Scraping off yet another piece of chewing gum that was stuck under the chair, Yoo Youngjae lets out a puff.

“I swear to god, chewing gums need to be banned in the cinema. Why do they even sell it at the candy bar?! Like they are just selling it so that we have to do THIS!!!”

At an ungodly hour of 9am Yoo Youngjae had just started his morning shift in the cinema. The cinema opens at 10 but really, it’s a weekday, a school day, work day, no people who are in their right mind or have not school or work will be at the cinemas to catch a movie that early. Youngjae sometimes wonder why is the cinema even opened at that time to possibly screen a movie to no one. But yet sometimes he is glad cause having such shift means he doesn’t have to deal with a lot of people.

Youngjae’s a college sophomore, but he’s differing for one semester. Having some troubles with paying his fees and also the fact he was trying to avoid his ex who was from the same course with him brought him to his state now.

The cinema he’s working at is pretty small and runned down near their college campus,normally during school hours no students will be here except a few who skipped and have no better place to go, though most will still just buy some snacks at the candy bar and hang around there.

The reason Youngjae had chosen to work here had been, firstly, he doesn’t have much choice, this is a job that doesn’t really require any special skills from him. Secondly, the pay was decent and he doesn’t need to pay extra for transport as it is a walking distance from his dorm. Thirdly, he takes mostly morning shifts where there’s not a lot of people, he just needs to clean up and sometimes (most of the times actually) he can sit in one of the screening halls that have little to no audience and watch a movie himself to pass time. He’s a theatre student so it is somehow his interest to watch movies, being quite antisocial, the chance of watching movies alone for free definitely gave him a push into filling up this position.

Youngjae is content with his job, he really is, the manager is a kind man he knows a few colleagues that are friendly and nice enough but he’s Yoo Youngjae, a whiny little , so he finds things to whine at everyday, even though this is a job he chose, he will whine about it while he does his job.

After he's done working on scraping off chewing gums left by the last batch of audience from last night, it’s already a little past 10 am. He reckoned a movie will be screened in hall 1 around 10.30am so he dragged his little bucket and scrapper to the counter, dropped it in the supplies closet and walked over to the candy bar.

“The usuals~” he chimes.

Jaebum who was manning the candy bar counter alone, didn’t even look up from his phone, clearly too immersed in his game to give a flying f about Youngjae, but he heard him, so he answered him.

“Jae, really, when I am fighting the boss??? Just get whatever the hell you want yourself, it’s not like you don’t know how to, and get outta my hair!”

Yeah real friendly colleagues, Youngjae snorts.

He proceed to scooping himself half a box of regular popcorn, he eats this regularly, he’s not crazy about it, also it’s fattening, he has to keep his figure that he had achieved after being quite depressed over his previous relationship for the one whole month. He’s over that but he consider the breakup a gain, he got his freedom back, he lost some weight, makes him look sharper and better, though taking a break from school but hey! No school for a few months!

He took the popcorn, a large diet coke and then took a detour to hall 1.

Expecting the hall to be empty, he took the seat right in the middle on the last row, waiting for advertisements and trailers to start rolling in.

5 minutes into commercials and a trailer of Jumanji that made him snort a bit causing him to choke a bit on the diet coke he was sipping on, the door of the hall opened, in walked another male that seemed to have a bright pink hair, it’s dark in the cinema he can’t really tell except that it is bright.

Youngjae noticed him, of course he noticed, the hall currently only holds the two of them and the said male had to, stop and pause a while when he saw him and proceed to seating in the seat one seat away beside him.

Youngjae was a bit confused, there’s literally no one else in the cinema, the guy could’ve sat anywhere he wanted, away from him, but okay maybe the dude really bought the ticket to that seat and he decided to just sit in the original seat he bought. Other than that the dude’s holding a large plastic bag, clearly not the ones from the cinema candy bar which was an ugly yellow with the ugly logo plastered in front, he can’t really tell what’s in the bag cause it’s a plain white regular plastic bag, what makes him confused is that the dude just sat down on his seat for a while, seemed to have gotten comfortable and he started rummaging the plastic bag with almost his whole face in it. Feeling that it’s rude to stare, Youngjae only watched him from the side every few seconds, wondering if the dude will pull out a knife and kill him right there, wow that’ll be cool.

When the movie started, for about a minute or so Youngjae decided that he’ll just concentrate on watching the movie, but he was really soon disturbed by a smell, he could not pinpoint at first but when he looked to the side, where the other male was sitting, his nose twitched a little, really, this dude is eating a cheesecake in the cinema?! And not a small cut out piece, but a whole probably 1 kilogram cheesecake, the dude is basically digging the cake with a spoon, stuffing his face while watching the movie.

Really there’s a no outside foods and drinks rule in the cinema but rather than wanting to call out the dude for breaking the rule he’s just amused by the fact he brought a whole cake into the cinema to devour himself.

Probably feeling his gaze, the said male diverted his eyes from the movie to find Youngjae’s half amused half judging face looking at him.

“Erm… you’re not gonna call me out are you?” Wow the dude had a deep hollow melodic voice to go with his seems to be pretty good looking face.

Youngjae haven’t found the right words to say yet and the dude already continued, “I’ll share you a piece if you don’t call me out? I mean, sharing is caring..?”

Youngjae scoffed a bit at that, he doesn’t know why but he finds the dude cute (not just his face!!!), he nodded.

The other male worked on cutting a decent piece from the remaining cheesecake he held, looked around and realize he had nothing to pass the cake to the cinema staff, he scoot to the seat that was previously in between them and gestured Youngjae to pick up the offering.

Youngjae mentally facepalmed at the situation but proceeds to accepting the piece of cake. Finishing the piece in a few munch, he decided that he should offer something back, so he handed the other male his barely touched popcorns to show his gesture of offering in return.

The other male breaks into a wide smile and whispered a thank you as he accepts and grabs a handful of popcorns.

They went back to watching the movie after a while but it was just around 30 minutes when the male actually started talking to Youngjae.

“So, the name’s Daehyun, you?”

“Hmm, Yoo Youngjae, as you can see I work here.”

“Cool, I’m a student at T.S College.”

“Oh, what course? I study there too, sophomore, but I’m taking a semester off.”

“Ohhhh… I’m doing media studies, senior by the way, you?”

“Hmm… theatre…”

They fall into a short silence before Youngjae starts talking again.

“Don’t you have class now?”

“I’ve class at 10 but my professor canceled last minute… I’ve another class at around… 12.30 so I’m killing some time here.”

“With a whole cheesecake?”

“Hey, I can finish that.”

The movie ended, Daehyun left bidding a soft goodbye to Youngjae. But he made sure he frequent the cinema more often in the mornings after that, catching Youngjae at work and bought a ticket to watch the movie of Youngjae’s choice together. After a few times he didn’t even need to buy a ticket, staff priority Youngjae says, dragging Daehyun into hall 3 after yelling at Jaebum who scowled at them for “making him sick in the morning” he said.

Youngjae does find out that Daehyun really can finish (INHALE) a whole cheesecake on his own.