[exo] Sucker for You (1/2)
Sucker for You
SeKai. PG-13. 8,700w.
Sehun has a sweet tooth for more than just candy.
Oh Sehun is not a morning person. Off the top of his head, he could think of approximately 547 reasons why his day would be better spent in his room, the curtains drawn tight around his windows, with his laptop being the only source of light in the room, and that would be on a bad day. Just the thought of waking up at an ungodly hour of the morning (which he usually considers to be anything before the crack of…noon) sends him diving for the protective shield of his blankets. He’s even entertained the idea of moving as far north as he possibly can more than fleetingly, to somewhere like Alaska where six out of twelve months of every year for him could be spent in complete darkness. Unfortunately for his habit of not thinking things through, like his mother is always kind enough to point out, the other six months he’d be in complete daylight, and that sends him straight back to his room before his mother can slip in another not so witty remark about him blending in with the snow if there were ever an avalanche while he was there.
But when Sehun isn’t being the antichrist of the morning, the days that he decides to rise shockingly early from his crypt are spent working behind the cash register of his family’s candy shop. Or more like he’s being unfairly shanghaied into “child labor” in exchange for not nearly enough pay for his efforts, as he likes to say. (His father tells him to suck it up.)
Sehun can’t really say that he minds giving a hand to his parents every now and then. They’ve had the candy shop for as long as he can remember; the particular store is tucked into a tidy little nook of their neighborhood’s main shopping district, not to mention being considered prime real estate. It’s been there for so long, in fact, that the homey shop front looks quite out of place in comparison to its glitzy neighbors, who offer all sorts of expensive luxuries that Sehun was never really interested in anyway. And it seemed like the children, clutching to their parents’ hands as they get ferried up and down the busy city streets share similar sentiments, being attracted to the candy filled display as opposed to glittering jewelry, brand name purses, or eccentric bottles of designer fragrances of which are common amongst others around it.
In recent years, Oh! Sweets had gained enough buzz that Sehun’s parents were able to expand it by three full stores. He was delighted by the fact that they were doing so well for themselves, but more stores meant a shortage of workers, and Sehun knew that they weren’t going to trust their store to just anyone who came along looking for a part-time job. In the end, it would be left up to Sehun to tend to the original shop, while his parents routinely made trips to the other ones to supervise the supplementary staff.
So when Sehun rises at the ass crack of dawn, he forces himself to rub the sleep from his eyes and reminds himself that his efforts are for a greater good, as cliché as it sounds, and hey, would his parents really notice if he swiped a piece of candy or two throughout the day? (The answer to that is actually yes, but if it’ll get him to work once in a while, Sehun’s parents think they can let it slide.) But secretly, he hopes one day that the kids he’s so used to seeing are escorted by an attractive older sibling, close to his age of 19, to be his eye candy.
It’s early, and he’s grumpy, and the streets are too damn quiet for his liking, but Sehun makes his way to the shop. The sun is just barely peeking up over the horizon and there might as well have been a zombie apocalypse the night before, similar to the ones Sehun is used to surviving through in his video games , with how little people there are around, starting their day alongside him. But he trudges on, in spite of the very, very long day ahead of him.
Running the shop on his own is no joke. Sehun finds this one of the very first times he does it on his own. He comes to realize that the shop always has a steady stream of customers at three peak points of the day; in the mornings, when mothers are with their children, too young for school, who want to get their shopping (whatever that may entail) done as soon as possible to make it ahead of the crowds. The second key time is the lunch hour, which usually stretches over about two full hours regardless, where the office workers take their breaks and frequent there for a sweet morsel with their meal. There are a few who return so often that Sehun has taken care to prepare their usual purchases in advance. He knows far too well how pressed for time most of these types of customers are, so it not only helps them by popping in and out to return to their schedules considerably faster, but its caused productivity and sales to increase so much that it’s a practice implemented at the other locations of the small chain. Of course, Sehun takes all the credit for that.
The third part of day that brings in business to the store is around the time the elementary and secondary schools get dismissed for the day. Most of the time, the children don’t buy much, and Sehun doesn’t have the heart to turn them away when they come to stare at the brightly colored displays, mouths watering at the mountains of sweets that are just out of their reach. If it were his parents in the store, he knows they would have scolded them, chasing them on home in favor of doing schoolwork and studying. But he can’t help but smile when he comes out from behind the register to give a giggling little group of nine year olds a free sample of the new candy coming to the store the following week. Again, it not only makes him feel good to see the children waddle away, cheeks bulging with candy filled smiles, but they usually come back with their parents to buy the newest treat they had tried that previous week.
(And he has his own little victories apart from those dealing with the shop, too. He remembers in particular, the most recent White Day. Though he hadn’t received any chocolates from any of the cute girls in school he had his eyes on in his class, during the afternoon rush of school children, he showed up to his shift to be greeted by a pleasant surprise. Not only had he arrived to find around a half dozen small bundles of chocolate left on the register attached to notes addressed with his name, but throughout his shift, he was approached with about eight more small parcels from the bolder young girls, who wanted to receive his praise for their gift directly. Most of his gifts had the unmistakable label “Oh! Sweets”, but what better excuse did he have to eat his parents’ homemade chocolate, as well as for free, than that one. To Sehun’s dismay, his stomach brutalizes him later on for scarfing down all of his chocolate in one sitting. Sehun is convinced it’s undeserved karma.
Needless to say, Sehun’s natural knack for aiding in customer satisfaction makes his parents proud. However, every advantage he has comes with its own drawbacks, today being one of them. He is indeed on his own, going so far as to open the shop all by himself as well. It wasn’t often that his parents gave him a shift quite so early in the morning, usually relegating use of the early morning hours for his studies (which now, were online classes, as opposed to the tutor that would come every day to home school him), but today also isn’t like most days.
To Sehun’s dismay, it’s Halloween.
He tries to convince himself that he doesn’t really hate the holiday, per say, as he unlocks the front door of the shop with the set of keys his mother had lent him that morning. The holidays meant more business for the shop, and especially for one like Halloween, the number of younger visitors increased. But it’s more or less that the holidays make Sehun wistful in a way that spending time with his family never could quite cure. Growing up in an environment where his life revolves around being or working at his parents’ shop, which only works out because Sehun’s parents bring the school to him instead of bringing him to the school, doesn’t leave him much time to expand his inner circle, (even his cellphone pathetically has only 3 contacts; his mom, dad and the main shop’s business line.) Oh! Sweets practically is his social life outside of conversing with his family. Sehun wouldn’t exactly consider himself friendless, but thinking it over, he’s not sure that the ten year olds who visit the shop on occasion to talk about anime count for much.
Brooding quietly and promising himself that the next time a group of kids come in, he would keep their relations strictly business oriented, Sehun dips his hand into the closest candy jar within reach once his jacket lays draped over the coat rack by the entrance. It isn’t quite time to open shop for the morning, which gives Sehun all of the time he needs to goof of-…tend to the tasks expected of him for that day. Fetching his apron from the back, he sets down the candy in his hand onto the front counter to tie the strings around his waist, smoothing out the wrinkles so that his name, neatly embroidered in red, is readable along the pocket of the fabric.
When he looks over at the counter, he realizes that that small, circular item he had snagged from the candy jar was a lollipop. It’s one of the organic ones, a dark shade of red and pomegranate flavored, in clear wrappers that just so happen to be environmentally friendly; the only person who really likes them being Sehun. A box of them had arrived a few years ago as a mistake. The Oh’s wouldn’t consider themselves healthy living pushers by any accord, considering their choice of business, but that very same year, when it seemed as though that specific brand of candy was practically sprouting legs and walking itself off the shelves, they couldn’t resist restocking.
For that, Sehun is thankful because without those teeth-rotting, sweetened orbs of condensed sugar, he would have never met his first (and probably only) friend. It’s quite the shame that they lost touch; Sehun is surprised that he even remembered it from so long ago, and so suddenly at that. Carefully removing the transparent cellophane wrapper preventing him from enjoying his sweet, he makes his way back over to the door, reversing the plastic Closed sign to read Open. Sehun hums softly as he closes his lips around the lollipop, recalling the memory of a tanned, round-faced boy with a permanent pout in his plush pink lips that had run into the store breathless and alone on a similarly icy day from a few years back…
* * *
Sehun stares out the shop’s large front window, looking longingly outside as a layer of fresh white snow continues to dust the ground. He smiles to himself, having not expected it to snow today; it’s a pleasant surprise nonetheless. The storm had blown in quite suddenly. It starts literally moments after he arrives at the shop, in time to help his mother with the afternoon rush of customers, filing in by the dozens for a moment of warmth and naturally a pound of miscellaneous sweets or two
Now, most of those people have hurried off to their homes, driving away before the roads become slick with the dangers of melted snow or unseen ice. Sehun finds it more enjoyable studying those who choose to walk the streets instead of taking refuge in their cars. His mother calls it people-watching (and apparently it’s considered something of a bad habit, not that Sehun actually cared) when he gazes out the window with bright eyes at those lugging their massive packages, traipsing toddlers along, connected at the hip by a little hand clasped around the corner of their parents’ coats, wondering what ridiculous amount of money they had decided to waste today. Sometimes, Sehun would create his own stories for them, too; what they worked as, who they were married to, where they were from, every part of their history and future down to the most minuscule detail.
But, the one thing that he keeps consistent, even if they walk the streets with no child in tow, is that he gives them one. They’re always about his age, no older than 11, and it doesn’t usually matter whether they’re a boy or a girl. If that day, he decides the child should be a girl, he gives her a soft, round face, long black hair with bright eyes that curve up into little crescent moons when she smiles (like his mom’s), and laughter that tinkles like wind chimes in a gentle breeze. She’s clothed in lacy dresses every day that fall down to her knees and laughs at all of his jokes, even if they’re about the less pleasant things an 11 year old boy can think of, like farts. Maybe one day they’d grow up and realize they have always been in love, like those best friends in the dramas Sehun watches frequently with his mom on their days off. But if it wasn’t a little girl, Sehun is perfectly satisfied with another boy, one who likes the same video games as he does. He’d have to be a bit older; Sehun has always wanted someone other than his cousins to call hyung. Either way, they would be friends, Sehun waiting for them to finish school and come bursting through the candy shop’s doors to greet him and say-
“Sehun!” He sighs, hearing his mom call from the back. Turning to look towards the back, while perched precariously on a stool behind the counter, he sees his mother busy punching numbers into a calculator, pausing between clicks to scratch a number or two onto the chart laid on the table in front of her. Once, Sehun had tried to do them for her, knowing how much she put her eyes to strain staring at the small font of the inventories and receipts from earlier purchases. The next morning, when his mother looked over his work and realized that there was ten thousand dollars’ worth of candy missing, he was banned from even counting without a calculator while he was working.
“Yeah, mom?” he replies, voice barely carrying to the back of the shop.
“It’s time to close shop!” Close shop, aka it’s time for Sehun to straighten all the jars on the shelves, lock the register, sweep the floor, and an abundance of any other tiresome chores his mom could think of him to complete while she spends her time updating the shop’s records.
As he turns the jars with their labels facing front, Sehun wishes he could just go outside in the snow already. A sigh plays across his lips as transparent glass jar clinks against its neighbors while being turned. Sehun can feel his focus slipping each time his hand grips the rim of the jar, not worrying about spreading germs; his mom only fills the jars on the lower levels with the wrapped candies anyway, leaving the rest higher up or beside the counter, with wide red scoops emblazoned with Oh! Sweets debossed into the plastic sitting atop the sweets. He steals a few lollipops from the next jar as he makes a pass over, stuffing them into the pocket of his apron and taking no notice of the jingling bell above the entrance meant to signal the arrival of a customer until a rush of icy air knocks the breath from his lungs.
Without looking up, in the most professional, non-breathless voice he can manage, he starts, “I’m sorry but we’re close-”
For a second time that day, the air leaves Sehun’s body in a rush. But, it’s not because of the cold.
When he does indeed look up, Sehun is face to face with a small boy, who by the looks of it, is close in age to him. (Face to face for Sehun being about two meters away, but who’s counting.) He doesn’t seem to notice Sehun off in the corner of the store with his hand glued to the jar of lollipops he had swiped from before, more preoccupied with warming up his hands. Sehun thinks that they’d probably be the same height if they stood next to each other as he creeps closer, staying low behind the maze of displays surrounding him.
The boy looks noticeably cold, little hands rubbing together to create friction for warmth as he hovers by the door, puffing a short breath of warmer air to help thaw him out between rubs. Sehun wonders where his winter clothes are, noting that the boy is without a scarf, hat, or even proper mittens when he moves behind a display near the door, close enough to get a decent look at him
He isn’t quite the little boy that Sehun had imagined him being. If anything, he looks more like the little girl Sehun envisions, sans the long hair he naturally attributes to girls having, waves lengthy enough to be tamed in neat little plaits at the back of their head. At least Sehun is somewhat certain that the unexpected guest is a boy. His full, pink lips and round face coated with a sun-kissed complexion make Sehun waver, however, because there has never been a boy to walk into the shop that was as pretty as the one standing in front of him at that very moment. The cherubic little face is framed by a wavy black hair, (adding further to Sehun’s ‘may be a girl’ theory), that seems to bother the other as he continuously pushes his bangs out of his eyes.
And a rather adamant push of his bangs gives the little stranger enough visibility to see Sehun peering over at him from behind a rotating rack of rock candies, shaped to imitate a rainbow. For a moment, they are both suspended in staring at each other, not knowing who would make the first move.
The boy is a touch quicker than Sehun. “What’re you looking at?” he snaps, uncaring of his tone despite the fact that he’s technically the one trespassing.
Sehun loses his voice for a moment, shocked by the harshness coming from such a delicate looking person. (Or maybe he was just a bad judge of character.)
“Well,” the boy repeats in the same grumpy tone, inching closer to a gape-mouthed Sehun. “Is there something on my face, huh?”
“I…no,” Sehun stammers, stepping out a bit further from his hiding spot. “But I could ask you the same question!”
It’s not the best comeback ever, Sehun realizes after he’s said it. But what did it matter if it made sense! The boy, no matter how sickeningly cute he is, isn’t supposed to be there and it’s Sehun’s job to kick him out.
“I wasn’t staring,” the boy retorts. In a flash, Sehun notices his body language change, all of the bark gone from the bite he never had to begin with.
“I was though,” Sehun admits, voice lowering. “But only because you looked cold. You’re really not supposed to be here because we’re closed, but if you’re cold, my mom’s in the back and she can make you some-”
“No!” The boy’s cheeks turn bright red, eyes opening wider than a deer stuck in headlights before Sehun can even finish his offer. He realizes his rudeness though, hanging his head to stare are his feet while wringing his hands nervously behind his back. “I can’t…my momma doesn’t allow me to take anything from strangers,” he explains. “Even from little kids.”
Sehun frowns at the rejection, even though he understands that rule all too well. He decides not to argue, but he doesn’t feel right letting the boy leave empty handed.
“How about some candy then?” Sehun offers, fishing out the lollipops he had pocketed earlier from inside his apron. “They’re wrapped and from the shop here, so it’s allowed right?”
The boy chews his bottom lip, biting the skin pink in worry. “Think of it like a free sample,” Sehun continues, fanning the three lollipops out to give the boy a choice.
“You won’t get in trouble?” he asks, eyeing the selection hesitantly. “I don’t have any money to pay for it, though.”
“Don’t worry about it, really,” Sehun shrugs. “I snag candy from here all the time, my parents don’t notice it.”
“Your parents own this place?” the boy asks incredulously, pausing to take in the entire shop.
Admittedly, Sehun is impressed by how awesome he feels when he gets to tell people that ask that he’s the son of the people who started the shop. It helps his parents too, because when he sits with his mom or dad at the register, the little old ladies coo over what a “sweet little boy” he is and buy more candy if he lets them pinch his cheeks.
“Yeah they do,” he nods in confirmation. “And one day it’s going to be all mine!”
The boy makes a quiet “oh” with his mouth, eyes still trained on the shelves that climb higher than both boys can reach. Any way you looked, the arrangement is more than appealing to the eye, the colored candies arranged to complement their neighbors. Wrapped candies in surplus and able to fit into jars line the shelves at the bottom, low enough to be reached by the occasional curious hand. The rest that don’t have their own personal packaging sit on the higher shelves in hinged containers, waiting to be stuffed into little plastic bags tied closed with silver twist ties. Each container is filled to a comfortable fullness, not quite high enough to spill over, but at a level that can be comfortably reached without having to dive a hand all the way to the bottom. In this one store, there are more sweets than the boy could name, (Sehun can, but it comes with the territory) even with the little pink stickers that label each jar with what’s inside. Some are in foreign languages he can’t quite make out, but it doesn’t matter because everything from the peppermints to the caramels, the saltwater taffies to the Jolly Ranchers , chocolate covered pretzels and cherries, gumballs, jawbreakers, gummy worms, sour straws, jelly beans, pop rocks, gumdrops, chocolates, and of course, lollipops, look like they would be heaven in his mouth. He makes a mental note to himself to come back on his birthday when he has enough money saved to splurge.
“No way,” he says to Sehun skeptically, shoving his hands in the pockets of his tattered pants and tearing his eyes away from the displays to look back at him. “How are you going to be able to run this big shop by yourself? You don’t look very smart seeing as you let in a stranger after closing time!”
“For your information, I-”
“Sehun!”
Again, Sehun gets cut off mid-sentence, not having the chance to finish before he hears rustling behind the voice calling him, coming from the back of the store. He doesn’t have to look to know that his mother is probably done with her work and is a mere seconds away from coming to the front, to not only find that he hasn’t really done a stitch of work, but he’s entertaining someone who isn’t a customer after hours and offering him candy for free. No matter how Sehun looked at it, they boy had to leave now.
Before the boy can react, (or protest, which is the more likely of the two situations), Sehun closes his first around one of the lollipops, keeping his hand over the other’s to make it stay balled before shooting him a pleading look towards the door. Thankfully, he gets the message, both boys shuffling as quietly as they can to the door and pulling it open just enough for him to slip out passed Sehun, unnoticed by anyone else.
“Sehun, why is the door open?” Sehun’s mother asks, walking to the front while folding up her apron. She gives him a look that says something more along the lines of “you’d better not be up to anything stupid” as opposed to one of genuine curiosity.
“Just looking at the snow, mom,” he replies, sticking his head out the door. Looking both ways, the boy is nowhere in sight, gone as quickly as if he disappeared into thin air.
“Well, put on your coat,” she says, starting to pull on her own, fingers pulling the buttons through their loops down the front. “You don’t want to catch a cold.”
“Yes mom,” Sehun says, letting the door close with a faint jingle of the bell attached to its top
It’s only then he realizes he forgot to ask the boy’s name.
The next morning, Sehun walks, rubbing his eyes and clinging to his mother’s arm as she all but drags him with her to the shop. He hadn’t slept well that night, his dreams plagued by a pretty boy with full lips and thin clothing, playing with a dark red lollipop between his teeth. It isn’t like Sehun at all to wake up remembering his dreams, so it alarms him that this one does. Part of him hopes that this isn’t his subconscious trying to tell him that everything that happened the day before was from a combination of his imagination and desperation for a companion. Because, well, that would totally suck.
He’s herded into the shop and grasping a broom for dear life before he can open his eyes, swaying on his feet under the haziness of sleep. All Sehun knows he has to do is get through the day, and before he knows it, he can be on his way home to that new gaming system his grandmother had sent him in the mail as an early Christmas present and-
Sehun’s head jerks up from sleepily lolling against his shoulder when he hears an incessant tapping noise against glass. His eyes immediately move to the large picture window at the front of the shop, falling on the figure wiping away at the condensation with a gloved hand. The person peers through the now defogged window, hands cupped over his eyes to form makeshift binoculars, and Sehun realizes, to his immense shock, that it’s the boy from the previous night, pink lips and all. Sehun can still hear the faint tapping, surprised that the boy hadn’t seen him, let alone come in to get him, as his lets the broom fall with a clatter to the floor, neglecting to re-zip his jacket before running outside again.
The bell above the shop’s door jingles as Sehun throws it open with enough force for it to slam against the wall behind it in his rush to get outside. He stands up straight, smiling almost a little too breathlessly when the boy flinches slightly from the loud noise the crashing of the door makes.
“Hi,” Sehun says uncertainly, realizing he hadn’t really thought over where this conversation was going. The boy didn’t seem to mind, however, moving away from the window to stand closer. Face to face, Sehun grins inwardly, having been right about them both being the same height, not that it really mattered.
“Hi,” the boy greets in return, shyly chewing on his bottom lip. “I…I came by to say thank you for yesterday. You know, letting me stay and stuff…and for the candy.”
Sehun shakes his head dismissively, giving the other a lopsided smile. He tries hard to fight the embarrassment of being appreciated, but his face betrays him, color not so subtly creeping up into his cheeks and spreading across the rest of his pale complexion. “I-it was nothing really,” he stammers, rubbing a hand against the back of his neck as he hangs his head. “My mom says it’s good to be nice to everyone…good karma or something…”
The boy shifts on his feet, the tip of his shoe indenting in the small pile up of snow still on the ground from last night. “Well, that’s not the only reason I’m here, yanno.”
Sehun looks back up at him, heart thudding in his chest at the other possible reasons he had returned. Obviously it’s not just to buy candy; otherwise the two would be inside and not standing in front of the shop, dancing around on their tiptoes to keep warm.
“It’s not?”
“No,” the other answers simply with a brief shake of his head. “I kinda owed you an apology, too. I was kinda mean when I saw you staring at me, but that was only because I thought I would get in trouble and if I got in trouble again, my momma said she wasn’t going to let me go out by myself anymore and-”
“I’m Sehun,” Sehun blurts, breaking the stream of unneeded explanations and apologies. Before he could be abandoned without asking again, he continues, insistent upon an answer. “What’s your name?”
“My name?” the boy says, unable to hide the twinge in his voice, as if the request is something beyond ridiculous. “I’m….Jongin.”
“Jongin,” Sehun repeats, unable to stop the smile that breaks across his face, even when Jongin raises a questioning eyebrow at him. “Jongin. It’s nice to meet you, I’m Sehun.”
“You’re kinda dumb, aren’t you?” Jongin chuckles, flicking Sehun’s forehead. The other winces at the action, rubbing at the abused area with the heel of his hand. “You already said that.”
“Don’t flick my forehead!” Sehun says, trying to raise his voice threateningly, only to be impeded by it cracking, damn puberty. He tries to speak over Jongin’s laughter. “For all you know, I could be your hyung!”
“Doubt it,” Jongin says confidently, crossing his arms over his chest. “Not unless you were born in 1993 or earlier. I’m a January baby.”
He gives Sehun a wicked grin, as if being born in January was something to be jealous of. And Sehun would’ve shot him down, had Jongin not been right about being the older of the two of them. But he couldn’t complain; maybe he’d finally be getting the hyung he’d always dreamed of.
“You’re weird,” Jongin says suddenly, bringing Sehun back to earth from his cloud of thoughts. “I like you.”
“So does this mean we’re friends?” Sehun asks eagerly, bouncing on his heels and all too excitedly clasping his hands in front of him.
Jongin pauses for a moment, looking Sehun up and down as if sizing him up. In any other situation, Sehun would have felt properly scrutinized, but the endless buzz in his head of friend friend friend friend overpowers what little ability he has to think properly.
But, at any rate, Jongin just nods. “Yeah, we’re friends.”
After that, Sehun calms down a bit. In passing, he wonders how Jongin is able to spend the entire day with him, as they both find miscellaneous things to do throughout the day to keep each other occupied, whether it involves Jongin helping Sehun with his chores, running up and down the street in a two man game of cops and robbers, or Sehun’s mom coaxing them inside for a warm drink and some lunch so they both didn’t die of pneumonia. From what Sehun knows, someone homeschooled in the method that his parents provide to him is something very hard to find because of how much money went into it. Sehun isn’t one to pass judgment, but the memories of Jongin running into the shop for warmth that his clothes couldn’t provide didn’t exactly scream “privileged” to him. But, it wouldn’t have mattered to Sehun if Jongin was a prince or a pauper; he finally had a friend.
Later on, before Jongin has the chance to run off to wherever it is that he lives, (Sehun thought that it would be a little too soon to ask), Sehun presses another lollipop into the older boy’s hand, just like he had done the night before. It’s the same flavor that Sehun had dreamt about the night before, dark red in color, pomegranate in flavor.
“What’s this for?” Jongin inquires, pointing it at Sehun before peeling off the wrapper.
“No reason,” Sehun says with a shrug, trying to match Jongin’s effortless nonchalance. He twirls his own lemon lollipop in his mouth, clacking it across the ridges of his teeth. “Think of it like a-”
“Free sample,” Jongin finishes with a shy smile, pushing his own lollipop into his mouth. He leaves it to rest on his tongue for a moment, letting the flavor gather there before pulling it out again to talk with a small pop. “It’s the same flavor you gave me yesterday. How did you know I liked it?”
“I didn’t,” Sehun admits. He has no plans on telling Jongin that his selection had been based on a dream from the night before; it’s no reason to get Jongin weirded out because Sehun lacks basic social skills
“Lucky guess then.” He’s the first to stand from the patch of the sidewalk that he and Sehun had cleared of snow before sitting down to relax. “See you tomorrow, then. Same time, okay?”
And before Sehun can answer, Jongin is gone.
(II)
SeKai. PG-13. 8,700w.
Sehun has a sweet tooth for more than just candy.
Oh Sehun is not a morning person. Off the top of his head, he could think of approximately 547 reasons why his day would be better spent in his room, the curtains drawn tight around his windows, with his laptop being the only source of light in the room, and that would be on a bad day. Just the thought of waking up at an ungodly hour of the morning (which he usually considers to be anything before the crack of…noon) sends him diving for the protective shield of his blankets. He’s even entertained the idea of moving as far north as he possibly can more than fleetingly, to somewhere like Alaska where six out of twelve months of every year for him could be spent in complete darkness. Unfortunately for his habit of not thinking things through, like his mother is always kind enough to point out, the other six months he’d be in complete daylight, and that sends him straight back to his room before his mother can slip in another not so witty remark about him blending in with the snow if there were ever an avalanche while he was there.
But when Sehun isn’t being the antichrist of the morning, the days that he decides to rise shockingly early from his crypt are spent working behind the cash register of his family’s candy shop. Or more like he’s being unfairly shanghaied into “child labor” in exchange for not nearly enough pay for his efforts, as he likes to say. (His father tells him to suck it up.)
Sehun can’t really say that he minds giving a hand to his parents every now and then. They’ve had the candy shop for as long as he can remember; the particular store is tucked into a tidy little nook of their neighborhood’s main shopping district, not to mention being considered prime real estate. It’s been there for so long, in fact, that the homey shop front looks quite out of place in comparison to its glitzy neighbors, who offer all sorts of expensive luxuries that Sehun was never really interested in anyway. And it seemed like the children, clutching to their parents’ hands as they get ferried up and down the busy city streets share similar sentiments, being attracted to the candy filled display as opposed to glittering jewelry, brand name purses, or eccentric bottles of designer fragrances of which are common amongst others around it.
In recent years, Oh! Sweets had gained enough buzz that Sehun’s parents were able to expand it by three full stores. He was delighted by the fact that they were doing so well for themselves, but more stores meant a shortage of workers, and Sehun knew that they weren’t going to trust their store to just anyone who came along looking for a part-time job. In the end, it would be left up to Sehun to tend to the original shop, while his parents routinely made trips to the other ones to supervise the supplementary staff.
So when Sehun rises at the ass crack of dawn, he forces himself to rub the sleep from his eyes and reminds himself that his efforts are for a greater good, as cliché as it sounds, and hey, would his parents really notice if he swiped a piece of candy or two throughout the day? (The answer to that is actually yes, but if it’ll get him to work once in a while, Sehun’s parents think they can let it slide.) But secretly, he hopes one day that the kids he’s so used to seeing are escorted by an attractive older sibling, close to his age of 19, to be his eye candy.
It’s early, and he’s grumpy, and the streets are too damn quiet for his liking, but Sehun makes his way to the shop. The sun is just barely peeking up over the horizon and there might as well have been a zombie apocalypse the night before, similar to the ones Sehun is used to surviving through in his video games , with how little people there are around, starting their day alongside him. But he trudges on, in spite of the very, very long day ahead of him.
Running the shop on his own is no joke. Sehun finds this one of the very first times he does it on his own. He comes to realize that the shop always has a steady stream of customers at three peak points of the day; in the mornings, when mothers are with their children, too young for school, who want to get their shopping (whatever that may entail) done as soon as possible to make it ahead of the crowds. The second key time is the lunch hour, which usually stretches over about two full hours regardless, where the office workers take their breaks and frequent there for a sweet morsel with their meal. There are a few who return so often that Sehun has taken care to prepare their usual purchases in advance. He knows far too well how pressed for time most of these types of customers are, so it not only helps them by popping in and out to return to their schedules considerably faster, but its caused productivity and sales to increase so much that it’s a practice implemented at the other locations of the small chain. Of course, Sehun takes all the credit for that.
The third part of day that brings in business to the store is around the time the elementary and secondary schools get dismissed for the day. Most of the time, the children don’t buy much, and Sehun doesn’t have the heart to turn them away when they come to stare at the brightly colored displays, mouths watering at the mountains of sweets that are just out of their reach. If it were his parents in the store, he knows they would have scolded them, chasing them on home in favor of doing schoolwork and studying. But he can’t help but smile when he comes out from behind the register to give a giggling little group of nine year olds a free sample of the new candy coming to the store the following week. Again, it not only makes him feel good to see the children waddle away, cheeks bulging with candy filled smiles, but they usually come back with their parents to buy the newest treat they had tried that previous week.
(And he has his own little victories apart from those dealing with the shop, too. He remembers in particular, the most recent White Day. Though he hadn’t received any chocolates from any of the cute girls in school he had his eyes on in his class, during the afternoon rush of school children, he showed up to his shift to be greeted by a pleasant surprise. Not only had he arrived to find around a half dozen small bundles of chocolate left on the register attached to notes addressed with his name, but throughout his shift, he was approached with about eight more small parcels from the bolder young girls, who wanted to receive his praise for their gift directly. Most of his gifts had the unmistakable label “Oh! Sweets”, but what better excuse did he have to eat his parents’ homemade chocolate, as well as for free, than that one. To Sehun’s dismay, his stomach brutalizes him later on for scarfing down all of his chocolate in one sitting. Sehun is convinced it’s undeserved karma.
Needless to say, Sehun’s natural knack for aiding in customer satisfaction makes his parents proud. However, every advantage he has comes with its own drawbacks, today being one of them. He is indeed on his own, going so far as to open the shop all by himself as well. It wasn’t often that his parents gave him a shift quite so early in the morning, usually relegating use of the early morning hours for his studies (which now, were online classes, as opposed to the tutor that would come every day to home school him), but today also isn’t like most days.
To Sehun’s dismay, it’s Halloween.
He tries to convince himself that he doesn’t really hate the holiday, per say, as he unlocks the front door of the shop with the set of keys his mother had lent him that morning. The holidays meant more business for the shop, and especially for one like Halloween, the number of younger visitors increased. But it’s more or less that the holidays make Sehun wistful in a way that spending time with his family never could quite cure. Growing up in an environment where his life revolves around being or working at his parents’ shop, which only works out because Sehun’s parents bring the school to him instead of bringing him to the school, doesn’t leave him much time to expand his inner circle, (even his cellphone pathetically has only 3 contacts; his mom, dad and the main shop’s business line.) Oh! Sweets practically is his social life outside of conversing with his family. Sehun wouldn’t exactly consider himself friendless, but thinking it over, he’s not sure that the ten year olds who visit the shop on occasion to talk about anime count for much.
Brooding quietly and promising himself that the next time a group of kids come in, he would keep their relations strictly business oriented, Sehun dips his hand into the closest candy jar within reach once his jacket lays draped over the coat rack by the entrance. It isn’t quite time to open shop for the morning, which gives Sehun all of the time he needs to goof of-…tend to the tasks expected of him for that day. Fetching his apron from the back, he sets down the candy in his hand onto the front counter to tie the strings around his waist, smoothing out the wrinkles so that his name, neatly embroidered in red, is readable along the pocket of the fabric.
When he looks over at the counter, he realizes that that small, circular item he had snagged from the candy jar was a lollipop. It’s one of the organic ones, a dark shade of red and pomegranate flavored, in clear wrappers that just so happen to be environmentally friendly; the only person who really likes them being Sehun. A box of them had arrived a few years ago as a mistake. The Oh’s wouldn’t consider themselves healthy living pushers by any accord, considering their choice of business, but that very same year, when it seemed as though that specific brand of candy was practically sprouting legs and walking itself off the shelves, they couldn’t resist restocking.
For that, Sehun is thankful because without those teeth-rotting, sweetened orbs of condensed sugar, he would have never met his first (and probably only) friend. It’s quite the shame that they lost touch; Sehun is surprised that he even remembered it from so long ago, and so suddenly at that. Carefully removing the transparent cellophane wrapper preventing him from enjoying his sweet, he makes his way back over to the door, reversing the plastic Closed sign to read Open. Sehun hums softly as he closes his lips around the lollipop, recalling the memory of a tanned, round-faced boy with a permanent pout in his plush pink lips that had run into the store breathless and alone on a similarly icy day from a few years back…
* * *
Sehun stares out the shop’s large front window, looking longingly outside as a layer of fresh white snow continues to dust the ground. He smiles to himself, having not expected it to snow today; it’s a pleasant surprise nonetheless. The storm had blown in quite suddenly. It starts literally moments after he arrives at the shop, in time to help his mother with the afternoon rush of customers, filing in by the dozens for a moment of warmth and naturally a pound of miscellaneous sweets or two
Now, most of those people have hurried off to their homes, driving away before the roads become slick with the dangers of melted snow or unseen ice. Sehun finds it more enjoyable studying those who choose to walk the streets instead of taking refuge in their cars. His mother calls it people-watching (and apparently it’s considered something of a bad habit, not that Sehun actually cared) when he gazes out the window with bright eyes at those lugging their massive packages, traipsing toddlers along, connected at the hip by a little hand clasped around the corner of their parents’ coats, wondering what ridiculous amount of money they had decided to waste today. Sometimes, Sehun would create his own stories for them, too; what they worked as, who they were married to, where they were from, every part of their history and future down to the most minuscule detail.
But, the one thing that he keeps consistent, even if they walk the streets with no child in tow, is that he gives them one. They’re always about his age, no older than 11, and it doesn’t usually matter whether they’re a boy or a girl. If that day, he decides the child should be a girl, he gives her a soft, round face, long black hair with bright eyes that curve up into little crescent moons when she smiles (like his mom’s), and laughter that tinkles like wind chimes in a gentle breeze. She’s clothed in lacy dresses every day that fall down to her knees and laughs at all of his jokes, even if they’re about the less pleasant things an 11 year old boy can think of, like farts. Maybe one day they’d grow up and realize they have always been in love, like those best friends in the dramas Sehun watches frequently with his mom on their days off. But if it wasn’t a little girl, Sehun is perfectly satisfied with another boy, one who likes the same video games as he does. He’d have to be a bit older; Sehun has always wanted someone other than his cousins to call hyung. Either way, they would be friends, Sehun waiting for them to finish school and come bursting through the candy shop’s doors to greet him and say-
“Sehun!” He sighs, hearing his mom call from the back. Turning to look towards the back, while perched precariously on a stool behind the counter, he sees his mother busy punching numbers into a calculator, pausing between clicks to scratch a number or two onto the chart laid on the table in front of her. Once, Sehun had tried to do them for her, knowing how much she put her eyes to strain staring at the small font of the inventories and receipts from earlier purchases. The next morning, when his mother looked over his work and realized that there was ten thousand dollars’ worth of candy missing, he was banned from even counting without a calculator while he was working.
“Yeah, mom?” he replies, voice barely carrying to the back of the shop.
“It’s time to close shop!” Close shop, aka it’s time for Sehun to straighten all the jars on the shelves, lock the register, sweep the floor, and an abundance of any other tiresome chores his mom could think of him to complete while she spends her time updating the shop’s records.
As he turns the jars with their labels facing front, Sehun wishes he could just go outside in the snow already. A sigh plays across his lips as transparent glass jar clinks against its neighbors while being turned. Sehun can feel his focus slipping each time his hand grips the rim of the jar, not worrying about spreading germs; his mom only fills the jars on the lower levels with the wrapped candies anyway, leaving the rest higher up or beside the counter, with wide red scoops emblazoned with Oh! Sweets debossed into the plastic sitting atop the sweets. He steals a few lollipops from the next jar as he makes a pass over, stuffing them into the pocket of his apron and taking no notice of the jingling bell above the entrance meant to signal the arrival of a customer until a rush of icy air knocks the breath from his lungs.
Without looking up, in the most professional, non-breathless voice he can manage, he starts, “I’m sorry but we’re close-”
For a second time that day, the air leaves Sehun’s body in a rush. But, it’s not because of the cold.
When he does indeed look up, Sehun is face to face with a small boy, who by the looks of it, is close in age to him. (Face to face for Sehun being about two meters away, but who’s counting.) He doesn’t seem to notice Sehun off in the corner of the store with his hand glued to the jar of lollipops he had swiped from before, more preoccupied with warming up his hands. Sehun thinks that they’d probably be the same height if they stood next to each other as he creeps closer, staying low behind the maze of displays surrounding him.
The boy looks noticeably cold, little hands rubbing together to create friction for warmth as he hovers by the door, puffing a short breath of warmer air to help thaw him out between rubs. Sehun wonders where his winter clothes are, noting that the boy is without a scarf, hat, or even proper mittens when he moves behind a display near the door, close enough to get a decent look at him
He isn’t quite the little boy that Sehun had imagined him being. If anything, he looks more like the little girl Sehun envisions, sans the long hair he naturally attributes to girls having, waves lengthy enough to be tamed in neat little plaits at the back of their head. At least Sehun is somewhat certain that the unexpected guest is a boy. His full, pink lips and round face coated with a sun-kissed complexion make Sehun waver, however, because there has never been a boy to walk into the shop that was as pretty as the one standing in front of him at that very moment. The cherubic little face is framed by a wavy black hair, (adding further to Sehun’s ‘may be a girl’ theory), that seems to bother the other as he continuously pushes his bangs out of his eyes.
And a rather adamant push of his bangs gives the little stranger enough visibility to see Sehun peering over at him from behind a rotating rack of rock candies, shaped to imitate a rainbow. For a moment, they are both suspended in staring at each other, not knowing who would make the first move.
The boy is a touch quicker than Sehun. “What’re you looking at?” he snaps, uncaring of his tone despite the fact that he’s technically the one trespassing.
Sehun loses his voice for a moment, shocked by the harshness coming from such a delicate looking person. (Or maybe he was just a bad judge of character.)
“Well,” the boy repeats in the same grumpy tone, inching closer to a gape-mouthed Sehun. “Is there something on my face, huh?”
“I…no,” Sehun stammers, stepping out a bit further from his hiding spot. “But I could ask you the same question!”
It’s not the best comeback ever, Sehun realizes after he’s said it. But what did it matter if it made sense! The boy, no matter how sickeningly cute he is, isn’t supposed to be there and it’s Sehun’s job to kick him out.
“I wasn’t staring,” the boy retorts. In a flash, Sehun notices his body language change, all of the bark gone from the bite he never had to begin with.
“I was though,” Sehun admits, voice lowering. “But only because you looked cold. You’re really not supposed to be here because we’re closed, but if you’re cold, my mom’s in the back and she can make you some-”
“No!” The boy’s cheeks turn bright red, eyes opening wider than a deer stuck in headlights before Sehun can even finish his offer. He realizes his rudeness though, hanging his head to stare are his feet while wringing his hands nervously behind his back. “I can’t…my momma doesn’t allow me to take anything from strangers,” he explains. “Even from little kids.”
Sehun frowns at the rejection, even though he understands that rule all too well. He decides not to argue, but he doesn’t feel right letting the boy leave empty handed.
“How about some candy then?” Sehun offers, fishing out the lollipops he had pocketed earlier from inside his apron. “They’re wrapped and from the shop here, so it’s allowed right?”
The boy chews his bottom lip, biting the skin pink in worry. “Think of it like a free sample,” Sehun continues, fanning the three lollipops out to give the boy a choice.
“You won’t get in trouble?” he asks, eyeing the selection hesitantly. “I don’t have any money to pay for it, though.”
“Don’t worry about it, really,” Sehun shrugs. “I snag candy from here all the time, my parents don’t notice it.”
“Your parents own this place?” the boy asks incredulously, pausing to take in the entire shop.
Admittedly, Sehun is impressed by how awesome he feels when he gets to tell people that ask that he’s the son of the people who started the shop. It helps his parents too, because when he sits with his mom or dad at the register, the little old ladies coo over what a “sweet little boy” he is and buy more candy if he lets them pinch his cheeks.
“Yeah they do,” he nods in confirmation. “And one day it’s going to be all mine!”
The boy makes a quiet “oh” with his mouth, eyes still trained on the shelves that climb higher than both boys can reach. Any way you looked, the arrangement is more than appealing to the eye, the colored candies arranged to complement their neighbors. Wrapped candies in surplus and able to fit into jars line the shelves at the bottom, low enough to be reached by the occasional curious hand. The rest that don’t have their own personal packaging sit on the higher shelves in hinged containers, waiting to be stuffed into little plastic bags tied closed with silver twist ties. Each container is filled to a comfortable fullness, not quite high enough to spill over, but at a level that can be comfortably reached without having to dive a hand all the way to the bottom. In this one store, there are more sweets than the boy could name, (Sehun can, but it comes with the territory) even with the little pink stickers that label each jar with what’s inside. Some are in foreign languages he can’t quite make out, but it doesn’t matter because everything from the peppermints to the caramels, the saltwater taffies to the Jolly Ranchers , chocolate covered pretzels and cherries, gumballs, jawbreakers, gummy worms, sour straws, jelly beans, pop rocks, gumdrops, chocolates, and of course, lollipops, look like they would be heaven in his mouth. He makes a mental note to himself to come back on his birthday when he has enough money saved to splurge.
“No way,” he says to Sehun skeptically, shoving his hands in the pockets of his tattered pants and tearing his eyes away from the displays to look back at him. “How are you going to be able to run this big shop by yourself? You don’t look very smart seeing as you let in a stranger after closing time!”
“For your information, I-”
“Sehun!”
Again, Sehun gets cut off mid-sentence, not having the chance to finish before he hears rustling behind the voice calling him, coming from the back of the store. He doesn’t have to look to know that his mother is probably done with her work and is a mere seconds away from coming to the front, to not only find that he hasn’t really done a stitch of work, but he’s entertaining someone who isn’t a customer after hours and offering him candy for free. No matter how Sehun looked at it, they boy had to leave now.
Before the boy can react, (or protest, which is the more likely of the two situations), Sehun closes his first around one of the lollipops, keeping his hand over the other’s to make it stay balled before shooting him a pleading look towards the door. Thankfully, he gets the message, both boys shuffling as quietly as they can to the door and pulling it open just enough for him to slip out passed Sehun, unnoticed by anyone else.
“Sehun, why is the door open?” Sehun’s mother asks, walking to the front while folding up her apron. She gives him a look that says something more along the lines of “you’d better not be up to anything stupid” as opposed to one of genuine curiosity.
“Just looking at the snow, mom,” he replies, sticking his head out the door. Looking both ways, the boy is nowhere in sight, gone as quickly as if he disappeared into thin air.
“Well, put on your coat,” she says, starting to pull on her own, fingers pulling the buttons through their loops down the front. “You don’t want to catch a cold.”
“Yes mom,” Sehun says, letting the door close with a faint jingle of the bell attached to its top
It’s only then he realizes he forgot to ask the boy’s name.
The next morning, Sehun walks, rubbing his eyes and clinging to his mother’s arm as she all but drags him with her to the shop. He hadn’t slept well that night, his dreams plagued by a pretty boy with full lips and thin clothing, playing with a dark red lollipop between his teeth. It isn’t like Sehun at all to wake up remembering his dreams, so it alarms him that this one does. Part of him hopes that this isn’t his subconscious trying to tell him that everything that happened the day before was from a combination of his imagination and desperation for a companion. Because, well, that would totally suck.
He’s herded into the shop and grasping a broom for dear life before he can open his eyes, swaying on his feet under the haziness of sleep. All Sehun knows he has to do is get through the day, and before he knows it, he can be on his way home to that new gaming system his grandmother had sent him in the mail as an early Christmas present and-
Sehun’s head jerks up from sleepily lolling against his shoulder when he hears an incessant tapping noise against glass. His eyes immediately move to the large picture window at the front of the shop, falling on the figure wiping away at the condensation with a gloved hand. The person peers through the now defogged window, hands cupped over his eyes to form makeshift binoculars, and Sehun realizes, to his immense shock, that it’s the boy from the previous night, pink lips and all. Sehun can still hear the faint tapping, surprised that the boy hadn’t seen him, let alone come in to get him, as his lets the broom fall with a clatter to the floor, neglecting to re-zip his jacket before running outside again.
The bell above the shop’s door jingles as Sehun throws it open with enough force for it to slam against the wall behind it in his rush to get outside. He stands up straight, smiling almost a little too breathlessly when the boy flinches slightly from the loud noise the crashing of the door makes.
“Hi,” Sehun says uncertainly, realizing he hadn’t really thought over where this conversation was going. The boy didn’t seem to mind, however, moving away from the window to stand closer. Face to face, Sehun grins inwardly, having been right about them both being the same height, not that it really mattered.
“Hi,” the boy greets in return, shyly chewing on his bottom lip. “I…I came by to say thank you for yesterday. You know, letting me stay and stuff…and for the candy.”
Sehun shakes his head dismissively, giving the other a lopsided smile. He tries hard to fight the embarrassment of being appreciated, but his face betrays him, color not so subtly creeping up into his cheeks and spreading across the rest of his pale complexion. “I-it was nothing really,” he stammers, rubbing a hand against the back of his neck as he hangs his head. “My mom says it’s good to be nice to everyone…good karma or something…”
The boy shifts on his feet, the tip of his shoe indenting in the small pile up of snow still on the ground from last night. “Well, that’s not the only reason I’m here, yanno.”
Sehun looks back up at him, heart thudding in his chest at the other possible reasons he had returned. Obviously it’s not just to buy candy; otherwise the two would be inside and not standing in front of the shop, dancing around on their tiptoes to keep warm.
“It’s not?”
“No,” the other answers simply with a brief shake of his head. “I kinda owed you an apology, too. I was kinda mean when I saw you staring at me, but that was only because I thought I would get in trouble and if I got in trouble again, my momma said she wasn’t going to let me go out by myself anymore and-”
“I’m Sehun,” Sehun blurts, breaking the stream of unneeded explanations and apologies. Before he could be abandoned without asking again, he continues, insistent upon an answer. “What’s your name?”
“My name?” the boy says, unable to hide the twinge in his voice, as if the request is something beyond ridiculous. “I’m….Jongin.”
“Jongin,” Sehun repeats, unable to stop the smile that breaks across his face, even when Jongin raises a questioning eyebrow at him. “Jongin. It’s nice to meet you, I’m Sehun.”
“You’re kinda dumb, aren’t you?” Jongin chuckles, flicking Sehun’s forehead. The other winces at the action, rubbing at the abused area with the heel of his hand. “You already said that.”
“Don’t flick my forehead!” Sehun says, trying to raise his voice threateningly, only to be impeded by it cracking, damn puberty. He tries to speak over Jongin’s laughter. “For all you know, I could be your hyung!”
“Doubt it,” Jongin says confidently, crossing his arms over his chest. “Not unless you were born in 1993 or earlier. I’m a January baby.”
He gives Sehun a wicked grin, as if being born in January was something to be jealous of. And Sehun would’ve shot him down, had Jongin not been right about being the older of the two of them. But he couldn’t complain; maybe he’d finally be getting the hyung he’d always dreamed of.
“You’re weird,” Jongin says suddenly, bringing Sehun back to earth from his cloud of thoughts. “I like you.”
“So does this mean we’re friends?” Sehun asks eagerly, bouncing on his heels and all too excitedly clasping his hands in front of him.
Jongin pauses for a moment, looking Sehun up and down as if sizing him up. In any other situation, Sehun would have felt properly scrutinized, but the endless buzz in his head of friend friend friend friend overpowers what little ability he has to think properly.
But, at any rate, Jongin just nods. “Yeah, we’re friends.”
After that, Sehun calms down a bit. In passing, he wonders how Jongin is able to spend the entire day with him, as they both find miscellaneous things to do throughout the day to keep each other occupied, whether it involves Jongin helping Sehun with his chores, running up and down the street in a two man game of cops and robbers, or Sehun’s mom coaxing them inside for a warm drink and some lunch so they both didn’t die of pneumonia. From what Sehun knows, someone homeschooled in the method that his parents provide to him is something very hard to find because of how much money went into it. Sehun isn’t one to pass judgment, but the memories of Jongin running into the shop for warmth that his clothes couldn’t provide didn’t exactly scream “privileged” to him. But, it wouldn’t have mattered to Sehun if Jongin was a prince or a pauper; he finally had a friend.
Later on, before Jongin has the chance to run off to wherever it is that he lives, (Sehun thought that it would be a little too soon to ask), Sehun presses another lollipop into the older boy’s hand, just like he had done the night before. It’s the same flavor that Sehun had dreamt about the night before, dark red in color, pomegranate in flavor.
“What’s this for?” Jongin inquires, pointing it at Sehun before peeling off the wrapper.
“No reason,” Sehun says with a shrug, trying to match Jongin’s effortless nonchalance. He twirls his own lemon lollipop in his mouth, clacking it across the ridges of his teeth. “Think of it like a-”
“Free sample,” Jongin finishes with a shy smile, pushing his own lollipop into his mouth. He leaves it to rest on his tongue for a moment, letting the flavor gather there before pulling it out again to talk with a small pop. “It’s the same flavor you gave me yesterday. How did you know I liked it?”
“I didn’t,” Sehun admits. He has no plans on telling Jongin that his selection had been based on a dream from the night before; it’s no reason to get Jongin weirded out because Sehun lacks basic social skills
“Lucky guess then.” He’s the first to stand from the patch of the sidewalk that he and Sehun had cleared of snow before sitting down to relax. “See you tomorrow, then. Same time, okay?”
And before Sehun can answer, Jongin is gone.
(II)