Day 10: “Demons exist, okay? I’ve seen children.” AU

“Tao-ge! I want to go there! I want candy!” The little girl starts raising her voice, crosses her arms and puts up her best pouting face.

God damn it, how is it that his little sister exactly knows what to do in order to get what she wants? Tao crouches down and takes his little sister, who is tearing up by now, in his arms. The elders around him are giving him disapproving looks for making the little girl cry and Tao just wants to roll his eyes at them; it’s because of them that he will have to give in to the girl because she’ll start crying even harder if he says no again.

“Where do you want to get candy, meimei?” He asks Bo Xuan. She stops crying and pushes back so she can look at Tao. “Candy Paradise!” she answers and her smile is so bright it makes everyone that was watching them happy too. And the world goes on.

They enter the candy shop and Tao has to blink a few times to get adjusted to all the bright colours that fill the whole shop. It hurts his eyes. He looks around a bit and leaves Bo Xuan to look around for herself. All the candy that’s laying there makes his teeth ache, just by looking at it. A shudder goes through his body at the thought of eating that much candy but before he can think of how disgustingly sweet some of it must be he gets called by his little sister. “Tao-ge, Tao-ge! I want this!”

He leaves the candy for what it is and focusses on his little sister who’s running to him with her hands full of candy and frowns disapprovingly at her. “Meimei, you know that you can’t run in the shop and that you need to put the candy in a bag,” he tells her with a sigh and takes her by the arm to the holder of the bags. “Here, put it all in here.”

They walk to the counter and there is Tao’s biggest surprise of the day. Behind the counter is no old man nor a smiling woman; there is a man that couldn’t be much older than him and damn he’s hot.

“-ge, Tao-ge,” the voice shakes him out of his thoughts once more and Tao embarrassingly scratches his head when he sees the man looking at him. “Would that be everything?” The deep voice of the cashier, Kris, Tao reads on the nametag, is pleasing. “That’s it,” he confirms and hands over the candy. “Gege, I want this too!” He crouches down once more and looks at what Bo Xuan is looking. It chocolate which looks so good that Tao wouldn’t mind some himself but he shakes his head – his parents would murder him if he gave Bo Xuan too much sugar. “Sorry meimei, we already got too much candy, you can’t have that too.” She starts tearing up once more but instead of letting herself be embraced in her brother’s arms she runs away and before Tao can even panic about her running on the street he notices that she’s not running outside but behind the counter.

Tao stands up again and sees then that his sister is hugging Kris’ legs and that said male is patting her head. He furiously starts apologising: “I’m sorry, come on meimei, let his legs go. You can’t bother the man.” However, Kris does everything that Tao didn’t want him to do. The taller of the two lifts Bo Xuan and starts shushing her. “Calm down meimei, you can come and get more candy tomorrow, okay?” he proposes and it makes her nod. Tao just opens his mouth, only to close it again and sighs. His little sister really always got it the way she wants it. “Okay handsome gege! Me and Tao-ge will come tomorrow again!” All the traces of sadness that were there are now gone and honestly, “Kris, you’re really sweet, doing that for her, but if you’re going to continue like that you’ll make her want you as her brother instead of me and you really don’t want that.”

Kris lets out a laugh. “It can’t be that bad,” he says and gives him the ATM and hands over the bag of candy to Bo Xuan. He pays for the – surprisingly expensive – candy and takes the receipt from the other’s hand. “Come again tomorrow!” the male says happily and Tao mutters “Oh we will” with a way less excited voice but the idea of seeing the male again doesn’t really displease him.

And they do. It doesn’t exactly go like Tao wants to – it once again costs him more money than he wants it to, his sister whines some more, gets some more (than Tao) attention from Kris but he also gains something from Kris.

The visits don’t continue daily but they do continue weekly and after visiting the shop for a month and about a 100 text in between those visits, something else is pushed in his hand next to a receipt. It’s a card for a musical that’s in the theatre next weekend.

“Shall we go together so I can give you all the attention you need?”

Tao blushes and suddenly feels extremely shy, so he nods.

Bo Xuan just tugs at his arm, asking why he’s suddenly so red.