Tilted (10/15)
<<
“But I don’t understand. Sehun fired you?” Joonmyun gaped at Yixing, who’d just walked through the door and delivered the news.
Yixing nodded solemnly and Joonmyun immediately put water on the stove to make tea.
“But why? Actually, it doesn’t even matter, he can’t fire you. He’s not in charge of the hiring and firing, I am. I’ll talk some sense into him.”
Yixing slid into a chair at the table. “You don’t have to do that, hyung, I actually...think it’s better if I leave the company.”
Joonmyun sat down too. “Do you want to tell me what happened?”
“It’s just...I’m not a good fit for this job,” Yixing said, staring at his hands in his lap. “I knew that from the beginning.”
“But I thought it was going well.” Joonmyun pursed his lips, watching him. He didn’t want to press Yixing any further, but he didn’t like seeing him give up like this. “I’ll respect your decision, just...maybe take some time to think about it?”
Yixing nodded and Joonmyun accepted that that was the best he was going to get for now. They drank their tea in relative silence until Yixing announced he was going to bed. Joonmyun stayed sitting at the kitchen table for a while longer, just thinking. About Yixing, and about Lu Han, and about how he had no idea where to go from here.
The sudden vibration of his phone on the table startled him. He looked down to see an incoming call from a blocked number. He curled his hand around the phone, getting up to glance around the corner at Yixing’s room and he made sure the door was closed before he answered it.
“Hello?”
“Good evening, Joonmyun. Are you free to have a little chat?” Lu Han’s voice asked on the other line.
“Yes?” Joonmyun said, the word coming out like a question as he looked at Yixing’s closed door again. “What about?”
“Not over the phone,” said Lu Han. “Come to my office.”
“Now?” Joonmyun confirmed, glancing at the clock. It was getting close to midnight already.
“Yes, now. I don’t exactly work a 9 to 5, Joonmyun.”
“Right…”
“So is that a yes?” Lu Han demanded.
“Yes,” said Joonmyun quickly. “I’ll be there.”
The call ended and Joonmyun quietly shuffled over to the door to put his jacket on, even carefully closing his hand around his keys so they wouldn’t jangle too loudly. It was an odd feeling, sneaking out of his own apartment.
He reached Lu Han’s office ten minutes later and found the door to the building unlocked. Lu Han let him in to the office and they took their usual seats across from each other.
“So, you knew Yixing was out with Oh Sehun tonight?” was Lu Han’s opening line. Joonmyun nodded. “Did you know they were on a date?”
Joonmyun took such a sudden breath that he almost choked on air. “What? No.” He watched Lu Han for a sign that he was going to elaborate, but his expression remained infuriatingly blank. “How long has this been going on?”
“It was their first date,” Lu Han clarified. “But I don’t think there’s going to be another one.”
Joonmyun considered this. “How is this relevant to Yixing’s secret? ...Well, his other secret, I mean.”
“It’s not, really.”
Joonmyun laughed in something like frustration. “Why even mention it, then?”
Lu Han’s mouth twisted to the side as he looked at Joonmyun. “It’s relevant to you, isn’t it?”
Joonmyun didn’t know what to say. He watched as Lu Han took a piece of computer paper, ripped it into small sections, and began folding them into tiny paper stars.
“Were you ever planning on telling Yixing how you felt?” he asked next, his voice surprisingly gentle.
“No,” Joonmyun said automatically, then amended, “...well, maybe. Someday. I know it sounds cliche, but I didn’t want to ruin what we had.” Lu Han said nothing and Joonmyun felt like he needed to keep talking to fill the silence. “And...I don’t know why I’m telling you this. You’re not a therapist.”
“No. I’m not.” Lu Han held one of his paper stars up to the light and dropped it in a clear jar on his desk that was already full of them.
“I bet some people make you feel like one, though,” Joonmyun thought out loud.
“Oh yeah,” Lu Han said, laughing. “You wouldn’t believe some of the sob stories I hear.”
“What did they talk about?” Joonmyun asked, trying to steer the conversation back on track.
“Oh, all kinds of things. I had one client, a young woman who suspected her husband was cheating on her, and it turned out he was...with her ex-boyfriend. And then there was one time--”
“I meant Yixing and Sehun,” Joonmyun cut in before Lu Han could tell another story. “Did he tell Sehun anything...you know...important, that he hasn’t told me?”
“Not...really,” Lu Han said vaguely. “He did pull an intriguing sort of stunt though, while he was alone at their table. He texted me from Sehun’s phone, pretending to be him.”
Joonmyun could practically feel his eyes widening with every word. “Wait, what? You and Sehun know each other?”
“Ah, yes. Did I forget to mention that?”
“And Yixing knows who you are?” Joonmyun was starting to hate it how Lu Han remained so calm while Joonmyun was floundering in his sea of confusion.
“No, he doesn’t know who I am. But apparently he wants to.” Lu Han sighed.
“Explain, please,” said Joonmyun, not wanting to put up with any more of Lu Han’s ambiguity. “And if you knew it wasn’t Sehun texting you, what did you do?”
“Texted him back like I didn’t know a thing, of course,” Lu Han said, like it was obvious. Then he went on, “Sehun and I are old friends. Our families know each other. That part is rather uninteresting.” Joonmyun pressed his lips together, feeling like maybe it was more interesting than Lu Han let on.
“However... why is Yixing trying to find out how Sehun knows me, and for some reason won’t just ask him? That’s the part that I called you here to talk about.” Lu Han dropped the rest of the paper stars he’d made into the jar.
“Why? What does it mean?” Joonmyun asked.
Lu Han looked at him seriously. “It means he has an agenda. He’s keeping something from everyone, Joonmyun, not just you, and I’d suggest you distance yourself from him while I get to the bottom of it. The investigation is in a delicate place right now and I don’t want you questioning him. It might make him suspicious and we don’t need that.”
“What? But...wait a minute.” Joonmyun stood up suddenly, surprising himself. “If Sehun knows you, what if he notices you following him and Yixing around?”
Lu Han laughed. “Do you really think I don’t know how to do my job?”
“No. I guess I shouldn’t have...um...sorry.” Joonmyun was about to sit back down, embarrassed by getting carried away, but then Lu Han stood up too, placing his hands flat on the desk in front of him.
“It’s okay. I understand your concern, but it’s like I said. I don’t think Yixing and Sehun will be seeing each other anymore. I don’t think we need to worry about it.”
Joonmyun really wanted to ask what happened in more detail and also how Yixing had gotten himself fired, but he knew none of that really had anything to do with what he’d asked Lu Han to find out and he forced himself to hold his tongue. “Can’t you tell me what you think this ‘agenda’ is?”
Lu Han walked around to the front of his desk and stretched one of his hands out toward Joonmyun. He stared at it in perplexity, thinking maybe he was about to pluck a piece of lint from his shirt, but then Lu Han’s hand landed on Joonmyun’s shoulder and he stared at it for a moment before he stared back up at Lu Han’s face instead.
“Joonmyun, there are going to be times throughout this investigation that I’m going to have to ask you to trust me. This is one of those times.”
The hand fell away slowly and Joonmyun watched it return to Lu Han’s side. His shoulder was still warm from where it had been a moment ago and again, he seemed to have lost the ability to organize his thoughts clearly enough to voice them.
“Do you trust me?” Lu Han asked, and his eyes were sparkling again. They were so bright in the light of the office and they were standing so close that Joonmyun could see his reflection in them. “Can you do what I asked you to do?”
Lu Han smiled then, but Joonmyun thought it was more of a sad expression. “To be blunt, Joonmyun, the priority here isn’t to keep you from getting hurt. But please, don’t ever think that means I don’t care. Because I...do.”
Joonmyun had to replay what Lu Han had just said a few times to himself before the meaning really sunk in. Joonmyun looked at him and he wanted to be able to trust Lu Han, to let him keep his promises like he kept those paper stars in the jar on his desk.
“I trust you,” he said.
*
“Work hasn’t been the same without you, Xing,” Chanyeol said. They were backstage again, behind the black curtain and in front of the new mirror Jongdae and Chanyeol had pooled their money to buy after the earthquake destroyed their old one.
“I’m sure that’s not true,” Yixing said, trying to laugh it off. “I wasn’t really there for that long.”
“I know, but I got used to your presence,” Chanyeol lamented. “Now it’s just me, Joonmyun, and occasionally Jongin at lunch, and I have no one to discuss music with.”
“You have me, though,” Jongdae pouted, poking Chanyeol’s cheek with the teeth of a comb.
Chanyeol snatched it out of Jongdae’s hand and used it to part his hair. “The word discuss implies an exchange of ideas between people, Jongdae. With you, I can barely get a word in edgewise.”
“That’s not true,” Jongdae argued. “I’m a very good listener. I’ll have you know…”
“Here comes another monologue,” Chanyeol said, turning to Yixing again as Jongdae went on. “Anyway, the point is that we miss you at the company, Yixing. Is there no chance you’ll come back? You could be my assistant, instead. It’d be great! I’m sure Joonmyun would go for the idea.”
“I don’t know. I’d have to think about it.”
“And you’d be a couple floors away from Oh Sehun, Master of Gloom and Doom,” Chanyeol added.
“Sehun’s not a bad guy,” said Yixing, looking past Chanyeol at his own reflection in the mirror, saw his choppy black hair splayed over his forehead, and he moved it aside a little. It was funny how it had been almost exactly a year now since he’d stumbled into this world, leaving behind everything connected to his old self, but he still looked the same as he did in his old photos from home.
“Yah, did you two even hear a word I said?” Jongdae cried out.
Chanyeol rolled his eyes. “Now you know how I feel.”
*
Surprisingly, Joonmyun seemed indifferent to the idea of Yixing becoming Chanyeol’s assistant. Chanyeol worked in the creative department, which was slightly more in line with Yixing’s actual interests and he hoped it would support his “not a good fit” story well enough, but he couldn’t read whatever Joonmyun wasn’t saying between the thin lines of his lips.
“I’m just going to try it out,” Yixing told him, acting nonchalant as well. “I might not take the job.”
The first thing Chanyeol had him do during his “sidekick trial period,” as Chanyeol kept calling it (“‘Assistant’ makes it sound like there’s such a power differential. You’d be more like a sidekick!”), was make copies.
“I know this must feel pretty familiar right now, and probably not in a good way,” Chanyeol told him as Yixing lingered in the doorway with his arms full of paper, “but I promise, you won’t be doing this kind of stuff all the time.”
Truthfully, Yixing didn’t mind making copies and never had, but he just smiled with his dimple showing to make Chanyeol happy and then headed to the copy room. The boring task was actually somewhat of a comfort at this point. It was the first time he’d set foot in this building since…
Yixing attempted to focus all his mental energy on aligning the paper in the machine instead of remembering kissing Sehun on the floor of his dark office again, but it was a little bit like trying not to think about pandas. As long as you were concentrating on not thinking about them, you were still thinking about them.
He hoisted himself up to sit on the table nearby, swinging his legs and reading all the notices on the walls for entertainment as he waited for the machine to spit out enough papers to bring back to Chanyeol. It was strange to be in this building again, doing the same tasks as he used to, but not sharing an office with Sehun, not going to get coffee in the afternoon and balancing Sehun’s extra packet of sugar on top of his cup, and not accidentally catching Sehun’s eye while he worked and flicking his gaze away before slowly looking back again so he could see Sehun smile to himself.
It was in the middle of these thoughts that a slim figure with a dark head of hair entered the room carrying a large stack of papers. Yixing took in a breath, panicking and trying to decide if he should turn around and pretend like he hadn’t seen him, but as he slid off the table to stand up, Sehun looked straight at him. There was a beat of awkward silence before Yixing said, “Hi.”
“Hi,” said Sehun, turning away to start making his copies.
Yixing assumed that was the end of the exchange. He gathered up the new copies and stacked them neatly on the table as if it was of the utmost importance that there wasn’t a page out of alignment.
“If I can ask...what are you doing here, Yixing?”
Hearing Sehun’s voice again startled Yixing enough that he knocked over one of his stacks of paper and they fanned out all over the floor. He swore under his breath and got down on one knee to start picking them back up, hoping Chanyeol wouldn’t be mad if some of the corners got bent.
He spotted another pair of pale hands scooping up papers out of the corner of his eye and his heart jumped a little. “I might start working for Chanyeol,” Yixing answered, his voice feeling tight, “as his assistant.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Sehun asked quietly, straightening out the papers in his hands and picking up a few more.
Yixing knew he was referring to what he’d told him about souls, but he’d already agreed not to see Sehun anymore. He didn’t want to have to do that with everyone else, too. “Chanyeol and I are friends, Sehun,” Yixing told him, then lowered his voice even though they were alone. “How am I supposed to survive in this world long enough to get home if I can’t form any relationships at all? If it weren’t for Joonmyun, and him, and...everyone…I might not even be here right now.” He moved away from Sehun a little to get some papers that had fluttered further across the room.
“Friends are okay,” Sehun said. “Lovers are okay, too.”
Yixing crossed the room and bent down again to get the last paper which was now right at Sehun’s feet, just as Sehun crouched to pick it up, too. Sehun withdrew his hand and let Yixing take it.
He looked Sehun in the eye again. “But you said…” he simply trailed off, not wanting to repeat the whole explanation. Sehun stood up and so did Yixing.
“Those things are all okay,” Sehun said, now looking over the top of Yixing’s head at something across the room, or maybe at nothing at all. “As long as you know that you can leave them, in the end. Can you?”
Yixing had to turn away, busying himself with carefully setting his stacks of paper on top of each other so he could carry them. “I have to bring these to Chanyeol,” he said, to break the strange mood that had cast itself over the room.
“Yixing,” Sehun said, gently taking him by the elbow as he walked by, “will you meet me at my apartment tonight around 9? This doesn’t mean anything’s changed. There’s just...something else I need to say, but I can’t say it here.”
Yixing stiffened, but he let Sehun stop him. “I think you’ve said enough.”
“Please, Yixing. I wouldn’t ask unless it was important,” Sehun begged. The seconds went by and all Yixing was aware of was that small place where they were touching.
“Okay,” Yixing found himself agreeing, his voice almost in a whisper as he slipped away from Sehun’s touch. “I’ll see you tonight.”
*
“I’m going out for a bit,” Yixing told Joonmyun, who was once again lying on the couch catching up on Neon Genesis Evangelion.
“Oh, okay.” Joonmyun turned the volume down on the TV, remembering Lu Han’s warning and knowing he probably shouldn’t even ask, but his curiosity just refused to be stamped out. “...Where to?”
“I thought I’d meet up with Jongdae,” Yixing said.
Joonmyun raised his eyebrows. “On a weeknight?”
“Yeah…” Yixing hesitated. “Uh, this was the only night we were both free.”
“Living on the edge,” Joonmyun teased, before turning his attention back to the TV. “Well, have fun.”
As the episode he was watching ended and he started on a new one, Joonmyun stared at his phone on the coffee table. He hadn’t heard from Lu Han since that last meeting and he wished that there was a way to contact him besides calling the office. He sighed and tried to focus on anime again. He was getting too obsessed with Lu Han and with this supposed “agenda” of Yixing’s.
His point was proven as his phone vibrated and his hand shot out to grab it. He couldn’t help being disappointed when it was Chanyeol’s name and not a blocked number that appeared on the screen, and he hated himself as he answered.
“Yeol?”
“Hey, hyung. How’s it going?” Chanyeol’s loud voice came through clearly even though there was a lot of background noise, wherever he was.
Joonmyun muted the TV. “Fine...how are you?”
“Well, um, actually...I’m sort of calling to ask for a favor…”
“Oh, alright…” Joonmyun considered this. “Um. What kind of favor are we talking here?”
There were suddenly a lot of loud shuffling noises on Chanyeol’s end of the line and Joonmyun had to hold the phone a little away from his ear. “Chanyeol? Hello? ...What kind of favor?”
“For god’s sake, Chanyeol, you take forever to get to the point.” Jongdae’s voice blared through the speaker as if he had his lips right up against it. “He’s asking for a blowjob, isn’t it obvious?” he cackled. Joonmyun held the phone even further away. “Actually...we were supposed to have a gig tonight at this place downtown, but the boss here totally pulled the plug last minute. Is there any way you can convince your manager to let us play an extra day at his club this week? It’s just that I’m behind on my rent and I really--”
“Wait a second,” Joonmyun interrupted. “You have a gig tonight?”
“Yeah, well, had,” Jongdae answered. “Until about two minutes ago.”
“Is Yixing with you, by any chance?”
“Yixing? No, I haven’t seen that man for a blue moon. Tell him I said hi, would you?” Jongdae laughed again and then there were more shuffling noises.
“Sorry about that,” Chanyeol’s voice said. “Would you do it though, hyung? You’d really be helping us out--”
“Right, yeah, sure,” Joonmyun said thoughtlessly. “You know what, I’ll ask manager-nim tomorrow and I’ll call you back, okay? Bye.”
As soon as he hung up with Chanyeol, he dialed the number for Lu Han’s office. No one answered, and he didn’t really expect anyone to since his secretary probably wasn’t there at this hour, but he still let out a frustrated huff as the voicemail recording played.
“Hi, Lu Han...it’s Joonmyun. I just...wanted to talk to you about something...um...recent, regarding my case. So...please call me when you get this. Thank you.”
He hung up and unmuted Evangelion, but his attention was hopelessly elsewhere. If Yixing hadn’t been going out to meet Jongdae, it meant he’d lied. Again.
It was a few minutes later that his phone vibrated again, this time with a text message.
Blocked: Got your voicemail. Do not reply. Let’s meet.
>>