Tilted (3/?)
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Yixing pushed the door to the jazz club open again with numb hands.
“Yixing?” Joonmyun’s voice sounded far away. “Is everything ok?”
It took him a moment to gather his bearings enough to nod. “I...it looks like I’ll be staying here longer than I thought.” He forced the muscles in his face to curve his lips up until a smile, but it undoubtedly communicated that this wasn’t happy news.
It must have looked even worse than Yixing thought, because Joonmyun’s own perma-smile slid right off his face, immediately falling into a flat line. He took on that concerned expression Yixing had become used to seeing him wear. “Oh...do you--”
“Could we get another round?” asked someone from the other end of the bar, cutting him off, and Joonmyun pursed his lips together, clearly wanting to say more to Yixing.
He exhaled shortly. “Sorry. Let’s talk later,” he said with a meaningful look before he transitioned back into bartending, displaying almost mechanical precision.
Chanyeol and Jongdae started setting up onstage in the next few minutes and Yixing decided to sit closer to the front to watch them. He made his way toward the stage, winding through groups of people and meandering around chairs and tables until he found an empty seat in a corner near the front.
They were still testing the mics, Yixing flinching at the feedback from one of them as Chanyeol poked at it, and he barely noticed someone sit down beside him in the only available seat left. The duo tried to make their introductions, but the feedback continued.
“Sorry,” Chanyeol said into Jongdae’s mic, the only one working. “Er...technical difficulties.” He backed away from the mic but Yixing could still hear him laugh bashfully.
“I can’t really talk now,” Yixing heard a low voice next to him say, and he turned to look at the man beside him, who was on his phone. Half his face was practically hidden behind a curtain of dark hair, but the high bridge of his nose was still visible. “Yes, I know what it means. And I have no doubt you’ll succeed this time. You always do.” He hung up, and when he turned his head toward Yixing, as if he sensed him staring, Yixing was immediately struck by a sense of familiarity that he couldn’t place. It felt as if it was folded up somewhere in a corner of his mind just out of his reach.
He quickly faced forward again when he realized that Chanyeol had finally gotten his microphone working. Joonmyun’s two friends really were as talented as he’d said, but Yixing found it difficult to give the performance his undivided attention, still grappling with what the end of the blue moon would mean for him. He snuck another glance at the man next to him, watching him shift the ice in his glass thoughtfully before taking a sip. There was something incredibly familiar about him, but as he scanned his features a second time, Yixing was sure he’d never seen him before.
The mysterious guy beside him got up just as Jongdae introduced the last song and Yixing’s eyes followed him as far as he could until he would have had to turn around.
“Good show,” he tried to congratulate Chanyeol and Jongdae as the crowd began to disperse and they started to pack up the mics and instruments again.
“Thanks!” Jongdae grinned. “You really liked it?”
Yixing nodded. He waited for them by the stage as they packed up, feeling awkwardly like he should help them but at the same time sure he’d break one of the mics or something. They were fast enough on their own that they finished before Yixing was even done contemplating.
“Well, we’re going to say goodbye to Joonmyun. Let’s see if he’s finished with his shift,” said Chanyeol and they made their way over to the bar. It wasn’t nearly as late as it had been the night before when the three of them were working. It also was now Sunday, Yixing realized, having temporarily forgotten that things as mundane as the days of the week existed.
Joonmyun had been chatting with a young couple, and bid them goodnight when Yixing and the others approached. “We’re gonna take off,” Jongdae told him.
“Yeah, I’m about to head out too,” Joonmyun replied.
“Don’t be a stranger, Yixing,” Chanyeol added, and Yixing nodded to him as they headed toward backstage again. The words reminded him once more that he was stuck here indefinitely.
“Ready to go?” Joonmyun led him back outside and they got in the car and began driving with neither of them saying anything.
“Told you you’d like my friends,” Joonmyun said after a while. He was smiling again, but it didn’t look as natural and easy as Yixing remembered it looking before.
“Yeah, I do like them,” said Yixing, and then they settled into more silence for a significant part of the ride. Yixing thought it was a little strange that Joonmyun wasn’t trying to make conversation like he had the rest of the times they’d been alone, but he looked like he was thinking hard about something.
Eventually, Joonmyun cleared his throat. “So...you said you’ll be staying in Seoul. For how long?”
Joonmyun glanced over at him in between watching his driving, but Yixing looked out the window instead of at Joonmyun. “A while. Maybe years. I don’t...I don’t really know what I’m going to do now,” he said quietly, feeling close to tears and hoping his voice didn’t give that away. “I’ll figure something out soon. I don’t want to burden you.”
“Yixing,” Joonmyun said. He paused for so long that Yixing wondered if he’d decided not to say anything else, but then he asked, “Do you need a job?”
Yixing’s mouth suddenly felt dry and he struggled to swallow before answering. “Well...yes, that’s probably my next step, but I...I think I know what you’re thinking, and you don’t have to get me a job.”
“But--”
“It’s just...I really appreciate it, but I don’t think I’m well suited to a job at a club. I’m not great at socializing, and I can’t speak the language well, and--”
“Yixing--”
“And I told Chanyeol and Jongdae that I was a musician once, but I really can’t sing in front of people. I--”
“Yixing, I’m not asking you to work at the club,” Joonmyun said in one breath.
Yixing blinked. “You’re not?”
“No. I’m asking you to come work at the company,” Joonmyun said. “I think...you might do really well as Sehun’s assistant. If you want the job, that is.”
“Wait a minute,” Yixing said slowly, trying to piece together what Joonmyun had just told him. “You want me, to work for Sehun, the guy who you said turned down all the applications from actually qualified people who wanted the job as his assistant?” He gave a short laugh. “I might do better at the club, actually. I don’t really know anything about business. I was an art student in Zen - er, China.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Joonmyun looked at him seriously. “Resumes and qualifications aren’t important to Sehun, that much he’s made clear. I really think that, if Sehun met you, he might want to hire you.”
“But...I…” Yixing was having serious trouble picturing this. But at the same time, he felt like he better take the opportunity if he got it. He was sure there wouldn’t exactly be employers lining up to hire him when they found out he had no record of having worked or gone to school anywhere in this world.
“Like I said, it’s just an offer. And I can’t make any promises that Sehun will definitely like the idea. But if you think you might want to give it a try, I can arrange for the two of you to meet and discuss it.” They pulled into the garage at Joonmyun’s apartment.
“Joonmyun...why are you doing this?” Yixing asked when Joonmyun turned the car off and they climbed out.
“Doing what?”
“Letting me stay with you, offering me a job, helping me...you hardly know me, but you act like we’re friends already.”
“Well, I’ve spent almost a whole day with you now, and I didn’t hate it. And...it at least seems like you didn’t hate it.” He laughed. “Doesn’t that sort of make us friends already?”
Yixing smiled as they headed into the building. “Maybe it does.”
“I think it’s important to help people. And to trust them. Give them the benefit of the doubt. That’s what I did for Sehun, because I know he’s capable of more than people give him credit for. And now, that’s what I’m going to do for you.” Joonmyun stabbed the elevator button with his finger emphatically.
Yixing was silent on the way up to Joonmyun’s floor even though he had essentially made up his mind already. “I want the job,” he said finally as the elevator pinged and the doors opened.
Joonmyun was beaming again. “Excellent. I’ll set up the meeting.”
*
The car ride to the company was tense, to say the least. Joonmyun chattered amicably about his own work while Yixing sat stiffly in the passenger seat.
“I’m not so sure about this,” Yixing said, staring out the window at all the unfamiliar buildings rushing by and wishing he could understand how things had even gotten to this point. When Joonmyun had said he’d set up a meeting time for him and Sehun, he hadn’t expected it to be the very next day.
“It’s going to be okay,” Joonmyun said, trying to placate him. “Sehun even canceled another appointment in order to fit you in… Granted, I don’t think there was a high chance of him even showing up to that other appointment in the first place, but the principle still stands.”
Once they were inside, Joonmyun handed Yixing a business card with the room number of Sehun’s office on it. “When you get out of the elevator on the fifth floor, it’s the fourth door on your left,” he told him as the doors slid shut and the elevator carried them up. Yixing swallowed hard when it stopped on Joonmyun’s floor. “Good luck. It’ll be fine.” Joonmyun flashed another one of his brilliant smiles at Yixing and then he was gone.
The doors closed up again and so did Yixing’s throat. He clutched the business card tightly in his hand as the elevator moved up one floor, and then another. The doors chimed as they opened again and an older man in the corner of the elevator glared at him until Yixing forced his legs to move forward and out into the hallway. He made his way four doors down the hall and placed his hand on the door to Sehun’s office.
He turned the knob and walked inside before he could give anything else a second guess. There was a cluttered desk in the entryway with an empty chair and behind it, a small cubicle where a young man with dark hair sat, typing furiously at a computer.
“Er...hello,” Yixing said, his voice coming out scratchy and he coughed a little to clear it.
The man didn’t pause in his typing. Yixing waited for what felt like another thirty seconds, shifting from foot to foot. He coughed again, louder.
“You must be the guy Joonmyun sent,” the other said, finally turning in his swivel chair to look at Yixing. He crossed his legs and folded his arms in front of his chest.
“Y-Yes,” Yixing said shakily. “My name is Yixing. Thank you for meeting with me.” Hurriedly, he remembered to bow. When he straightened back up again, he was able to get a better look at Sehun.
His smooth complexion and narrow face gave him a youthful appearance, but he was handsome, with alluring eyes and a strong nose.
With a jolt, Yixing recognized him. The man who’d sat beside him last night at the show, having a mysterious phone conversation in the middle of the club, was the same man who was in front of him now. And he still looked so familiar beyond that, somehow.
He inhaled through his nose, trying to focus on what Sehun was currently asking him. “So, why do you think you would be a good fit for this job as my office assistant?”
Yixing took a moment to compose an answer. Before he even opened his mouth, Sehun spoke again. “Stop. I don’t actually want you to answer that.” His phone pinged and he drew it out of his pocket. His thumbs quickly moved across the screen. “Tell me something more interesting. Like...um…what’s your favorite drink?”
Yixing squinted. “You mean like...alcohol?”
Sehun scrolled through his phone for a while and then looked up at him like he had just asked for the solution to 2+2. “Yes. I mean like alcohol.”
Sehun’s voice was also deep, but not loud like Chanyeol. Instead, Sehun talked softly, like he couldn’t project his voice very far, and Yixing thought that often you’d have to be quiet yourself to hear what he said.
“I’m sorry. My Korean isn’t very good.” Yixing cleared his throat again. “I don’t really drink a lot, but...I think red wine is supposed to be good for you, or something. I think I read that somewhere.”
“Uh-huh, I see it now. Of course Joonmyun would like you.” Sehun leaned back further in his chair. “Safe. Boring.”
“How...how is that relevant to the job, though?” Yixing asked, then immediately worried he had overstepped some boundary. Sehun looked at him sharply, but his gaze quickly returned to the screen in his lap.
“It could be. People from the company go out for drinks together sometimes.” Sehun waved a hand in the air lazily, continuing to type on his phone with the other one. “Are you good with numbers?”
Yixing hesitated. “Um...well...yeah, I guess so,” he said, and winced. This had to be the most pathetic job interview in the history of job interviews. Sehun would probably tell the whole building and they’d all laugh about it later.
Nonetheless, Yixing tried not to fidget as the other man took a long drink from his travel mug, his striking eyes staring him down imposingly. “You’re hired,” Sehun said abruptly as he set the mug down again, uncrossed his legs, and turned swiftly back to his computer screen.
Yixing gaped at him. He was sure ten minutes hadn’t even passed. “I’m...what?”
Sehun turned his head three quarters of the way back toward Yixing and narrowed his eyes at him. “Your command of the language really does need some work. You’re hired.”
“Thank...thank you,” Yixing stammered out through his utter shock.
“Don’t thank me.”
“I...it’s just that Joonmyun said you rejected a lot of people--”
“I don’t think you get it,” Sehun said, interrupting him. “It’s not me who wants an assistant. It’s Joonmyun, and Boss Yifan. I don’t actually know what good it will do. I don’t want the ‘best’ person for this job. Hell, I don’t really care if you get any work done at all. But if I have to have an assistant, then what I want is someone who will stay out of my way.” Sehun’s words made Yixing think of icicles: cold and brittle, with sharp edges. “If you can do that, the job’s yours.”
“I...I...okay.” Yixing blinked a couple times, trying to make sense of what was happening, but so far, few things in this world made any sense.
Sehun gave a single nod, then flicked his eyes down to his phone screen once more. “Be here tomorrow, 8am sharp.”
Chanyeol was waiting for Yixing in the hallway when he left Sehun’s office. “Joonmyun’s in a meeting,” he said. “He asked me to come and collect you.”
“How’d it go?” Chanyeol prompted when Yixing didn’t say anything.
“I got the job,” Yixing said, feeling like he was telling himself this news as much as he was telling Chanyeol.
Chanyeol’s eyes widened almost comically. “Joonmyun will be happy.” He lengthened his strides, forcing Yixing to pick up the pace.
Yixing wasn’t fishing for praise, especially after how that interview had gone, but he did find it a little odd that Chanyeol wasn’t congratulating him.
“What do you think of Sehun?” Chanyeol asked as they slipped into the elevator and he jabbed the button for Joonmyun’s floor with his knuckle.
“He’s…” Yixing scrunched his eyebrows together, mentally scrolling through Korean adjectives.
“Yeah, don’t take it personally,” Chanyeol said, his lips stretched in a wide line that wasn’t quite a smile. “He’s like that to everyone. I do wish you luck.”
Yixing gave a half-smile back. “Thanks.”
Chanyeol dropped Yixing off in Joonmyun’s office. “Joonmyun said he doesn’t mind if you hang out in here; he should be back pretty soon. I should get back to work too, but maybe the three of us can meet up for lunch?”
“Sure.” Yixing nodded to him as he ducked back outside. Once the door had closed behind Chanyeol, he took a proper look around the office. It was pretty small, but still roomier than Sehun’s cubicle was. Joonmyun had very few personal decorations. There was a paperweight shaped like a pair of thick-rimmed glasses, and a small corkboard that held mostly what looked like notices and reminders, but there was a small picture of Joonmyun with Chanyeol and Jongdae, and another of Joonmyun with another young man, surrounded by a couple of small, fluffy dogs.
Yixing sat down on the small sofa in the corner, turning his nonfunctional phone over in his hands as he stared at Joonmyun’s screensaver, which showed varying scenes of outer space. Eventually, he would have to get a new phone, but it just felt like another little thing that would tether him to this world, separating him further from his own.
Thinking of phones reminded him of Sehun’s cryptic conversation in the club again, and he wondered what it was going to be like to work for him. His first impression had been strange, and the second even stranger. He was unpredictable, as well as cold, the kind of person Yixing preferred to avoid. He would much rather work for someone like Chanyeol, who at least was friendly and made an effort to help others feel comfortable, but he supposed he was lucky to even get this chance. Joonmyun certainly seemed to have faith in Sehun, and in Yixing.
Yixing was so lost in thought that he didn’t even hear Joonmyun come in.
“Hey, congratulations!”
Yixing jumped. “Oh, hi. Uh, thanks.”
“What did I tell you?” Joonmyun set his briefcase down and sat in his computer chair. “I knew it’d go fine.”
“Um, well…” Yixing wanted to protest, but he didn’t really know what to say. Complaining about Sehun would seem ungrateful. “Thank you,” he said again instead.
“So, I have another couple hours of work to do and then we can grab some lunch. The cafe here is actually pretty good.”
The screensaver was displaying a close-up of a full moon. Yixing clutched his phone tighter in his fist.
Joonmyun wiggled the mouse and the moon disappeared, revealing a complex-looking spreadsheet. “You can use my laptop if you want.” He nodded toward the briefcase. “Wouldn’t want you to get bored.”
“Thanks,” Yixing said, sliding the computer out of its case. He looked at the homepage of the internet browser for a moment, chewing his lower lip, before he tried to check his email. The page didn’t come up. He sighed quietly through his nose, not knowing what he’d expected to happen. It was only the world wide web, after all, not parallel world wide.
Chanyeol knocked on the door later on, urging Joonmyun to hurry up. “I’m starving,” he whined in the doorway.
“I’m not done entering this data.”
“You can do it later. Food is more important,” Chanyeol insisted.
Joonmyun sighed, but stood up. “Fine, you win.” Chanyeol grinned.
Yixing tried to memorize how to get to the cafeteria as they weaved through the building, but it was difficult to concentrate with Chanyeol still going on about how Joonmyun works too hard. “You need to take care of yourself more, hyung,” he was saying. “It’s Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. You need to put basic survival necessities like food and sleep ahead of dumb things like data entry. Isn’t that Jongin’s job, anyway?”
“He’s still on vacation,” Joonmyun replied, ignoring the rest of what Chanyeol said. “He’ll be back on Friday. And then you can meet him too, Yixing. Jongin’s my assistant.”
Yixing nodded as they entered the cafe, following the others as they raced to fill their trays. Yixing had just sat down next to Chanyeol at a table when he spotted a familiar profile, partially covered by a wing of dark hair. Joonmyun followed his line of sight and blinked his eyes open wide when he saw Sehun pass by them.
“He hardly ever eats in the cafe,” Chanyeol observed out loud, watching from his seat with knitted brows.
“Sehun,” Joonmyun called, trotting a little to catch up with Sehun’s longer legs, and he turned around at the sound of his name. “Would you like to join us?”
“We’ve tried this before, he’s not going to say yes,” Chanyeol protested out of the corner of his mouth.
Sehun looked over Joonmyun for a moment, and then flicked his gaze to where Yixing and Chanyeol were sitting. He shrugged and made his way over to them with his tray. Joonmyun’s eyes lit up like he’d accomplished some great feat. Chanyeol’s mouth fell open, but he forcibly closed it again when Sehun sat down across from him.
It was silent as the four of them began to eat. Sehun was glued to his phone screen as he shoved heaps of food into his mouth without looking. Yixing nervously stirred rice around his tray with his chopsticks, and Joonmyun’s eyes kept circling around the table at everyone while Chanyeol looked entirely absorbed in his plate.
“So,” Joonmyun said finally, “I heard that the earthquake we had yesterday wasn’t felt anywhere else in the city. It was confined to just our block, where the jazz club is. That’s weird, right?”
“Yeah, very,” Chanyeol said around the food in his mouth.
Sehun’s eyes suddenly snapped up from his phone. Joonmyun looked at him with stark attention, presumably in case he was going to say something, but he slowly returned to tapping at the screen without adding to the conversation.
“Did you hear about the earthquake, Sehun?” Joonmyun asked, not giving up on trying to include him.
“Yes, I heard about it,” Sehun said without looking up again.
Joonmyun was pretty quiet after that. Yixing tried hard to come up with another conversation topic, but minutes ticked by and he couldn’t think of a damn thing.
Sehun finished eating quickly and got up to leave without pushing his chair back in. “Bye,” Joonmyun called brightly.
“See you tomorrow?” said Yixing, but it came out so quietly and feebly that he wasn’t sure if Sehun even heard, not that he was expecting a response anyway.
Chanyeol turned to Joonmyun when Sehun was gone from view. “I don’t know what you see in him,” he said, shaking his head.
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