“Oh god. That’s the store you’re going to be working at?”

Minseok pretends to be cleaning up the table that seats Luhan, Baekhyun and Tao whom are all scrutinizing the bright and bustling Kim's Krafts across the mall from the tea shop.

  “Yeah I guess,” Luhan is blowing bubbles in his milk tea and is now watching Tao and Baekhyun thoughtfully slurp their own drinks and stare at the store. Minseok shakes his head and sighs.

  “Well, it’s kinda cute,” Baekhyun finally comments, “But- ,”

  “Ha! Do you know what’s cute? Jongdae’s roommate,” Luhan wags his eyebrows hoping Baekhyun would fall for the red herring.

  “What? No way! Is HE really Jongdae’s roommate?”

  “Uh huh.”

Baekhyun claps his hands together gleefully.

  “Tao! We are so going to- ,”

  “Hold it! I’m the “unwanted tail” remember?”

  “Oh right.. oh wait..,” Baekhyun furrows his eyebrows at Luhan, his elated mood dropping as soon as it came, “Don’t you dare try to change the subject.”

  “Darn it.”

  “But seriously..,” Baekhyun watches as Luhan plays with a paper napkin in his hands,”..just, don’t worry too much about it.”

*Easier said than done*

Minseok nods in agreement, “You have to go through with this Luhan. I think it would help with whatever that flooding thing Yixing was talking about.”

  “Yeah, and we’ll get you a bubble milk tea if you survive. If, hahaha.” Tao cackles.

Minseok smacks Tao in the back of the head as he is taking another large slurp of his milk tea causing him to cough and spray a good amount of it out at Baekhyun. Baekhyun wrinkles his nose and steals Luhan’s napkin to daintily dab away milk tea on his face.

  “I’ve convinced these guys to hang around for a bit,” Minseok points to Tao and Baekhyun’s books bags on the ground, “So holla if you need help or get worked up or something. I’ll hang around after my shift and we can go home together.”

  “Aw, thanks Baozi,” Luhan is feeling just a teensy bit better but not totally reassured.

  “Oh hey, I think I recognize that guy,” Tao squints into Kim’s Krafts at Jongin who is stacking heaps of colored yarn with Luna.

  “Oh right! Play nice with other coworkers! Unless one of them wants to pick a fight, then you gotta kick somebody’s .” Baekhyun offers cheerily as he starts prying at Luhan's nervous death grip on the table.

  “Wait Tao, how do you know him?” Luhan asks. He's trying to grasp anything now that would delay his trip over to Kim's Krafts.

Tao seems however distracted by what Baekhyun had just said.

  “Wow you advocate violence using a quote from Mulan. Greaat advice.”

  “Like you said anything better!”

  “Well… I’ll see you after work?” Minseok has to head back to the counter to help out.

Luhan nods numbly and leaves his bubble milk tea unfinished. He feels knots in his stomach as he approaches Kim’s Krafts.
He bumps into Luna (figuratively) at the door. She isn’t wearing her apron and he supposes she’s off her shift.

  “Oh hi! I heard you ended up taking the job here. I’m Luna!”

  “Luhan…” He's always hated how he got really shy in new situations.

  “Well, a little for-your-info, all our shifts overlap each others. So your working with Jongin your first half of your shift and then Amber your second. I think we are all pretty nice people so just ask away if you need any help!”

  “Okay.”

She waves and hurries off.

  “…”

  “Well. Luna has classes and we were both going to give you a rundown of your job but you’re kind of late.” Jongin finally explains after a beat of silence. Luhan is awkwardly standing around as Jongins finishes placing the last balls of yarn in the pile he was building.

  “Where’s Joonmyun?”

  “Oh hiding from duty. Or usually behind the cash register. He pops up every so often when he feels like helping out.”

He steps back to admire his handiwork before ushering Luhan to the back storage room. Luhan turns one last time before he disappears behind shelves to glance at Baekhyun and Tao in the tea shop and sees them giggling at something they apparently saw between him and Jongin. …Which was nothing obviously and Luhan sighs as he remembers that he could totally holler to dumb friends when he needs help.

Jongin turns around to look at him after he had sighed and frowns.

  “Man you look miserable for someone who wanted to work here.”

  “I didn’t really want to work here. I just went from interning at a small but successful design company to working in a dinky crafts store.” Saying it out loud really makes Luhan want to smack himself for being such a failure at life.

  “Well, don’t you dare pull another “Krystal” on us. One mood-killer, miserable employee was enough.”

He hands Luhan a brown apron and waits for him to slip it over his head before then pinning on Luhan’s nametag while Luhan is fumbling knotting the apron strings behind him. Luhan looks up suspiciously at Jongin, which is a bad idea because their faces are pretty close to each other and he can feel Jongin’s breath tickle his nose. Wow, great first day at work.

Jongin catches his eye and shrugs.

  “Just helping you get started working faster,” and he pats Luhan’s chest, well nametag, before motioning Luhan to follow him back out into the store. Now if Baekhyun and Tao had seen that . . . Luhan shakes his head and tries to calm a creeping blush on his face.

  “So that was uh the storage room. We don’t usually restock stuff throughout the day because Joonmyun likes to change things around a little from day to day, unless it is part of our highlighted item of the day or week. Today it’s yarn.”

  “Uh huh. What if a customer wants something else that is out of stock on shelves but available in the back?”

  “Only if it’s really specific what they want. Otherwise – use your sales person skills to sell thing something to substitute because Joonmyun likes the look of emptying shelves.”

  “Okay.”

  “Basically memorize your way around the shop. Uh here on the left are all the crafts supplies for I guess the fabric artsy stuff. We have fabric, thread, cloth glue, ribbons…” Jongin rattles off names of the merchandise as he walks past them, gesturing to them every so often. Luhan can’t help but notice how even Jongin’s laziest movements were fluid and smooth.

  “Center is the cash register... Hi Joonmyun.”

  “Jongin! I want to you to take over the cash register when you’re done.”

  “Roger that …and there are miscellaneous stuff around the center like fake flowers, picture frames and the item of the day. Over on the right, I guess are stuff for the the other genre of art with paints, sketchbooks, play doh, pens, pencils and uh we basically have a lot of stuff.”

Jongin turns to Luhan and stares at him for an awkward bit before, “Uh so that concludes out tour. Your mission is to just help people find stuff, get people to buy stuff, straighten stuff on shelves, pretend to straighten stuff on shelves… and that’s a very interesting patterned ribbon you got there…”

Luhan freezes and looks down at his hands to realize that he had been playing around with a spool of an ugly brownish-orange ribbon covered in derpy cartoon smiley faces for some time.

  “Sorry.. It’s um very.. smooth ribbon.. yeah.”

Luhan mentally slaps himself at the fact that what could have been the trigger to picking up the ribbon was the adjective he had used to describe Jongin’s movement. *Smooth*

  “Huh.. cool. I think the smiley faces glow in the dark.”

  “Cool..” Luhan quickly drops it on a nearby shelf and guiltily stuffs his hands in his pockets.

  “No.. that’s not where it goes. Put it back in the right place when you have the chance. Now go. Start working.”

  “Wait. What?”

  “Oh sorry. Excuse me, bad habit. You’re probably older than me like almost everyone else working here. Um please start working as soon as you can. There’s really not much to it. You can just spend your shift today familiarizing yourself and just directing people around.”

Luhan’s translation: wander the store and don’t take things. He must have had some kind of shocked or terrified expression on his face because Jongin stops in mid turn towards the cash register and looks at Luhan.

  “Or.. do you enjoy my company so much that I must linger?”

  “Just go.” Luhan doesn’t mean to snap at Jongin but he seems to take it pretty well and smirks at Luhan playfully before making his way back to the cash register.

Luhan stares back at the disk of ribbon innocently sitting on a shelf full of sketchbooks and art supplies and feels a familiar tension in his head and a heat on the palms of his hands that are now playing with the fabric in his pockets.

Damn, he was so ed.

----

“Bye Amber! I’ll see you later.”

Luhan feels a brief moment of relief when stepping out of Kim’s Krafts followed quickly by a horrible clawing guilt. He picks his way across the mall into the tea shop.

  “Hi Minseok, Kyungsoo..”

  “Hi Luhan! How was work? I was called for as back up or something like that.” Kyungsoo chirps as Luhan plops down in a chair across the table from Minseok.

  “Baekhyun and Tao ditched after a while to chase after some guy that they apparently knew.” Minseok pushes a bobba tea toward Luhan. Luhan shakes his head and pulls out the spool of ribbon and places it on the table glaring at it and all its smiley faces that seem to be leering back at him.

  “Oh dear,” Kyungsoo sighs.

  “Drink your tea,” Minseok instructs.

  “I don’t want it.”

  “Drink it and you are going to Kleptos Anon again.”

  “No. I was given crap advice last time.”

  “I actually talked to Yixing and he wants you to come again. Apparently he knows it was bad advice too.”

  “Luhan I think you should go maybe it would be better this time,” offers Kyungsoo hopefully.

  “Go to Kleptos Anon and I’ll buy you bobba for a week.”

  “Seriously!!? Wait. No.”

  “Luhan…”

  “God damn it. You guys think I’m so easy to entice?”

  “But you are.”

---

Luhan had about a week before the next Klepto Anon meeting. However, after his first day at work, he found that as long as he kept himself busy and didn’t find a specific object to become fixated on, he was fine. He volunteered once to work as a cashier thinking it would be better than prowling the store, but found that he got bored quite quickly and started playing with pens and papers that there lying around.

Other than the ribbon, by Friday the only other thing that he had taken was a tube of green acrylic paint, one of the many unopened tubes of paint ree day by some lady.

Luhan walks into Kleptos Anon on Friday feeling actually quite good about himself before remembering that he was also a bit annoyed with Yixing.

  “Where’s Chanyeol?” Luhan notices the absence of the tall nervous giant.

Yixing looks embarrassed as he takes a seat across from Luhan.

  “Uh, well today’s topic of discussion is, uh don’t really go for the flooding technique. Chanyeol went into a Party City – you know how they have to most random of stuff in there – and he freaked out and had an anxiety attack of some sort. For some reason I’m number one on his speed dial and he called me to talk to a security guard to get him out of the trouble he had kind of gotten himself into.”

  “Are you . . . serious?”

  “Um yeah. I hear you're now working a crafts store, don’t do it. The flooding thing isn’t the most ideal method to handle such a delicate issue like Klepto.”

  “Well," Luhan furrows his brows, "I think I’m fine now though. I haven’t lifted much stuff this week.”

  “But you still did.”

  “Yeah but it’s getting better.”

  “But that doesn’t mean you’re fine.”

Luhan glares across the table at Yixing.

  “You’re stopping me from trying to pursue a normal life. I’m not like Chanyeol.”

  “No I’m cautioning you. Don’t get your hopes too high. That’s good you didn’t steal much this week, but Klepto tendencies tend to be correlated to your emotions and levels of anxiety and may never go away.”

However at some point through the little speech, Luhan has tuned Yixing's words out due to annoyance.

  “Alright.. any other helpful advice to share this week?”

  “Just remember that.”

----