The Purpletown Emergency Services building was an impressive three-story building, newly built on the edge of town.

It sat on a stretch of land between the busy road and a rocky shoreline, with sweeping ocean views stretching towards the horizon.

To the north stood Lee's DIners, a longtime local favorite that had long marked the informal end of town.

Beyond that stretched the small rural community of Purpletown where Seungwan had been born and raised, not much more than a Main Street and a dozen blocks of residential buildings before a visitor would hit the beach running alongside the coastline.

He loved this town and longed to return to it whenever he left. 

And now he was formally charged with protecting it from fire and other unexpected disasters.

This wasn’t his first time reporting to work at this building. He spent a year on the volunteer fire brigade before leaving for an accelerated firefighter training program in the city.

But this was the first time he would get paid for it, and a thread of doubt was loosely stitched right through his midsection—that he wasn’t ready for this, that it was too much responsibility.

That Seungwan was still, at thirty, too young for this.

Which was objectively just not true. Most of his classmates had been almost ten years younger than him.

Only in Purpletown, where he’d gotten into a fair amount of trouble after his parents died, was he still seen as the Shon Kid. 

It wasn’t even like anyone thought he was still a troublemaker. 

Seungwan simply been following his brother Jongin around, so it had been excused. Adjusting to being raised by his older brothers. He was a good kid who would eventually grow up.

So he’d joined the army, following in the footsteps of Baekhyun, Chanyeol, and Junmyeon.

Jongin had gone in a different direction, but now they were both back in town—and both living with Chanyeol.

More than a decade had passed, and they were both still figuring their lives out.   

Technically, Jongin didn’t live with Chanyeol. He’d bought a garage down at the harbour and was restoring it.

There was an apartment behind the garage, but it was, well, an apartment behind a mechanic’s garage, and hadn’t been updated in thirty years.

So it wasn’t entirely habitable, and more than a year after returning, Jongin didn’t seem to be in a big rush to make the apartment his proper home.

All he cared about was the garage, and his growing clientele for customized muscle cars.

But Jongin wasn’t Seungwan’s problem.

Seungwan was Seungwan’s problem. Like figuring out why he was still standing in the parking lot, even though his first shift started in ten minutes and he wanted to be early.

A familiar truck crunched into the gravel parking lot. 

Had he been waiting, on some subconscious level, for Baekhyun to arrive? Seungwan had checked.

They would both be at work today, although technically his brother wasn’t his supervisor. Baekhyun ran the whole building and managed the paramedics who worked out of it.

The fire department was managed separately. They had one pumper truck stationed here, a single team of four firefighters switching out every twenty-four hours.

 Within the larger region of Daegu, other fire crews and volunteer brigades were based out of in different towns. 

And now, the two Shon brothers, the oldest and the youngest, worked here, a part of small town in Daegu.

“Did you just arrive?” Baekhyun asked, grabbing his coffee and backpack from the passenger seat. 

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“You nervous?” 

“Nope.”

Baekhyun chucked him on the shoulder. “Liar. We’re all nervous at first.”

Seungwan wasn’t sure if he believed his brother. The only thing Baekhyun had ever been outwardly nervous about in his whole life was personal stuffs.

Falling in love with Taeyeon had done a number on him. Having Minjeong, and then Minjeong having Jimin... but work stuff?

Of course, Seungwan had only been a kid when Baekhyun had started his career in emergency services.

Maybe a lifetime ago, Baekhyun had been nervous.

It better not take Seungwan two decades to lose the "what the " feeling inside his chest. He rolled his eyes—maybe at himself, maybe at his brother—and followed Baekhyun inside.  

He’d met two of the three firefighters he would be working with the other day, when he came in to sign his contract and get his certifications photocopied.

Yunho and Changmin were both twenty years into their careers, contemporaries of Baekhyun's, and Seungwan had a sneaking suspicion they were going to treat him with kid gloves for a while.

That was fine, Seungwan would prove himself in time.

But the real challenge would be winning over Minsoo, who drove for their team. He’d been a firefighter for thirty-five years, and could retire any time. 

The first thing he told Seungwan was that his retirement wasn’t going to happen any time soon.

The second was that Minsoo didn’t see anything wrong with the way they’d always been doing things, which Seungwan took to be a reference to the fact they used to send out a truck with just two or three firefighters, and round out their numbers with volunteers.

If there had been any doubt about what Minsoo meant, he came back to it again and again over the course of their shift. By the time the four of them sat down to a dinner Yunho had made, twelve hours into their day, Seungwan had run out of ways to say, “I hear you, but I’m glad to be on the team.”

Seungwan couldn’t deny there were people who had been on the volunteer brigade a lot longer than he had.

But none of them had taken a year to do the required training to be become a full-time firefighter.

None of them had shared a two-bedroom apartment with three other people and counted every last penny so their savings stretched over the entire year in the city.  

He’d earned this position, and he would demonstrate his value to the team in time.

Or now, because as soon as dinner ended, the alarm went off.

They’d had two callouts earlier in the day for minor problems, but the report coming in over the radio was that this was a three-alarm blaze at a rural home.

Fifteen seconds after the call came in, Seungwan dropped down the pole and sprinted to where his gear waited next to the fire truck.

After a year of intense training, this drill was unconscious routine.

He kicked off his shoes and stepped into his boots, already inside his pants. The straps came up next, over his shoulders. Once the pants were on, the balaclava hood went next.

Finally the coat, his thumbs sliding into the protective cuffs. His gloves, helmet, and breathing apparatus would all go on in the truck.  

Less than a minute later, they were buckled in, barking the all-clear to Minsoo so he could get them to the scene.

A ladder truck met them at the farm, both arriving at the same time, and they worked together to account for all members of the family and get the kitchen fire extinguished.

They managed to confine the damage to one part of the home, and while it looked devastating, Seungwan knew they’d saved the structure from complete disaster.

It was late in the night when they were cleared to leave. “Purpletown Pumper 2, heading back to station,” Minsoo reported to dispatch.  

“Roger Pumper 2.”

Back at the station, Minsoo backed the truck in, then they all unbuckled and climbed out. Their gear needed to be sorted out, scrubbed off, and reset for the next call.

“Shon,” Minsoo barked out.  

Seungwan stopped and turned. 

“Good job, kid. Welcome to the team.”

It was a win. It wasn’t the end goal—the kid was still there, tagged on as always—but Seungwan grabbed onto the praise with both hands. “Thanks. That means a lot.”

Seungwan: First shift done.  

Joohyun: How’d it go?

Seungwan: It was busy. We had a kitchen fire. Saved the house, though.  

Joohyun: Good job.

She didn’t call him kid. Maybe she would have once upon a time, but not anymore.