multipurpose 1/2
multipurpose [taemin/minho, jonghyun/kibum; T; ~19, 000, rom.]
taemin spends the summer working at a beach resort, wherein minho is more than just a receptionist.
a/n: this is my most light-hearted work so far besides ski resort. pretty much a chick flick.
A file sliding over polished wood is harsh in the silence of the small, suffocating room, air brimming with tension. Taemin is standing behind his mother holding a stack of files, his back perfectly straight, behind a tall chair - but he really would prefer to be standing behind the smaller chairs he faces. The smaller, mahogany chairs, occupied by broken people.
He wouldn’t need to look at the people in it then. He does not like looking at them, because it is usually the female with the puffy red eyes and the male with his jaws set. Sometimes it isn’t so quiet, so unnaturally peaceful - but they all know there is a storm broiling within the chairs’ occupants. Sometimes they start shouting, screaming and yelling, and crying and wailing and the “guards”, Taemin has come to coin them, must barge in and take control.
If he is lucky, he stands for an hour in each session, three times a day. If he is not, it happens five times a day and more, leaving him tired and sick at the end.
“I’m just going to ask again, are the both of you certain in doing this?” His mother would ask and it’s frightening how impassive she looks, like she doesn’t even care.
Divorces are never happy, as much as the ex-couples try to make it be. The confirmation comes out in various ways, sometimes angry, sometimes soft, sometimes they don’t get a confirmation at all because fighting starts happening.
“I can’t live with him anymore.” This lady said once. And Taemin stiffened behind the tall chair, watching tears pool into her eyes. He tries not to listen to the reasons, so he doesn’t dream about them happening to his parents but her voice is extremely loud and clear in the quietness.
“You can’t live with me?” The man asked incredulously. “Who’s the one going out all the time, with some guy I’ve never even spoken to before -”
“He’s just a colleague!” The lady screamed, and Taemin’s heel hit against the cupboard behind as he backs away. “This is the problem - you’re always so paranoid -”
Everything else after, Taemin does not get to hear. Mrs. Lee shoves him out of the room as the guards enter, restraining the couple from coming to blows and Taemin is already halfway down back to his mother’s office as the fighting escalates and spills into the reception, a mix of profanities and grudges and unspoken hurts, and his heart is pounding frightfully.
It is strange how his mother deals with this everyday but he is still in a family. Perhaps it’s because she knows the reasons behind couples wanting to go away from each other, that she can stop it from happening to them.
But even that assurance seems to be losing ground.
Insecurity is beginning to crawl its way into his heart. Until recently, Taemin has never seen nor heard his parents fighting before. Late at night, he had remembered that there was a glass of milk forgotten on the counter. Getting out of bed, he had walked right into a conflict.
“ - and I know what I’m doing,” Mr. Lee said, pacing out of the kitchen.
“This isn’t something - it’s a large percentage, and he’s not even our blood!” Mrs. Lee chewed through her teeth, following him.
“You don’t know him, he’s honest,” Mr. Lee continued, facing her. “Besides, Taemin wants to dance -”
With Mrs. Lee’s gaze snapping onto Taemin, Mr. Lee stopped abruptly, looking at Taemin also. He shook himself out of his trance, heart beating fast, going into the kitchen and grabbing his milk, not even pausing when some of the liquid sloshed out the cup and onto the floor. Mumbling a hurried ‘g’night’, Taemin scurried back into his room, resting his back against the cold door, replaying the argument in his head.
The next day, Mr. Lee spoke to him, tried to cover it up with a story Taemin knew to be a lie. But he nods and frowns and pretends to understand because it’s not like he can really do much anyway.
“Tell me why we are here again,” Kibum asks dryly as they step into a dimly lit changing room that smells like old socks.
“Because hyung, you have nothing else to do during summer,” Taemin replies, beginning to breathe more difficultly in the humidity.
“How rude,” Kibum scoffs as they pick their way through yellowing scraps of clothing. “I have many things to do. I can go shopping, lazing at the beach -”
“Where will you get your money, Kibum?” Jinki asks and Kibum falters for a moment, tentatively kicking a stray pair of pants out of his path in disgust.
“Numbers,” He finally says and Taemin stops to look at him in confusion. Kibum pulls his phone out and scrolls through his contacts. “Flirt through it. Flirt the goods into plastic bags. Flirt the goods to me.”
Taemin gaps at his friend. Jinki shrugs when he glances at him. Kibum laughs, loud and obnoxious and Taemin is still gaping.
“I am such a whore, I know.”
“Really?” An unfamiliar voice asks and Taemin finds a handsome boy standing beside them. He must’ve come from inside the showers because his hair is damp. And he must be who they had to find, judging from the stack of folded clothes wilting in his hand.
“And you are..?” Kibum looks completely unimpressed, one side of his mouth upturned, eyes flat.
“JongHyun,” The boy smiles brightly and Taemin warms up to him instantly. “The in-charge of staff attire distribution. The only in-charge.”
He says the last part like it’s a big deal. He passes them their uniforms and Taemin gets into a cubicle, fighting his way through the huge white shirt, large orange pants nearly dropping off his waist and pooling around his feet. Emerging from the cubicle, everyone is out - except for Kibum.
“Kibum..?” Jinki calls carefully.
When there is no reply, Jinki knocks on his door gently. “Kibum..? You okay?”
“No! I look like a frickin’ clown, how can I be okay?” Taemin glances at JongHyun for help, feeling bad that this is happening on their first day.
“Just come out and we’ll see what we can do,” Jinki coaxes and Kibum doesn’t reply.
“I’m coming through, make way!” JongHyun orders and Taemin is gaping again, at the stranger. Jinki scrambles away from the door, hiding Taemin behind him.
“Nobody comes in!” Kibum shrills from the inside.
“It’s fine, everything’s going to be fine! I’m getting you out of there!” JongHyun assures like a fireman and Taemin finds it all absurd.
“No!” Kibum screams again. “Don’t you dare -”
A piercing scream cuts through resounding ‘bang!’ of plastic colliding with porcelain tiles, right when JongHyun rams his shoulder into the door and it pops inwards, his entire barrelling form disappearing inside the cubicle.
Everything looks ritzy and expensive from the outside, the resort Taemin’s father owns. Starting from nothing but a rundown pier, Mr. Lee had pooled in his entire savings mid-life to purchase the pier’s rights. He had rebuilt it then, right from scratch, and never stopped working to bring it to the perfection Sapphire Sands currently is.
Most people know where Sapphire Sands is situated, right beside the sea, and mostly the rich and possibly famous people manages to stay a night. Taemin has never really thought much about it, never told anyone about who his father is, except for his closest friends - Jinki and Kibum, but after spending two summer breaks in his mother’s office watching marriages get torn apart, he figures working in a family resort can’t be any worse.
It’s not that he likes working, but Taemin isn’t the type of person to waste his days away. Being in a new environment, and being afraid to screw anything up, since his dad is pretty strict of his resort’s standards, Taemin had dragged his best friends along.
On the inside, Sapphire Sands really is as dirty and unglamorous as the fast food restaurants Jinki liked going to. Not that Taemin has seen that side of the bedrooms. Right now, Taemin is stuffing loose ends of a new bed sheet under the mattress, listening to Kibum bitch on about how stupid and dim-witted and dense JongHyun is.
“Hyung, if you came out he wouldn’t have barged in,” Taemin says as he stretches. They have finished the last room on the levels assigned to them. Staff is to change the sheets of the guests during breakfast time, so the customers return back with fresh beds for “the best, holiday quality experience” - quote JongHyun.
“Don’t you give me that,” Kibum mutters through clenched teeth, shutting the door a little too hard and startling Taemin. “First Jinki, and now you. What if I weren’t dressed? Huh? Then what would I do?”
“Didn’t you call yourself a...whore?” Taemin says the last part really softly, bolting when Kibum’s eyes widened, arms lunging for him.
Smoke stings his eyes as Taemin squeezes through the crowded kitchen, waiters shouting incomprehensible orders and chefs confirming back with secret codes - or maybe it’s just really noisy and Taemin can’t hear anything. Jinki and Kibum are already at their stations - the breakfast table and Taemin has no idea where to go. He had to pee and they were already late.
“Minho?” A waiter yells into his face above the din. Taemin nods and is lead out of the chaos, being directed towards the lobby, finger pointing in multiple directions at once. “That’s your man right there.”
Patting him on the back, the waiter disappears into the kitchen again. Coming out of the hidden passageway for staff, Taemin appears by a potted plant, trying to find this ‘Minho’ that’s supposed to instruct him about the breakfast table.
The lobby is nearly empty, with a grand winding staircase facing an equally grand golden rimmed glass entrance - it opens and a bellboy rolls in a cart of luggage, a family trailing behind. Taemin’s footsteps echoes through the place and he looks up to find the ceiling so high he snaps his gaze back to the ground, feeling dizzy and a little scared of heights.
A few tourists walk past him, towards the receptionist, all shades and perfect outfits and perfect hairstyles and Taemin feels like a sore thumb in his loose shirt and ugly orange pants. The lobby staff are impeccably smart and neat, with a black blazer and tie and white work shirt and Taemin really needs to find Minho so he and all of his unglamourousness can disappear right now.
Biting his lips and glancing around more frantically - why is the place so big - Taemin spots something ugly in the midst of the perfection that is Sapphire Sand’s lobby. It is metallic and rusted and it looks horrible and there is somebody sticking a hand into it, wearing a blazer - he is the only one unoccupied. Taemin hurries over, feeling like he is painfully obvious as he strides past the grand entrance, over the thick carpeted floor and cutting through plush cushions and a glass coffee table and intricate lamps to reach this ugly spot.
“Hi, I’m looking for Minho,” Taemin rushes when he reaches the machine. Something sweet wafts up his noise and he looks down to find pink cotton candy tumbling inside a hole. A cotton candy machine.
“You must be Taemin.”
The voice is rich and deep and it tore his attention away from the sweet. Taemin has never seen such large eyes before, and he is quite frankly, taken aback. It is strangely disproportional and possibly weird.
“ Yeah, I’m late for breakfast duty,” Taemin answers quickly and he realises that the boy is wearing a name tag that spells ‘Minho’. “And you’re supposed to tell me where to go and what to do.”
Minho smiles, perfect white teeth and perfectly spiked hair, and it is strangely infectious and warm. Upon reassessment, Taemin finds the boy rather dashing, and quite human - as compared to all the other perfect robots around them. The machine buzzes lowly between them as Minho drops a hand into it. Fidgeting for a moment where the boy dealt with the machine, Taemin blinked when Minho looks up and grins, all opened mouth and friendly.
A little girl waddles up beside Taemin and he steps away, letting Minho stretch down and pass her a paper roll holding a generous amount of pink floss. She tries to say ‘thank you’ with her missing teeth, coming out inarticulate and squeaky and Minho pats her head, smiling to himself as she runs towards the new group of tourists that arrived.
“The breakfast table is on the second level,” Minho’s deep voice says and Taemin snaps his attention back to the boy - who he notices is more than a head taller than him. “All you need to do is replace dirty plates with clean ones, and be polite. Tie your hair.”
“Right, thanks,” Taemin bows, hastily gathering his copper locks into a hand, turning around to bound up the stairs.
A low buzzing trails behind him and Taemin shakes his head, getting it out of his mind, preparing to face grumpy, roused patrons.
Not even lying, when Taemin had heard that all he needs to do is to “replace dirty plates with clean ones”, he had thought it would be easy.
Now, he is bustling about with an armful of plates, sauce and curry and bits of god-knows-what smearing over his shirt as he tries not to drop any. The breakfast hall is noisy and the patrons seem intent on overworking the staff, hands shooting up all over the place - and Taemin is running out the kitchen door for the twentieth time after depositing the plates with a clatter into a pail - much to the dishwashers’ dismay.
“May I clear this?” Taemin says with a tight smile, trying not to slap the fat man who doesn’t even look at him, nodding haughtily - like he’s so damn rich to sit in this breakfast hall.
Technically, he has to be, but Taemin didn’t care much about facts right now as he attempts another balancing act with the plates.
“Here,” A familiar voice says and Taemin heaves a sigh of relief when half the load is lifted off his arms, Jinki’s face appearing above the stack.
“Thanks, hyung -”
“Leave me alone,” Somebody hissed, strangely familiar and Taemin glances to the side to find Kibum growling at JongHyun beside.
“See, the outfit doesn’t look that bad does it?” JongHyun prods his fingers underneath Kibum’s plates. “Let me help you with -”
“Don’t you have something else to do?” Kibum hisses, looking at JongHyun in the face. “Like jumping off a building?”
“You mean the rock-climbing station?” The boy asks and Kibum rolls his eyes, circumventing the table he’s serving, JongHyun following behind.
Taemin shares a look with Jinki, and they both muffle their laughs.
“C’mon, c’mon!” Mr. Jung barks from the side, loud in the room’s sudden quietness. “You didn’t make me drive a few miles here just to show me this.”
Music starts blaring in the room again and Taemin takes a shaky breath, counting the beat in his head.
5, 6, 7, 8.
Twist and turn and dip and - miss - go on - miss. By now, Taemin is biting his lips, eyebrows knitted together as he looks at his feet. Left, right, left, left - miss. The music stops. Taemin groans inwardly.
“You’re not feeling it man,” Mr. Jung says. “You’re not feeling it. This is a dance expressing the freedom of affection - it’s already on your face, you look pissed - how is that affection?”
Shirt sticking to his back uncomfortably as he recovers, arms akimbo, Taemin turns his eyes from the floor onto Mr. Jung’s face. Copper bangs cover most of his instructor’s features but he still hates that look of frustration. Taemin never disappoints in dancing, he does that the best and he needs to - he needs to with his father working so hard for this.
“I’m sorry, please give me another chance,” He flicks his bangs aside, hair matting his sweaty neck, watching Mr. Jung walk away from him and gathering his bag.
“You have the whole night,” The instructor says as he made for the door, clapping Taemin’s shoulder. “Remember, it’s not just a school, it’s a group, a title. Feel the dance.”
The click of the door echoes in Taemin’s head long after Mr. Jung left, long after he’s sat on the floor wallowing in what feels like the abandonment of his teacher, long after he’s pressed the repeat button and he’s trying to catch every move within the timing.
He goes on and on until he’s fallen thrice and bruised his hip. Taemin is lying beside the silent radio, breathing evening, when his meditation is rudely interrupted.
“Uh...hi,” Somebody said from the door uncertainly.
Sitting up and squinting at the harsh light coming from outside, Taemin realises his arms are aching. “Who’s that?”
“Taemin?” The person has a deep voice.
“Minho?”
“Uh yeah,” The door closes behind Minho, and Taemin recognises the huge eyes from this afternoon. “I’m locking up. You’re here pretty late.”
“Technically I can be,” Taemin manages past his grimace as he pushes up from the ground. “My dad’s Mr. Lee.”
“Is that so?” Minho asks and he looks up to see a hint of amusement on the boy’s face. Taemin rolls his eyes, feeling his lips tug upwards at how bratty his previous comment was. “Well then, Mr. Lee, would you like me to keep the Sand’s studio open longer?”
Minho is bowing with an arm over his waist, a smirk on his face, and Taemin laughs, shoving the boy.
He waits outside in the hallway, trying not to limp, as Minho locks the remaining rooms. Taemin notices that the boy takes his job very seriously, disappearing inside the studios for awhile, checking if the air conditioning and plugs are turned off, before coming out and locking. Every time Minho emerges into the hallway, he smiles awkwardly at Taemin and holds up a finger, like Taemin was a tourist or something and he’s asking for a moment.
Taemin finds that adorable.
Of course he doesn’t tell Minho that as they walk out together, and he doesn’t tell Minho that as he waits for the boy to lock the main wooden doors, in the night’s cold. Instead, Taemin goes, “So, you’re a receptionist and you’re on lock-up duty.”
“Every single day,” Minho says standing up and Taemin returns the grin.
The next few days rushes past Taemin mercilessly. He fumbles out of bed with Kibum shrieking about being late, Jinki tripping and thudding against walls and floors and doors behind them. They try not to fall over with how fast Kibum is dragging them by the arms, towards the staff changing room hidden behind bushes at the back of the resort.
“We get residential rooms because you’re the boss’ son,” Kibum mutters under his breath. “And what happens? We become late. That’s what.”
Taemin tries not to giggle at his friend’s complaints - as funny as they sounded, Kibum is also as equally serious about them. They tug on the oversized outfits and wait for Kibum to finish pinning up brooches he’s magically pulled out of his luggage the night of their first day. Kibum has stolen five pairs of pants and spent the entire night knitting them up. Now they look like skinnies and they make Kibum look like one of those perfect tourists and he is happier than ever while Taemin stares dumbfounded.
“Hey, hyung do you think you can -” Taemin asked once.
“Absolutely not,” Kibum answered flat out. “If too many of us do it, they’ll catch us and it’ll be back to that hideous...” The diva pointed at Taemin’s pants with a distasteful expression, finger drifting uncertainly as if he didn’t even know where to begin. “Thing,” Kibum decides.
At 8:00 sharp, Jinki will have left for the kitchen while they bulldoze down the second and third levels of block A, housing estates for tourists, struggling miserably in putting on fresh bed sheets in pace with the team that are taking them off. The team that rips the bed sheets off have it easy, and while Taemin’s halfway done with the second level, the former is already skipping towards the staff lounge, probably to laze or something - he doesn’t know because he’s never spoken to them before.
Barely having time to speak with Kibum, they rush down to the breakfast hall by 9:05, entering through the front door and immediately slipping into duty, picking up full and dirty plates, attending to arrogant patrons that Taemin really wants to stab in the eye with a crab claw.
They don’t see JongHyun around nowadays, and Taemin isn’t sure how Kibum feels about it. He talks as if he doesn’t care but he keeps talking about it. The diva doesn’t even make calls at night to random people in their school to flirt - but that might be because they have been incredibly tired recently.
However, Taemin does see Minho. At breakfast. Frying eggs.
“What are you doing?” Taemin sputters the first time he sees Minho behind the buffet counter, the aroma of eggs and sausages and seafood strong in the air. A lady eyes his dirty shirt disapprovingly and slips past the omelette counter.
“Frying eggs,” Minho says, looking innocent and adorable in a white apron, and Taemin really shouldn’t be thinking about this right now.
“Aren’t you supposed to handle reception?” Taemin asks, bewildered, and Minho smiles and he should really stop smiling because that isn’t an answer. “Stop smiling.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be clearing tables?” Minho counters, mirth in his eyes as he slips the spatula underneath a crabmeat omelette, flipping it. Taemin watches as it lands perfectly.
“Taemin!” He whips around to find Jinki’s load tilting precariously by the kitchen entrance. Before he can run over, the metal door opens and a helper hastily divests Jinki of the plates. “It’s fine now. I’m cool. We’re cool.”
During lunch and dinner however, somebody else by the name of Darwin does the omelettes instead and Taemin doesn’t have the time to think about it with multiple hands shooting up in the air all over the place.
They get an hour break between shifts which is really too short for them to rest in their own rooms, hence they end up sitting in the staff lounge with the other waiters, all listless and defeated. It’s a large and spacious room with red carpets and multiple couches placed haphazardly for the staff to rest on. A bar sits in the far corner but nobody attends to it and Taemin has only found soda inside the fridge.
Some girls still manage to find the strength to chat and they giggle in their seats. Some read the papers and others listen to music and try to sleep for a little. Taemin wants to do that, he wants to get some sleep, especially when he has dancing practice at night - but Kibum keeps talking about his nails, all the time.
“Look at this,” Taemin jerks awake at the voice, a bleary fingertip hovering inches from his face. “What is this?”
“Mm’rg?” He mumbles and sits up, trying to focus.
“It’s called chipping. My nails are chipping Taemin,” Kibum says it like it’s Taemin’s fault.
In contrast to the diva, Jinki seems to be enjoying the entire experience. Partly because he passed the cooking auditions and he’s posted in the kitchen as an assistant chef - so he doesn’t deal with haughty customers, and partly because the assistant chef has access to the resort’s entire store of chicken.
Chefs get off ten minutes before waiters because the waiters must stay behind and help with the dishes. When Taemin drags himself into the lounge, Kibum beside him already too exhausted to say anything about the condition of his appearance, he usually finds Jinki stuffing his face with a plate of drumsticks. Jinki lets them take precisely one drumstick and half a wing - everything else is his.
After dinner shift, Taemin leaves his friends with a hurried ‘see you later hyung’, getting into the nearest toilet to change into dancing attire. He rushes down to the studio to practice his choreography. He practices and practices until it is late, but not as late as before so he doesn’t get chased out again, and he tries not to limp back to the estate with his swollen ankles.
Times where the pain is unbearable, Taemin takes a day off and attempts to get started on holiday homework instead, which is frankly as good as not trying at all. On those nights, he stares at the question until Kibum stops chatting on the phone and has told him to go to sleep over five times, sleeping himself. Jinki returns home soon after, done with briefings on tomorrow’s course (what dishes to cook, who to assign them to) and Taemin keeps awake long enough for Jinki to explain what binomial expansion is, before talking animals start conversing in his head.
This repertoire was broken one evening when Taemin’s father asked for him. Thinking he screwed up, dreading each step towards the longhouse that sheltered the resort’s important people, Taemin was relieved at Mr. Lee’s booming laughter.
“Did you think you were going to be scolded?” His father had asked and Taemin could only laugh nervously in response.
He finds out later that his schedule is to be changed - every staff goes through this cycling. It results in him walking along the beach on a Wednesday afternoon beside an energetic Kibum
“So maybe this wasn’t such a bad idea after all,” Kibum says, huge sunglasses perched on his nose, completely abandoning the staff outfit and wearing his vacation one - all straw hat and flip-flops and striped singlet and beach shorts.
“Hyung, somebody will scold you for this,” Taemin points out as he picks a tissue from the sand, depositing it into the plastic bag they are carrying.
“Fine, fine, just one day,” Kibum waves his tong precariously close to Taemin’s face, and he feels sand flicking onto his cheeks. “I get the sun, sand and sea for one day. In this perfect stretch of golden perfectness in all of my beautiful perfect perfectness.”
Kibum sighs contentedly and rests his wrists on his hips. Despite a tong with seaweed hanging in one hand and a garbage bag in the other, Taemin finds the diva quite fabulous at the moment. But as much as he likes his friend to enjoy the view, sparkling azure sea and whatnot, they really are supposed to be clearing the stray pair of underwear a few meters away.
Taemin laughs as Kibum mumbles to himself, going over and dealing with the offending article. “Yuck. Disgusting.”
Wiping the sweat from his forehead, Taemin notices a yellow shack in the mess of sunbathers, multi-coloured towels and soaring Frisbees and flying volleyballs. Curious, Taemin pulls on Kibum’s arm, leaving their bags and tongs, trudging towards the shack. It definitely isn’t a lifeguard post because those are tall and skimpy and all over the place.
“Where -”
“Hyung, I think that’s a store,” Taemin says, glancing at Kibum, the latter adjusting his shades downwards.
“Wonderful, I need a drink,” The diva pushes his shades in place again, this time the one leading. “They have staff discounts don’t they?”
Taemin figures the only reason he escapes customer complaints is because Kibum looks like a tourist himself - they are cutting across people’s towels and kicking sand all over the place, it’s not like he wants to but Kibum is dragging him along so fast he’s stumbling in the sand, barely being able to bow in apology to indignant “hey!”s.
And the sun is blocked out. Taemin blinks and takes a moment to adjust, seeing Kibum already at the cashier. Going over, Taemin almost jumps at the face behind the counter.
“What ever could be wrong with you?” Kibum asks, large celebrity shades regarding him. “Sit down, there are staff discounts here.”
“Minho?” It isn’t a question, really.
“At your service,” The boy answers, smiling and sliding Kibum a glass with strawberries inside.
“But aren’t you - what - huh?” Taemin says helplessly.
“We serve ice cream too,” Minho continues without a beat and Taemin notices a freezer over the counter as the boy slides it open, cup in one hand, scoop in the other.
“Oh,” Kibum pipes up, inspecting the flavours. “Ice cream is good. Take pistachio.”
Minho is looking at him questioningly. It’s pretty ridiculous how he’s seeing Minho everywhere and he never gets a straight answer, so Taemin fumbles for a moment, thinking receptionist, cook, lock-up duty - and finally gives up understanding altogether. “I’ll have vanilla,” he says, defeated.
“That’s two-fifty,” Minho states, holding out a large cup that had too much ice cream in it.
“Oh, good deal,” Kibum pipes up again, lowering his shades. “That’s an extra large cup. For the price of a small.”
Then an idea hits Taemin. Taking the cup and spoon, Taemin smiles his best. “I have to pay?”
It was quiet for a while, Minho frowning in confusion, before tiling his head. “Are you -”
“Do I have to pay?” Taemin asks again and Minho seems to get it, sighing dramatically.
“No, of course not,” Minho shakes his head, waving them off, smiling slightly. “Break time’s not in an hour, get to work.”
“You scheming little bastard,” Kibum says in glee once they are far from the shack. “You totally made use of your father’s name.”
“It’s not like Minho minds,” Taemin grins at Kibum’s look of approval, shoving a spoonful of melting vanilla into his mouth.
True though, Minho didn’t seem to mind - at least not to Taemin.
So it turns into a routine, every Wednesday, Taemin gets a free ice cream while cleaning the beach. Minho likes to pinch his nose when Taemin pretends to brag about his father - but only when Kibum isn’t around. Not sure when it began, but whenever somebody ruffles his hair, Taemin will glance around to find Minho’s back, already rushing over to his next task.
He wonders how anyone could handle a schedule so packed. Taemin doesn’t know what Minho does, but he always sees Minho everywhere, hurrying about with unnatural calm. The boy is never at one place for long and Taemin is beginning to spend more time hypothesizing Minho’s job in the resort - a manager, perhaps?
He doesn’t get ice cream on Thursday and Sunday duty though, because somebody called Myungsoo tends the store on those days - and confirms Taemin’s suspicion of an actual living scrooge. He doesn’t give staff discounts, not until Kibum starts arguing with him, and it’s not like Taemin is going to shoot his mouth off about who he is everywhere.
One thing Taemin learns is that there is no such thing as normalcy in Sapphire Sands. Nothing is “normal” about an expensive resort that feels like an entire world of its own with the stretch of beach and amusement park. Nothing is “normal” about all these celebrity-like tourists swarming the place and nothing is “normal” about the atmosphere of complete holiday abandon in the air.
Hence it really shouldn’t have surprised Taemin when it happened, but it did, anyway. Taemin takes the stairs, two at a time, up to his father’s office one evening. He expects a change in duties, a normal roster cycling. But he does not expect a repeat of that night.
“I’ve checked all the documents,” Mrs. Lee’s voice floats into the hallway of the longhouse, out of his father’s unit. Taemin stops, wondering why his mother is here. “You cannot terminate once you confirm. It’s everything -”
“I know,” Mr Lee interjects, sounding vexed. Taemin’s breathing constricts. “It’s my decision.”
“You can’t just decide like this - what makes you think -”
“Then what makes you think it’s a wrong decision? I’ve spent months pondering this. Do you think I treat this as a joke?”
“It’s everything you’ve worked for!”
Everything is coming back and Taemin finds the solid ground in his chest splintering apart. His fingers slip easily on his palms, cold and sweaty, and Taemin hears every word clearly even though he’s hoping and doing his best to block them out.
“So it’s mine to deal with!”
There is a clank as Taemin’s heel bumps into a vase set on the floor, upturning it. The voices stop and Taemin glances to the door, heart pounding and breaths coming in short. Palm prints are left on the vase after Taemin sets it upright, backing away from the office, out of the longhouse, and bolting towards the residential areas.
Scenes play out in Taemin’s head as he sucks in cold wind, biting down his windpipe. Of clenched jaws and glistening cheeks and puffy red eyes, seated on tiny mahogany - and Taemin could do nothing but watch something he’s been taught beautiful, break apart from behind a tall oak chair. What feels worse is that he knows the hand sliding the papers over the wide expanse of wood - the only thing still keeping a marriage intact - belongs to his mother. His mother is destroying marriages and love and he cannot do anything except watch behind the tall oak chair.
Maybe karma is getting back at them. What goes around comes around. Just like how he’s focusing more on the fight than his math question and it’s already been an hour since he first sat down. Taemin tells Jinki he’s fine when the boy asks - he can’t focus if Jinki teaches him now anyway.
Instead, his feelings start spilling out of him, making Jinki backtrack out of the toilet, eyes wide with concern, toothpaste foaming around his mouth, brush sticking out. The hyung shows Taemin his palms then, half-squatting, as if asking him to wait, before scrambling into the washroom and rinsing noisily.
Taemin stifles a laugh as Jinki’s foot catches the door, tripping in his hurry to attend to him. Settling at the foot of his bed, Jinki gives him full attention. Something in the way Jinki says “what’s wrong?”, like a homely, less work-oriented father he’s never had, causes Taemin to begin rambling.
About how love isn’t what the storybooks make them out to be, about his doubts on whether people can really “love” each other like the princes and princesses he was told so much about, because he hasn’t been seeing any of that recently and certainly not two hours ago.
“Hyung, do you think anyone can live together forever?” Taemin asks helplessly.
“I think...people can,” Jinki answers thoughtfully, nodding.
“Then why do people get divorced?” Taemin pushes away the memories of standing behind an oak chair. “Did they love each other from the start?”
“Sometimes, people forget what they married each other for,” Jinki explains and Taemin realises the nagging feeling in his chest for the first time - that and the window isn’t closed, sea breeze ghosting over his neck. “When -”
A loud ‘bang!’ echoes through the room and startles the both of them. Kibum appears in the walkway a second later, going, “I am so frickin’ pissed.”
Kibum’s arms are akimbo, feet tapping, and he’s giving them that ask-me-right-now look. Glancing at Jinki, the latter glances at Kibum in return, swallows audibly and asks, “what’s wrong Kibum?”
“Do you remember that moron called JongHyun?” Kibum spits the name out viciously and Taemin grimaces. “Do you know what he said to me? Do you know?”
It’s quiet for a moment, the only sound is that of Kibum tapping his foot, which became quicker for emphasis. Jinki gets the hint and coughs, “what did he say, Kibum?”
“He told me to stop being such a bitch.”
Taemin snorts but he stops immediately at Kibum’s glare.
For the next ten minutes, the room is noisy with Kibum shrilling, walking towards the dresser taking off his earrings, into the bathroom. Kibum bitches through the brushing of his teeth, occasionally stepping out into the bedroom and flinging his hands in the air for effect, toothbrush shimmying in his cheek. Jinki’s efforts are futile in calming the diva down, sounding weak and useless beside the colourful vocabulary spewing out of Kibum.
Bored with the monologue, Taemin peers out the open window, taking in countless stars splashed across the night. He inhales the sea breeze, feeling lighter than before, and he hears water. Somebody is sticking a pole into the pool, illuminated blue at night, sending ripples across the glass surface. Curious, Taemin watches as the person lifts the - he sees that it’s a net - out of the pool, twisting about to empty it and Taemin’s heart catches in his throat as the blue lights fall on his face.
“Minho?” He asks before he can stop himself.
Pausing, the silhouette casts around, and Taemin shouts “hey”, waving. The shadow looks up and raises his hand after a moment, a deep voice travelling up after.
“You stay here?”
“Yeah, trying to get homework done,” Taemin grins, not really knowing why. “I can’t do math.”
Kibum hasn’t stopped shrieking, ideas on the size of JongHyun’s brain slipping out the toilet door above the splashing of water, and Taemin barely makes out, “I could take a look at it.”
Taemin takes a second to consider - it’s time he finished at least one exercise anyway, already two weeks into summer break. Why not? Showing a thumbs up, Taemin gathers his book and pen, brushing past Jinki who is fidgeting outside the toilet trying to calm the diva down, and slips into his flip-flops.
Minho is seated underneath a large umbrella at one of the poolside tables when Taemin gets onto the patio and he quickly settles into the chair beside, noticing the dirty net lying on the floor.
“So you’re a pool boy now?” Taemin asks, and Minho chuckles.
“Surprised?” Minho asks as he drags the assessment book towards himself, flipping through it.
“Not really, no,” Taemin admits, resting his chin in a palm. “Why do you do so many things?”
There is a moment that spans at Minho’s eyes finding his - it’s gone extremely fast, like cherry sparks - and Taemin realises he’s falling into something scary.
“I’m multipurpose,” Minho’s teeth are white in the darkness and Taemin tears his gaze away, rubbing his nose.
“You are, aren’t you?” It comes out flat. “I’m stuck at question two.”
In the next fifteen minutes, Taemin finds out that Minho really is multipurpose because he teaches unbelievably well and Taemin is spotting tricks and nooks in the questions and solving it much easier by the time he gets to question six.
Ten in the evening, the swimming pool is empty. Eerily so, because although the many windows facing them had orange lights behind cream curtains, it is silent to the point of hearing crickets and the scratching of his pencil - and the slosh of water as Minho continues cleaning the pool.
Feeling safe, it is just the two of them in the world, and possibly still a little bothered, Taemin broke the quiet. “Hey, Minho hyung?”
Taemin rolls his eyes when his only reply is the sound of water lapping gently into drains. He knows Minho is listening but he doesn’t like that, he likes a reply. Twisting around in his chair, Taemin stares at Minho scooping up leaves from the pool, voiding the assumption that Minho’s a manager - managers need to speak up don’t they?
“Stuck?” Minho finally regards Taemin, pulling the net out.
“No, it’s not that,” Taemin frowns as he tries to form his sentence. “It’s...just - do you believe in love?”
Immediately understanding the meanings that could be in that sentence, Taemin blinks quickly, flushing. “I didn’t mean -”
“Why do you ask?” There’s a faint smile on Minho’s face as he picks up the garbage bag.
“People get divorced,” He spews out, scuttling to the edge of his seat, not missing Minho’s lips faltering. “I mean, if it was love, they would grow old together right? Through illness and everything.”
“They don’t enjoy it,” Minho sits and Taemin feels like a kid. “Getting divorced. It hurts for them.”
“Uh...so?” Taemin didn’t mean to be rude, but he isn’t seeing what Minho’s trying to point out.
“So there’s still something there,” Minho says amusedly, sitting forward and resting both elbows on his knees. “Problems come along in relationships. How much they can bear, how much they try and work it through, decides if two people want to leave. It doesn’t mean they don’t love each other.”
Taemin scrunches his face as fingers tug on his nose. Minho always treats him like a child.
“But if it makes you feel better,” Minho continues, eyes twinkling in the dim starlight. “My grandparents still live together.”
Laughing loudly, Taemin quickly covers his mouth and shoves Minho, certain he’s woken some patrons.
Squinting in the sun, nylon is rough against his fingers as Taemin forces the end of a volleyball net downwards. After running from his parents, Taemin had gotten a text informing him that beach clean-up has been changed to maintenance, much to Kibum’s horror (“I can’t do heavy manual labour!”) and that Jinki is to join them in replacing the bedroom’s extra shirts.
“Is it done yet?” Kibum calls from the opposite end of the court, much louder than it really needs to be. The diva is annoyed that he has to wear the staff “jumpsuit”, as he calls it, annoyed at getting wrinkles from UV ray exposure, annoyed that they had to tighten a volleyball net when he hates sports.
“I can’t get the knot!” Taemin yells back, equally bothered by the heat beating down on him. The hair sticking all over his sweating neck and face isn’t exactly helping his mood; he thinks about chopping it off to a length meant for boys - ‘girl’ has been used to address him quite often recently.
Taemin is bumped aside by something hard and he flinches from the hot contact on his arm. Glancing back at the intrusion, peeved, he finds Minho yanking on the ends of the net. Taemin watches as Minho ties them together, lips pursed in concentration, and he wonders why he had struggled so hard with it when the boy lets go of the ropes, knotted.
Then he realises.
Minho is topless.
“W-where is your shirt?” Taemin sputters, face burning and he’s pretty sure it isn’t the sun.
“I’m on lifeguard duty,” Minho answers, looking genuinely confused. “Extra clothes add to the weight.”
“Right,” He tells himself to calm down, tells himself to just keep his eyes on Minho’s face that looks a tad sunburnt, pink dusting over tanned cheek. “Multipurpose.”
Minho smiles then, waving behind Taemin and he guesses Kibum is behind. “I’m on patrol now. See you guys around.”
Barely getting “see you” out of his mouth, Taemin wrenches his gaze away from Minho’s back (Taemin thinks Minho looks really good in his light blue beach shorts), running down the sand with a bright red board, ‘lifeguard’ printed on it in obnoxiously large capitalised white font. And he finds Kibum giving him that look.
That look he always gives when he sees something stupid. Or incredibly basic.
“What?” Taemin blurts out, walking past Kibum.
Kibum huffs, catching up. “You are totally into him.”
“Huh,” Taemin deadpans. “Like you and JongHyun hyung?”
“That is out of context,” Kibum argues, nose high in the air. “It is impossible for me to fall for a complete dim-wit -”
The conversation stops with shouting in the distance. Their names are being called and Taemin squints to see Jinki running towards them from the resort’s hotel, a big smile plastered on his face, JongHyun following.
“Speak of the -” Kibum’s sentence cuts off again because Jinki trips on the bicycle path, crashing into granite tumbling. “Jinki!”
Far from a happy reunion, Kibum and JongHyun had started arguing the minute they were within earshot. It started with the diva jostling JongHyun away, pulling Jinki up himself. JongHyun demanded Kibum’s problem then, and Kibum said something along the lines of being allergic to stupidity.
Taemin is walking beside Jinki awkwardly along the corridor branching off into bedrooms, both unsure on how to deal with the pair fighting behind, hoping they don’t wake anybody. Apparently JongHyun was supposed to show Jinki how to carry out his new duty. The clean shirts they were supposed to hang in the customers’ closet are in JongHyun’s hands, being flung about in his grip - creasing in the process - as the argument escalates.
“You have something to say about everything I do -” JongHyun stops as Kibum spins around, facing him.
“Exactly! So don’t say or do anything at all!” Kibum yells back and JongHyun snarls.
“Why are you such a bitch? I -”
“I’m a bitch? I’m a bitch?” Kibum asks incredulously and shoves JongHyun. “If I'm a bitch then what are you? Huh?”
“The only in-charge of staff attire,” JongHyun puffs his chest out.
Kibum scoffs.
“Alright, you want some of this?!” JongHyun demands, stepping up to Kibum. Taemin glances at Jinki, whose face is whitening with dread.
“You want some of this?!” Kibum raises his voice back, jutting his chin out.
“Um...guys,” Jinki says weakly.
And it happens so quickly Taemin is left gaping with no knowledge on how what he is seeing came to be. JongHyun’s lips are clamped over Kibum’s, a hand on his lower back and another on his waist, a pile of clean shirts lay forgotten on the carpet. Kibum is scratching on JongHyun’s shoulders messily and Taemin is just staring.
“I hate you!” JongHyun spits into Kibum’s face when he pulls away.
“I hate you more!”
And they are kissing again.
A hand slaps over Taemin’s eyes and he hears Jinki going, “meep”.
Taemin tells himself not to cry as he tries to flow with his steps. The music is jacked right up to its maximum volume and his ears are beginning to block from the sound - but it only means Mr. Jung isn’t happy and it takes nearly everything to break his fall when his foot slips on sweat.
Getting back up onto his feet, the room falling silent, Taemin hears himself breathing - wheezing. He looks like a mess in the mirror, plasters on his arms and his left toes are touching the polished wood gingerly - his ankle is swelling. Catching Mr. Jung’s eyes, Taemin registers disappointment and he almost cries when he tells him to give him another chance.
Almost.
The music consists of strong beats and lilting breaks and Taemin finds the choreography ridiculously difficult, full of feet crossing and jumping and timing - but then again, so has everything else he’s done before.
But Taemin just can’t seem to get it. He reminds himself of a previous mistake nearing that part and he finds himself forgetting another step, either that or his moves get jumbled up and he completely loses the beat. And he’s not even going to think of the times his elbow crashes with the ground.
“We’re stopping now,” Mr. Jung announces and Taemin is on the floor, recovering from a fall.
“What? No -”
“It’s eleven, Taemin,” Mr. Jung says, looking at him, unsatisfied and displeased and Taemin swallows. “You stay here but I live miles away.”
There’s something in Taemin’s throat, and his chest flares painfully, along the lines of frustration, and his eyes prickle. Sparks race across his arm when he accepts Mr. Jung’s hand, limping over to the only bench in the studio, and Taemin tastes something awful in his mouth.
“Mr. Jung,” Taemin begins, looking at his feet. He can’t face the instructor. “What’s wrong with me?”
“Maybe it’s the wrong dance.”
“No,” Taemin refuses to lose to choreography. He’s the best when it comes to dancing and he knows the instructor’s just trying to be kind. “Tell me. What’s wrong with me?”
“You’re not feeling it,” Mr. Jung answers and the simplicity of it causes the fire in Taemin’s chest to grow, consuming him from the inside right up to his eyes.
“I’m trying. How do I -”
“Nobody can tell you how.”
Feeling helpless, but knowing it’s true, the fire inside him spills out of his eyes once a click resounds in the room. It’s hard to breathe and Taemin feels knives slicing his ankle where he grips it, breaths shuddering and vision bleary. Frustration and every feeling of self-resentment is rocking Taemin’s body on the bench and he’s biting back his sobs for the longest time. The room is bright and clean and empty and his sharp inhales echo off the mirrors.
Taemin refuses to cry but he’s crying already and he’s trying to stop. Swallowing, Taemin lets out a harsh breath, registering a weight on his knee for the first time. Startled, he glances up, blinking water out of his eyes, finding a large hand enclosed over his thigh and Minho sitting beside him.
He lets out an incoherent mix between a cry and a wail, voice teary and nasal, and doesn’t know what to think when Minho smiles.
“Better?”
“How long have you been here?” Taemin asks, a little too forcefully, wiping his cheeks roughly and acutely aware of Minho’s hand on his thigh.
“About fifteen minutes,” Minho answers, finally taking his hand off and Taemin loosens up.
“Lock-up duty,” He remembers, bits of a laugh getting into his cracking voice. “The studio’s closing now, isn’t it?”
“Technically, you’re allowed to stay,” The boy says and Taemin snorts noisily, sniffing. “Did...something happen?”
“I’m just messing up,” His flats are really worn out. Taemin presses his toes together and winces at the pain shooting up his left leg. “That’s all.”
“Everyone messes up.”
“Yeah well, I can’t,” Taemin looks at Minho and smiles wryly, swiping at his face to dry a loose tear. “It’s a piece for an audition. I have to get into this school.”
Minho is quiet and he nods as he listens and Taemin feels like he’s being undone.
“I have to, because my dad’s finally letting me dance,” He knows he’s rambling but he can’t stop. “It’s the only way to prove myself to him. This is the only school he’ll be happy with.”
They sit in silence, Taemin sniffling and becoming increasingly embarrassed. He’s fidgeting in his seat, throwing furtive glances at the mirror to find Minho perfectly content in simply sitting there, taking in the room. The quiet isn’t deafening like after he screws up and the music stops. It’s awkward but comfortable and it helps Taemin think better.
“C’mon,” Minho eventually says and Taemin realises he’s breathing normally again.“Let’s walk you home.”
From that day, on every Tuesday and Thursday night, Taemin will limp back to his room with Minho. It’s an unspoken commitment on Minho’s part and the boy doesn’t listen when Taemin tells him not to.
They bump into each other on the road, in the sea breeze and under the stars. They talk about the littlest things, the people they’ve met that afternoon, something funny that happened, something bothering them, and Taemin becomes light and dizzy.
When he trips, Minho catches his elbows. And even though he hisses as fingers press into the bruises around the bone - Minho apologising immediately - Taemin’s chest flutters.
And he doesn’t realise that he is falling.
Another change occurs after that night, which Taemin has no idea about as he jolts out of bed, fumbling for the alarm clock and cursing at how he has five minutes to get into the staff jumpsuit before he’s late for bed sheet duty.
Hopping and tugging the oversized orange pants up as he emerges from the bathroom, frenzied, Taemin rips off a note stuck on the fridge, wanting to know why Kibum didn’t wake him up.
“Taeminnie, you seemed exhausted so hyung left first. Your duty today: room 204 - 224. We’re not doing duty together, don’t let your partner wait too long!
Love, Kibum hyung. (insert heart)”
Taemin bolts out of the room then, dropping the note for the doorknob, clambering down the stairs and searching for his assigned rooms. He tears down the hallway of the sixteenth level, startling a few half-awake tourists and almost colliding into lady as he rounds the corner.
The door-hanger of room 204 has been flipped, “welcome back!” in fancy fonts printed on a bright green background, mocking him. It’s a staff practice - the group taking out the bed sheets will turn the door-hanger around to show an orange background while the group replacing the bed sheets will flip it back to green as a signal that the room’s been done.
Guilt and annoyance is pooling inside of Taemin as he continues down the hallway, finding every door sporting a green hanger. He thinks that this person is either joking around, trying to get him into trouble by lying about the state of the bedrooms, or just really an overachiever wanting to make him look bad.
Either way this person must be evil. Taemin jams a cardkey into the nearest room, knocking lightly and waiting for a signal if anyone is inside - nobody - before he whips it open, already hawk-eyed and suspicious of the sheets.
Surprisingly, the bed is well-made, neat and clean sheets nearly glowing in the late morning sun, streaming through the satin curtains. Taemin is held in place for a moment, not understanding at all, before he’s out the door again, passing green, green, green - how can anyone work so fast - orange.
Taemin blinks and walks - runs to it, actually, unlocking the door and barging in. The door hits something from the inside, a dull thud and Taemin’s shoulders jump backwards at the recoil. Shaking off the shock, Taemin peers past the door, finding a tall boy rubbing the back of his head, looking disgruntled. The boy is very handsome, with large eyes, and Taemin doesn’t know when he’ll finally be used to surprises in Sapphire Sands.
JongHyun had requested to be in the same team as Kibum for morning duty, hence Minho had to step in to fill the empty slot in Taemin’s team. Minho didn’t have anything else except morning duty so he went ahead with the job first. Apparently he had just entered the last room when Taemin rammed the door into his back.
“Sorry,” Taemin apologises weakly as Minho looks at him accusingly, a trace of a smile on his face.
“Just don’t work like them,” Minho says, rolling the cart closer to the bed.
Not comprehending, Taemin looks at the bed. There are still sheets covering it, crumpled and dirty, even though there’s an orange hanger outside - and Taemin gets it.
“Slackers,” He says and Minho nods, expression serious as he bends down to pull the fabric out from underneath the mattress. The boy always looks serious anyway, so Taemin doesn’t know if he’s really angry.
Minho looks at him questioningly and Taemin takes a second to understand, scrambling over opposite the boy, plunging his hands under the bed. He is about to tug the sheets out when he catches a yellow stain inches from his arm.
“What the hell is that?” Taemin asks in disgust, glancing from the spot to Minho. The sheet on the boy’s side is already out, grasped in his hands and Taemin sees strong forearms before Minho laughs.
“Don’t think about it,” The hazy sun is caught in Minho’s eyes, crinkling by the sides. “Just do it.”
Extremely disturbed by the stain in close proximity, Taemin purses his lips and pulls on the sheets. Suddenly, the world is thrown forward and his arms nearly pop out of their sockets. He is in complete confusion, cry muffling as he bounces on something soft.
Minho is upside down and laughing and it’s then that Taemin realises he’s on the bed. Once he had gotten his end of the sheet out, Minho had tugged on it, resulting in Taemin being thrown forward with his grip on the fabric.
Kicking wildly, Taemin scuttles around, falling on his butt far away from the stain. Minho is in hysterics by then and Taemin feels indignant and hot. He yanks hard on the bed sheet, feeling an instant rush of satisfaction at Minho’s eyes widening, which quickly turns into panic as the boy loses his footing - landing right above him.
“Ow, my foot,” Minho complains, voice tickling Taemin’s shoulder.
Taemin is laughing, close-mouthed, but Minho must’ve felt it, pulling up on his elbows and frowning at Taemin. Their faces are unbelievably close but Taemin doesn’t get to flush because fingers are jabbing into his ribs, dancing along his sides, tickling him. Minho is merciless and Taemin is convulsing on the bed, useless in his attempts to shove the boy off with dwindling strength, barely making out, “you think that’s funny, huh?”
Clean white sheets finally cover the mattress and Taemin feels giddy and breathless, ribs tingling as he follows Minho out of the room. Taemin listens to Minho explaining the system and he points out loopholes.
"It's better for a group to change and replace the sheets," Taemin says and he averts his eyes when Minho looks at him with rapt attention. "I mean, you save resources and more people can be deployed elsewhere."
The lift arrives with a 'ding'. Minho appears pensive as they walk into it, polished wood and lemon scented.
“And it's easier to find out who are the slackers,” Taemin continues hastily. "But it's just a suggestion. I mean. Yeah."
"...I think we can work something out," Minho says slowly, facing Taemin and smiling slightly. "It makes sense. We can try that."
A hand messes his hair up then, and although Taemin 'tsk's at that, he's looking down to hide his grin.
part ll
taemin spends the summer working at a beach resort, wherein minho is more than just a receptionist.
a/n: this is my most light-hearted work so far besides ski resort. pretty much a chick flick.
A file sliding over polished wood is harsh in the silence of the small, suffocating room, air brimming with tension. Taemin is standing behind his mother holding a stack of files, his back perfectly straight, behind a tall chair - but he really would prefer to be standing behind the smaller chairs he faces. The smaller, mahogany chairs, occupied by broken people.
He wouldn’t need to look at the people in it then. He does not like looking at them, because it is usually the female with the puffy red eyes and the male with his jaws set. Sometimes it isn’t so quiet, so unnaturally peaceful - but they all know there is a storm broiling within the chairs’ occupants. Sometimes they start shouting, screaming and yelling, and crying and wailing and the “guards”, Taemin has come to coin them, must barge in and take control.
If he is lucky, he stands for an hour in each session, three times a day. If he is not, it happens five times a day and more, leaving him tired and sick at the end.
“I’m just going to ask again, are the both of you certain in doing this?” His mother would ask and it’s frightening how impassive she looks, like she doesn’t even care.
Divorces are never happy, as much as the ex-couples try to make it be. The confirmation comes out in various ways, sometimes angry, sometimes soft, sometimes they don’t get a confirmation at all because fighting starts happening.
“I can’t live with him anymore.” This lady said once. And Taemin stiffened behind the tall chair, watching tears pool into her eyes. He tries not to listen to the reasons, so he doesn’t dream about them happening to his parents but her voice is extremely loud and clear in the quietness.
“You can’t live with me?” The man asked incredulously. “Who’s the one going out all the time, with some guy I’ve never even spoken to before -”
“He’s just a colleague!” The lady screamed, and Taemin’s heel hit against the cupboard behind as he backs away. “This is the problem - you’re always so paranoid -”
Everything else after, Taemin does not get to hear. Mrs. Lee shoves him out of the room as the guards enter, restraining the couple from coming to blows and Taemin is already halfway down back to his mother’s office as the fighting escalates and spills into the reception, a mix of profanities and grudges and unspoken hurts, and his heart is pounding frightfully.
It is strange how his mother deals with this everyday but he is still in a family. Perhaps it’s because she knows the reasons behind couples wanting to go away from each other, that she can stop it from happening to them.
But even that assurance seems to be losing ground.
Insecurity is beginning to crawl its way into his heart. Until recently, Taemin has never seen nor heard his parents fighting before. Late at night, he had remembered that there was a glass of milk forgotten on the counter. Getting out of bed, he had walked right into a conflict.
“ - and I know what I’m doing,” Mr. Lee said, pacing out of the kitchen.
“This isn’t something - it’s a large percentage, and he’s not even our blood!” Mrs. Lee chewed through her teeth, following him.
“You don’t know him, he’s honest,” Mr. Lee continued, facing her. “Besides, Taemin wants to dance -”
With Mrs. Lee’s gaze snapping onto Taemin, Mr. Lee stopped abruptly, looking at Taemin also. He shook himself out of his trance, heart beating fast, going into the kitchen and grabbing his milk, not even pausing when some of the liquid sloshed out the cup and onto the floor. Mumbling a hurried ‘g’night’, Taemin scurried back into his room, resting his back against the cold door, replaying the argument in his head.
The next day, Mr. Lee spoke to him, tried to cover it up with a story Taemin knew to be a lie. But he nods and frowns and pretends to understand because it’s not like he can really do much anyway.
“Tell me why we are here again,” Kibum asks dryly as they step into a dimly lit changing room that smells like old socks.
“Because hyung, you have nothing else to do during summer,” Taemin replies, beginning to breathe more difficultly in the humidity.
“How rude,” Kibum scoffs as they pick their way through yellowing scraps of clothing. “I have many things to do. I can go shopping, lazing at the beach -”
“Where will you get your money, Kibum?” Jinki asks and Kibum falters for a moment, tentatively kicking a stray pair of pants out of his path in disgust.
“Numbers,” He finally says and Taemin stops to look at him in confusion. Kibum pulls his phone out and scrolls through his contacts. “Flirt through it. Flirt the goods into plastic bags. Flirt the goods to me.”
Taemin gaps at his friend. Jinki shrugs when he glances at him. Kibum laughs, loud and obnoxious and Taemin is still gaping.
“I am such a whore, I know.”
“Really?” An unfamiliar voice asks and Taemin finds a handsome boy standing beside them. He must’ve come from inside the showers because his hair is damp. And he must be who they had to find, judging from the stack of folded clothes wilting in his hand.
“And you are..?” Kibum looks completely unimpressed, one side of his mouth upturned, eyes flat.
“JongHyun,” The boy smiles brightly and Taemin warms up to him instantly. “The in-charge of staff attire distribution. The only in-charge.”
He says the last part like it’s a big deal. He passes them their uniforms and Taemin gets into a cubicle, fighting his way through the huge white shirt, large orange pants nearly dropping off his waist and pooling around his feet. Emerging from the cubicle, everyone is out - except for Kibum.
“Kibum..?” Jinki calls carefully.
When there is no reply, Jinki knocks on his door gently. “Kibum..? You okay?”
“No! I look like a frickin’ clown, how can I be okay?” Taemin glances at JongHyun for help, feeling bad that this is happening on their first day.
“Just come out and we’ll see what we can do,” Jinki coaxes and Kibum doesn’t reply.
“I’m coming through, make way!” JongHyun orders and Taemin is gaping again, at the stranger. Jinki scrambles away from the door, hiding Taemin behind him.
“Nobody comes in!” Kibum shrills from the inside.
“It’s fine, everything’s going to be fine! I’m getting you out of there!” JongHyun assures like a fireman and Taemin finds it all absurd.
“No!” Kibum screams again. “Don’t you dare -”
A piercing scream cuts through resounding ‘bang!’ of plastic colliding with porcelain tiles, right when JongHyun rams his shoulder into the door and it pops inwards, his entire barrelling form disappearing inside the cubicle.
Everything looks ritzy and expensive from the outside, the resort Taemin’s father owns. Starting from nothing but a rundown pier, Mr. Lee had pooled in his entire savings mid-life to purchase the pier’s rights. He had rebuilt it then, right from scratch, and never stopped working to bring it to the perfection Sapphire Sands currently is.
Most people know where Sapphire Sands is situated, right beside the sea, and mostly the rich and possibly famous people manages to stay a night. Taemin has never really thought much about it, never told anyone about who his father is, except for his closest friends - Jinki and Kibum, but after spending two summer breaks in his mother’s office watching marriages get torn apart, he figures working in a family resort can’t be any worse.
It’s not that he likes working, but Taemin isn’t the type of person to waste his days away. Being in a new environment, and being afraid to screw anything up, since his dad is pretty strict of his resort’s standards, Taemin had dragged his best friends along.
On the inside, Sapphire Sands really is as dirty and unglamorous as the fast food restaurants Jinki liked going to. Not that Taemin has seen that side of the bedrooms. Right now, Taemin is stuffing loose ends of a new bed sheet under the mattress, listening to Kibum bitch on about how stupid and dim-witted and dense JongHyun is.
“Hyung, if you came out he wouldn’t have barged in,” Taemin says as he stretches. They have finished the last room on the levels assigned to them. Staff is to change the sheets of the guests during breakfast time, so the customers return back with fresh beds for “the best, holiday quality experience” - quote JongHyun.
“Don’t you give me that,” Kibum mutters through clenched teeth, shutting the door a little too hard and startling Taemin. “First Jinki, and now you. What if I weren’t dressed? Huh? Then what would I do?”
“Didn’t you call yourself a...whore?” Taemin says the last part really softly, bolting when Kibum’s eyes widened, arms lunging for him.
Smoke stings his eyes as Taemin squeezes through the crowded kitchen, waiters shouting incomprehensible orders and chefs confirming back with secret codes - or maybe it’s just really noisy and Taemin can’t hear anything. Jinki and Kibum are already at their stations - the breakfast table and Taemin has no idea where to go. He had to pee and they were already late.
“Minho?” A waiter yells into his face above the din. Taemin nods and is lead out of the chaos, being directed towards the lobby, finger pointing in multiple directions at once. “That’s your man right there.”
Patting him on the back, the waiter disappears into the kitchen again. Coming out of the hidden passageway for staff, Taemin appears by a potted plant, trying to find this ‘Minho’ that’s supposed to instruct him about the breakfast table.
The lobby is nearly empty, with a grand winding staircase facing an equally grand golden rimmed glass entrance - it opens and a bellboy rolls in a cart of luggage, a family trailing behind. Taemin’s footsteps echoes through the place and he looks up to find the ceiling so high he snaps his gaze back to the ground, feeling dizzy and a little scared of heights.
A few tourists walk past him, towards the receptionist, all shades and perfect outfits and perfect hairstyles and Taemin feels like a sore thumb in his loose shirt and ugly orange pants. The lobby staff are impeccably smart and neat, with a black blazer and tie and white work shirt and Taemin really needs to find Minho so he and all of his unglamourousness can disappear right now.
Biting his lips and glancing around more frantically - why is the place so big - Taemin spots something ugly in the midst of the perfection that is Sapphire Sand’s lobby. It is metallic and rusted and it looks horrible and there is somebody sticking a hand into it, wearing a blazer - he is the only one unoccupied. Taemin hurries over, feeling like he is painfully obvious as he strides past the grand entrance, over the thick carpeted floor and cutting through plush cushions and a glass coffee table and intricate lamps to reach this ugly spot.
“Hi, I’m looking for Minho,” Taemin rushes when he reaches the machine. Something sweet wafts up his noise and he looks down to find pink cotton candy tumbling inside a hole. A cotton candy machine.
“You must be Taemin.”
The voice is rich and deep and it tore his attention away from the sweet. Taemin has never seen such large eyes before, and he is quite frankly, taken aback. It is strangely disproportional and possibly weird.
“ Yeah, I’m late for breakfast duty,” Taemin answers quickly and he realises that the boy is wearing a name tag that spells ‘Minho’. “And you’re supposed to tell me where to go and what to do.”
Minho smiles, perfect white teeth and perfectly spiked hair, and it is strangely infectious and warm. Upon reassessment, Taemin finds the boy rather dashing, and quite human - as compared to all the other perfect robots around them. The machine buzzes lowly between them as Minho drops a hand into it. Fidgeting for a moment where the boy dealt with the machine, Taemin blinked when Minho looks up and grins, all opened mouth and friendly.
A little girl waddles up beside Taemin and he steps away, letting Minho stretch down and pass her a paper roll holding a generous amount of pink floss. She tries to say ‘thank you’ with her missing teeth, coming out inarticulate and squeaky and Minho pats her head, smiling to himself as she runs towards the new group of tourists that arrived.
“The breakfast table is on the second level,” Minho’s deep voice says and Taemin snaps his attention back to the boy - who he notices is more than a head taller than him. “All you need to do is replace dirty plates with clean ones, and be polite. Tie your hair.”
“Right, thanks,” Taemin bows, hastily gathering his copper locks into a hand, turning around to bound up the stairs.
A low buzzing trails behind him and Taemin shakes his head, getting it out of his mind, preparing to face grumpy, roused patrons.
Not even lying, when Taemin had heard that all he needs to do is to “replace dirty plates with clean ones”, he had thought it would be easy.
Now, he is bustling about with an armful of plates, sauce and curry and bits of god-knows-what smearing over his shirt as he tries not to drop any. The breakfast hall is noisy and the patrons seem intent on overworking the staff, hands shooting up all over the place - and Taemin is running out the kitchen door for the twentieth time after depositing the plates with a clatter into a pail - much to the dishwashers’ dismay.
“May I clear this?” Taemin says with a tight smile, trying not to slap the fat man who doesn’t even look at him, nodding haughtily - like he’s so damn rich to sit in this breakfast hall.
Technically, he has to be, but Taemin didn’t care much about facts right now as he attempts another balancing act with the plates.
“Here,” A familiar voice says and Taemin heaves a sigh of relief when half the load is lifted off his arms, Jinki’s face appearing above the stack.
“Thanks, hyung -”
“Leave me alone,” Somebody hissed, strangely familiar and Taemin glances to the side to find Kibum growling at JongHyun beside.
“See, the outfit doesn’t look that bad does it?” JongHyun prods his fingers underneath Kibum’s plates. “Let me help you with -”
“Don’t you have something else to do?” Kibum hisses, looking at JongHyun in the face. “Like jumping off a building?”
“You mean the rock-climbing station?” The boy asks and Kibum rolls his eyes, circumventing the table he’s serving, JongHyun following behind.
Taemin shares a look with Jinki, and they both muffle their laughs.
“C’mon, c’mon!” Mr. Jung barks from the side, loud in the room’s sudden quietness. “You didn’t make me drive a few miles here just to show me this.”
Music starts blaring in the room again and Taemin takes a shaky breath, counting the beat in his head.
5, 6, 7, 8.
Twist and turn and dip and - miss - go on - miss. By now, Taemin is biting his lips, eyebrows knitted together as he looks at his feet. Left, right, left, left - miss. The music stops. Taemin groans inwardly.
“You’re not feeling it man,” Mr. Jung says. “You’re not feeling it. This is a dance expressing the freedom of affection - it’s already on your face, you look pissed - how is that affection?”
Shirt sticking to his back uncomfortably as he recovers, arms akimbo, Taemin turns his eyes from the floor onto Mr. Jung’s face. Copper bangs cover most of his instructor’s features but he still hates that look of frustration. Taemin never disappoints in dancing, he does that the best and he needs to - he needs to with his father working so hard for this.
“I’m sorry, please give me another chance,” He flicks his bangs aside, hair matting his sweaty neck, watching Mr. Jung walk away from him and gathering his bag.
“You have the whole night,” The instructor says as he made for the door, clapping Taemin’s shoulder. “Remember, it’s not just a school, it’s a group, a title. Feel the dance.”
The click of the door echoes in Taemin’s head long after Mr. Jung left, long after he’s sat on the floor wallowing in what feels like the abandonment of his teacher, long after he’s pressed the repeat button and he’s trying to catch every move within the timing.
He goes on and on until he’s fallen thrice and bruised his hip. Taemin is lying beside the silent radio, breathing evening, when his meditation is rudely interrupted.
“Uh...hi,” Somebody said from the door uncertainly.
Sitting up and squinting at the harsh light coming from outside, Taemin realises his arms are aching. “Who’s that?”
“Taemin?” The person has a deep voice.
“Minho?”
“Uh yeah,” The door closes behind Minho, and Taemin recognises the huge eyes from this afternoon. “I’m locking up. You’re here pretty late.”
“Technically I can be,” Taemin manages past his grimace as he pushes up from the ground. “My dad’s Mr. Lee.”
“Is that so?” Minho asks and he looks up to see a hint of amusement on the boy’s face. Taemin rolls his eyes, feeling his lips tug upwards at how bratty his previous comment was. “Well then, Mr. Lee, would you like me to keep the Sand’s studio open longer?”
Minho is bowing with an arm over his waist, a smirk on his face, and Taemin laughs, shoving the boy.
He waits outside in the hallway, trying not to limp, as Minho locks the remaining rooms. Taemin notices that the boy takes his job very seriously, disappearing inside the studios for awhile, checking if the air conditioning and plugs are turned off, before coming out and locking. Every time Minho emerges into the hallway, he smiles awkwardly at Taemin and holds up a finger, like Taemin was a tourist or something and he’s asking for a moment.
Taemin finds that adorable.
Of course he doesn’t tell Minho that as they walk out together, and he doesn’t tell Minho that as he waits for the boy to lock the main wooden doors, in the night’s cold. Instead, Taemin goes, “So, you’re a receptionist and you’re on lock-up duty.”
“Every single day,” Minho says standing up and Taemin returns the grin.
The next few days rushes past Taemin mercilessly. He fumbles out of bed with Kibum shrieking about being late, Jinki tripping and thudding against walls and floors and doors behind them. They try not to fall over with how fast Kibum is dragging them by the arms, towards the staff changing room hidden behind bushes at the back of the resort.
“We get residential rooms because you’re the boss’ son,” Kibum mutters under his breath. “And what happens? We become late. That’s what.”
Taemin tries not to giggle at his friend’s complaints - as funny as they sounded, Kibum is also as equally serious about them. They tug on the oversized outfits and wait for Kibum to finish pinning up brooches he’s magically pulled out of his luggage the night of their first day. Kibum has stolen five pairs of pants and spent the entire night knitting them up. Now they look like skinnies and they make Kibum look like one of those perfect tourists and he is happier than ever while Taemin stares dumbfounded.
“Hey, hyung do you think you can -” Taemin asked once.
“Absolutely not,” Kibum answered flat out. “If too many of us do it, they’ll catch us and it’ll be back to that hideous...” The diva pointed at Taemin’s pants with a distasteful expression, finger drifting uncertainly as if he didn’t even know where to begin. “Thing,” Kibum decides.
At 8:00 sharp, Jinki will have left for the kitchen while they bulldoze down the second and third levels of block A, housing estates for tourists, struggling miserably in putting on fresh bed sheets in pace with the team that are taking them off. The team that rips the bed sheets off have it easy, and while Taemin’s halfway done with the second level, the former is already skipping towards the staff lounge, probably to laze or something - he doesn’t know because he’s never spoken to them before.
Barely having time to speak with Kibum, they rush down to the breakfast hall by 9:05, entering through the front door and immediately slipping into duty, picking up full and dirty plates, attending to arrogant patrons that Taemin really wants to stab in the eye with a crab claw.
They don’t see JongHyun around nowadays, and Taemin isn’t sure how Kibum feels about it. He talks as if he doesn’t care but he keeps talking about it. The diva doesn’t even make calls at night to random people in their school to flirt - but that might be because they have been incredibly tired recently.
However, Taemin does see Minho. At breakfast. Frying eggs.
“What are you doing?” Taemin sputters the first time he sees Minho behind the buffet counter, the aroma of eggs and sausages and seafood strong in the air. A lady eyes his dirty shirt disapprovingly and slips past the omelette counter.
“Frying eggs,” Minho says, looking innocent and adorable in a white apron, and Taemin really shouldn’t be thinking about this right now.
“Aren’t you supposed to handle reception?” Taemin asks, bewildered, and Minho smiles and he should really stop smiling because that isn’t an answer. “Stop smiling.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be clearing tables?” Minho counters, mirth in his eyes as he slips the spatula underneath a crabmeat omelette, flipping it. Taemin watches as it lands perfectly.
“Taemin!” He whips around to find Jinki’s load tilting precariously by the kitchen entrance. Before he can run over, the metal door opens and a helper hastily divests Jinki of the plates. “It’s fine now. I’m cool. We’re cool.”
During lunch and dinner however, somebody else by the name of Darwin does the omelettes instead and Taemin doesn’t have the time to think about it with multiple hands shooting up in the air all over the place.
They get an hour break between shifts which is really too short for them to rest in their own rooms, hence they end up sitting in the staff lounge with the other waiters, all listless and defeated. It’s a large and spacious room with red carpets and multiple couches placed haphazardly for the staff to rest on. A bar sits in the far corner but nobody attends to it and Taemin has only found soda inside the fridge.
Some girls still manage to find the strength to chat and they giggle in their seats. Some read the papers and others listen to music and try to sleep for a little. Taemin wants to do that, he wants to get some sleep, especially when he has dancing practice at night - but Kibum keeps talking about his nails, all the time.
“Look at this,” Taemin jerks awake at the voice, a bleary fingertip hovering inches from his face. “What is this?”
“Mm’rg?” He mumbles and sits up, trying to focus.
“It’s called chipping. My nails are chipping Taemin,” Kibum says it like it’s Taemin’s fault.
In contrast to the diva, Jinki seems to be enjoying the entire experience. Partly because he passed the cooking auditions and he’s posted in the kitchen as an assistant chef - so he doesn’t deal with haughty customers, and partly because the assistant chef has access to the resort’s entire store of chicken.
Chefs get off ten minutes before waiters because the waiters must stay behind and help with the dishes. When Taemin drags himself into the lounge, Kibum beside him already too exhausted to say anything about the condition of his appearance, he usually finds Jinki stuffing his face with a plate of drumsticks. Jinki lets them take precisely one drumstick and half a wing - everything else is his.
After dinner shift, Taemin leaves his friends with a hurried ‘see you later hyung’, getting into the nearest toilet to change into dancing attire. He rushes down to the studio to practice his choreography. He practices and practices until it is late, but not as late as before so he doesn’t get chased out again, and he tries not to limp back to the estate with his swollen ankles.
Times where the pain is unbearable, Taemin takes a day off and attempts to get started on holiday homework instead, which is frankly as good as not trying at all. On those nights, he stares at the question until Kibum stops chatting on the phone and has told him to go to sleep over five times, sleeping himself. Jinki returns home soon after, done with briefings on tomorrow’s course (what dishes to cook, who to assign them to) and Taemin keeps awake long enough for Jinki to explain what binomial expansion is, before talking animals start conversing in his head.
This repertoire was broken one evening when Taemin’s father asked for him. Thinking he screwed up, dreading each step towards the longhouse that sheltered the resort’s important people, Taemin was relieved at Mr. Lee’s booming laughter.
“Did you think you were going to be scolded?” His father had asked and Taemin could only laugh nervously in response.
He finds out later that his schedule is to be changed - every staff goes through this cycling. It results in him walking along the beach on a Wednesday afternoon beside an energetic Kibum
“So maybe this wasn’t such a bad idea after all,” Kibum says, huge sunglasses perched on his nose, completely abandoning the staff outfit and wearing his vacation one - all straw hat and flip-flops and striped singlet and beach shorts.
“Hyung, somebody will scold you for this,” Taemin points out as he picks a tissue from the sand, depositing it into the plastic bag they are carrying.
“Fine, fine, just one day,” Kibum waves his tong precariously close to Taemin’s face, and he feels sand flicking onto his cheeks. “I get the sun, sand and sea for one day. In this perfect stretch of golden perfectness in all of my beautiful perfect perfectness.”
Kibum sighs contentedly and rests his wrists on his hips. Despite a tong with seaweed hanging in one hand and a garbage bag in the other, Taemin finds the diva quite fabulous at the moment. But as much as he likes his friend to enjoy the view, sparkling azure sea and whatnot, they really are supposed to be clearing the stray pair of underwear a few meters away.
Taemin laughs as Kibum mumbles to himself, going over and dealing with the offending article. “Yuck. Disgusting.”
Wiping the sweat from his forehead, Taemin notices a yellow shack in the mess of sunbathers, multi-coloured towels and soaring Frisbees and flying volleyballs. Curious, Taemin pulls on Kibum’s arm, leaving their bags and tongs, trudging towards the shack. It definitely isn’t a lifeguard post because those are tall and skimpy and all over the place.
“Where -”
“Hyung, I think that’s a store,” Taemin says, glancing at Kibum, the latter adjusting his shades downwards.
“Wonderful, I need a drink,” The diva pushes his shades in place again, this time the one leading. “They have staff discounts don’t they?”
Taemin figures the only reason he escapes customer complaints is because Kibum looks like a tourist himself - they are cutting across people’s towels and kicking sand all over the place, it’s not like he wants to but Kibum is dragging him along so fast he’s stumbling in the sand, barely being able to bow in apology to indignant “hey!”s.
And the sun is blocked out. Taemin blinks and takes a moment to adjust, seeing Kibum already at the cashier. Going over, Taemin almost jumps at the face behind the counter.
“What ever could be wrong with you?” Kibum asks, large celebrity shades regarding him. “Sit down, there are staff discounts here.”
“Minho?” It isn’t a question, really.
“At your service,” The boy answers, smiling and sliding Kibum a glass with strawberries inside.
“But aren’t you - what - huh?” Taemin says helplessly.
“We serve ice cream too,” Minho continues without a beat and Taemin notices a freezer over the counter as the boy slides it open, cup in one hand, scoop in the other.
“Oh,” Kibum pipes up, inspecting the flavours. “Ice cream is good. Take pistachio.”
Minho is looking at him questioningly. It’s pretty ridiculous how he’s seeing Minho everywhere and he never gets a straight answer, so Taemin fumbles for a moment, thinking receptionist, cook, lock-up duty - and finally gives up understanding altogether. “I’ll have vanilla,” he says, defeated.
“That’s two-fifty,” Minho states, holding out a large cup that had too much ice cream in it.
“Oh, good deal,” Kibum pipes up again, lowering his shades. “That’s an extra large cup. For the price of a small.”
Then an idea hits Taemin. Taking the cup and spoon, Taemin smiles his best. “I have to pay?”
It was quiet for a while, Minho frowning in confusion, before tiling his head. “Are you -”
“Do I have to pay?” Taemin asks again and Minho seems to get it, sighing dramatically.
“No, of course not,” Minho shakes his head, waving them off, smiling slightly. “Break time’s not in an hour, get to work.”
“You scheming little bastard,” Kibum says in glee once they are far from the shack. “You totally made use of your father’s name.”
“It’s not like Minho minds,” Taemin grins at Kibum’s look of approval, shoving a spoonful of melting vanilla into his mouth.
True though, Minho didn’t seem to mind - at least not to Taemin.
So it turns into a routine, every Wednesday, Taemin gets a free ice cream while cleaning the beach. Minho likes to pinch his nose when Taemin pretends to brag about his father - but only when Kibum isn’t around. Not sure when it began, but whenever somebody ruffles his hair, Taemin will glance around to find Minho’s back, already rushing over to his next task.
He wonders how anyone could handle a schedule so packed. Taemin doesn’t know what Minho does, but he always sees Minho everywhere, hurrying about with unnatural calm. The boy is never at one place for long and Taemin is beginning to spend more time hypothesizing Minho’s job in the resort - a manager, perhaps?
He doesn’t get ice cream on Thursday and Sunday duty though, because somebody called Myungsoo tends the store on those days - and confirms Taemin’s suspicion of an actual living scrooge. He doesn’t give staff discounts, not until Kibum starts arguing with him, and it’s not like Taemin is going to shoot his mouth off about who he is everywhere.
One thing Taemin learns is that there is no such thing as normalcy in Sapphire Sands. Nothing is “normal” about an expensive resort that feels like an entire world of its own with the stretch of beach and amusement park. Nothing is “normal” about all these celebrity-like tourists swarming the place and nothing is “normal” about the atmosphere of complete holiday abandon in the air.
Hence it really shouldn’t have surprised Taemin when it happened, but it did, anyway. Taemin takes the stairs, two at a time, up to his father’s office one evening. He expects a change in duties, a normal roster cycling. But he does not expect a repeat of that night.
“I’ve checked all the documents,” Mrs. Lee’s voice floats into the hallway of the longhouse, out of his father’s unit. Taemin stops, wondering why his mother is here. “You cannot terminate once you confirm. It’s everything -”
“I know,” Mr Lee interjects, sounding vexed. Taemin’s breathing constricts. “It’s my decision.”
“You can’t just decide like this - what makes you think -”
“Then what makes you think it’s a wrong decision? I’ve spent months pondering this. Do you think I treat this as a joke?”
“It’s everything you’ve worked for!”
Everything is coming back and Taemin finds the solid ground in his chest splintering apart. His fingers slip easily on his palms, cold and sweaty, and Taemin hears every word clearly even though he’s hoping and doing his best to block them out.
“So it’s mine to deal with!”
There is a clank as Taemin’s heel bumps into a vase set on the floor, upturning it. The voices stop and Taemin glances to the door, heart pounding and breaths coming in short. Palm prints are left on the vase after Taemin sets it upright, backing away from the office, out of the longhouse, and bolting towards the residential areas.
Scenes play out in Taemin’s head as he sucks in cold wind, biting down his windpipe. Of clenched jaws and glistening cheeks and puffy red eyes, seated on tiny mahogany - and Taemin could do nothing but watch something he’s been taught beautiful, break apart from behind a tall oak chair. What feels worse is that he knows the hand sliding the papers over the wide expanse of wood - the only thing still keeping a marriage intact - belongs to his mother. His mother is destroying marriages and love and he cannot do anything except watch behind the tall oak chair.
Maybe karma is getting back at them. What goes around comes around. Just like how he’s focusing more on the fight than his math question and it’s already been an hour since he first sat down. Taemin tells Jinki he’s fine when the boy asks - he can’t focus if Jinki teaches him now anyway.
Instead, his feelings start spilling out of him, making Jinki backtrack out of the toilet, eyes wide with concern, toothpaste foaming around his mouth, brush sticking out. The hyung shows Taemin his palms then, half-squatting, as if asking him to wait, before scrambling into the washroom and rinsing noisily.
Taemin stifles a laugh as Jinki’s foot catches the door, tripping in his hurry to attend to him. Settling at the foot of his bed, Jinki gives him full attention. Something in the way Jinki says “what’s wrong?”, like a homely, less work-oriented father he’s never had, causes Taemin to begin rambling.
About how love isn’t what the storybooks make them out to be, about his doubts on whether people can really “love” each other like the princes and princesses he was told so much about, because he hasn’t been seeing any of that recently and certainly not two hours ago.
“Hyung, do you think anyone can live together forever?” Taemin asks helplessly.
“I think...people can,” Jinki answers thoughtfully, nodding.
“Then why do people get divorced?” Taemin pushes away the memories of standing behind an oak chair. “Did they love each other from the start?”
“Sometimes, people forget what they married each other for,” Jinki explains and Taemin realises the nagging feeling in his chest for the first time - that and the window isn’t closed, sea breeze ghosting over his neck. “When -”
A loud ‘bang!’ echoes through the room and startles the both of them. Kibum appears in the walkway a second later, going, “I am so frickin’ pissed.”
Kibum’s arms are akimbo, feet tapping, and he’s giving them that ask-me-right-now look. Glancing at Jinki, the latter glances at Kibum in return, swallows audibly and asks, “what’s wrong Kibum?”
“Do you remember that moron called JongHyun?” Kibum spits the name out viciously and Taemin grimaces. “Do you know what he said to me? Do you know?”
It’s quiet for a moment, the only sound is that of Kibum tapping his foot, which became quicker for emphasis. Jinki gets the hint and coughs, “what did he say, Kibum?”
“He told me to stop being such a bitch.”
Taemin snorts but he stops immediately at Kibum’s glare.
For the next ten minutes, the room is noisy with Kibum shrilling, walking towards the dresser taking off his earrings, into the bathroom. Kibum bitches through the brushing of his teeth, occasionally stepping out into the bedroom and flinging his hands in the air for effect, toothbrush shimmying in his cheek. Jinki’s efforts are futile in calming the diva down, sounding weak and useless beside the colourful vocabulary spewing out of Kibum.
Bored with the monologue, Taemin peers out the open window, taking in countless stars splashed across the night. He inhales the sea breeze, feeling lighter than before, and he hears water. Somebody is sticking a pole into the pool, illuminated blue at night, sending ripples across the glass surface. Curious, Taemin watches as the person lifts the - he sees that it’s a net - out of the pool, twisting about to empty it and Taemin’s heart catches in his throat as the blue lights fall on his face.
“Minho?” He asks before he can stop himself.
Pausing, the silhouette casts around, and Taemin shouts “hey”, waving. The shadow looks up and raises his hand after a moment, a deep voice travelling up after.
“You stay here?”
“Yeah, trying to get homework done,” Taemin grins, not really knowing why. “I can’t do math.”
Kibum hasn’t stopped shrieking, ideas on the size of JongHyun’s brain slipping out the toilet door above the splashing of water, and Taemin barely makes out, “I could take a look at it.”
Taemin takes a second to consider - it’s time he finished at least one exercise anyway, already two weeks into summer break. Why not? Showing a thumbs up, Taemin gathers his book and pen, brushing past Jinki who is fidgeting outside the toilet trying to calm the diva down, and slips into his flip-flops.
Minho is seated underneath a large umbrella at one of the poolside tables when Taemin gets onto the patio and he quickly settles into the chair beside, noticing the dirty net lying on the floor.
“So you’re a pool boy now?” Taemin asks, and Minho chuckles.
“Surprised?” Minho asks as he drags the assessment book towards himself, flipping through it.
“Not really, no,” Taemin admits, resting his chin in a palm. “Why do you do so many things?”
There is a moment that spans at Minho’s eyes finding his - it’s gone extremely fast, like cherry sparks - and Taemin realises he’s falling into something scary.
“I’m multipurpose,” Minho’s teeth are white in the darkness and Taemin tears his gaze away, rubbing his nose.
“You are, aren’t you?” It comes out flat. “I’m stuck at question two.”
In the next fifteen minutes, Taemin finds out that Minho really is multipurpose because he teaches unbelievably well and Taemin is spotting tricks and nooks in the questions and solving it much easier by the time he gets to question six.
Ten in the evening, the swimming pool is empty. Eerily so, because although the many windows facing them had orange lights behind cream curtains, it is silent to the point of hearing crickets and the scratching of his pencil - and the slosh of water as Minho continues cleaning the pool.
Feeling safe, it is just the two of them in the world, and possibly still a little bothered, Taemin broke the quiet. “Hey, Minho hyung?”
Taemin rolls his eyes when his only reply is the sound of water lapping gently into drains. He knows Minho is listening but he doesn’t like that, he likes a reply. Twisting around in his chair, Taemin stares at Minho scooping up leaves from the pool, voiding the assumption that Minho’s a manager - managers need to speak up don’t they?
“Stuck?” Minho finally regards Taemin, pulling the net out.
“No, it’s not that,” Taemin frowns as he tries to form his sentence. “It’s...just - do you believe in love?”
Immediately understanding the meanings that could be in that sentence, Taemin blinks quickly, flushing. “I didn’t mean -”
“Why do you ask?” There’s a faint smile on Minho’s face as he picks up the garbage bag.
“People get divorced,” He spews out, scuttling to the edge of his seat, not missing Minho’s lips faltering. “I mean, if it was love, they would grow old together right? Through illness and everything.”
“They don’t enjoy it,” Minho sits and Taemin feels like a kid. “Getting divorced. It hurts for them.”
“Uh...so?” Taemin didn’t mean to be rude, but he isn’t seeing what Minho’s trying to point out.
“So there’s still something there,” Minho says amusedly, sitting forward and resting both elbows on his knees. “Problems come along in relationships. How much they can bear, how much they try and work it through, decides if two people want to leave. It doesn’t mean they don’t love each other.”
Taemin scrunches his face as fingers tug on his nose. Minho always treats him like a child.
“But if it makes you feel better,” Minho continues, eyes twinkling in the dim starlight. “My grandparents still live together.”
Laughing loudly, Taemin quickly covers his mouth and shoves Minho, certain he’s woken some patrons.
Squinting in the sun, nylon is rough against his fingers as Taemin forces the end of a volleyball net downwards. After running from his parents, Taemin had gotten a text informing him that beach clean-up has been changed to maintenance, much to Kibum’s horror (“I can’t do heavy manual labour!”) and that Jinki is to join them in replacing the bedroom’s extra shirts.
“Is it done yet?” Kibum calls from the opposite end of the court, much louder than it really needs to be. The diva is annoyed that he has to wear the staff “jumpsuit”, as he calls it, annoyed at getting wrinkles from UV ray exposure, annoyed that they had to tighten a volleyball net when he hates sports.
“I can’t get the knot!” Taemin yells back, equally bothered by the heat beating down on him. The hair sticking all over his sweating neck and face isn’t exactly helping his mood; he thinks about chopping it off to a length meant for boys - ‘girl’ has been used to address him quite often recently.
Taemin is bumped aside by something hard and he flinches from the hot contact on his arm. Glancing back at the intrusion, peeved, he finds Minho yanking on the ends of the net. Taemin watches as Minho ties them together, lips pursed in concentration, and he wonders why he had struggled so hard with it when the boy lets go of the ropes, knotted.
Then he realises.
Minho is topless.
“W-where is your shirt?” Taemin sputters, face burning and he’s pretty sure it isn’t the sun.
“I’m on lifeguard duty,” Minho answers, looking genuinely confused. “Extra clothes add to the weight.”
“Right,” He tells himself to calm down, tells himself to just keep his eyes on Minho’s face that looks a tad sunburnt, pink dusting over tanned cheek. “Multipurpose.”
Minho smiles then, waving behind Taemin and he guesses Kibum is behind. “I’m on patrol now. See you guys around.”
Barely getting “see you” out of his mouth, Taemin wrenches his gaze away from Minho’s back (Taemin thinks Minho looks really good in his light blue beach shorts), running down the sand with a bright red board, ‘lifeguard’ printed on it in obnoxiously large capitalised white font. And he finds Kibum giving him that look.
That look he always gives when he sees something stupid. Or incredibly basic.
“What?” Taemin blurts out, walking past Kibum.
Kibum huffs, catching up. “You are totally into him.”
“Huh,” Taemin deadpans. “Like you and JongHyun hyung?”
“That is out of context,” Kibum argues, nose high in the air. “It is impossible for me to fall for a complete dim-wit -”
The conversation stops with shouting in the distance. Their names are being called and Taemin squints to see Jinki running towards them from the resort’s hotel, a big smile plastered on his face, JongHyun following.
“Speak of the -” Kibum’s sentence cuts off again because Jinki trips on the bicycle path, crashing into granite tumbling. “Jinki!”
Far from a happy reunion, Kibum and JongHyun had started arguing the minute they were within earshot. It started with the diva jostling JongHyun away, pulling Jinki up himself. JongHyun demanded Kibum’s problem then, and Kibum said something along the lines of being allergic to stupidity.
Taemin is walking beside Jinki awkwardly along the corridor branching off into bedrooms, both unsure on how to deal with the pair fighting behind, hoping they don’t wake anybody. Apparently JongHyun was supposed to show Jinki how to carry out his new duty. The clean shirts they were supposed to hang in the customers’ closet are in JongHyun’s hands, being flung about in his grip - creasing in the process - as the argument escalates.
“You have something to say about everything I do -” JongHyun stops as Kibum spins around, facing him.
“Exactly! So don’t say or do anything at all!” Kibum yells back and JongHyun snarls.
“Why are you such a bitch? I -”
“I’m a bitch? I’m a bitch?” Kibum asks incredulously and shoves JongHyun. “If I'm a bitch then what are you? Huh?”
“The only in-charge of staff attire,” JongHyun puffs his chest out.
Kibum scoffs.
“Alright, you want some of this?!” JongHyun demands, stepping up to Kibum. Taemin glances at Jinki, whose face is whitening with dread.
“You want some of this?!” Kibum raises his voice back, jutting his chin out.
“Um...guys,” Jinki says weakly.
And it happens so quickly Taemin is left gaping with no knowledge on how what he is seeing came to be. JongHyun’s lips are clamped over Kibum’s, a hand on his lower back and another on his waist, a pile of clean shirts lay forgotten on the carpet. Kibum is scratching on JongHyun’s shoulders messily and Taemin is just staring.
“I hate you!” JongHyun spits into Kibum’s face when he pulls away.
“I hate you more!”
And they are kissing again.
A hand slaps over Taemin’s eyes and he hears Jinki going, “meep”.
Taemin tells himself not to cry as he tries to flow with his steps. The music is jacked right up to its maximum volume and his ears are beginning to block from the sound - but it only means Mr. Jung isn’t happy and it takes nearly everything to break his fall when his foot slips on sweat.
Getting back up onto his feet, the room falling silent, Taemin hears himself breathing - wheezing. He looks like a mess in the mirror, plasters on his arms and his left toes are touching the polished wood gingerly - his ankle is swelling. Catching Mr. Jung’s eyes, Taemin registers disappointment and he almost cries when he tells him to give him another chance.
Almost.
The music consists of strong beats and lilting breaks and Taemin finds the choreography ridiculously difficult, full of feet crossing and jumping and timing - but then again, so has everything else he’s done before.
But Taemin just can’t seem to get it. He reminds himself of a previous mistake nearing that part and he finds himself forgetting another step, either that or his moves get jumbled up and he completely loses the beat. And he’s not even going to think of the times his elbow crashes with the ground.
“We’re stopping now,” Mr. Jung announces and Taemin is on the floor, recovering from a fall.
“What? No -”
“It’s eleven, Taemin,” Mr. Jung says, looking at him, unsatisfied and displeased and Taemin swallows. “You stay here but I live miles away.”
There’s something in Taemin’s throat, and his chest flares painfully, along the lines of frustration, and his eyes prickle. Sparks race across his arm when he accepts Mr. Jung’s hand, limping over to the only bench in the studio, and Taemin tastes something awful in his mouth.
“Mr. Jung,” Taemin begins, looking at his feet. He can’t face the instructor. “What’s wrong with me?”
“Maybe it’s the wrong dance.”
“No,” Taemin refuses to lose to choreography. He’s the best when it comes to dancing and he knows the instructor’s just trying to be kind. “Tell me. What’s wrong with me?”
“You’re not feeling it,” Mr. Jung answers and the simplicity of it causes the fire in Taemin’s chest to grow, consuming him from the inside right up to his eyes.
“I’m trying. How do I -”
“Nobody can tell you how.”
Feeling helpless, but knowing it’s true, the fire inside him spills out of his eyes once a click resounds in the room. It’s hard to breathe and Taemin feels knives slicing his ankle where he grips it, breaths shuddering and vision bleary. Frustration and every feeling of self-resentment is rocking Taemin’s body on the bench and he’s biting back his sobs for the longest time. The room is bright and clean and empty and his sharp inhales echo off the mirrors.
Taemin refuses to cry but he’s crying already and he’s trying to stop. Swallowing, Taemin lets out a harsh breath, registering a weight on his knee for the first time. Startled, he glances up, blinking water out of his eyes, finding a large hand enclosed over his thigh and Minho sitting beside him.
He lets out an incoherent mix between a cry and a wail, voice teary and nasal, and doesn’t know what to think when Minho smiles.
“Better?”
“How long have you been here?” Taemin asks, a little too forcefully, wiping his cheeks roughly and acutely aware of Minho’s hand on his thigh.
“About fifteen minutes,” Minho answers, finally taking his hand off and Taemin loosens up.
“Lock-up duty,” He remembers, bits of a laugh getting into his cracking voice. “The studio’s closing now, isn’t it?”
“Technically, you’re allowed to stay,” The boy says and Taemin snorts noisily, sniffing. “Did...something happen?”
“I’m just messing up,” His flats are really worn out. Taemin presses his toes together and winces at the pain shooting up his left leg. “That’s all.”
“Everyone messes up.”
“Yeah well, I can’t,” Taemin looks at Minho and smiles wryly, swiping at his face to dry a loose tear. “It’s a piece for an audition. I have to get into this school.”
Minho is quiet and he nods as he listens and Taemin feels like he’s being undone.
“I have to, because my dad’s finally letting me dance,” He knows he’s rambling but he can’t stop. “It’s the only way to prove myself to him. This is the only school he’ll be happy with.”
They sit in silence, Taemin sniffling and becoming increasingly embarrassed. He’s fidgeting in his seat, throwing furtive glances at the mirror to find Minho perfectly content in simply sitting there, taking in the room. The quiet isn’t deafening like after he screws up and the music stops. It’s awkward but comfortable and it helps Taemin think better.
“C’mon,” Minho eventually says and Taemin realises he’s breathing normally again.“Let’s walk you home.”
From that day, on every Tuesday and Thursday night, Taemin will limp back to his room with Minho. It’s an unspoken commitment on Minho’s part and the boy doesn’t listen when Taemin tells him not to.
They bump into each other on the road, in the sea breeze and under the stars. They talk about the littlest things, the people they’ve met that afternoon, something funny that happened, something bothering them, and Taemin becomes light and dizzy.
When he trips, Minho catches his elbows. And even though he hisses as fingers press into the bruises around the bone - Minho apologising immediately - Taemin’s chest flutters.
And he doesn’t realise that he is falling.
Another change occurs after that night, which Taemin has no idea about as he jolts out of bed, fumbling for the alarm clock and cursing at how he has five minutes to get into the staff jumpsuit before he’s late for bed sheet duty.
Hopping and tugging the oversized orange pants up as he emerges from the bathroom, frenzied, Taemin rips off a note stuck on the fridge, wanting to know why Kibum didn’t wake him up.
“Taeminnie, you seemed exhausted so hyung left first. Your duty today: room 204 - 224. We’re not doing duty together, don’t let your partner wait too long!
Love, Kibum hyung. (insert heart)”
Taemin bolts out of the room then, dropping the note for the doorknob, clambering down the stairs and searching for his assigned rooms. He tears down the hallway of the sixteenth level, startling a few half-awake tourists and almost colliding into lady as he rounds the corner.
The door-hanger of room 204 has been flipped, “welcome back!” in fancy fonts printed on a bright green background, mocking him. It’s a staff practice - the group taking out the bed sheets will turn the door-hanger around to show an orange background while the group replacing the bed sheets will flip it back to green as a signal that the room’s been done.
Guilt and annoyance is pooling inside of Taemin as he continues down the hallway, finding every door sporting a green hanger. He thinks that this person is either joking around, trying to get him into trouble by lying about the state of the bedrooms, or just really an overachiever wanting to make him look bad.
Either way this person must be evil. Taemin jams a cardkey into the nearest room, knocking lightly and waiting for a signal if anyone is inside - nobody - before he whips it open, already hawk-eyed and suspicious of the sheets.
Surprisingly, the bed is well-made, neat and clean sheets nearly glowing in the late morning sun, streaming through the satin curtains. Taemin is held in place for a moment, not understanding at all, before he’s out the door again, passing green, green, green - how can anyone work so fast - orange.
Taemin blinks and walks - runs to it, actually, unlocking the door and barging in. The door hits something from the inside, a dull thud and Taemin’s shoulders jump backwards at the recoil. Shaking off the shock, Taemin peers past the door, finding a tall boy rubbing the back of his head, looking disgruntled. The boy is very handsome, with large eyes, and Taemin doesn’t know when he’ll finally be used to surprises in Sapphire Sands.
JongHyun had requested to be in the same team as Kibum for morning duty, hence Minho had to step in to fill the empty slot in Taemin’s team. Minho didn’t have anything else except morning duty so he went ahead with the job first. Apparently he had just entered the last room when Taemin rammed the door into his back.
“Sorry,” Taemin apologises weakly as Minho looks at him accusingly, a trace of a smile on his face.
“Just don’t work like them,” Minho says, rolling the cart closer to the bed.
Not comprehending, Taemin looks at the bed. There are still sheets covering it, crumpled and dirty, even though there’s an orange hanger outside - and Taemin gets it.
“Slackers,” He says and Minho nods, expression serious as he bends down to pull the fabric out from underneath the mattress. The boy always looks serious anyway, so Taemin doesn’t know if he’s really angry.
Minho looks at him questioningly and Taemin takes a second to understand, scrambling over opposite the boy, plunging his hands under the bed. He is about to tug the sheets out when he catches a yellow stain inches from his arm.
“What the hell is that?” Taemin asks in disgust, glancing from the spot to Minho. The sheet on the boy’s side is already out, grasped in his hands and Taemin sees strong forearms before Minho laughs.
“Don’t think about it,” The hazy sun is caught in Minho’s eyes, crinkling by the sides. “Just do it.”
Extremely disturbed by the stain in close proximity, Taemin purses his lips and pulls on the sheets. Suddenly, the world is thrown forward and his arms nearly pop out of their sockets. He is in complete confusion, cry muffling as he bounces on something soft.
Minho is upside down and laughing and it’s then that Taemin realises he’s on the bed. Once he had gotten his end of the sheet out, Minho had tugged on it, resulting in Taemin being thrown forward with his grip on the fabric.
Kicking wildly, Taemin scuttles around, falling on his butt far away from the stain. Minho is in hysterics by then and Taemin feels indignant and hot. He yanks hard on the bed sheet, feeling an instant rush of satisfaction at Minho’s eyes widening, which quickly turns into panic as the boy loses his footing - landing right above him.
“Ow, my foot,” Minho complains, voice tickling Taemin’s shoulder.
Taemin is laughing, close-mouthed, but Minho must’ve felt it, pulling up on his elbows and frowning at Taemin. Their faces are unbelievably close but Taemin doesn’t get to flush because fingers are jabbing into his ribs, dancing along his sides, tickling him. Minho is merciless and Taemin is convulsing on the bed, useless in his attempts to shove the boy off with dwindling strength, barely making out, “you think that’s funny, huh?”
Clean white sheets finally cover the mattress and Taemin feels giddy and breathless, ribs tingling as he follows Minho out of the room. Taemin listens to Minho explaining the system and he points out loopholes.
"It's better for a group to change and replace the sheets," Taemin says and he averts his eyes when Minho looks at him with rapt attention. "I mean, you save resources and more people can be deployed elsewhere."
The lift arrives with a 'ding'. Minho appears pensive as they walk into it, polished wood and lemon scented.
“And it's easier to find out who are the slackers,” Taemin continues hastily. "But it's just a suggestion. I mean. Yeah."
"...I think we can work something out," Minho says slowly, facing Taemin and smiling slightly. "It makes sense. We can try that."
A hand messes his hair up then, and although Taemin 'tsk's at that, he's looking down to hide his grin.
part ll