19th-century palace mocking their modern incompetence.
“Run, Bamby-ya!”
“I’m running! But the camera bag! It’s dragging me down!”
They pounded across the bridge, the canal water black and silent beneath them. They could see the station clock ahead.
22:17.
“One minute!” Yejun yelled, pretty much to himself.
They hit the station doors, skidding on the tiles. Gates. Stairs.
They collapsed onto the platform just as the conductor raised the whistle to his lips.
“WAIT!” Eunho screamed, waving his arms.
The conductor paused. He smirked but eventually held the door.
They threw themselves into the carriage, piling onto the floor in a tangle of limbs.
Hisss. The doors locked. The train lurched forward.
For five minutes, the only sound in the carriage was the collective gasping of five men who had nearly died of cardio-induced indigestion.
“We made it,” Yejun whispered to the ceiling of the train car. “We are alive.”
“I think I pulled a muscle,” Noah groaned, checking his pulse. “And I touched the door handle. Unsanitized.”
They dragged themselves into seats. The train ride back to Amsterdam was quiet and dark. The adrenaline faded, leaving a heavy, satisfied exhaustion.
Yejun watched the black window, seeing only his own reflection. He looked wrecked. But he was smiling.
We can do this, Yejun thought. We survived the bicycle anarchy. We survived the raw herring. We survived the Eierbal. We survived the karaoke sprint. Rome is just ruins and pasta. How hard can it be?
Across the aisle, Eunho’s phone buzzed. He checked the Discord message.
[MediocreLeo]: Did you try the Eierbal?
Eunho smiled. He looked at the group, all dozing peacefully. He typed back.
[SilverWolf]: Mission accomplished. It was heavy. It was weird. But Hamin ate two. And we shut down the karaoke booth. 10/10 would raid again.
He put his phone away. Groningen had been a good side quest. But the main boss was waiting in Italy.