Chapter 12

Sehun

Seulgi had been ignoring Sehun for four days.

Four.

Days.

Four. Four of the day-type things.

Which probably didn’t seem like an eternity to the average person, but, well, the average person had never met Kang Seulgi, had never caught her when she fell or eaten strawberries with her in a park, or…

Okay, so the average person did not have an excruciatingly embarrassing, raging crush on Kang Seulgi.

Still.

It .

It in the most painfully obvious way. It in such a painfully obvious way that, the thing is, Seulgi had to have noticed, oh, say, four days before. And yet, every time Sehun was in the same room as her, she left with a pointed-sounding huff. But the worst part of the painfully obvious age was that it was painfully obvious that Sehun couldn’t control his face when Seulgi was anywhere near him.

He hadn’t used puppy-dog eyes to this extent since he was three.

He was literally seconds away from throwing himself at Seulgi, pinning her down to the nearest horizontal surface, and… begging her to talk to him.

Xiumin had taken to spending all of his time laughing at him and sending him ridiculous emoticons (“Honestly, Xiumin, what does the tempura prawn, majestic as it is, have to do with my love life? Or advice on said love life? Xiumin? Xiumin????”)

Sehun had nearly hung up on him the last time they talked. Which was, okay, the fifth time they had talked that day. Which may or may not have been 15 minutes ago. And it was 10 o’clock. In the morning. But he had started speaking in the baby voice that had annoyed him just as thoroughly when he was 8. “Awww wittle Hunnie has his fiwst cwush.” He had not, of course, actually hung up on him. Mostly because he remembered June 14th, 2011, the last time he had hung up on him (“That was my Vietnam,” Sehun whispered to himself). He might be a secret agent, but there are some people even he knows not to cross.

Still. His crush was becoming more and more embarrassingly obvious. That girl in the bathroom (“Joohyun,” her business card had read) had known without even seeing them in the same room.

The way Sehun saw it, he figured there were two possibilities. Either Seulgi knew and was awkwardly avoiding him because she was afraid Sehun was going to try to kiss her or something (which, okay, valid, because he had very nearly kissed the toothpaste off her lip the morning before on the way into the bathroom), or Seulgi was, somehow, too insecure to understand that Sehun wanted her, and was avoiding him for some other reason. The first seemed much more likely, not least because every time he thought about Seulgi feeling insecure, he wanted to weep and sing the latest boyband’s annoying hit.

Yes, he knew it. Everyone knew it. The short one was fit. Whatever.

So. So, following that logic, Seulgi knew that Sehun would do anything for her, that he thought about her and dreamt about her, and that, if he had a pink sparkly diary, he would write “Mrs. Kang Seulgi” in the margins. Seulgi knew all of that, she had to, and she was ignoring Sehun.

Sehun was almost certain that, though he had never personally faced the cruel sting of rejection before, this is what it looked like.

“,” Sehun muttered enthusiastically, if quietly, to himself, “.”

“Language, Sehunnie,” Seulgi chirped from the kitchen before freezing, comically clutching the orange juice to her chest with one hand, the other clasped over .

It was the first thing she had said to Sehun in four days and suddenly, Sehun felt like the couple of steps separating the living room and the kitchen were much too large a distance. So, he stumbled to his feet and then righted himself, ears turning pink.

It was not the first time, nor would it be the last time he thanked God for the fact that they were covered by his hair.

He stalked through the space between them in long strides, ending just inches away from a rather frightened-looking Seulgi.

Sehun wanted to knit her a sweater or something. It was outrageously emasculating.

Nearly growling in frustration, he backed his partner into the fridge, pressing his hands next to Seulgi’s (reassuringly just as red as his felt) ears.

Nudging his nose across the shell of one of them, he growled “D’you have a problem with the word ‘