The Game: Happy Wheels

***

Kyungsoo sits in the kitchen stool, stirring the spaghetti he’s boiling with long tongs. He ignores the way Chen and Chanyeol point and laugh at him. Well, almost. When Chanyeol walks too close to him in the kitchen, Kyungsoo ‘accidentally’ bumps into his annoying tallness and ‘accidentally’ almost flings the boiling water at him.

“Watch what you’re doing!” Chanyeol screeches like a bat out of hell.

“Get out of my kitchen!” Kyungsoo retaliates, flinging the pasta into a colander.

Kimchi spaghetti, just for his obnoxious roommate that caught the flu and somehow won’t eat anything other than that cooked by the resident genius himself, Do Kyungsoo.





But why is Kyungsoo in such a bad mood?





Because Kai won’t stop playing those stupid video games, even though he’s covered in a sea of snotty tissues.





Not only does Kyungsoo have to listen to his victorious screeching and keyboard tapping at one in the morning; there’s also the disgusting trumpet sounds he makes as he blows his nose ridiculously loudly, and that annoying raspy whiny voice he makes when he wants something and anyone besides Kyungsoo doing it is not good enough.





Like how he had to buy that ing spaghetti pasta at four in the morning because Kai had cravings.




Like a pregnant woman.





Last time Kyungsoo checked, his roommate was not a pregnant woman. He was, in fact, a ridiculously normal, healthy teenager, with quite nicely toned abs and a serious video game addiction.

Kyungsoo finally gets around to serving the meal in a small bowl with a set of chopsticks, walking back to his roommate. Kai’s still up, despite Kyungsoo’s frequent instructions to turn off the ‘ing laptop’ and sleep.

But Kai is adamant he won’t turn it off. He drags Kyungsoo onto the bed with him, snuggling into his chest as he shows Kyungsoo the screen.

Kyungsoo makes attempts to gingerly push the taller teen away but Kai has him in a vice grip. Kyungsoo doesn’t want to get sick at all. He hates when his voice becomes all gravelly and he can’t sing. He lives to sing, and it’s just plain frustrating when he can’t.

“What are you playing?” Kyungsoo asks, rolling his eyes. There’s a weird looking chubby woman on the screen, and the words ‘Happy Wheels’ are sitting on the right hand side by her face, with instructions sitting at the bottom of the screen.

“Happy Wheels?” he asks. Kai coughs and nods.

“Alright, so what is it? What do you do?”

Kai snatches at the kimchi spaghetti, handing the laptop across to Kyungsoo.

Kyungsoo hits start after first reading the instructions. A list of levels pops up on the left, and when he clicks on one, a short description occupies the other half of the screen.

There’s almost a million different levels, and Kyungsoo clicks on one of them, surprised when a man with a bike comes onto the screen, what Kyungsoo presumes to be his son sits in a little passenger seat behind him.

“So, what do you do?” Kyungsoo asks.

Still, there’s no sound. Instead, Kai motions to the arrow keys. The up arrow moves forwards, the down arrow moves backwards, and the left and right arrows change the way the bicycler is leaning. Space bar, he finds, is like doing a jump.

“What are you guys playing?” Chanyeol swoops in, sitting on the end of Kai’s bed.

He snatches the game from Kyungsoo, causing the younger teen to pout. Kai playfully pokes Kyungsoo on the nose and he growls. Kai gives him a smile and shovels another chopstick load of spaghetti between his lips, getting it all over his chin.

Kyungsoo leans around Chanyeol and picks up a tissue, wiping it away.

“Jesus, get a room you two!” Chanyeol exclaims. Kai is quick to rasp out a response.

“We have a room, just you’re in it.”

Chanyeol laughs at this statement, and also Kyungsoo’s face that’s gone a few shades darker than before, handing him back the laptop. Chanyeol winks at Kai when Kyungsoo’s not looking, his eyes trained to the screen.

“Try a Bottle Run level,” he says excitedly.

“What you have to do, is get through super fast! Like, when you roll over the bottles they get broken but if you’re not quick enough you fall!”

Kyungsoo furrows his brows, taking the game off of Chanyeol.

“OK?”

He hits the up button, watching as the man in green on the bicycle moves forwards. There’s some weird yellow box with arrows that propels Kyungsoo’s bicycle man forward, and he grunts as the first bottle gets destroyed. There’s a whole line of them, and they stretch on for only a little bit.

Kyungsoo didn’t realise his breath was quickening.





“Oh WOW!” he shouts, as another yellow box makes his character go faster and faster. He makes the bicycle man lean forward, screeching loudly as the back wheel starts to sink into the nothingness.




“You’re not going to make it!” Chanyeol shouts loudly.

And Kyungsoo doesn’t.

A few seconds later, the bottles are all smashed and Kyungsoo finds the bicycle man flying through the air. He does a front flip, and the child is flung from the bicycle, twirling and twirling in the air. Kyungsoo screeches as it flies, completely and utterly befuddled.

What the hell was this game?

The bicycle man is still flying through the air. But, to Kyungsoo’s surprise, there is a loud thud and a groan that comes from the speakers.




“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”




The green shirt is not really green anymore; instead, it’s covered in red streaks as red comes pouring out of the man’s limbs, which are now strewn haphazardly around the place.

Some are impaled on spikes that line the floor.




“WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?”


Kyungsoo shrieks, eyes wide. Kai lets out a soft chuckle, breaking into a wheezing, coughing fit. Kyungsoo hesitates, before rubbing Kai’s back. Chanyeol just laughs.

“Kai didn’t mention Happy Wheels involves dying a bazillion times over? It’s basically an obstacle course, and you have to make it to the goal at the end!”

Kai nods, pulling Kyungsoo into him. Chanyeol rolls his eyes and exits the room, taking the laptop with him. When Kai whines in protest, Chanyeol turns around with a smirk plastered to his face.

“Why?” Kai moans.

“You need to rest, Kai,” Chanyeol says pointedly.

“I’m sure Kyungsoo’s the perfect person to look after you!” he raises an eyebrow suggestively.

Kai just growls, nuzzling into Kyungsoo’s shirt. Kyungsoo pulls the now empty bowl of kimchi spaghetti off of Kai’s lap, making him rest his head on the pillow.

“I’ll be back,” Kyungsoo says, making for the kitchen. Kai nods, and when Kyungsoo returns he is completely mortified.

Kai hasn’t left the bed, but there’s yet another Macbook in his hand.

“What?” he complains to Kyungsoo.

“I have a spare under the bed just in case.”

Thank Pewdiepie for this madness. All those times he's played it...

But Kai needs to learn to take breaks, or he'll get totally sick!!