It was a late afternoon when Kyungsoo's lessons were over and he was faced with the daily challenge of the 72 steps to his front door. He was probably the only idiot left in this city without an elevator in the house. Oh well, besides Chen who was equally poor as him, which was obviously the reason they were stuck in that rundown apartment. At least it made up for the (amazing) lack of quality in size.
'Treat it as the only workout your lazy is gonna get in the next three years.', one of his best friends had advised lovingly as ever.
Kyungsoo internally shrugged as he took another step.
Well, he was right about that.
When he finally reached the door and kicked off his shoes, he immediately went to Chen's room, where his friend was sitting in his usual spot - on the floor, sitting on a cushion with headphones on. He lifted said ones to greet Kyungsoo.
Who just breathed heavily in response.
"You... remember the first time... We got here? When we said... 'Maybe we'll get used to the stairs'? Yeah well... NO. We'll NEVER... Get used to them."
"Hello to you, too, can I offer you a glass of water and a hobbit?"
Kyungsoo blinked.
"What?"
"...A TOWEL." he repeated with annoyance more than evident in his voice as he began to rapidly hack onto his keyboard.
"Ooookay." Kyungsoo just said, shrugged off his stuff and re-placed his shoes in a neat fashion(he wasn't that messy after all).
With a glass of water he found himself right in time for Chen to finish his message.
He turned towards him with an exhausted look on his face.
"There's this one guy in the voice chat and he's been listening to 'They're taking the hobbits to Isengard'. THE TEN HOUR VERSION. God, I'm going crazy..."
Kyungsoo nodded in mild pity.
"When did he switch it on?"
Chen threw a look to his clock before answering with a strained smile.
"I don't know, roughly about 6 hours 47 minutes and... 30 seconds? Not that I'm counting."
"Is your eyebrow twitching slightly, or-"
"6 hours, 47 minutes and 34 seconds-"
"Okay, okay, I get it!" he said, raising his hands in surrender... And splashing water on himself in the progress.
"You're so stupid."
"Thanks man."
"You're welcome."
"And here I was on the quest of saving you from your misery. Baek called, wanna meet up at the coffee shop?"
"Hell yes."
In a split-second Chen had thrown his headphones on the table and excused himself online.
Another 30 seconds later he was standing in the doorway, impatiently waiting for his friend to put on a dry shirt.
"Hurry uuup~!"
Kyungsoo looked at him unimpressed while he zipped up his hoodie, raspily asking:
"What did you say?" imitating the annoying sketch he had been tortured into listening.
Chen almost threw a shoe at him.

"Wow, so Kyungsoo finally managed to find himself a boy even though he never leaves the house? DAMN, what are we doing wrong, ChenChen? On a second thought, you don't leave the house either, nevermind."
"Shut up, Baek." they simultaneously answered and Jongdae flung a cookie wrapping paper at said brunette who didn't even flinch as it poorly tumbled down to land in his lap.
"For your information I did not find myself a boy." Kyungsoo answered with a withering glare.
"You make me sound like a little kid finding a playmate. Chanyeol is not a boy, he's a MAN. And a fine one, excuse your poor taste!"
Baekhyun still didn't look up from his lap but his eyebrows visibly scrunched together in annoyance.
"And what do you mean by that?"
Kyungsoo pretended to think as he played with the coffee shop's menu.
"Hm... Maybe the fact you prefer take-out food over home-made one or that your Super Junior bias is Donghae or... that you're currently knitting in public with wool so freakishly neon that I wish I had taken my sunglasses along with me!"
Baekhyun gasped in exasperation and Jongdae flinched at his flailing hands that almost caused his ridiculously huge knitting needle to poke out his eye.
"How dare you! How dare you question my wonderful fishy-Hae!"
"We both know he's more about visual aspects than talent."
Baekhyun's features turned blank and Jongdae carefully nudged his roommate's shoulder.
"Dude, I wouldn't mess with him, these things seem kinda dangerous."
"For your information 'these things' are 13.5 inch long Tunisian knitting needles. With one very sharp end each, but I can also make use of the blunt one." Baekhyun said in a matter-of-fact-voice. The unsettling thing about this was that he wasn't kidding in the least.
Yeah, sure. Who knows whether you didn't already.
Shuddering at the thought Kyungsoo was about to give another sharp reply about how a 4-inch circular knitting needle would be more than enough to strangle the life out of him when Jongdae suddenly pretended to sniffle until he broke out in full-blown wailing.
"Dad, you're so mean to mom...! Why do you talk bad about Donghae when mommy always screams his name with so much love??"
If the whole coffee shop had not been observing him, now they were.
A distressed waitress was already texting her boss about three crazed teenagers playing some possibly-sick game. The mention of knitting was definitely helping.
(Though it later turned out that her autocorrect had messed it up to spell 'knotting'. Her boss seemed weirdly flustered about it afterwards.)
"W-what are you talking about Jongdae!" Kyungsoo spluttered with a red face, eyeing the other customers.
At this, Baekhyun finally lowered the needles and leaned forward, effectively hiding the unsettlingly bright garment-in-the-making and grasped for his hands.
"Soo. Hub. I think it's time for me to tell you the truth." he earnestly started and Jongdae cried a little more dramatically to conceal the fact that he snatched away Baekhyun's milkshake.
"I've been meaning to tell you. But... I'm cheating on you. With HaeHae. He's just so handsome, playful, talented, charming... Has very nice body rolls, a voice to die for... He's everything you'll never be. Sorry not sorry."
Just as the waitress was about to intervene, Kyungsoo stood up to loudly slam his hands onto the table, causing her to flinch and reconsider.
"You take that back!"
Baekhyun shot up as well, pushing his mysterious mess of wool and needles into the waitress' hands to hold onto it without even sparing her a glance as he glared at his offending husband.
"Which part exactly? Cause I don't see any false statement."
"The voice one!"
In between slurping the milkshake eagerly, Jongdae hooted in delight.
"Yeeeay, let's settle it the traditional way, just the three of us!"
Kyungsoo narrowed his eyes.
"Gladly. I'll take you on BLINDLY!"
"Oh really? We'll see whether it won't be YOU dragging the whole thing down as usual, eh?"
By now the whole staff was looking positively horrified at whatever images they were battling with.
Snatching their bags they both made for the exit while still bickering away at how much of a y mom Baekhyun would be.
Jongdae took his sweet time wiping excess milk from his mouth and righting his clothes before he took Baekhyun's pitiful looking ball of wool and brightly smiled at the unsettled woman.
"The milkshake's pretty good! We'll be sure to come again and recommend it to all our friends!"

It had been at the end of Kyungsoo's first semester that they had met Baekhyun.
During an annual fashion show where the upper years were bustling around to present their completed works, Kyungsoo was slightly at a loss since he hardly knew anyone and the first semesters only presented one outfit for which he had already organized a model and everything was set. Still, he was nervous as hell and when he found an unoccupied corner(which is to say, a bench full of daily clothes, shoes and discarded props) and Baekhyun allowed him to squish onto the bench beside him with a wry smile, Kyungsoo had been eerily quiet.
Not that this caused complications since Baekhyun was the exact opposite, chattering like crazy when nervous. And the doe-eyed boy was more than content letting Baekhyun's rambles wash over him, thankful for the distraction.
Turned out that Baekhyun was one semester ahead of him and studied at a slightly more prestigious fashion-school in Seoul.
By the time Jongdae sneaked backstage after the show, he found Kyungsoo and Baekhyun still talking an the three decided to take the conversation to a nearby fast food restaurant.
Which was how their friendship was born.
And even though Kyungsoo and Baekhyun turned out to be vastly different and spent most of their time arguing and bickering over every little thing as soon as Kyungsoo had warmed up to him, Baekhyun quickly became a permanent addition to the duo.
Sometimes Kyungsoo wondered why someone as boisterous, outgoing and popular like Baekhyun would choose nerds like them to hang out with - but on more than one occasion did it occur to him that Baekhyun in fact didn't have that many friends.
Which puzzled him a little, but he respected him nonetheless.

"...And that's why you don't have any friends!"
Baekhyun merely flipped him off while he continued to enthusiastically shout SNSD's 'Gee' into the microphone.
Jongdae gleefully sang along as he swayed to the rhythm.
Moodily Kyungsoo watched Baekhyun hitting all the right notes - of course he would!
It's not even fair, he probably sang this song every morning in front of his bathroom mirror. Or in the shower. In the elevator. Really, picturing Baekhyun going crazy over SNSD songs in public was almost too easy. He'd make for a fantastic musical actor.
So it came to no one's surprise that he scored 9.400 points out of 10.000, earning himself not only a virtual, but also Jongdae's applause. Traitor.
"Just you laugh - that was mere luck! Next one's gonna be in blind mode!" Kyungsoo said while snatching away the second microphone from Jongdae.

The karaoke bar they frequented was still somewhat of an underdog in the city. There, they used a western karaoke system that worked differently. Unlike most karaoke bars you could immediately see how well you hit the notes on screen. Also it had a bunch of playing modes where the contestants faced off each other in a number of rounds. There was the classic round, which Baekhyun just absolved, yes. But also the blind round where the notes you had to hit were turned off and you could merely guess by the screen's comments how good you were faring.
Also most of the time the system chose the songs out of their selection folder(in which Jongdae always managed to sneak in ludicrous songs like "Put A Banana In Your Ear" that caused all of them to fail miserably).
It seems like Lady Luck was on Kyungsoo's side on this one and he loudly shouted a winning "YES!!", while Baekhyun's face scrunched up.
Jongdae ignored their reactions and put on the song before Baekhyun could claim to use one of his wildcards on this and the jazzy sound of "Almost There" from the Disney movie Princess and the Frog filled the booth.
Of course a jazzy and melodic song would fit Kyungsoo's warm and velvety voice perfectly. Besides, who didn't like Disney movies.
And of course Baekhyun was a very sore loser so he gave his all to keep up, though Jongdae reading the comments out loud was not actually a big help.
"Pitiful! Off Track! O.K.! Pitiful!"
Deep in concentration Baekhyun blindly flailed his arm in hopes of hitting him, but Jongdae kept leaning out of his range with a cackle.
Just when they were in the midst of the song the door behind their sofa opened and a staff member entered.
"Hey guys, I brought your snacks-"
...And got knocked over by Baekhyun, whoms hands had finally met a target and sent the silver tablet with the snacks down to the floor.
"Oh damn, sorry about that!" Jongdae hurried to say as he first tried to aid him in picking the stuff up while awkwardly leaning over the back of the sofa just to find his arms too short. By the time he had jumped next to him, his help was almost unnecessary as everything was carelessly shoved back to the tablet already.
"Ah, I'm sorry guys, I'll get you new ones-"
They were interrupted by Baekhyun urgently hitting the back of the couch to silence them.
Jongdae smiled apologetically, put a finger to his lips and they both looked at the screen where the two competing guys were still going at it undeterred with passion(on Kyungsoo's end) and fiery desperation (at Baekhyun's).
"They're pretty good." the guy whispered to Jongdae who nodded solemnly.
"He's really into this song, claims it has personal value. Besides, Baek here at English."
Nodding in understanding he looked at the screen when they reached the final. And like any proper Disney song it ended in a ridiculously long high note.
High notes weren't exactly Kyungsoo's forte but his voice applied to the song's atmosphere beautifully and even though Baekhyun fared not too bad on the last one, Kyungsoo still won by far with a total of 8400 to 4500, pumping his fist in the air with vigor.
"YESS!! Take that! No one beats me in Disney songs!"
"Say that again when we ever get a tangled song!"
"Oh pleeease, I could recite those in my sleep-"
"So I'll just go get some new snacks then. Awesome singing, by the way."

They both turned around, startled at the foreign voice. That was not so foreign to Kyungsoo after all.
His voice died in the middle of the sentence as he stared into the face of Park Chanyeol with wide eyes while the faint echoes of princess Tiana's voice were resounding in his head.

Getting closer and closer every day – and I am al~most there...

Wah, it feels really weird to update that often!
But I wanna try to update at least once a week - I'll do my best~ :D
You know the feeling of having a song stuck in your head all day long? Where I come from we have a word for this - it's literally an 'earworm', picturing the song to crawl in your ear and stay there.
So here's the link to poor ChenChen's horrible 'earworm':
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9Uz1icjwrM

The vocal line's gonna have Karaoke evenings quite frequently and since I think the Asian way of karaoke is... Kinda awkward and boring(maybe that's just me?) I let them play the way me and my friends do - UltraStar deluxe aaall the way!
The title's a random mashup of all the songs that appeared throughout this; I need to admit that WE had "Put A Banana In Your Ear" in our karaoke library. Which I may or may not have to take responsibility for.

Mini Fashion Dictionary Entry 2:
- Jylle Navarro -
If you're wondering what the heck Baekhyun's up to... you can look up Jylle Navarro, an English designer who specializes in alternative knitware.

Love you all
Sugar-and-Salt c:

P.S.: YES, it's totally possible to have wool/fabric so neon you need sunglasses to work with it.