There are those days where Kyungsoo despised his life, and today was one of them. Sure his life was fine and dandy, he had a fairly good paying job as a retailer at Code:EXO, where all the current and most hip fashion is displayed and sold, he had a roof over his head and was very content with his life. But really it was just a horrible day for him, and he didn’t know whether to cry or laugh thinking about what happened at the store. He never felt such chagrin and he really wanted to cocoon himself in thick blankets and hibernate for the rest of his life.

 The reason for his current state of embarrassment? Kim Jongin, the new employee of Code:EXO.

Jongin was the complete antithesis of him, while he was quiet and withdrawn, Jongin was a bit louder and not so withdrawn from society, actually he was quite a social butterfly. His ability to socialize with others made it so he was able to get around the store often, suggesting this and that (honestly Jongin’s sense in clothing was a bit horrid, but apparently the female minority didn’t mind because they thought he was fairly attractive) to customers and helping them locate where the certain clothing item they want is. Yes the complete opposite of Kyungsoo who can barely talk to any of the customers without stuttering and accidentally leading them to the wrong aisle.

Sometimes, Kyungsoo honestly believes Joonmyun hired Jongin more as a bauble than an employee because there are those times where he believed the younger didn’t know how to dress less flashy, but that doesn’t mean he’s useless. It’s just those extra things added to his shirt made it very unnecessary and he’s pretty sure it’s to advertise their store more.

Kyungsoo sighs and stuffs more of the bland tasting kimchi-spaghetti into his mouth and chews it slowly. “Should’ve added more flavoring,” he mumbles to himself.

Joonmyun looks up from his paper work and gives a concerned look to his friend, “you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.” No. he wasn’t. He’s been feeling like crap since that incident and he didn’t dare to reveal his face to the rest of the employees.

Joonmyun shrugs and continues filling out more of the paperwork, scrunching his eyebrows together as he stares at the numbers written on the paper. He sighs and writes a few notes in a blank box, scratching a few mistakes out, then nods at his emendation with a satisfied look. He moves the papers to the sides neatly and pats it to make sure it would stay in place.

“No seriously, are you okay? You’ve been sighing a lot and your cooking has been looking less edible these days,” Joonmyun says, pointing his pen at Kyungsoo’s lunch.

The owl-eyed man blinks, does his food really look inedible? Sure it tasted bland, but it doesn’t mean it’s inedible, he felt offended. “That’s mean Joonmyun.”

The red-head shrugs, “just saying, so what’s your problem?”

“What makes you think I have a problem?”

Joonmyun looks at Kyungsoo with a blank expression and glances down at the half-eaten container of kimchi-spaghetti. Kyungsoo merely mouths an ‘o’ and closes the container. “Oh, does it look that inedible?” Joonmyun nods and Kyungsoo’s expression becomes more gloomy.

“So, want to tell me what’s bothering you?”

“Well the—“

“Hyung!” A tall man peeks out from the door with a toothy grin, “there you are Kyungsoo-hyung!”

The two turn to see interrupted their conversation, Kyungsoo’s eyes widen seeing who had cut him off and Joonmyun merely shakes his head and sighs. “We should continue this discussion some other time,” Joonmyun says with a soft smile and heads towards his office, promptly shutting his door with a click.

“That was… weird,” the tall, wild haired man looks Joonmyun leaving with a pout, he turns to Kyungsoo and gives him a bright smile, “so hey Kyungsoo-hyung!”

Kyungsoo smiles back, everyone was impotent to that bright smile, it was hard not to smile back. He places his container of unfinished food into his bag, and gives his full attention to the tall man. “Hey Chanyeol, do you need something?”

“Yeah! Um,” the tall man, Chanyeol, scratches the back of his neck, trying to recall what he needed to tell the short man. “Oh yeah, Jongin needs you, hyung.”

“Jongin? As in Kim Jongin?”

“There’s only one Jongin in this place silly.”

Kyungsoo merely gapes at Chanyeol, Jongin was the person he least wanted to see. He already embarrassed himself in front of the younger, no need to embarrass himself again. The other giggles, seeing Kyungsoo’s expression and squishes Kyungsoo’s cheeks, “you’re so silly hyung, aww look you’re blushing.”

Kyungsoo swats Chanyeol’s hands away and rubs his cheeks, “stop that!”

Chanyeol merely laughs and scratches his cheek. “Sorry, anyways Jongin kinda needs you in the evil labyrinth of clothing.”

“The what?”

“The storage closet, that place is huge.” Chanyeol pauses and scrunches his face, “and evil, I think ghosts are haunting it. A bunch of leopard printed clothes attacked me.” The tall man suddenly gasps dramatically and grabs Kyungsoo’s shoulders, “do you think a ghost of a leopard possessed the clothes to seek revenge for killing its brethren to make the clothes?”

Kyungsoo glances to the side, trying to avoid eye-contact with the really tall man-child, “I think that was just Tao accidentally bumping into you holding the clothing, Chanyeol.”

“Are you sure it’s not leopard ghosts seeking revenge?”

Kyungsoo nods and escapes from Chanyeol’s grip on him as soon as it slackens. “I should, um, go to Jongin and see what he needs.”

Chanyeol his head to the side and blinks distractedly, “oh yeah, sure. Just don’t let those bestial beings get to you and kill you, hyung! You don’t know what leopard spirits could do to you.” He ends the last part, wiggling his fingers to emphasize the spirits part. Kyungsoo merely nods and smiles awkwardly as he edges towards the door.

As he turns, Chanyeol calls out to him, “oh and hyung, can you hook me up with your Jino friend person thing, he’s cute.” Kyungsoo turns his head slightly to see Chanyeol’s bright smile that was filled with hope, he nods slowly, “uh, sure?”

“You’re the best hyung ever, anyways have fun in the scary evil labyrinth of clothing, and also…” Chanyeol glances around and lowers himself to Kyungsoo’s height. “Beware of the leopard ghost,” he whispers out, as if he’s afraid someone would hear him. “Okay, see you hyung!”

Kyungsoo walks out of the break room with wide, owl-like eyes. “I really just think it’s Tao,” he mumbles to himself. He walks up to the storage closet, or dubbed as the ‘evil labyrinth of doom’ by Chanyeol, takes a deep breath and opens the door. Immediately after opening the door, he is bombarded with leopard printed clothing and a very disheveled Chinese man.

“Sorry hyung,” the young man says, rubbing the back of his head.

“Uh, are you okay Tao?”

The black-haired man nods, and begins to gather the scattered items of clothing, “Jongin is waiting inside, he kind of looks like he needs to pee, it’s kind of funny.”

“Uh…”

Tao picks up the last of the clothing and begins to head to the department he’s in charge of. “I’ll see you hyung,” he says, trying to wave a hand at Kyungsoo, but fails miserably as more clothing starts to fall from the pile. “Dammit.” It was very obvious that the clothing were an impediment, preventing Tao from doing anything other than carrying the clothing to his aisle.

The short man merely stares at the scene and is pretty sure Joonmyun is going to gloat to Kris about how his management is much more organized than Kris’, he could feel an oncoming headache. Sometimes the rivalry between the two could get very idiotic. He turns back to the door of the dreaded storage room, looking at the effete door in front of him. He pushes it open carefully, not wanting to accidentally lock himself in, the lock was really old and he wondered why nobody bothered to change it, or replace the door in general.

He begins to look around to see if the new addition to the long line of eccentric employees was anywhere to be seen. He catches sight of the tan boy playing around with a diaphanous shirt. “This shirt is too see-through… why is it the best-selling item in this store anyways,” Jongin mumbles quietly to himself.

“Uh, Jongin?” The tan boy jumps in surprise and looks at Kyungsoo with wide eyes. He tries to stash the shirt back into its bag, but accidentally rips it. “. “ Jongin stares at the shirt, then hides it behind his back (which is pointless since the other already saw him rip the shirt) and tries to smile innocently at Kyungsoo, “oh, uh, hey Kyungsoo-hyung.”

“There’s really no point in hiding the shirt, Jongin,” Kyungsoo points out.

Jongin stares at Kyungsoo with wide eyes and removes the shirt from his back, and stares at it. He chuckles nervously and scratches his head, “um. Yeah, no point.”

“You’re going to have to pay for it.”

Jongin blinks profusely, “Are you serious?” Kyungsoo nods. “This shirt costs over 50 dollars!” Jongin groans out loud and slinks to the ground, covering his face with the ripped shirt.

“Store policy.”

“There goes my monthly paycheck,” Jongin says behind his hands.

Kyungsoo gives a sympathetic look and pats Jongin’s back gently, “there there. Didn’t you ask Chanyeol to get me?”

“Oh,” Jongin removes his hands from his face, “yeah.” He stands up and brushes off the nonexistent dust that was on his pants and clears his throat. “Uh, do you--” the tan boy shifts his gaze to the neon colored clothing hanging to his left, and looks back at Kyungsoo, “do you want to go out and eat with me?”

Kyungsoo stares at Jongin blankly, his brain was currently a maelstrom of thoughts after what Jongin said, and he was pretty sure he had a stupid smile on. Jongin doesn’t realize Kyungsoo’s current predicament and continues talking, “because you know, I kinda embarrassed you in front of a lot of people, and I thought ‘hey why not ask him out to dinner?’ and yeah, also because Ikindalikeyou, but other than that.” Jongin looks up and gives Kyungsoo a lopsided smile, causing the other to flush and make a weird, strangled noise.

“Uh, are you okay, hyung?”

Kyungsoo snaps out of his daze and nods his head frantically, “oh, what? I’m fine, perfectly fine. And a dinner sounds great, and Ikindalikeyoutoo, so everything is fine.”

“You what—“ Before Jongin could finish his sentence, the door bursts open with a frantic looking Chanyeol, accompanied by a very amused looking Jongdae and a bit too overly excited Baekhyun. “Code red, I saw the leopard printed clothing, outside the evil labyrinth of clothes,” Chanyeol announces loudly with a scared expression.

“Chanyeol I think you broke the door,” Baekhyun says, kicking one of the shards of wood.

“You think? He practically destroyed it,” Jongdae says, giving Baekhyun a questioning look.

Chanyeol shoots a glare at the two, “it doesn’t matter, this is a code red, the leopard printed clothing is outside the evil labyrinth of clothes!”

Jongdae sighs and pats Chanyeol, “those are probably Tao’s.”

“So? Still, they’re haunted!” The tall man says, waving his arms around.

Jongin clears his throat and the three turn to him, “I was trying to ask him out to dinner here.”

Baekhyun covers his mouth and smack’s Chanyeol’s arm. “Ow! Hey, what was that for?!”

“You just ruined their moment you .”

Chanyeol crosses his arms and pouts, “well I’m sorry, it’s a code red.”

“Code red, code polka-dots, I don’t care, you just ruined their moment and we’re leaving, come on.” Baekhyun grabs Chanyeol’s and Jongdae’s wrist, dragging them away from Jongin and Kyungsoo.

“But, code red!”

“Shut up, Chanyeol.”

“No you shut up, Jongdae.”

Eventually the trio disappears into another set of aisles, leaving a very annoyed Jongin and a confused Kyungsoo. “What just happened,” the shorter out of the two asks.

Jongin continues to stare at the direction the trio left and shrugs, “no idea, so the dinner?”

“Uh, sure? I mean it’s repayment right?”

Jongin looks to the side, “uh, yeah.” He kinda thought of it as a date too, they both kinda did confess to each other, or he think they did. “And a date,” he adds in just in case. “We both said we liked each other, before Chanyeol came in to ruin everything.”

Kyungsoo looks at his feet with sudden interest, “we kind of did, didn’t we?”

“Yeah.”

The two stand around awkwardly, and look around, away from each other’s gaze. Kyungsoo sighs and scratches the back of his neck and begins to leave the room, “I should, um, report this to Joonmyun, the manager, yeah.”

Jongin nods, “uh yeah, you do that, I’ll, um organize clothes.”

“Yeah.”

“Mmhmm.”

The two continue to stand awkwardly before muttering, “see you this evening” and “see you later”. It was going to be a marvelous dinner date for the two. 

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a/n: wowzies i did not look over it so there may be mistakes and stuff, uh yeah that's pretty much it.