She took his word.

In retrospect, the Rose Vine Bakery was indeed in need of extra hands. A half-formed idea was always partially welcomed, so it took less than she expected to convince her parents to accept a new helper into their employ. The sign was easy to make, the criteria brief and palatable. She found herself standing on her tiptoes on Monday morning, smoothing its creases on the shop window.

Kyungsoo came by that evening looking more than just a little smug, though he made up for it with an offering: a flask of chocolate, a special recipe of his own make, to pass by an evening’s worth of homework. They found themselves trailing cookie crumbs over history texts, scattering marshmallows over half-finished essays.

Wednesday sent flower petals swooping in loops across the shop window and ushered a new patron to their doorstep.

His coat was grey and warm, collar turned up and stiff against his caramel neck. His hair was choppy, brushing against long lashes and secretive, depthless eyes. The atrocious platinum hair was no more; he wore it the same length, the same style, but now, it had the richness of molten gold.

“Oh,” was the first word that passed his lips. The tugs at the corners were subtle. “Hello.”

 “Hi,” she responded with raised brows, lowering the tin tray so she could get a better look at his face. “It’s you.”

The boy at the park shrugged with barely concealed amusement. There was a bit of light dancing in his eyes, a flutter of gold. “I wondered why the cake was so delicious,” he teased.

She blushed, embarrassed, and set down the bun-laden tray. “That cake was one of a kind, you know,” she joked. “So if you’re looking for more, I’m afraid you’re out of luck.”

“It’s a shame. That was the best chocolate cake I’ve ever tasted.” The accompanying smile to the statement was playful, dangerously disarming.

She obliged him with a returning, shy tug at the corners of her lips.

He crossed the room slowly, deliberately, running his eyes across corners and crevices. He scanned the breads and buns and cakes, but looked particularly taken by the cupcake tower Gayoon had painstakingly arranged into a branching tree.

“Did you do that?”

“Yes.” She sighed at the memory. “Took me hours. Especially because I had to get something to stand on just to reach the top.”

His smile was a curving crescent against his cheeks, a fissure of flashing white that left her a bit shaky. “Then leave it to me.”

“Excuse me?”

He pointed a thumb at the sign pasted across the window. “You’re looking for help, right? Right now, I’m your latest applicant.”

She blinked at him, speechless, but let loose a laugh to dispense the tension. She reached under the counter and slapped a form onto the marble, rolling a pen at his direction. There were ticks on the form for the details he needed complete. “You’re the first, actually.”

He sauntered nearer. Again, she felt overwhelmed by his height. He had an easy posture, languid and lithe, skin like honey and muscles like water. He towered easily over her on the other side of the counter. His eyes were dancing shadows beneath his bangs when he bent to pick up the pen, and the brief eye contact they shared revealed an unfathomable expression beneath his amused complaisance.

“‘Kim Jongin’,” she read. His name was musical to pronounce. “Do you know how to bake?”

He shrugged. “If you count hauling burnt cakes and cookies out of the oven when my sister conveniently forgets about them during her hour-long showers then yes, I do.” His laughing eyes met hers. “Don’t worry. I’m a fast learner.”

She tapped her nails on the counter thoughtfully, contemplating his employment. “Well, I suppose you’ll be useful where the inventory is concerned, and those sacks of flour are quite heavy…”

“So I’m signing away my life as a pack mule. How lovely.” His lips quirked, but the of his pen were unfaltering as he dragged the ink into the looping curves of his signature. When he was done, he pushed a folder into her hands. “My resume.”

“You’ve come prepared.”

“I’ve worked before.”

She tucked the form and resume into the small basket her mother kept beneath the counter. “Well, Kim Jongin, expect us to keep in touch.”

He hummed, and then drifted towards the far edge of the table. Her cheeks flamed slightly when she realised that he was the flowers in the vase.

“You kept this.”

“I didn’t see a reason not to.”

He brushed a petal with utmost gentleness. “You made them prettier than they were.”

She shrugged, a little embarrassed. “Like I said: nothing a little water couldn’t fix. And besides, they were already pretty.”

He smiled a gentle smile. “I don’t know your name yet.”

“It’s Gayoon. Seo Gayoon.”

“Thank you, Gayoon-ah.”

His sudden lapse into informality caught her by surprise.

“You can just call me Jongin, or what my friends call me, Kkamjong.” He stuck out his hand. “Cause we’re friends now, right?”

She stared at it, smiled softly, and took his hand. “Sure. This isn’t official but welcome to Rose Vine Bakery, Jongin.”

It took little convincing, getting her parents to hire Jongin. His resume itself was convincing, boasting of many experiences. For a boy at the fringes of his high school years, Jongin had worked a lot, juggling shifts and part times at odd hours. She found it a bit odd, because nothing in his dressing bespoke of desperate poverty: his clothes and shoes were of fine material and appropriate brands. Although not entirely cocky, he carried himself with aplomb, a touch of recklessness in that stretching smile of his.

“He would make a great attraction!” her mother had exclaimed, and Gayoon, feeling the world spin and burn, smacked her forehead against the wood of her desk.

He arrived to work to a critical Kyungsoo.

Kyungsoo was much slighter than he, delicate, if Gayoon were to be polite. He had bones as light as a bird’s and arms and legs of rods and sticks, but perhaps it was the eyes that made Jongin stop short halfway across the threshold and back away. It was a good half a minute of uncomfortable scrutinising on Kyungsoo’s part and cringing on Jongin’s before Gayoon herself swept into the room and dumped an apron over Kyungsoo’s head, affectively shielding Jongin from those petrifying eyes.

“Hey, Jongin,” she greeted him with a bright smile. She reached up and loosened her ponytail, then left it to swish against the back of her neck.

“He’ll do,” Kyungsoo whispered to her, tearing the apron off his eyes and smiling an uncomfortably bright smile at Jongin. “Good luck on your first day.”

Jongin looked torn between accepting the wish and scrunching his brows over Kyungsoo’s odd behaviour. In the end, he accepted graciously. His eyes flickered towards Gayoon, pleading for guidance.

“You can start by wrapping the loaves we’ve just gotten out of the oven ad arranging them over those shelves,” Kyungsoo said serenely, gesturing airily at the shelves before ducking back into the kitchen.

“Um…”

“Excuse him,” Gayoon said. There was a faint ache on her temples already for Kyungsoo’s rather baffling treatment of their newest colleague. “He is a weirdo. It’s an untreatable condition, I’m afraid.”

“Is he the manager?” Jongin asked hesitantly.

Gayoon let out a bark of a laugh. “He isn’t even an official employee. No worries, if there’s anything you just report to me.”

Jongin’s shoulders relaxed. He rocked a bit on his toes; a strangely childish movement that made her smile.

“So, um, I just begin?” he asked, hesitant and lost.

She shook herself out of her reverie, prayed Jongin didn’t think much of her odd smile, and ducked under the counter. She emerged with a shirt and threw it at him. His arms shot up, tan lines and solid muscle catching the limp piece of fabric easily in mid-air.

“You get changed to that and I’ll teach you how to wrap the loaves. That’s all you’ll be doing for the day. In the meantime, I’ll teach you how to use the register should a situation call for it, and maybe give you a rundown on how things work around here.”

Jongin nodded, all eager eyes. “Where do I change?”

She pointed to the kitchen. “There’s a room at the back.”

He balked, if only a little. “Would he mind? I mean...” he laughed nervously, “it’s his domain and all.”

Gayoon rolled her eyes. “It’s my family’s bakery so technically, this whole place is my domain, and I say you go change at the back.”

Jongin cocked his head and started towards the door. When he came to her, he stopped, smiled a brilliant smile that could have melted half of the women in Seoul, and thanked her.

It was only when the door closed behind him that she realised she’d stood there gawking at him.

Kyungsoo left early that day, and no matter how much she wanted to, she couldn’t lie and say that she wasn’t glad.

True to his claim, Jongin was a fast learner; he grasped the method of loaf-wrapping quite easily and in fifteen minutes, managed to produce the most perfectly wrapped loaves she’d ever seen. There was a window between the kitchen and the bakery with glass that could slide, through which they talked. Suddenly, minding the register wasn’t as lonely as it had once been.

“I go to the local performing arts school,” Jongin said. There was sweat on his forehead and an ocean of wrapping paper around him. A tray of freshly baked loaves sat before him, gold and fluffy and mouth-watering –courtesy of Kyungsoo’s magic hands.

She paused in fiddling with one of the spare plastic. It scrunched and bunched in her hands, like lining on a bouquet. There was awe in her eyes when she looked at him, and laughter in his as he looped a ribbon onto the bunched up plastic in his hands.

“Can you sing?” she asked.

He chuckled, shoulders shaking, fingers working deftly as he talked. “I’m not much of a singer. I’m a dancer.” Something of twinkle danced into his eyes. “What? You’re into singers?”

She laughed and turned her head slightly, hoping that Jongin couldn’t see her blush.

“He’s a singer, isn’t he?” Jongin asked knowingly.

“Um yeah. Sort of.” She shrugged. “He’s just an amateur I guess, but he has a lovely voice.”

Jongin looked up, movements lapsing into a stop. She realised that the tone she’d used in mentioning Baekhyun was dreamy and wistful. She smiled, shrugged to show that it wasn’t a big deal, and poked him lightly with the plastic to get him back to work.

“What’s her name, your girl?” she asked, veering the topic away from Baekhyun.

“Yeonjoo,” he said, hands settling into their previous pace. “She’s a dancer too, a ballerina. You can say I had had a crush on her ever since I saw her stretching on the barre, but that was a long time ago.”

“You took ballet too?”

“Back then,” he said, adding another loaf to the pile, “but I’ve switched to modern dance. Grand jetes and pliés are nice and all, but I think I’m more suited for popping.”

“That explains it,” she muttered softly to herself.

Jongin paused again, eyeing her curiously. “Explains what?”

“Well,” she laughed nervously, slightly embarrassed he heard. “You walk differently. For a boy, you’re very graceful.”

“Does that give me positive points or negative ones?”

“Positive,” she answered truthfully.

“Then that’s one good ballet has done to my life.”

“Two good things,” she corrected. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have met your girlfriend.”

“Ex-girlfriend,” he said with a wince, although he didn’t sound hurt. “We’re done as ever.”

“Sorry,” she cringed. “I didn’t mean that.”

Jongin leaned forwards, resting his hands over the counter where he worked. The space between them wasn’t large, and as he leaned closer towards the window, his eyes easily caught and held hers.

“Look, it’s over. That day when we met, I learned to accept that. So don’t apologise because it’s not your fault. Everything between me and her should never be in your conscience.” His lips slipped into a smile. “You’re the girl who took my flowers when no one would, so I owe it to you to be grateful.”

“In exchange for cake,” she reminded him.

“The best cake I’ve ever had.” He grinned, and then pulled back.

“Are you trying to kiss up to the bosses’ daughter?” she eyed him critically. “First day and you already have an eye out for a raise? I should have known better.” She shook her head at him in mock disappointment.

He cleared his throat and said, very solemnly, “Actually, I my eye is not so much for the raise; it’s far less interesting than the daughter.”

The magazine she threw at him was done with little to almost no contrition.

“It’s a joke!” Jongin said, backing away with a laugh. He looked so joyful that she had to laugh too.