[super junior] the high cost of dying (1/7)
crying forever omg this NaNo fic. is. an. uncoordinated. mess. but i'm too lazy to rewrite, so.
The High Cost of Dying
super junior // kyuhyun/zhou mi (+ minor mimin, kyumin) // r // 50,000+ words (total)
[inception!AU] In which Cho Kyuhyun, international corporate spy and part-time assassin, is sent to China on a bizarre mission involving famous popstar Victoria Song with the assistance of Chinese MC slash fashionista Zhou Mi, whom he had never met before. Along the way they discover shocking secrets, unexpected attraction, and how to make edible pancakes.
The High Cost of Dying.
-
the cabarets of liverpool and luxembourg
have closed for moral reconstruction.
-
“There is nothing about you that’s original.”
That was the last sentence Cho Kyuhyun heard before the world literally tilted off its axis and an overwhelming pain hit his system, throwing him onto his knees. At that exact moment, the ground beneath his feet rumbled and the walls started crumbling apart. He looked up, alarmed, as if the cracking ceiling could offer an explanation for the way his entire body suddenly felt like it had just been smashed into a stone wall by a truck running two hundred miles an hour. It sounded clichéd, but the sounds of the world ending, reality collapsing into itself, the ground crumbling beneath their feet were too much too soon. Kyuhyun gasped for breath, the pain rising and choking him, turning into horrible nausea in mere seconds. His eyes blurred with involuntary tears, and he could not even be glad that he never felt the impact when a massive ceiling rubble piece hit him straight on in the head.
When Kyuhyun came back to consciousness, he wished he had stayed with the crumbling room instead.
The first thing that assaulted his senses was the smell. Oil-slicked, petroleum-soaked asphalt on a blazing summer day. Industrial-strength burnt rubber smell. Pungent melting tar. You never knew what the ground beneath your feet was like until you were down face-first on it. It smelled hot and suffocating, and when Kyuhyun took the first shuddering breath, that was when the pain hit.
Breathing burned. His body was heavy and weak, and everything felt like they were falling apart inside. The pain he had felt in that crumbling room was dulled compared to this searing ache. Kyuhyun tried to hold his breath, but the world flashed black and white before his eyes. He tried to document the damage because it was what he had always been taught to do - broken ribs (definitely several), damaged lungs, something wrong with his hips (fractured or broken?), going into shock - but the thoughts were too fleeting for his haywire brain to grasp.
He could see the car out of the corner of his eyes. It was now a slump of metal wreckage, scraped down to its frame and bent out of shape, a grotesque caricature of its old self. It was too dark for him to see anyone else, and at that moment, lying on the hot and pungent concrete in the dark, one thought suddenly hit him - There had been a car accident, and he was going to die.
In that brief moment of clarity, he almost expected his life to flash before his eyes, except nothing did. It was a silly thought, almost a childish wish, how he had imagined a real death would be different in the technical process from the other hundreds of demises he had experienced. He felt the way his body trembled in shock and automatically recorded the motion and its intensity. For future designs, he thought, until he remembered there was no coming back and there was no waking up this time. Cho Kyuhyun was no stranger to pain or even death, but only until this moment did he realize the only vast difference between dream and reality was the intense, unadulterated fear.
“Kyuhyun. Kyuhyun-ah.”
He looked up and felt a firm hand grasp his, fingers cold and clumsy. Eunhyuk. Their chemist. He was crying and sobbing, his face all scratched up, wet and twisted, and randomly Kyuhyun remembered how they had always laughed at Eunhyuk for being the over-emotional crybaby of the group. There really had been too many horrible pranks. Yet somehow Eunhyuk’s sobs felt comforting then, the illusory proof that someone was there and cared for him. Kyuhyun wanted to ask “Why are you like this? We’ve only known each other for a year,” but what came out of his mouth was “I don’t want to die.”
Except it was more like a breathless croak. He didn’t know if Eunhyuk even heard him, but Eunhyuk’s grasp on his hand tightened to the point it would almost ache if it wasn’t for the intense pain assaulting the rest of his body.
“Don’t talk, don’t talk… Just wait, they are coming, it’s going to be all right, please…”
Eunhyuk was probably just trying to reassure himself, but Kyuhyun found he wanted so desperately to believe him, simply because he didn’t want to die, not really. It shocked him how much he didn’t want to die. Somehow his desperation felt almost embarrassing. He had always thought he had this down, deaths and clever last words and no regrets, having done this hundreds of times in practice, but apparently nothing prepared him for the real world.
A cough forced its way out of his throat, and the sounds of blood rushing in his ears almost drowned out the nearing wailing siren. His hand twitched, and suddenly the sound jerked him back to where he had been before waking up to the side of the road.
“What happened…?”
“I don’t know… The car flipped. I couldn’t see anything. We couldn’t.” It was then that he realized Eunhyuk’s hand was also shaking badly in his grasp.
“The mark… police…” His breathing was getting louder and louder in his ears.
Eunhyuk’s eyes darted behind and back to him. “Shindong’s got him, don’t worry. The job is done.”
And somehow that reminded him that there really were other people with him in that metal wreckage.
“Leeteuk-hyung? Kangin?”
“Leeteuk… Leeteuk is okay.” Eunhyuk swallowed, and Kyuhyun knew he was glossing over the facts. “He will be. Kangin…” Eunhyuk trailed off, and Kyuhyun knew with no amount of uncertainty his fate. Kangin had been the one driving.
“Lucky us.” Kyuhyun mumbled, his aching eyelids fluttering. Somehow the pain felt less intense now. It still felt bone-deep, but it was like there was a layer of glaze numbing all his senses. It was almost easier to breathe.
“Yeah, lucky us…” Eunhyuk half laughed half sobbed out over him, and that was the last thing he heard before the outside world tilted off its axis for the second time that day.
And then… total black-out.
---
---
---
“Did you know some female turtles produce eggs four years after mating? Imagine that, sperms that live for four years!”
Thirty-five thousand feet above the ground into his thirteenth flight of the quarter (he only knew this because the company accountant forced him to do a report at the end of every quarter), Cho Kyuhyun was aware more than ever of what Leeteuk meant when he said the saddest thing about being a frequent business traveler was not being alone nor having no place to call home, it was simply that you didn’t get to choose the people who invaded your personal bubble for a large, large percentage of your life.
The bald man with a beer belly beside him started cackling over his own inside joke, and Kyuhyun started eyeing the far rows of seats in desperation. It was just early November, meaningless season in a period of nothing, why on earth was the plane full? He really did try to plug in his earphones and let Mika Nakashima blast the man away after the second time the dude asked him what his favourite reptile was, but Kyuhyun barely got through “Glamorous Sky” before the man poked him and continued the conversation as if all was well with the world.
“They can even make noises when having sex, bet you never knew that!”
To tell the truth, the sad thing was Kyuhyun did actually know all this, all thanks to a classmate back in university called Yesung who had a pet tortoise and brought it to class every single day. There had been so many attempts to kidnap the tortoise, but none of them ever succeeded. Yesung was a vicious little man when it came to his Ddangkoma. Kyuhyun felt pretty horrible about himself as a person that he still even remembered the name of that ugly little rock.
“Have you ever seen a turtle lay eggs? I have, this one time five years ago. It was a magical experience, let me tell you.”
Kyuhyun sank further into his seat and decided he hated the real world with the fiery passion of a hundred burning suns.
-
Home. He swiped the card and the thick heavy wood door clicked open. Home was an apartment suite on the seventh floor of a pretentiously contemporary building in downtown Seoul that his accountant in the company and his sister had spent half a year trying to convince him to move into. It was simply because it would be the “cool” thing to do. Plus he needed to spend his hard-earned money somehow, his sister said. Why Kyuhyun needed a lascivious suite in the cool part of town that he barely stayed at for one consecutive week at a time, he didn’t really know, but she kept insisting it was necessary to uphold their standards.
The place was actually all right, he guessed. It was modern, bright yet cozy, well designed with all the little clever touches, and also a completely barren land resembling a half-empty storage more than actual living space. There were still stacks and stacks of boxes piling up across the place, those half opened and also those that were still taped shut. He didn’t even remember what were in those boxes. Still, he figured that if he didn’t remember, they must have been nothing important because he never used them anymore anyway. And so the boxes sat there.
Kyuhyun had moved here approximately one year ago.
He took off his shoes, threw his luggage and coat to the side and dragged himself into the living room, dropping down to the leather couch, blatantly ignoring the dust cloud that puffed up, glittering in the late afternoon sunlight. Home at last, Kyuhyun repeated to himself. Except the couch was a little too soft, the light a little too bright, and somehow the place seemed less familiar than his standard Hilton hotel rooms across the continent. At least then he had the comfort of seeing the same white-covered bed, the same ugly hard chairs, the same hazy lamps, and the same peach-scented bath soaps every night he opened the door to his room in every single city. This felt… off.
He stared at the fridge and the cupboard from his position on the couch. After spending ten minutes contemplating the blinding whiteness of the fridge, Kyuhyun decided it wasn’t even worth it to stand up and open it to check. The last time he had been in the apartment was probably mid October, and even then it was not even for a full week. Not nearly enough time for him to finally wander down to his local grocery store in search of something not greasy nor heartburn-inducing. The cupboard definitely was not up to the task either. He remembered opening it last month (and the month before that) and even then both times the only things it produced were two bottles of salt and pepper.
Reaching out for his bag on the floor, Kyuhyun rummaged through the mess inside to pull out a small plastic bottle. He snapped the cap open, mentally calculated the recommended dose, and shook out double the amount of the little white pills. Kyuhyun quickly swallowed them whole in one go. His life was a really, really pathetic cliché, Kyuhyun thought as he drifted off to sleep, exhausted and unsettled. Images of crawling turtles laying white rubbery eggs haunted him to sleep.
-
The call came late in the night. Well, actually the call came at eight in the evening, but when he groggily opened his eyes after only four hours of sleep to the familiar annoying buzzing sound of his cellphone and total darkness in the room, it was definitely considered too late into the night. His head felt heavy, his body weighed down and aching. He sometimes wondered if he was getting old, but then decided it was still too early in life to even get a quarter life crisis. (Kyuhyun sometimes had very high hopes for the future.)
After five minutes of constant ringing and buzzing, it was clear that whoever the asshole on the other end of the line was, he was not going to let this go. Kyuhyun growled into his couch cushion and sluggishly rolled down to the floor, hand first, then knees and shoulders. He reached for the bag he had thrown carelessly on the floor earlier, yanking it open to pull out the phone, the beeping noise louder and more annoying than ever. Kyuhyun stared at the caller id and considered throwing the phone out the window. He had not even been home for a full day yet.
“Leeteuk-hyung.”
“Well, freaking finally.” Leeteuk’s shrill voice was loud and obnoxious on the other end of the other line. Kyuhyun couldn’t really say he had missed this.
“Hyung, I haven’t even been home for half a day yet.”
“Don’t worry you’ll have one and a half day of rest this time. We’ve got a briefing at nine tomorrow morning.”
“And you couldn’t just text or send me an email?” Kyuhyun sighed heavily, dragging himself back onto the couch. Sometimes he told himself he had known what he would be getting into when he signed the contract, but sometimes he wasn’t so sure.
“I just want to check up on my favourite dongsaeng, is that a crime?” Leeteuk laughed, muffled by the sound of paper rushing. He was calling about work at eight in the evening, which meant Leeteuk was working overtime again. Kyuhyun rolled his eyes. Typical.
“If you’re bored with paperwork, just go home hyung.”
“You know that’s not how it works, Kyuhyun-ah. There ought to be someone doing the paperwork so the youngsters like you could fly free. Speaking of which, how was Jeju?”
“Fine. Too many tourists.” Kyuhyun burrowed his head further into the soft cushions. He could feel himself drifting off again. “Aren’t we supposed to talk about it tomorrow?”
“Okay okay, go back to sleep, little Kyuhyun.” Leeteuk laughed, the sound too cheerful and ringing to handle when he was half-asleep. “I’ll see you at nine tomorrow!”
“Bye hyung. Go home.”
Leeteuk laughed and ended the call. Kyuhyun groggily set the alarm and then rolled over, going back to sleep.
-
If anyone ever asked what his job was, Cho Kyuhyun either said he worked for a trading company, or that he was an architect. Both were true, except he was an architect in a trading company, and that normally didn’t make sense to most people.
SM was a dream company, literally.
Around five years prior, the first group of scientists successfully tested what they called a “dream sharing technique” for the first time in Europe. They found a way to link the subconscious of several people at once while these people were put in a deep sleep. It was ground-breaking and controversial, and it was not long before the big corporations tripped all over themselves trying to recruit these scientists for their own labs.
Only half a year later, the first prototype of the commercial “dream machine” was born and patented. In the next year, the PASIV device (which was abbreviation for some lengthy English name that he could never remember) was released to the market, establishing a new age where dream sharing was portable, quick, convenient, and easily controlled. Of course the dream sharing machines were under limited distribution and the few big companies that produced them held very strict regulations.
Asia took a while to warm up to the idea. SM was the first company in South Korea to develop its own lab for the sole purpose of researching dreams and the subconscious, hiring Korean professors and experts who were passionate about the new developments in the world. They quickly recognized the biggest business potential of the new dream sharing technique: the sharing of information.
SM in essence was an information trading company. It only sounded formal and proper until one got to know how they trade these information. They started out with small operations like secretly hooking up the head researchers of other rival companies to the PASIV to take information about their progress. When SM realized it actually worked, they started taking mail orders from other businesses. Quickly enough, SM became one of the most powerful corporations in Korea. In order to protect their operation, the lab went completely underground, a team of specialist dream agents was trained, and SM started picking out the top students relevant to their interest at Seoul University. Cho Kyuhyun had been one of them, majoring in Architectural Design and Technology.
“So what happened in Jeju that kept you up at night? You were totally out of it when I called yesterday evening.” Leeteuk grinned at him, entirely too cheerful to handle at nine in the morning. Kyuhyun didn’t even know how this worked - he had slept for at least twelve hours and was still tired, while he knew for sure Leeteuk had been at work at least until one. The older man was half leaning half sitting on the large glass table, while Kyuhyun himself was sprawled over one of the million swiveling chairs in the meeting room.
“Nothing. You know how the job went, hyung. I sent you the mail immediately after I wrapped it up.”
“Well, isn’t the purpose of this meeting is to elaborate on it?”
“Not really.” Kyuhyun rolled his eyes, tugging at the cuff of his shirt. He probably should do his laundry soon. “We all know I’m just here for the new job. I’ll send you the full report of this one next week.”
Leeteuk squinted at him. “Oh right, of course you will, especially when you’re running free in China and all. I want it on my desk tomorrow before your flight, Kyuhyun.”
“Hyuuung,” he whined. Leeteuk was probably the nearest thing he had akin to a supervisor, though his official title was something like Administrative Assistant, whatever that meant. He used to work as a field agent, but then transferred completely into the office three years ago. After the accident.
Leeteuk paused for a beat before he turned to look at Kyuhyun, the lines of his face became softened and more somber. “You don’t have to include it in details in the report, but I still want to know this. How did you wake up from the dream?”
Kyuhyun stilled. “I don’t see how that’s any of the company’s concern.”
“Kyuhyun.”
“I died, obviously. It’s not exactly breaking news. Everyone and their mother knows it - we die in the dream, we wake up.”
“So how did you die?”
Kyuhyun realized he was not going to escape this one either. He had never been able to, he didn’t know why he bothered this time. “The car slammed into the side of the mountain.” He averted his eyes, focusing on the stain on his sleeve, trying to erase the image of crushed metal and shattering glass burned behind his eyelids.
“Why did the car slam into the side of the mountain?” Leeteuk’s voice was quiet. Somehow it made him feel inexplicably guilty.
“I drove it.”
“Kyuhyun…”
“I know, I know.” Kyuhyun let out a loud sigh. “But it’s fine, okay? I’m fine. I woke up. Still here. One piece. I’ll write you a full report tomorrow, let’s just get on with what I am here for, which is the new job. I’m going to China? Why do you keep sending me to China? I do better in Japan. I like Japan.”
Leeteuk was silent for a few beats, but he finally gave in as Kyuhyun was resolutely not looking at him. “We’ve got a lot of people to cover Japan already. We went through this already, Kyuhyun, your new focus will be China for now as our current China crew is skeleton at best. The market is developing at neck-breaking speed there. There's a lot of opportunities for development as well.”
“My Chinese is crap.”
“And that is why you need to be exposed to the environment more often.” Leeteuk gave him his brightest charming smile and Kyuhyun flinched. Leeteuk pulled out a manila folder from out of nowhere and he took it gingerly. Kyuhyun raised an eyebrow as he pulled it open - the folder was considerably thin compared to all the previous folders he had ever received. He was starting to get hopeful - perhaps this would be a really quick and easy one, like an errands run to simply practice his Chinese or something.
Except of course it was not. This was SM they were talking about.
Kyuhyun stared at the files in front of him. “It’s an information retrieval job?” He looked up to see Leeteuk nod. “I think some papers are missing. Where is the file that actually says what I have to retrieve?”
“There is none.”
“Wait. What?”
“The information you are supposed to retrieved is not specified in this brief.” The older man was still smiling. It was getting kind of creepy.
“Then I’m going to be informed later?”
“No, you are just not supposed to know it. And I know you are going to ask how the hell you would be able to retrieve something if you don’t even know what it is, but that’s how it goes. You will know it when you encounter it.”
“How the hell would I be able to retrieve something if I don’t even know what it is?” Kyuhyun deadpanned. “No but really, I will know it when I see it? You expect me to go into someone’s subconscious without knowing what is really going down there and what risk might be waiting?”
“This is classified information, Kyuhyun. You can’t know it beforehand as it would put all of us, including yourself, at risk. I know it’s hard but this is a special mission and that’s why we need you for this. You are one of our best.” Leeteuk leaned over to put a hand on his shoulder, and Kyuhyun frowned.
“Flattery doesn’t work if we already know it’s true, hyung.” Kyuhyun flipped through the file, scrutinizing the picture and profile written, blatantly ignoring Leeteuk’s funny face at his statement. “What could I possibly find that’s worthy of corporate interest inside the subconscious of a Chinese pop star?” His eyebrows furrowed as he looked at the picture. “Victoria Song, real name Song Qian, born in 1987 in Qingdao, the next big thing in China, recently perpetrated Korean market.”
The girl in the picture was beautiful in that typical teen pop idol way - big eyes, cute hair with bangs, pouty glossed lips, white porcelain skin (possibly thanks to truckloads of make-up and photoshop), disgustingly cutesy manners. Kyuhyun resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “She looks fifteen years old.”
“You look fifteen years old.” Leeteuk rolled his eyes. “Anyway, since this is a special mission, and I know it’s going to be hard on you, there would be someone assigned to work with you. He will actually be in charge of leading the operation while you take care of the technical aspect.”
Thank god, at least this time he could just sit back and do his “technical” thing. Still, Kyuhyun whined for the sake of being a difficult brat. “I can’t choose my own team?”
“Of course you still can, but this person is pertinent to this operation. He’s our local Chinese agent, and he has contacts with our mark so it’s going to make your job easier.”
“I… see.” Kyuhyun flipped through the pages, taking in the basic outline of the young girl’s life. “I take it I have never worked with this person before.” He had worked with several Chinese contacts on many jobs in China, but somehow he felt Leeteuk wasn’t talking about any of them.
“No you haven’t, but I believe you know the guy.”
“Yeah?” Kyuhyun looked up, raising his eyebrow at Leeteuk as he saw the older man was smirking.
“You know your sister has a part-time boyfriend for whenever she’s back in Asia?”
“…Yeah?” More like part-time arm-candy actually, the way Ahra talked about it.
Ahra also worked for the company, but she was located in Europe. She went into SM after his second year working for them, taking on administrative work and location of talent. Basically she was doing both public relations and human resources work for the company.
His sister only went back to Asia every half a year for the compulsory briefings. Somehow between bothering her little brother every step of the way and endless work meetings, she had found herself a boytoy to accompany her on shopping trips and dinner dates. The few things a girl should always indulge in when she had a chance, she said. Strangely enough, over the years Kyuhyun had never met the guy, though to be honest he couldn’t care less as the guy was only relevant to her life twice a year. His sister was more than capable of handling herself, and she would kick him into next year if he tried to meddle with her life.
…Though he wondered what that had anything to do with this job.
“That guy is going to be your partner.”
…Oh.
Kyuhyun tried to remember whether Ahra had ever told him the boytoy also worked for the company. Or that the boytoy was actually Chinese.
“His name is Zhou Mi, and he works the day job as an MC for a big TV channel in China, so he’s got a lot of useful contacts, especially in the entertainment world. He’s basically perfect for this operation. I trust you two will get along swimmingly.” Leeteuk patted him on the back and Kyuhyun had to wonder if this was actually some crazy elaborate plan set out by his own sister.
By noon he received a text from the devil herself.
kekeke heard you got partnered with mimi >:)
if anything happens to my boy i will cut you :D
-
After he drove home, called for some take-away, did his laundry, and stared at the blank document of the blasted mission report for half an hour, Kyuhyun decided to hit the bar to drown his sorrows.
Well, okay, not really. He went down to a nice local wine bar near his place to enjoy a nice glass of Merlot and “good company”. His sister forced him into going out as therapy for his “anti-social ways” whenever she was in Korea, but somehow it had become a habit whenever he was home. It helped that the area around his apartment building was ground zero for the swanky lots of the city with dozens of bars, lounges, and restaurants.
Ahra dragged him to this particular bar after she read a raving review on the internet. Wine was one of the rare finer things Kyuhyun had learned to appreciate in life, so he was actually receptive to the idea. At least it was infinitely better than that one time she had dragged him to a gay nightclub.
The bar was called Sapphire Blue, slightly hidden behind a park. It was quaint and cozy, and no one tried to grope him in the dark there, so it was an instant winner. Well, the wine was really good as well. They had a huge selection, bottles shown stacked in a large wooden shelf behind the bar. They had mostly French wine, but Italian and Australian were popular as well. Still, if he went by himself, he rarely called for a full bottle. A glass or two of the house wine would be good enough. Even Ahra, having lived in Europe for years, confirmed that the quality of their selection was superior.
When Kyuhyun walked in, the place was humming with conversation and laughter. It seemed like a good night. All the beautiful and well-dressed men and women of Seoul city seemed oddly optimistic and cheerful. He slid into his usual seat at the bar, and the bartender looked up, grinning at him.
“Ah, Kyuhyun-sshi. Long time no see.”
A young guy manned the bar of Sapphire Blue most of the time. There were other servers as well, and they rotated, but this one remained constant. He was good at what he did, which Kyuhyun guessed was why he seemed to be a permanent staff. The guy apparently knew his wine and had made some recommendations that had Ahra swooning before. He looked in his early twenties, definitely considered cute by the female population (he had heard the gossip of the ladies in the bar), his smile always bright and cheerful. He had learned Kyuhyun’s name by his second visit and knew all of his favourites. Kyuhyun would pretend to be uncomfortable with it, but actually he was quite glad he had a place called his favourite haunt.
“Long time no see, Sungmin-sshi.” He smiled and nodded, hand automatically reaching out for the special menu of the day set on the bar top.
“We have a new shipment today, special 2003 vintage of the Châteauneuf-du-Pape AOC, would you like to try?” Sungmin got that winning seller smile on, and Kyuhyun knew he would find it hard to get out of this one. He was definitely no pushover, but Sungmin was good at what he did.
“Oh, you know I can’t take full bottle…”
“Don’t worry, I’ll save the bottle for you, so I can make sure you would come back sooner.” Sungmin laughed, waving his hand.
“Is that okay?”
“Of course it is. You’re our special regular.”
And then the guy sauntered away to the far corner of the bar, most likely getting the bottle for him. Kyuhyun wondered what constituted as a “special” regular. He supposed Sungmin was always so cheerful towards him because it was what he was paid to do, but sometimes it was pretty nice. He could even say that they had become sort of friends over the time. His sister teased him about it the last few times she went with him, but Kyuhyun knew he was away too often for anything.
He looked on with interest Sungmin showed him the heavy bottle with embossed papal regalia and insignia and then deftly set out to uncork it. The deep red liquid that trickled down to the glass felt almost comforting. Sungmin’s movement was controlled and precise. He had somehow missed this ritual. Sungmin pushed the glass towards him, and Kyuhyun smiled at him before slowly bringing the glass to his nose, gently swirling the liquid on the way.
“French dried herbs en Provence. Something called garrigue.” Sungmin’s lips curved up in a pleased smile, keeping their eye contact.
Kyuhyun was vaguely aware of Sungmin’s attention being focused entirely on him at that moment. The wine tasted thick on his tongue, hinting of something sensual, wild and dangerous, tar and leather and spice. Kyuhyun allowed the taste to trickle down his throat.
“Yes?” Sungmin was peering at him now, the smile turning almost mischievous.
“Yeah… of course.” Kyuhyun nodded, unconsciously averting his eyes, breaking the eye contact. He pushed the glass back to the other man.
“How was work?” Sungmin was filling up the glass more freely now.
“Fine, tiring, same as always.” Kyuhyun shook his head. Sungmin didn’t know what he did for a living, but he could obviously see that Kyuhyun didn’t travel over two hundred days a year for leisure. In fact, Sungmin was probably the only person besides Leeteuk who knew his schedule best as Kyuhyun always made sure to pop into Sapphire Blue whenever he was home.
“So how long are you going to stay this time?” Sungmin placed the newly full glass of deep red in front of him and Kyuhyun nodded his thanks.
“I’m flying out tomorrow morning.” That reminded him, he still needed to pack for the China trip. He hadn’t even unpacked from the previous job yet.
“Aw really? What a pity. I was hoping you would have the chance to finish this bottle during one stay.” Sungmin sort of pouted, and Kyuhyun could distinctly hear some ladies cooing in the distance. He resisted the urge to roll his eyes.
“I guess you’ll just have to save it til next time for me.” Kyuhyun shrugged, taking a sip from his glass. He wouldn’t actually mind finishing the whole bottle for the night. It was better than going home and looking at the blasted report.
“I’ll do that, so make sure to come back soon.” Sungmin nodded firmly. “So what land of epic adventure are you flying to this time Kyuhyun-sshi?”
“Beijing. I think.” At least that was what he remembered the brief said.
“Ah, China. You seem to go to China a lot lately.”
“Yeah. My boss thinks I need to practice my Chinese.” Well, technically Leeteuk was not even his boss, but with the way he acted, the older man might as well be his mother.
Sungmin laughed in understanding. “I see I see. Speak to me a sentence in Chinese?”
Kyuhyun’s eyebrows furrowed in thought, and then slowly smoothed out into a mischievous expression, his lips curving into an easy smirk. “Fuwuyuanr.”
“What is that?” Sungmin tilted his head, a confused smile on his face.
“I’m calling you.”
“What?”
“It means squirrel.” Kyuhyun burst out laughing at the expression on Sungmin’s face.
-
A late morning in November, Cho Kyuhyun decided that he would just have to deal with the rest of his whole life being contained in one standard piece of luggage and one giant handbag. Kyuhyun fiddled with his sunglasses as he was going through customs, feeling impatient and very short on sleep. He had come back at some hour late into the early morning and barely glanced at the blinking blank page on his computer screen before collapsing to bed. It was a miracle he woke up with just enough time to throw everything into his luggage and rush to the airport in time. He didn’t have time to look into the mirror, but he must have looked like absolute crap right then. The sunglasses’ purpose was to hide his face, and he hoped it would stay on until he got to the hotel in Beijing and throughout his meeting with this new… partner.
For once Kyuhyun immediately passed out on the plane without the help of Sung Shi Kyung blasting from his music player.
Kyuhyun woke up in Beijing feeling a little more like a real human being. As he was standing and waiting at the luggage belt, his phone beeped, signaling a message arriving. Kyuhyun didn’t even need to look to know it was Leeteuk. He really didn’t want to open it, as it was ninety-nine percent some fierce bitching about his not submitting the promised report yet, but a sense of duty compelled him. However, Kyuhyun blinked in surprise as he actually read the message.
Zhou Mi said he would pick you up at the airport… Be nice. :)
Kyuhyun stared. Did Leeteuk really forget about the report? Was this some suspicious plan of ulterior motive to punish him for not submitting the report? Did this Zhou Mi guy even know what he looked like? Kyuhyun hope to dear gods this guy wouldn’t be one of those people holding a piece of tattered paper with his misspelled name on it, waiting pathetically at the gate among the obnoxious taxi drivers.
He reluctantly pushed the trolley with his bags outside, immediately scanning the obnoxious banners and cardboard pieces for any variation of his name and breathing out a sigh of relief as he saw nothing of the sort. He looked around the crowd again, trying to look for anyone who might look like they worked for a powerful and sketchy South Korean corporation. Kyuhyun stood there for three minutes before he decided he might as well take a taxi back to the hotel. The Zhou Mi guy probably forgot about him. They would have to meet up later in the day anyway.
Just as his eyes zoomed in on a taxi driver who looked the least like a homicidal psychopath and he was about to walk towards him, someone grabbed his arm.
“Cho Kyuhyun?”
Kyuhyun’s first instinct was to lash out. Except he tumbled back when his arm hit someone squarely in the chest. The grip on his arm tightened to keep him from falling back, and when Kyuhyun finally regained his footing, he came face to face with… a honking nose.
“Are you okay?”
The Korean was lightly accented, and Kyuhyun’s eyes flickered up. Now Kyuhyun was definitely not short by any means, he practically towered over eighty percent of the people in his life, but damn this man was tall. Possibly this was also the first time in his life he had to tilt his head up that much to establish possible eye contact. Except there was no eye contact to be had because over that big honking nose was an equally huge pair of Ray Ban aviator sunglasses. Not to mention Kyuhyun was wearing his own pair to hide his sleep-deprived hungover face from the world. So he stared at the giant pair of Ray Ban through his own sunglasses.
“Who are you?” He surreptitiously pulled his arm from the other’s grasp. Kyuhyun watched in bemusement as a bright smile suddenly lit up the man’s face. He looked as though Kyuhyun had just told him he had just been knighted by the Queen of England.
“I’m Zhou Mi! I trust Leeteuk-hyung has told you about me?”
Oh. Kyuhyun took a step back, zoomed out, and focused again. Tall, very tall, towering-over-the-rest-of-the-world tall, in his twenties, fashionably styled dark hair, giant sunglasses, honking nose, abnormally bright and cheerful smile, sharp and narrow angles, colour-coordinated outfit with… was that a clutch? Oh, and legs that went on forever.
So. This was the Chinese boytoy. For a few moments Kyuhyun wondered why the company had picked up someone from a model agency. Kyuhyun tried to imagine his sister with this unarguably fashionable young man and sort of understood why she had picked him as arm-candy in the first place. He looked good, attractive even, and apparently very well put-together.
Except this was a serious business job and Kyuhyun had to wonder how good this pretty boy actually was in the game. He didn’t need a flaily airhead ruining the operation half-way.
“Right. Okay. How did you recognize me?” Kyuhyun started picking up his bag, and the guy hurriedly grabbed the other one as they started walking.
“Let me help you with that… Ah, Ahra… your sister. She sent me pictures.”
Kyuhyun’s nose scrunched up. He didn’t really want to think about what kind of pictures his sister had deemed appropriate to send to the guy, and so keeping mum about it and pretending they never existed in the first place seemed like the right course of action.
“You were late.”
“Ah, I’m really sorry! I got distracted by the new Burberry collection in the shop… their winter coat collection just came into the store.”
Kyuhyun turned to stare at the thousand-megawatt apologetic smile on Zhou Mi’s face. Had he really just said what Kyuhyun thought he had just said? …This was probably why his sister had kept this guy for so long. Except Kyuhyun was now starting to get apprehensive about their time working together. Even the guy’s flawless cashmere scarf was starting to make him feel uncomfortable and shabby in his plain white shirt.
“How was the flight? Ahra asked me to pick you up from the airport and show you around, I hope it’s fine for you.” Zhou Mi still had on that apologetic smile, probably amplified because of Kyuhyun’s dubious expression. So it was his sister after all. How old did Ahra think he was? Twelve? Did he not know how to even get from the airport to the hotel room after five years flying around the world? It wasn’t like he was playing tourist in Beijing either. He was there for the job, not to be “shown around”. In fact, the faster he could finish this the better, he would rather bypass all the sightseeing.
The walk to the airport parking lot was rather awkward as Zhou Mi tried to chatter endlessly about trivial matters like the weather, the traffic, the state of his house, and Kyuhyun made mumbling noises in his mouth in response. To be honest, the guy’s voice was at least rather pleasing to the ears, though Kyuhyun would never admit it out loud.
Zhou Mi finally stopped when they reached a white Mercedes M. Zhou Mi took off his Ray Ban when he slid into the driver’s seat, and Kyuhyun had to admit there was nothing hidden that took away his overall aesthetics. If anything, Zhou Mi looked even younger than he thought. Kyuhyun kept his own sunglasses on and intended to do so until he got into his hotel room. He felt off about the whole world that day. They drove out to the highway, the sun high and cheerful overhead, unlike the drab weather in Seoul. Zhou Mi played some sort of cheery Chinese dance pop music in the car, and Kyuhyun wondered how he would be able to survive the next few days of unflinching cheerful sunshine.
Beijing was noisy and crowded with concrete and metal the same way any big city would be, and Kyuhyun found it almost comforting. Except when Zhou Mi pulled into the parking lot of a tall building that resembled nothing like a hotel. Kyuhyun refrained from panicking, but was definitely alarmed by the sketchy practice of this Zhou Mi character. Was this guy even the real Zhou Mi? The sudden change of plan, the abnormal cheerfulness, it was starting to get suspicious now. He should have asked for proof when they first met.
“Okay, wait. Where are we? This is definitely not my hotel.” Kyuhyun surreptitiously inched his way further towards the car door, calculating how fast he could make a break for it if necessary.
Zhou Mi turned to stare at him, surprise and confusion clear in his eyes. “Leeteuk-hyung didn’t tell you? You are staying at my place.”
“What?” Kyuhyun croaked. “Why?”
“For safety reasons, that’s what he said. He really didn’t tell you?”
Why had Leeteuk never told him about this? Was this another one of those sketchy “you would see it when you saw it” deals about this particular job? Kyuhyun decided he might as well call the man himself and check the validity of this absurd situation. He pulled out his phone from his bag and hit speed dial. Leeteuk picked up on the first ring.
“Oh hey Kyuhyun I hope you got there all right-“
“Hyung am I supposed to stay with Zhou Mi?” Kyuhyun cut the man off, annoyance clear in his voice. Leeteuk didn’t miss a beat.
“Oh yes, actually, yes. Is his place not to your liking or something?”
“I don’t know, I haven’t even stepped inside the building yet because oh, someone had just informed me about this change of accommodation a mere two minutes earlier! Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
“Oh you know, it’s been busy around here… There has been a lot of last minute changes…” Leeteuk’s tone of voice was getting vague. Kyuhyun knew this tone. “Okay, so now that the confusion is cleared up, I hope the rest of the job goes okay. Good luck!” And then Leeteuk hung up. Kyuhyun knew it.
He looked up to see Zhou Mi’s bewildered expression. Kyuhyun frowned.
“You tell Leeteuk hyung that you are driving me to a hotel and I am going to get a room there.”
Zhou Mi immediately whipped out his phone and started furiously typing his message. Two minutes later, his own phone buzzed.
Safety reasons, Kyuhyun-ah. Trust me it’s mandatory. Don’t put yourself in unnecessary risk.
Kyuhyun rolled his eyes. Well, at least he knew Zhou Mi actually had contact with Leeteuk then. He unbuckled his seatbelt and opened the door of the car, stepping out and grabbing his handbag along.
“Okay then, let’s go.”
Zhou Mi stared at him from the driver’s seat. “Go? Go where? I thought I was driving you to the hotel?”
“Was I not supposed to stay at your place? Be a good host and lead me up. You’d better make it up for that five-star hotel room I was looking forward to.”
Zhou Mi quickly scrambled out of the car, taking his luggage like he was his personal chauffeur.
-
Part 2