If anyone asked, Oh Sehun would say that he wasn't exactly sure when Just Sweet changed from a bubble tea shop into the setting for a day drama, but he was tired of it.

He would not say that he secretly found Minseok's obsession with Jongdae kind of adorable or that he was at all invested in getting the unlikely couple together someday soon. (Because he didn't and he wasn't. For one thing, adorable was an adjective Sehun reserved solely for his BTG. For another, he was not cut out to be a matchmaker—not in this life or any other—and the fate of other peoples' romantic happiness had nothing to do with him. Nothing at all.)

Still, with Suho's understandable resignation following his unfortunate allergy incident a few days earlier, Sehun found himself more involved in Minseok and Jongdae's situation than he'd ever expected—or honestly wanted—to be.

"It's like they think I'm a freaking relationship counselor or something!" Sehun complained to his boyfriend as Luhan did school work and the younger boy, who was technically on shift, pretended to wipe down the table.

"Aren't you?" Luhan teased sweetly, pecking a quick kiss of insincere apology to his boyfriend's cheek after Sehun squawked in annoyance.

"Bully," Sehun whined, aegyo accidental but effective nonetheless. He caught Luhan's gaze as it shifted over his shoulder and into a glare, and Sehun turned around to find Yifan hovering awkwardly a few meters away. The student manager coughed like he was hinting at something and though Sehun knew Luhan would probably have just ignored Yifan, Sehun didn't really have the energy. (He got that from Jongin, probably. Or maybe it was the other way around? Either way, Kyungsoo was always complaining about his boyfriend's lazy tendencies, but Sehun and his best friend had been that way since childhood. No amount of pestering from Mama Do was going to change that.)

With a sigh and a lingering brush of his palm across Luhan's smaller shoulders, Sehun picked up his rag and returned forlornly to his spot behind the counter. His arrival relieved Jongdae of the cashier position, and just in time too because not a minute passed after Jongdae disappeared into the back for his break before Minseok was barreling through Just Sweet's doors with two surprising companions in tow.

"Suho hyung! And Lay-ssi!" Sehun greeted after exchanging silent "Hello" with a sad-looking Minseok. Truthfully Sehun was a little surprised to see the three together.

"We're flatmates, actually. Me and Lay," Minseok shared in response to Sehun's unspoken curiosity.

"I was here to meet Min for a quick study break when Junnie nearly died," Lay added while Sehun nodded in understanding and Suho blushed when Lay smiled winningly at him. (Sehun didn't know who this Junnie was, but the only near-death experience in Just Sweet's recent history was Suho's, so Sehun had no problem making an educated guess. That and Lay's dimples were pretty difficult to argue with, even for someone as admittedly sullen as Sehun.)

"And now we're here for some bubble tea!" Suho concluded, though he rapidly amended his statement to "Milk tea! No tapioca involved!" when Sehun shot him a look. Jongdae chose that moment to emerge from the back room with his apron sloppily tied around his waist and his name tag pinned shamelessly askew.

Sehun's coworker grumbled incoherently when he recognized the customers standing before the register, and he rubbed at his eyes with a frown, clearly exhausted and possibly still waking up from a stolen nap. "Oh," he said, voice level and deceptively disinterested. "It's you."

It should have been strange for Sehun to see the normally mischievous and playful Jongdae acting so cold, but sadly such behavior had recently become pretty standard for the other boy.

(Sehun had it on good authority—and by that he meant Jongin, who'd heard the story from Kyungsoo, obviously—that Jongdae and Minseok had had some sort of a fight. Apparently Jongdae had finally given an answer to Minseok's confession—and a positive one, too—but then he'd asked Minseok to wait until Jongdae felt ready for a relationship. Minseok had been understandably livid, had yelled something along the lines of "I've been waiting for you for years, you selfish bastard!", and had stormed out of the shop in a huff.

Chanyeol and Baekhyun backed up the story when Sehun grilled them about the details over his next shift, and Sehun found himself sad that he had missed it.)

Ignoring Jongdae's presence completely, Minseok finally placed his order of a plain milk tea with bubbles, while Suho got a honeydew milk tea with rainbow pudding—"Like your boyfriend's rainbow hair!" he told Sehun with an excited smile. Lay ordered nothing at all but still insisted on paying, and Sehun processed the payment while Jongdae moped behind him. Jongdae stood with back turned away from Minseok and the others even though both Just Sweet employees, and possibly even Suho, knew that Jongdae couldn't have made the ordered drinks if his life depended on it. (He really was that hopeless and it really did drive Sehun insane.)

The three customers went to find themselves a table, and Minseok waved over at Baekhyun and Chanyeol where the couple was hunched together and whispering suspiciously. Both boys took a moment to wave back before returning to their deeply important conversation, and Sehun shot Luhan a desperate look accompanied by a long suffering sigh. The BTG just laughed and blew his boyfriend a kiss before returning his attention to his textbooks.

And Jongdae was indeed useless as Sehun moved around the working space to make the drinks. He was even worse today, though, because in the time it had taken Minseok and the other two to order, Yifan's pretty girlfriend had arrived and now Minseok was openly flirting with the girl right in front of Jongdae's face.

"The nerve," Sehun thought he heard Jongdae complain under his breath. (And was that a clenched fist Sehun saw barely hidden beneath the skirt of Jongdae's uniform apron?)

Honestly, part of Sehun wanted to agree with Jongdae because, really, what kind of guy gets a return confession from his lifetime crush and then turns around to flirt with someone else? A different part of Sehun—the part that had to clean up all of Jongdae's messes and secretly relished the jealous anguish Yifan would likely feel when he emerged from his office to find his girlfriend flirting with another guy—completely disagreed: if Minseok wanted to flirt with someone in an obvious ploy to make Jongdae jealous, Sehun certainly wasn't going to get involved. And so he didn't, but Luhan did.

"I can't believe you!" Luhan hissed, stomping toward Minseok and Yifan's girlfriend with short, angry steps that got him across the shop floor much faster than expected for someone with legs so little. (Sehun knew from experience that Luhan's legs could be pretty long when necessary—like when they were kissing against the closed door of Luhan's dorm and the BTG had the urge to wrap himself around Sehun's body for better balance and access—but it was still pretty impressive how speedy Luhan could charge when mad enough.) "You!" He turned first to Yifan's girlfriend, pointing an accusatory finger into her upper arm. "My poor baby cousin is helplessly into your boyfriend and I will not have you emotionally damaging someone that my Taozi has feelings for. Yifan deserves whatever he gets in my opinion, but Tao doesn't deserve to have his heart broken by having the person he likes get his own heart broken. So stop it."

Yifan's girlfriend was left gaping at the small Chinese boy as Luhan turned all of his ire onto Minseok. Sehun's boyfriend apparently still had a lot of pent-up feelings and it was truly remarkable watching Luhan tear into Minseok.

"Jongdae said he likes you, you pabo! So what if he doesn't think he's ready for a relationship yet? Count your blessings! At least you don't have to wait in limbo anymore. Now you know for sure and you can win him over with your charms but trying to make him jealous is not the right way to do it." Luhan deflated slowly as Minseok's pout deepened and Yifan's girlfriend continued to watch silently, clearly in shock.

With one last glare at both parties, Luhan commanded "Fix this," before flouncing to Sehun's side and burying his face into his boyfriend's shoulder with a pronounced sigh. Baekhyun and Chanyeol could be heard clapping loudly in the background, but Sehun ignored them to kiss the top of Luhan's head—he shouldn't find Luhan stunning when he was angry like that, but it was sort of hard for Sehun not to find everything Luhan did absolutely beautiful—and brush a hand to pet at his boyfriend's hair in steady, soothing .

"You have homework, love," he reminded his boyfriend gently. Luhan groaned into Sehun's collarbone and breathed deeply for a few seconds, but eventually he pulled away. With a quick kiss to Sehun's lips, Luhan returned to his table in silence and resumed studying like he hadn't just caused a hugely dramatic scene. (Sehun was positive Jongin would relish the gossip when he shared it later, and Sehun was actually sort of sad that his best friend hadn't caught Luhan's outburst for himself. For some reason it was kind of satisfying to Sehun that his boyfriend could be just as scary as Jongin's.)

After that, things pretty much returned to normal—or as normal as things in Just Sweet ever seemed to be. Minseok sat hunched over his milk tea for a few minutes; he was sniffling suspiciously and it wasn't long before he fled the shop with his hands over his face and his drink forgotten. Jongdae shot Sehun a pleading look and, after a begrudging nod of permission from his harried coworker, quickly followed Minseok out the door.

"I hope they work it out," Sehun mumbled to himself as he cleared away Minseok's trash and washed the table as quickly as he could. Jongdae's sudden departure meant Sehun was the only regular employee on shift at the moment—Yifan, still holed up in his office and completely oblivious to everything that had just occurred in the shop he was supposed to be managing, didn't count—and Sehun was loath to leave the register unattended for long. Still, by the time he'd finished tidying up around Just Sweet, there was already a small line formed by customers waiting to order, and Sehun was surprised to see Yifan's girlfriend first in line.

"Sorry for the delay," he apologized stiffly, hating that his job required him to be polite even when he didn't think the particular customer deserved it. "What can I get you?"

The girl leaned forward, her expression puzzled, and asked "If I order something will you tell me why on earth everyone in this place seems to hate me?"

Sehun wasn't expecting that. "Um," he paused, unsure what to do, but then Yifan came out of his office and Sehun muttered "Sure, I guess. Give me a minute," before resuming his duties and looking appropriately busy.

"Where's Jongdae?" Yifan wanted to know, and Sehun had to resist the urge to roll his eyes as he handed Yifan's girlfriend her change. (It seemed like every employee at Just Sweet other than Sehun—and Luhan, of course—were completely imcompetent. Kyungsoo never came to work, Yifan never left his office, and Jongdae couldn't actually make any of the items on the drink menu. Sehun was honestly surprised that the bubble tea shop was even still open at the rate they were going.)

"Out," Sehun responded curtly while the customer after Yifan's girlfriend took his sweet time deciding what to order. (Seriously, though, why couldn't he have done that while waiting? Sehun hated his job.) "He had a minor emergency."

"Oh." The student manager didn't seem to know what to say to that, so he just nodded briefly, offered a tired smile to his girlfriend, and went back into hiding. Jongdae's sense of timing was apparently impeccable because he returned right after Yifan closed the door to his office behind him. Sehun's coworker was smiling broadly so Sehun assumed something good must have happened in the 15 or so minutes since Jongdae had abandoned him.

"I covered for you with Yifan," Sehun told Jongdae. "Now cover for me."

"But the orders?" Jongdae sounded surprised that someone younger than him had the nerve to boss him around, but even more evident was the instant panic in his voice when it occurred to him that he'd have to actually make the drinks that had been ordered while he was out making up with Minseok.

"You'll be fine," Sehun reassured the older boy, not really believing his words himself but the sight of Yifan's girlfriend waiting expectantly was starting to annoy him and Sehun wanted to deal with that situation as fast as he could, so he left Jongdae standing alone in the work space without a backward glance.

"He looks a little out of his league," the girl pointed out offhandedly as Sehun approached wearing an obvious frown. "And you look a little unhappy to see me," she added, attempting a joke to lighten the mood but not doing so very successfully.

"Your boyfriend didn't look all that happy to see you either," Sehun countered almost maliciously. (The drama was severely exhausting. Sehun wished for the easy days, back when it was just him pining over his BTG.)

To Sehun's surprise, the girl looked instantly annoyed. "Would you all stop saying that? Yifan is not my boyfriend! God."

Huh. That was certainly not what Sehun had been expecting her to say, and if their sudden attention was anything to go by, Luhan, Baekhyun, and Chanyeol seemed just as shocked.

"He's not?" Tao questioned tentatively, his voice sounding hopeful. Sehun had no idea when Luhan's cousin had gotten to Just Sweet, but a glance at his watch revealed that his shift really was almost over—thank God!—and that Luhan and Tao's shared shift was set to start in less than ten minutes.

"Um, no?" The girl's answer came out like a question of it's own, and Sehun couldn't decide if that was because she was unsure or because she couldn't understand how anyone could possibly think she and Yifan were an item. "I have a girlfriend?" She offered, still questioning, though this time Sehun was sure it's because she was simply confused.

"You do?" Tao squeaked in surprise and Sehun rolled his eyes. Of course she did. Of course the drama that had been consuming all of Just Sweet's employees and half of its regular customers for over a month wasn't really drama at all. Of course Yifan was a hopeless idiot who'd been making Tao suffer for ages simply because he didn't know any better. Of course.

"I quit," Sehun declared loudly, tossing the rag in his hand onto the table. He wasn't sure anyone heard him except for Luhan, who snickered and winked again.

"Sure you do," the BTG mouthed at his boyfriend in amusement. "Sure."