The next seven hours see Jongdae walking in and out of the entertainment building with various items to show his friend, even changing his outfit three times after discovering an expensive clothing shop just down the road, and Baekhyun's pretty certain that his credit card balance has gone through the roof.

"What do you think?" Jongdae asks, showing off his new outfit that makes him look like he just stepped out of a Tumblr photo. Baekhyun doesn't bother to look up from his tablet (which has less than 30% battery life at this time), and instead holds up his fist, thumb pointing down to the ground.

"You're not even looking," Jongdae pouts, hoping to capture Baekhyun's full attention, but to no avail. He turns to the female next to the latter, and leans on the wall to stop himself from falling over. "Does this look alright?"

The female looks up and scans Jongdae up and down. "In full honesty, you look gay."

Baekhyun hides his laugh, hi-fiving the female before finally looking up at the younger male. "You are right. He does look gay."

"Sometimes I wonder how I'm friends with you, Bacon."

"You love me. That's how."

"Oh, so he's accentuating his ual orientation with that outfit," the female comments, making Baekhyun break out into laughter again. "Now I get it."

Jongdae huffs, storming out of the room as dramatically as he can without knocking anything over. The other two laugh at him as they watch him make his way to the coffee shop across the road through the glass windows, and Baekhyun snaps back into reality, remembering that his friend still has his credit card.

"That bastard's paying the bill for that credit card," he says. "Especially since he just wasted about 500,000 won on an outfit that 'accentuates his ual orientation'."

Kyungsoo wonders whether or not people are there just to meet them or for the actual job. The majority of those that had come in and out of the interview room had either been starstruck to the point where they couldn't even answer some of Jongin's simplest of questions, or talked on and on about how they would do anything for him (and they meant anything).

Applicant number 277 isn't an exception, and Kyungsoo finds himself wanting to drown away his boredom with the vodka that Joonmyun hides in his wardrobe, even though he doesn't drink.

"Thank you for coming today-" Jongin begins, but is cut off by the applicant herself.

"Minjung. Jeon Minjung."

"Thank you for coming today Minjung. Jeon Minjung," Jongin says, and Kyungsoo hides a small laugh as the applicant's face turns slightly sour at the idol's words.

Jongin escorts her out of the room, closing the door and prepares for their next applicant by putting the woman's application folder into a cubby hole amongst many others.

Kyungsoo notices that the woman has left behind a small piece of paper, and he picks it up and reads its contents. Realising that 'Minjung. Jeon Minjung' has left behind her phone number in hopes that one of the two males will call her for a reason other than to tell her if she got the job or not, Kyungsoo crumples the paper into a ball and throws it in the small bin next to the door, just missing Jongin as he walks back to the couch.

"Another one?" Jongin asks, and Kyungsoo sighs, with a small glimpse of hope left in his heart that he'll find somebody this round that could fill the void personal assistant position in his career.

"Should I call for the next one, or do you want to do something beforehand?"

Kyungsoo shakes his head, signalling for Jongin to call the receptionist for the next applicant to be brought forward. The former checks his phone as he waits, resisting the urge to play a game to take his mind off of the task at hand.

"Number 278. You're up."

The receptionist's words are finally ones that Baekhyun wants to hear, and he bids his newly-found female friend, Im Kyunghee (which he has grown a liking to because just like him, she picks on Jongdae whenever he comes back with something new), once he's gathered his things.

The receptionist greets him with a slightly-genuine smile and leads him to the interview room on the other side of the ground floor. She knocks on the door, with the two being met with a surprisingly-still-optimistic Jongin, whom takes Baekhyun's folder from him once he enters the room and the door shuts behind him.

Kyungsoo looks up and meets Baekhyun's eyes, giving him a small smile like he had with all the other applicants. Baekhyun takes a seat on the couch opposite the idols and looks down at the coffee table in front of him until Jongin begins talking, forcing him to look up at them in pure politeness.

Kyungsoo watches as Baekhyun answers Jongin's questions, noticing as the interviewee begins opening up as time passes. He looks over his physical appearance, appreciating that he wasn't dressed as formally as the others that have come and gone over the past few hours, but still put some effort into his current attire.

Baekhyun notices Kyungsoo staring at him from the corner of his eye, but doesn't think anything of it as Jongin writes his answers on the clipboard in his hands. Kyungsoo continues to observe Baekhyun, noticing how he became more relaxed as more questions were asked. He doesn't know why he is intrigued by the interviewee (maybe it's because he isn't making a big deal of the situation, Kyungsoo wonders), but finally snaps out of his small trance when Jongin asks the one question that he loves hearing the answer to.

"If Kyungsoo was stuck inside his car as fans surround it, what would you do to clear a path?"

"Easy. Tell them that Kyungsoo's actually with Exo. Not only do you get your idol, but you get four others."

Kyungsoo doesn't know why the words, "They'll kill Sehun for sure," come out of his mouth at that moment amongst stiffled laughter, but it happens anyway. The reaction from the teen idol causes Baekhyun to hold back a smile of joy, knowing that this could be a step closer to getting the job Jongdae 'so desperately wants him to get'  (and Baekhyun hopes he does,  as it gives him a chance to get away from the clumsy coffee lover for a good amount of hours a day).

"Did Bacon finally get called in?"

Kyunghee looks up from her phone to Jongdae, who now sports a new pair of sunglasses that she estimates are worth a good two hundred dollars.

"He's been in there for about ten minutes now," Kyunghee replies. "A lot longer than a lot of other applicants."

Just as she finishes her sentence, the receptionist calls for applicant number 279, and the two see Baekhyun walk towards them with his lips forming a small smirk on his face.

"I take it that the interview went well?" Jongdae asks. "Did it, Bacon? Did it?"

"Let's just say that I managed to make him laugh, and if that's not good news, then I don't want to know what good news is."

Kyunghee stands up, pushing against the wall to regain feeling in her numb legs. "So I guess that I don't need to try out anymore. But I don't mind buying you guys an early dinner to celebrate a possible job."

Jongdae stops Baekhyun before he can agree to the female's offer. "Don't worry, Kyunghee-ssi. Dinner's on me."

He walks out of the place, taking out his friend's credit card once again and turning it around between his fingers. Baekhyun at that moment doesn't care about the fact that his credit card bill is going to be the longest it ever will be, and instead follows Jongdae with Kyunghee by his side and backpack sloppily held by his shoulders.

And for some odd reason, despite the growing darkness in the sky and the lack of sleep, Baekhyun feels as if his day just got a whole lot brighter.

A/N: Okay, so it's been almost a month since I updated this (I'm honestly sorry for that) but this chapter's been in the works for a while and I finally got around to finishing it. I honestly did not know what to write for the interview bit, so various brain dumps created it. I also hope that I don't offend anybody with the conversation at the beginning (the one about Jongdae looking 'gay'), but it was the only way I could make that random scene make sense. If it is not what people expected, I'm sorry. Truly.