bus stop.
Pairing: Suho/Chanyeol
Rating: PG
Summary: Junmyeon missed his bus, and a stranger with a guitar offers to accompany him while he waits on the bus.
Disclaimer: This AU is located in Singapore, but not all the information about the city are entirely true though some place do exists in real life, it's a merely work of fiction.
He loves the weather, the never ending heat, something that he would never find in his hometown, he’s not really good in handling a cold weather anyway. He thinks about Seoul that must be extremely cold right now, this is his first December in Singapore and he finds it amusing that there’s no need to put on a coat or using a hot packs for the first time of his life.
Now it’s 8 pm just after he finished his work at Korea Tourism Organization and come home. He finds his job as enjoyable and great, he doesn’t find it stressful, he’s loves explaining and answering on all the questions that the visitors asked on him, there’s a sense of proudness that Junmyeon has when he started to boast about his own country to the foreigners, and sharing is caring anyway.
Robertson Quay, 9 pm. That’s the message that Wufan sends to him, a Chinese Canadian and also his housemate that would always bring him to those typical posh looking bar every Friday night, they shared the same interest in wine even though outside that, they’re not really alike. Wufan is funky and fashionable looking who works at a high end local fashion magazine while Junmyeon is only a tourism officer who mostly buys his clothes in Uniqlo.
He wears on his pale blue shirt that he gets from Uniqlo, nothing eye catching or flashy, just a simple plain color that he personally likes, and a dark jeans, he’s ready in 15 minutes after putting some hair gel on his hair, and locks the door to leave.
The bus stop to Robertson Quay is 200 meter from his public housing, it’s the bus number 186. But it’s unfortunate enough that just when he’s only 10 meters from the bus stop, the bus is already there and leaves quickly no matter how Junmyeon already waves his hand and run to chase on the bus, and even scream “stopp!!” recklessly because he really hate to missed the bus.
“Shit!” he curses automatically in his native language, there’s only one person who is sitting at the bus stop and Junmyeon doesn’t really care if the person listens or not because he might not understand what Junmyeon is saying anyway.
“That was pretty dramatic, the chase and the screaming.” a voice says, Junmyeon looks at the man who just mouths on a sentence in Korean language to him, grinning widely at Junmyeon with too many teeth.
He looks Korean, Junmyeon notices. The boy seemed to be much taller than he is (and younger), with a strange looking big ears and specs that makes him looks like he comes out from a manhwa, he’s wearing a varsity jacket and caps, while holding a guitar case beside him.
“You should check on the schedule beforehand, new in here?” the boy casually asks him. It’s rare for Junmyeon to involves himself in a conversation with a stranger, but the big eared seems to be not harmful and adorable, he thinks.
“Yeah, this is my third month.” Junmyeon takes the seat beside the boy, “How could I check on the schedule?” he asks.
“It’s in the SBS Transit website, there’s an application for that, you could just downloaded it and put on the bus number and the bus stop number and there you go, let me check for you, bus 186? Is it?” he takes out his phone from his pocket, tapping on the screens several times and suddenly frowns badly to Junmyeon, “aw man, you need to wait 32 minutes later for that, that’s - shitty.”
“What,” Junmyeon’s face is pale, he’s still breathy from his run and he wipes out the faint sweat from his forehead as he lets a helpless sigh from his lips, “This is sucks,”
“Want me to accompany you? I’m not in a rush, and at least you’re not waiting here by yourself.” the boy offers, “Don’t think of me as a weirdo, although most people thinks that I have the look for that, but….I am not a bad person, trust me.” his voice is low and ensuring.
Why not. Junmyeon muses. He hates to be by himself anyway, and this person somewhat amuses Junmyeon with his confidence and hospitality, an additional company wouldn’t be a bad idea at this moment.
“Fine, if that’s what you want.” Junmyeon nods, “Are you playing somewhere tonight?”
“It’s not like what you think. I teached guitar to kids, and I just finished a lesson from the condominium nearby, I don’t look like a teacher, is it?” he points at himself and gives Junmyeon a snarky grin.
“Not at all,” Junmyeon smiles, “Can you sing?”
“Nah, I think I’m not a bad singer but my friends always told me to just keep my mouth shut whenever I sing, wanna hear me play?” he seems to be read to unzip the guitar case, “Request me a song!” he suggests, “As long as I know the song I can play it for you, I’m Chanyeol by the way.”
There’s a short silence where Junmyeon knits his eyebrows and thinks and make a puff with his cheeks, there’s a lot of songs that he likes, he can’t just tell it all to Chanyeol, he needs to pick only one title, something that he wants to listens.
“Blower’s Daughter?” he doubts that Chanyeol knows the song, it came from a soundtrack of Closer, a movie that he really loves. It’s an old movie and he could sense a huge age gap between him and Chanyeol that makes him doubting Chanyeol.
Chanyeol strums the guitar without any saying anything, his voice is slightly hoarse but huskily soft and his pronunciation is terrible, it’s not like it’s the most beautiful voice that Junmyeon has ever listens to, but he enjoys it very much, he closes his eyes and tapping on his thighs and humming on the song too. There’s not so many passerby or buses that passed by when Chanyeol plays and Junmyeon feels like they’re living in their own bubble without anyone around them for a brief moment, like a magic.
Chanyeol finishes singing and Junmyeon opens his eyes and claps while his eyes are forming a crescent shapes as he smiles delicately to Chanyeol, “Good job, kid. It was magical.”
“What?” Chanyeol raises his eyebrows, “Magical? How lame can you be in your choice of word?” he laughs loudly, “Magical…This is not a disney movie.”
“But it’s wonderful, maybe because I can’t play guitar at all. And your voice is nice, it’s warm and magical.” he puts on a pressure on the last word. Chanyeol laughs for the second time again.
“But isn’t the english sucks,”
“I was too absorbed that I forgot about the english,” Junmyeon reasons, “It’s good! I’m not making fun of you, you sound like you don’t want to believe me.”
“You’re witty,” Chanyeol comments, “What are you doing in here? Let me guess, multinational company? Doing accounting or marketing stuffs? Business executive?”
“Tourism officer in KTO,” Junmyeon answers, “You are a bad guesser,”
“You looked rich though, but I could also imagining you serving on the customer at KTO, somehow, I’ve been there only once when my chinese friend Taozi was applying for a kimchi cooking class. There’s a lot of Koreans lately, is it becoming a trend or something to come to Singapore to work?” Chanyeol wonders.
“I think so, this place is much better. Less stressful, multi cultural environment, it’s safer in here and the sun is up for the whole year.”
“It’s ironic that you basically just saying that Singapore is better than Korea while your job is promoting Korea.” he dryly laughs.
“I’m promoting it for a tourist, not for a living. Definitely not, it’s getting hard to find a proper job nowadays in Seoul too, the competition is horrible.”
“Are you indirectly saying that you’re a loser?” Chanyeol is honest and Junmyeon doesn’t feel offended, he likes how he chats comfortably with him.
“That’s another long story that I can’t really tell for you,” he puts on a weary smile, “And how about your story?”
“Nothing special, I’ve been here since high school when my dad got a job transfer in here, and they love it in here that they decided to move permanently. I am in college by now and it’s been my fifth year in Singapore.”
“Should call you sunbaenim in here, huh?” he throws on another corny jokes to Chanyeol, “You’re very young.”
“You sounded like you’re already 50, there’s no way that we would have a huge age gap. I know that it’s sort of impolite to ask about age but-”
“You’ve been impolite since the first time we met when you told me that I’m being dramatic.” Junmyeon snaps at Chanyeol, “I’m 24 this year.”
“See? Not to far, I’m 21, that makes us have only a 3 years difference.”
Bus 186 could already be seen from afar, coming close to the bus stop.
“My bus is coming,” Junmyeon stands up from the seat, “Thanks for the time, Chanyeol.” he pats Chanyeol’s shoulder and cheekily smiles, “You’re a good singer.”
“Wait.” Chanyeol says, “Give me your name and your number.”
“Why?”
“You still owe me that long story that you haven’t told me yet, and we’re going apart soon in 20 seconds and you’d better give me your number now or else I’m going to regret this 40 years later when I get old.” he reasons back at Junmyeon.
Junmyeon pulls out his wallet from his pocket and the bus is reaching and he waves at the bus to give a sign for the bus to stop before he hands in Chanyeol a small white card from the wallet.
“My name is Kim Junmyeon!” that’s the last thing that he says before he enters inside the bus. Chanyeol’s figure slowly disappeared when the bus is going further away as Junmyeon looks at his figure from the backseat window.
Junmyeon doesn’t know why, but his heart flutters and he can’t wait until there are more stories to tell when they’d meet later.