[title song: no oh oh - clc]
[4k]

CHAPTER 4

"What?” Yoojin responds to Jackson Wang’s grinning (and frankly creepy) face with a scowl that only deepens when she glances at Bambam and the high schooler and they both offer her just as infuriating grins. “Seriously, I’m like ten seconds away from calling the police.”

Jackson Wang rolls his eyes, “And tell them what, exactly? It’s not like we’re holding you captive here. You’re free to go whenever you please.”

Yoojin stares at him because he’s right. He didn’t even lock the door behind him. Clearly, she can leave, but Jackson Wang also knows that she can’t leave without Yuna or the shopping bags. She sighs, crossing her arms as she sways in her spot a bit, the alcohol making her vision swim. She stares at them for a long time, mulling over her next words. She was never much of a think before you speak kind of girl, opting for the more straightforward approach, but when push comes to shove and her liquored up brain can’t stop thinking about how Baekhyun solemnly predicted that Burger King was going to take them all out (and not in the send of taking them out to a nice dinner or anything, mind you), she decides it’s about time she hone a new skill. So she thinks before she speaks, or tries to. It’s a bit hard at the moment. She’s never drinking again.

So then she sighs, her words still slurring much to her chagrin, “Okay, look.” She mumbles, “I’m really sorry about the bath bomb thing. I swear I didn’t know it was going to happen. So, like, if you’re looking for revenge or something, I was completely unaware of what was going on. I am completely innocent.” She thinks before she speaks and decides she’s going to throw someone else under the bus because honestly it’s about time.

The three of them look at her like they don’t believe her for a second. She frowns. It was worth a try at least. “Okay, maybe not innocent, per se, but I wasn’t aware.”

Jackson raises a brow, “Yeah and I’ve got a three headed dragon as a pet.”

“Sarcasm doesn’t look cute on you.”

“So you think I’m cute?” Jackson grins and winks at her, “True.”

She makes a face so ugly he snorts as she mumbles, “Shut up.”

There’s a pause, where they just stare each other down, until Jackson glances sideways, at his clique before his eyes slide back over to meet hers. He raises a thick brow.

“We heard you open the store a lot.” Jackson says, eyes glinting. He doesn't need to clarify what store for her to figure it out.

She blinks at him, so surprised that she drops her scowl, though now she’s looking at him in suspicion, “How do you know that?”

“We have our sources.” Bambam responds for him, grinning widely like he knows a million secrets and he’s never going to tell her any of them. Frankly, it freaks her out the tiniest bit.

“Okay.” Yoojin drags out the word, grimacing because honestly what kind of James Bond bull is this? They have spies in McDonald’s? How? Why?

“So that means you have the keycode.” Jackson continues speaking as if there was never an interruption, eyes never leaving hers. It sounds more like a statement than a question and Yoojin quickly puts two and two together.

“I am not letting you...you heathens into the store after hours.” Yoojin says, crossing her arms, that same surge of protectiveness from earlier returning all over again. God knows what kind of damage they plan on inflicting on the store.

“Heathens.” Bambam repeats, snickering loudly, “How old are you?”

“I mean.” This time the high schooler speaks up, cutting Yoojin’s response off, and when she really looks at him, especially in her hazy alcohol-induced state, she realizes that he doesn’t quite look like a high schooler nor does he look like a college freshman, he looks like someone in between, soft and hard, a boy filled with juxtapositions (in his leather jacket and ear piercings juxtaposed with his high pitched voice, everything really) with twinkling eyes that makes him look like the type of guy that would either stick gum in an unsuspecting person’s hair for fun or offer to pay for a haircut and styling session for said unsuspecting person, depending on his mood at that very moment. Basically, he reminds her of a Sour Patch Kid and she eyes him warily because she’s seen those commercials and she really does not want to go there. He raises a brow at her, lips curling into a beautiful smile. “Either you hand over the keycode or you don’t get your shopping bags back.”

She stares at him, at the fact that he clearly sounds like he’s threatening her and she’s wondering if this is the part where the Sour Patch Kid goes ‘sour’.

“Or your friend.” Jackson Wang adds on with an infuriating, toothy grin that has her turning to him, frown deepening at his words.

Perhaps, if she had been sober and able to process exactly what the hell was going on in a logical sort of way, she could have responded with a ok…well, I’m leaving now weirdos before finding Yuna and their bags and booking it out of the place. That would have been the best course of action because clearly there was nothing actually threatening about this situation. But she’s drunk as hell and nothing makes sense and Jackson’s words set off alarms in her head and she’s drunk, God why is she so drunk?

(Also Sour Patch Kid is clearly up to something, if his grinning expression means anything.)

So she gasps and exclaims, “Not Yuna.” Her eyes dart between the boys and she feels dizzy, the room swirling in her vision for just a brief moment.

Jackson Wang just nods solemnly and Bambam starts giggling like he’s having the time of his life, while she freaks out internally because she really wants her best friend back, as well as that cute pair of shorts she bought in Seoul, the one with the polka dots.

“This is just plain mean.” She mumbles.

Jackson Wang just tilts his head and raises a brow, his voice low and filled with amusement her inebriated brain doesn’t catch.  “So are you in or nah?”

~.~.~.~.~

She isn’t sure how exactly it happened but suddenly she’s standing in front of McDonald’s surrounded by four boys decked out in face masks and backpacks and she wonders if she’s going to lose her job because of this. She probably will, if Junmyeon doesn’t put her six feet under first.

(Four boys because Mark had shown up when Jackson Wang held the passenger side door open for her with a flourish, earning himself a long, hard stare from her and a laughing Bambam who started seal-clapping against Sour Patch Kid. There was a grin on Mark’s face and a bag in his hands as he watched Jackson herd her into the car and she made sure to grumble her way through the entire car ride, ignoring the way someone in the backseat had started cooing at her to cheer up in a disgustingly cute voice that only seemed to give her the inexplicable urge to crawl out the open window headfirst.)

She eyes them warily, shivering in the cool summer breeze, the warmth from the alcohol starting to wear off. They’re all bouncing on their toes as if they’re excited for what they’re about to do and Yoojin wonders why because this is illegal. By then, she knows she probably could and probably should refuse but she’s already standing in front of McDonald’s and she kinda wants a ride back so there’s no point fighting this whole whatever-the-hell-it-is anymore. She’s already there so she’s basically sentenced herself to a fate worse than Junmyeon pushing her into a giant fryer, like that one nightmare Chanyeol had started wailing about right before finals.

“Please don’t break anything.” She says, in resignation, eyeing them pointedly.

Jackson Wang rolls his eyes, “Don’t worry about that. We don’t want a felony on our hands.”

“And breaking and entering is what, exactly?” Yoojin asks, rubbing her bare arms as she gives him a withering look.

“It’s not breaking and entering when you let us in.” Jackson Wang raises a thick brow at her, hauling the backpack over his shoulders and she sighs, finally stepping towards the door.

“This is coercion.”

“We never said you had to.”

“You’re holding my cute polka dotted shorts hostage.” Yoojin glares at him, “And my friend.”

Jackson makes a face, “Your shorts are fine.” Then he smirks and she follows the movement of his lips in annoyance, “And your friend’s probably more than fine.”

Yoojin grimaces at that, “Oh, God. Don’t.”

“Then hurry up. We don’t have all day.” He nudges at her shoulder and she reluctantly gives in.

She purposefully gets on her toes so she can block the pinpad from view with her back, cupping her hand over it for good measure. “No looking.” She practically hisses at them, narrowing her eyes into slits.

“Alright, Burger Girl.” A deep voice says Burger Girl in English and she promptly throws them the middle finger over her shoulder without bothering to dignify the speaker with a glance, earning her a chorus of cackles.

She types in the eight digit number, it spells out Star Wars on American phones he had told her, and she tries not to think about how Junmyeon had bestowed the password on her with such severity she was surprised he wasn’t making her swear on the bible and raise her right hand as she received the password in his office-slash-the-small-storage-closet-in-the-break-room. Her palms start to sweat as her finger hovers over the last digit, a seven, guilt bubbling up in .

There’s a cough behind her and she sighs, loudly, before she presses the last button, the series of clicks loud and jarring to her ears as the door unlocks and the security system deactivates.

Then the boys are on the move.

“Keep watch, noona.” The damn Sour Patch Kid pats her on the head condescendingly as he steps around her and she gapes at him. Mark lets out a snicker, his voice lilting up higher in pitch as he nudges past her next, his grin wide, infectious if the situation wasn’t like this. They walk by her in a line and she feels like she’s betraying her people right then and there. It feels strange and she feels really, really bad and she prays Junmyeon doesn’t try to sue her or something, but she doesn’t really make a move to stop them. Mostly because she has sore feet and she needs a ride back and she’s exhausted, her eyes drooping already, and because Yuna is in Jackson Wang’s friend’s clutches (though Yuna’s probably not complaining about that at all, though Yoojin really hopes Hani hadn’t agreed to whatever she’s doing with Yuna because of Jackson’s plan because then Yoojin’s going to have to bust some heads because how dare they with her best friend’s feelings like that). Hell, another reason is mostly because Yoojin’s polka dotted shorts are in Jackson Wang’s clutches. But a huge reason she doesn’t actively try to stop them at this point is because she’s just shocked at the nonchalant boldness in their actions and the self-preserving, college kid with daddy issues inside of her is making her very much subdued at the moment because of how threatening that boldness feels. All she does is make a move to follow them, but then Jackson just places two fingers on her forehead, stopping her in her tracks.

“Hey!” She swats at his hand.

He doesn’t take his hand off her forehead, instead he just smiles, a cocky smirk that makes her want to punch him, before he pushes at her forehead, pushing her back a tiny bit, which makes her cheeks redden because it’s embarrassing.

He leans down, then, and even though he isn’t that much taller than her, he still has to hunch a bit, his face hovering inches from her nose. His grin is as infuriating as ever and she can feel the irritation bubbling up in her chest almost immediately. “It’s a surprise, Burger Girl. We don’t need you being nosy.”

And then he nudges her head backwards, shutting the door after him, her response dying on the tip of her tongue. She stares at him through the glass doors and wonders what the point of kicking her out was when the entire store is decked out in ceiling to floor windows anyway. She glares at him, for good measure, and he meets her gaze with an easy smile. And then he shoots finger guns at her, laughing to himself, before turning on his heels and disappearing into the kitchen, the one place she can’t see.

The kitchen doors swing shut behind her and she groans, stomping her foot.

It’s eerily quiet then, the night growing cold as the alcohol’s buzz seems to disappear, leaving her so exhausted that all she wants to do is sleep. The hairs at the back of her neck stand on end as she shivers, glancing up at the door. She spots the camera, trained right at her, and she pales, sighing once again. She mouths a guilty sorry just in case God is watching (or rather Junmyeon on the security cameras tomorrow morning) and spins on her heels, slumping into one of the outdoor seating chairs, sighing loudly as she curls up on herself, trying and failing to find warmth.

~.~.~.~.~

“That took so long.What were you even doing in there?” Yoojin hisses, shivering even more now. Her buzz is completely gone and she just feels even more exhausted then she had felt earlier. She doesn’t even bother standing up, the four boys trickling out of the store and surrounding her, their faces flushed happily and they laugh, despite the fact that neither of them have said anything yet. She figures it’s that weird, telepathic inside joke thing that best friends tend to do, since she does it a lot with Yuna.  

“You’ll see.” Mark says, ominously, his face appearing even pale in the moonlight.

She nods, pouting sleepily, “I’ll probably get fired before I get the chance.” She yawns, grimacing at the thought.

“Burger King’s hiring!” Bambam reminds her, cheerfully, patting her arm in consolation. If she wasn’t so tired she’d kick the boy in the shins. He backs away at her murderous glare, throwing both his hands up in the air, “I was just saying…”

“Shut up.”

`He just laughs then and her head pounds at the loudness of it. She decides, right then and there, that she’s definitely fighting the very, very tall twelve year old first, after she takes care of her arch-nemesis of course. Maybe she’ll be able to throw him in to the Han River before the others get to her first. As long as the scary manager, Jaebum, doesn’t come for her right after she thinks she’d be resigned to whatever her fate is afterwards.

The Sour Patch Kid grimaces and murmurs, “Ugh. No thanks.” He gives her a disparaging look, looking her over as if she’s a wad of gum he’s found stuck to the bottom of his shoe.

Yoojin changes her mind. She’s fighting both of them after Flopson and then she’ll let fate carry out the rest.

(But it’s not exactly a quiet ride back, there’s giggling in the backseat (these boys giggle more than Joy and Yeri and that’s saying something), and Jackson Wang’s loud voice booms through the car whenever he responds to anything, but somehow she manages to ignore it all, her eyes drooping as she falls asleep to the lively sounds.

Someone nudges at her shoulder and she grumbles, pressing her face further against the leather seat, curling in on herself, and she swears she hears a sigh, as well as a few choice cuss words, before the cold air becomes warm. She snuggles into the warmth and falls completely into unconsciousness, sighing contentedly because she’s not freezing anymore.)

~.~.~.~.~

When she opens her eyes the next morning, jolting awake thanks to her blaring alarm, she finds herself tucked into her bed, in her room, and she wonders if it was all some horribly elaborate dream. She shoots upright and gasps at the slight queasiness the sudden movement brings her. She groans, rubbing her eyes with her too big sleeves, before she shoves the sheets off of her.

When she’s standing in front of her mirror, she realizes that she’s still swearing her clothes from yesterday, though this time she’s wearing a slightly familiar-looking black jacket with a black and white striped collar, the sleeves dangling past her hands since they’re way too long. It smells faintly of cologne and it feels warm against her skin, like a soft caress, and she presses her thumb and forefinger against the fabric, against the collar of the jacket, wondering where the hell it came from. She tugs at the sleeves that are clearly too long, waving her hands around just to see the sleeves flap around cutely.

She blinks in confusion because she isn’t sure how she ended up back home or whether the party thing last night even happened in the first place. She glances in front of her closet, where her shopping bags sit, all of them spilling out of the biggest shopping bag that she had stuffed the smaller ones into.

She blinks rapidly before she slowly makes her way out into the living room, still wrapped in the too-big jacket that smells really nice, only to find Yuna grinning at her phone in a cheesy, blissful sort of way, unaware of the fact that her eggs are burning in the frying pan as she types out a response. She doesn’t even notice when Yoojin pushes up the sleeves of black jacket to her elbows and moves the frying pan over to the other side of the stove, allowing the eggs to cool, before giving Yuna a disparaging look. Yuna just grins at her phone, her eyes sparkling with happiness and her cheeks a soft, gentle pink. Then Yoojin sees the giant hickey on Yuna’s neck, creeping under the collar of her shirt, and Yoojin blinks rapidly. She quickly realizes, right then and there, that last night did in fact happen and then—and then she realizes that she’s so ing screwed.

~.~.~.~.~

She’s not just so ing screwed. She’s completely and utterly ed.

And she thought the bath bomb incident had been bad. Jackson Wang and his squad had decided to retaliate with bath bombs as well, to the point where the colorful, soapy, glittery water had seeped out from the kitchen and behind the cash registers. Sehun had stood there, ankle deep in rainbow water in the middle of the kitchen, with a scowl, a miniature mop, and a ridiculous amount of glitter covering his face.

“You’re an idiot.” Sehun had said, without preamble. And then he had the soaking wet miniature mop into her hands and sloshed out of the kitchen, his aura unforgiving.

And then Yoojin had noticed the reason why the kitchen had looked so small.

Because someone had replaced all the loose equipment, the fryer cages, the spoons, the tongs, the cups, with miniature versions of them. It looked like the kitchen had been transformed into an elementary school and Yoojin honestly couldn’t wrap her head around the logistics of how.

Honestly she didn’t have time because the door had been pushed open and Junmyeon looked pissed.

And positively glittery.

“There are glitter bombs everywhere. It got in my coffee.” Junmyeon had whispered, but he didn’t sound angry, exactly. He sounded strangely in awe, dazed.

(Apparently the Burger King boys had set up balls filled with loose glitter all over the store that would just drop on unsuspecting McDonald’s employees with the slightest of triggers. She can’t believe she enabled this.

Fortunately, Junmyeon doesn’t fire her, which is surprising. It’s also surprising how relieved she feels when he just sighs, shakes his head, and hands her a miniature bucket and a tiny mop and mumbles, “This is war, isn’t it? You didn’t have a choice.”

She doesn’t correct him and tell him that technically she did but she was intoxicated and therefore gullible and they used that to their advantage. Junmyeon looks tired and determined, a strange mixture of emotions she thinks somehow suits him well, despite the fact that it really shouldn't suit anyone, let alone him.

He makes her clean up the bath bomb mess on her own, which results in sopping wet shoes and rainbow soap in places she never thought rainbow soap could go.)

~.~.~.~.~

“You know…this a kind of a Look, I’m not gonna lie.” Jongdae mumbles, admiring himself in the reflection of the window, his face covered in glitter. Yoojin looks from Jongdae up to the ceiling, where there’s a bunch of spherical balls filled with glitter no doubt, though one wrong step could trigger the trap that makes them falls. Out of everyone who had come into work today, Yoojin was the only one who managed to remain unscathed, though she still had six hours to go. “Like some hot alien contour or something.”

Baekhyun grimaces at Jongdae, his expression twisted into an extremely sulky one (because he’s been hit with three glitter bombs already and he keeps grumbling about how his hair is ing ruined and someone’s going to pay for this). “How about you trigger the rest of those glitter bombs since you love it so much?”

That’s when Sehun speaks up, from where he’s rooted to his phone in the middle of the store, surrounded by overhead glitter bombs, like a minefield that he doesn’t even care about. “How about we send Yoojin into the mine field instead? This is all her fault anyway.” Sehun glares at her, clearly peeved because glitter is not punk, as she overheard him whining at Junmyeon when he found out that Junmyeon wasn’t going to fire her. “Since she’s not even getting fired for this.”

Yoojin glares right back because she’s already told them what happened last night, like, fifteen times, “I swear I didn’t mean to. I was—”

This time Baekhyun speaks up, frowning at her. “Don’t you dare say those Burger Kink boys swindled you.”

“Well, I certainly wasn’t planning on using the word swindled. What are you? A pirate?”

Jongdae giggles, “You said kink.” And then he giggles even loudly.

They all stare at Jongdae, giggling immaturely to himself, until Baekhyun joins in, hesitantly at first until his laughter becomes louder, unabashed, and it’s so contagious that eventually Yoojin starts laughing as well. Sehun even cracks a smile and Yoojin swears Jongin’s toe twitches in the play area he’s in, where Jackson Wang and his friends forgot to put any traps. It’s funny, really, if Yoojin doesn’t think too hard on the fact that she has to clean up this mess.

They laugh and laugh and ignore the customer knocking on the window with a crazed, hungry look in his eyes, ignoring the Closed for Maintenance sign emblazoned three inches from his face.

At least until Junmyeon skids into the room with a large, coiled poster board in his hands. His eyes are steely and the laughter stops abruptly. He doesn’t pay attention to his surroundings, though, namely the ceiling, and Yoojin watches, slightly horrified and slightly awed, as a glitter bomb explodes above him, creating a soft pop that showers him in a lot of silver and purple glitter, so much of it raining over Junmyeon that some of it piles up in Junmyeon’s open mouth.

Yoojin has to suppress the laugh threatening to spill from her lips when Junmyeon’s face turns red and anger makes his brows knit together in anger.

“All of you. Break room now.” Junmyeon sputters out around a mouthful of glitter.

“Why?” Sehun asks, frowning, his eyes flickering up to the glitter mine field above him warily.

“It’s time to plan a counter attack.” Junmyeon looks dead serious, so serious in fact that, for once, no one dares question him, especially with the way his jaw is set and eyes are on fire.  “And we need a way to root out those sources Yoojin said they mentioned.”

A/N: omg I can't believe this weekly update business is actually working (maybe because I'm just writing shorter chapters in general because of that I guesS? but i feel like this is like....gross short i'm sorry i'll try writing longer chapters i feel like i'm skimping out when i write chapters shorter than 5k smh)

anyways this is basically part 2 of last chapter and I kinda feel like the plot is moving slowly so if you feel the same about pacing or whatever, please let me know and i will fast forward it up! 

thank you everyone for reading and subscribing to this! please let me know your thoughts below love u all

xoxo