The heavy raindrops were pattering down at an alarming rate and Byun Baekhyun was certain that he currently resembled a lost puppy which had been tossed out into the cold but the fury flaming within him – which no amount of rain could extinguish – caused him to march on nonetheless. Passing by his favourite coffee shop, Le Café de l'Esprit, and ignoring the blue-haired boy dazedly staring past him from the other side of the window, Baekhyun made a note to step in there a little later – preferably when the place didn’t have any strange daydreamers in there. Or maybe he just couldn’t trust someone who would dye their hair such an eccentric colour, he thought to himself.

Baekhyun finally arrived at his destination and unceremoniously barged in through the tall office building’s front doors, accidentally slamming them behind himself in the process. The entire office turned to look at the drenched young man standing at the doorway. A clap of thunder abruptly erupted from behind him, causing him to jump up in alarm. Amidst the giggles around him, he strode over to the front desk and slammed the wet magazine he had rolled up in his fist onto the hard surface.

“Welcome to Mystic Magazine!” the teenage boy behind the desk said overenthusiastically. “My name is Kim Jongin, intern. H-How may I help you?”

It was evident to see that Jongin was trying his very best to stifle his laughter but Baekhyun pretended that he didn’t notice and flipped through the magazine. “Do you see this restaurant review here?”

“Two stars,” Jongin read. “This is awesome though. My friend Chanyeol wrote this and he’s really cool and he taught my dogs to do tricks and he cooks for me sometimes and last Christmas, he gave me—”

Baekhyun impatiently poked a finger at the name on the bottom of the page. “Where can I find him?” he interrupted.

“Oh, Chanyeol has an office at Le Café de l'Esprit. It’s this totally fancy place and it just opened up and—”

Baekhyun didn’t let Jongin continue and after a quick mumble of “thanks”, he was dashing out of the office and back out under the rain. He decided then and there that he was completely done with shivering from the cold and that running to Le Café de l'Esprit would be the best option. However, the moment he set off in a sprint, he bumped right into a startled lilac-haired girl holding a clear umbrella. Baekhyun flashed his signature square-shaped smile apologetically before awkwardly jogging away. Was having brightly coloured hair a trend nowadays? He ran a hand through his chestnut hair and brushed the idea of him with flaming red hair aside. The only thing I need to focus on now, he thought, is finding Park Chanyeol and defeating him.

“So you want to see Chanyeol because he wrote your friend’s restaurant a bad review and you’ve been prowling around in the rain all this time searching for him and now that you’ve tracked him down, you want me to tell you where his office is so that you can fight him?”

Baekhyun deadpanned. “Yes.”

The coffee boy who had just spoken scrutinized Baekhyun from head to toe and then he chuckled. It wasn’t intended to be cruel because the coffee boy looked sweet, Baekhyun noted, and his laugh sounded like a baby’s laugh and there was something very endearing about the way the other’s eyes formed small crescents but after a whole minute had passed, Baekhyun realised that the coffee boy wasn’t taking him seriously.

“Listen here, pretty boy, this isn’t a joke.”

“Pretty?! I’m a man,” the coffee boy whined. “And a very manly one at that. Besides, I have a name.”

Baekhyun scanned the coffee boy’s nametag in a hurry before his eyes met the other’s once more. “Yeah, well, your fluffy blonde hair and that feminine sparkle in your eye says otherwise, Lu Hein.”

“It’s Luhan. Lù Hán.”

“Okay, Lu…whatever. Are you foreign? No, why am I even asking? Park Chanyeol. Yeah, that restaurant critic jerk. Are you taking me to him or what? Where is he? My hapkido classes are going to pay off today. I’m Baek to the Hyun. And can I have your number? Wait, what? Ignore that. Do you uh do you come here often? I mean, I mean why does everyone have such light hair these days? Yours is like brighter than gold. You’re actually really pretty, to be honest. Can I have— Never mind, never mind. I uh…Park Chanyeol. Hapkido. Fight. Now. And then afterwards, maybe we could— Gosh, why do you look like a deer? You have these doe eyes like I could get lost in them and I’m so into—”

“For the love of… Would you shut up?” Luhan shook his head disbelievingly, not sure whether or not the other was serious right now. “I’m from Beijing, you asked because you’re an idiot, I am not taking you to Chanyeol, he’s not even here, you cannot have my number because I don’t even know you, I do come here often since I work here, pastel hair is trendy lately and this is the body my parents gave me.”

The two exchanged glances for a moment and then Baekhyun broke the silence.

“I’m Baekhyun.”

“You’re Baek to the Hyun,” Luhan said mischievously. “Anyway, Chanyeol isn’t here. He’s in his office, upstairs on the left.”

Baekhyun raised a delicate hand up the air and knocked on the door in front of him in the most irritating manner he could manage. A few seconds later, a deep voice called “come in” and he found himself entering the restaurant critic’s lair.

“Yes?”

Okay, this Chanyeol guy was so rude. Baekhyun came all this way through the damn rain— No, it was a flipping waterfall and this guy was going to just sit there and make Baekhyun talk to the back of his leather wheelie chair? He wanted to get a good and proper glance of Chanyeol before he fought him.

Brandishing the forgotten magazine out of nowhere, Baekhyun slammed it, for the second time today, onto the desk. “Park Chanyeol.”

Grunt.

Seriously? This is how the jerk wanted to be?

“Do you know who I am?” Baekhyun was met with silence so he decided that he would take it mafia-style on this. In the best gangster tone he could muster – all right, it was terrible and came out more ghetto than anything else – Baekhyun repeated. “Do you know who I am? I’m Baek to the Hyun and when you get on my bad side, I ain’t nice people no more.” He jabbed a finger at the two-star review and went on. “I got a lot of friends in this world, Park Chanyeol. Some are real special, some…not so much. And you upset a special one. A good kid, this one. Opened up a nice restaurant downtown. But you go and give it this lousy review, you publish it in the local magazine for all the homeys to see and I don’t like that sort of thing. No, I do not.”

The fake accent and the failed attempt to sound intimidating was starting to get a little difficult so Baekhyun put a halt to the act altogether. He was about to open his mouth and say more, in his normal voice this time, when the chair finally spun around, revealing a tall young man with his eyes deadset on an intense game of SM Superstar on his smartphone.

“Yes! Beat my own record! Chanyeol is the king!” He tossed his phone aside and jumped out of his chair in happiness as he made victorious gestures in the air. “Whoop!”

“Were you listening to anything I just said?”

Chanyeol walked up to the shorter male and without any regards to personal privacy or the fact that Baekhyun needed space to breathe, he smirked. Park Chanyeol freaking smirked at Byun Baekhyun. “Baek to the Hyun, did you say?”

The named boy froze. How did this jerk go from a childish ball of sunshine to a cold city guy within a mere few seconds?

“So it’s you who’s been sending me threatening letters and leaving angry messages on my answering machine?” Chanyeol asked. He still hadn’t wiped the smirk off his face and as seconds passed by, it was starting to look like a stupid grin.

Baekhyun didn’t say anything, though. He couldn’t say anything. His heart was hammering in his chest and he was uncertain whether it was out of general fury and disdain towards Chanyeol or whether it was because the other had a really attractive voice and a name that rolled nicely on the tongue and he was also super tall and his face was absolutely flawless and his ears stuck out really cutely and for the love of coloured hair, his was silver and he was standing so close to him that Baekhyun could count every eyelash and see the exact texture of those soft, pouty lips. But this hot guy was the same jerk who gave his friend’s restaurant a two out of five stars and Baekhyun had to tell Chanyeol that he was thoroughly displeased with that and would like an apology as well as his lips pressed up against his own.

“You’re the same Byun Baekhyun who claimed that he would show me his wrestling moves and take me down?”

“Yeah, that’s right,” Baekhyun replied at last. His dark orbs wer