You woke up once the sunlight shone its striking brightness onto your blanket, making the thick fabric warm and cold as the winter was still vivid in the weather. You groaned at the contrast and lifted yourself by your elbow, peering over your shoulder to peek at your sky blue colored alarm clock. The shorter arm was pointing to 7 meanwhile the older one was just the opposite.

7.10 am. You grunted hoarsely. You coughed, throwing the sleep out of your voice and rubbed it off from your eyes too. You sat up straight and draped one of your legs out to search for the floor with your feet. 

Your toes made contact with the chilly wood and you shivered in response. However, you put the feelings aside and stood on both of your feet as you were fully awake. You stretched, shirt rode up to your pelvic bone. You dropped your arms and yawned. You made your way to your dresser (which was prepared by your parents) stared into the mirror.

You practically saw a ghost at early of the day but that didn't surprise you as you met that ghost almost everyday. 

You picked up your comb and after a few brushes to neat your brunette hair up, you stepped into the closet to change into some more appropriate clothes. 

You ran down the small spinny stair to only track a fragrance coming from the other side of the house. You pursued the yearning smell, leading yourself into the kitchen and a plate of pancake on the kitchen island. You gasped.

He made this?

You froze in front of the delicate breakfast, studying the indulgence. A stack of 4 pancakes (wasn't that too much?), honey syrup flowed down the mountain like a waterfall in various ways with some cubes of butter on top the stack. You found a scribble of note tucked under the plate, only revealing a bit of itself to you. You pulled it out and read further. 

I have schedules today. I made you breakfast as I don't wanna make myself look douchey for leaving you alone in the house without any food. I'll be back around late night.  

His message was right to the point without any hint of wanting to make friends. You thanked him mentally anyway. 

You sat on the stool, nearest to the corner and twirled the knife and fork he arranged tidily beside the plate. You cut them into 4 pieces and later into smaller pieces that was just the right size for a bite. You were much taken back with his cooking ability, you could hardly fry an omelette right. 

After finishing the scrumptious breakfast made by him, as you were about to head back to your room to clean yourself, your eyes caught a sight of piled dirty clothes in the laundry basket. You tumbled the laundry basket over until it fell, the clothes Chanyeol wore yesterday appeared into the picture. You smirked to yourself. 

Since he cooked, let's not be so stingy.

You sprinted upstairs and grabbed your towel. 

**********

Chanyeol walked pass a series of cubicles, people between only ducked their head down as he was heading for the head office. 

Chanyeol had been called to the Lee Sooman's office to talk further about the plan of his marriage when he was busy waiting for his turn to record his upcoming mini album, also informed that he would be joined by someone else. He clicked his head to the side at the statement.

He read the push sign hung on wooden door and did as he was told. He observed the rustic office in one glance as he used to be here a couple of times to talk about EXO. He quickly bowed down to his seonsaengnim as they made an eye contact. 

"Annyeonghaseyo." He greeted politely, his body formed a perfect 90 angle. He flashed a perfect view of his teeth to clarify his well known nickname, Teeth Rich. He saw a woman sitting in front of the old man, she also bowed down and he responded the same.

Chanyeol took his seat next to the woman like how Lee Sooman indicated him to. 

"I'm happy to have you here, Chanyeol." He started. 

"Me too." He pressed his lips, nodding cheerfully.

"Well, just for you to know, this would be your own publicist, Mrs. Lee Heeyoung. 5 years older than you. She's currently married."

"Oh.." He shrugged. You don't have to tell me that. 

He faked a toothy smile at the woman and they made a quick handshake. "Nice to meet you, Chanyeol." 

"Nice to meet you too, Mrs. Lee." Mrs. Lee smiled softly. 

"Mrs. Lee would be handling the matter of your marriage and also any of your scandal or anything that might involve you. You should be grateful to have her as your publicist, Chanyeol cause you see, she's one of most professional publicist out there. She handled quite a lot of the hottest scandals of the other artists."

There's nothing he could say, well, what was he expecting him to reply? He could smile and nod. 

"I told her everything about your wife to her and by the time, the wedding was a secret safe with us. You don't have to worry about anything and just keep doing your work normally. Just in case, if you are on a talk show and if they ask about marriage or your love life, just say 'no comment' jokingly, all right?" He reminded which Chanyeol could only, you know, nod. 

"Okay. That's it actually. You just have to be nice towards her, Chanyeol. She's from a very famous company and I paid quite an amount of money for you to cover up this matter. I guess, that's it?"

"Yes, sir." They bobbed their head at each other. Lee Sooman then back to look at the pity boy. "Be good, Chanyeol."

Shyly, he giggled, "I will."

"Okay. Thank you for coming, Mrs. Lee and you too, Chanyeol."

All of them stood up in unison and after exchanging handshakes for the last time, Chanyeol walked Mrs. Lee out of the company. 

"I'm looking forward to work with you, Chanyeol." She pulled out her phone fron her small handbag and tapped on the screen. "I should have your number, shouldn't I?"

"Yes." He, too, taking out his phone to enter her number in his contact. 

"Eonni!" A voice suddenly descended into the silence and he could heels cluckling toward their directions. Mrs. Lee only tilted her head back to catch a girl dressed in trench coat running toward her while grinning from ear to ear at her. Chanyeol lifted his eyes up to only be surprised at the most unexpected scene in his life.

"Eunbyul-ah, I thought you were waiting in the car."

His heart shrunk into a dried apricot. 

"You were taking so much time, eonni. I'm worried." She pouted at her senior and shifted her attention to Chanyeol. "Annyeonghaseyo, Chanyeol-ssi." She sniggered slyly yet sweetly at him. 

"Ah.." His voice shook. "Annyeonghaseyo."

Don't let them see it got to you, Chanyeol-ah. He prompted to himself.

He coughed, throwing away the vivid memory out of his mind.

"This is Eunbyul, Kwon Eunbyul, Chanyeol. She's my junior, currently under me." Mrs. Lee introduced wastingly as he knew a lot more about her.

"Nice to meet you, Chanyeol-ssi." She was back with that soft and caramel-like voice of her, melting Chanyeol down like she knew she would, she handed her hand for him.

"It's nice to meet you too, Eunbyul-ssi." Chanyeol forced to let the voice escape from his memory like once he succeed to do in the past two years. He joined his hand with hers, the sooth skin of hers lingered in his rough palm. She let go first, her skirt flowed in slow motion. 

"Well, I better get going first, Chanyeol-ah. I still have a lot of things to settle and I'm sure you have recording to do too, right?" Mrs. Lee excused.

"Yes." Eunbyul observed him quietly.

"Goodbye, Chanyeol-ssi.I'm hoping to meet you again in the future." She bowed down to him, the feeling was somewhat eerie for him as if she was taunting him with all of her action from the tone she used when she talked to him, the way she cunningly leered at him, the way she proposed her hand at him and the way she said goodbye at him. All of those were like provoking his past doing toward her, now she was making sure he felt what she felt a long time ago. 

She sent him her last glacé beam before she walked away from him side to side with her beloved senior.

At that time, Chanyeol sensed that something unannouned would happen again.

**********

This is a bad idea, you thought to yourself. 

You eyed the laundry again. You had washed it, the washing machine washed it already, so you just had to hang it up and let it dry under the sunlight. However, the current view was not very pleasant. Especially when a boxer brief was splattered on the top. 

You have to do this. You have to do this. You told yourself. You internally shook your head, just the thought of picking up the underwear cringed you. You could hear yourself screeching when you touched the cotton, a scream pierced through the calm air.

*********

"I didn't know Eunbyul works as a publicist." Baekhyun munched on his hoppang while peering up to Chanyeol who was sitting opposite of him at the other side of the table. 

"Who's Eunbyul?" Jongin asked for almost like the 100th time since the girl's name popped into the recording room.

"She's Chanyeol's ex, you ." Sehun ticked on his head. "How would I know?" 

"You know nothing, Jongin." Kyungsoo replied. 

"Chanyeol told her that they needed to break up since he was going to debut two years ago. Yeah, you know, it's not that pleasant for a rookie idol to date when he just debuted. She was kinda sadden and furious by the time." Suho explained. "Did she cry?"

"Only for a few weeks, I guess. I saw her eating fried chicken after two weeks of our breakup. I felt bad for her actually." Chanyeol said. "Her best guy friend told me she gained 3 kilos that time. Thank God I didn't meet or bump into her after that, well, except for just now." He shrugged. 

"But you got over her already, didn't you?"

"Yeah, but the way I dumped her was kinda cruel and yes, I did forgot about her-"

His feelings somewhat mixed, infecting the words too.

"Gee, it felt weird to bump into her again and I'm not feeling good either." He resumed his stopped sentence. He teared his hoppang into half to ease his eating process and stuffed the fluffy white bread into his cavern to push the feelings back inside.

"Maybe you should pay attention to your wife instead, hyung."

Another sick crept into his nerves, sending nauseated pulse to ran along his body for the accurate next 3 seconds and that made him late 3 seconds to sweep the whole situation together.

Sehun choked on his tteokbokki at JongIn's remark, couldn't hold onto his laugh. The tallest groaned.

"Seriously, for once again you guys bring her up into the topic, I'm gonna pick up the sickle in our backyard and put in under your sheet so that everytime you guys get in bed, it'll stick up into your , bleeding."

One expressions. EXO-K : /judging hard/

Chanyeol laughed nervously, trying to play it off cool, "Nahh, I'm just joking, all right?"

Their surroundings got ten times more uncomfortable with all the eyes on the boy with the married boy who still had cheeks puffed, occupied. 

"Okay, fine!" He dropped off his food on top of the table and tucked each of his arms on each other, pulling a sulky face.

"You know, Chanyeol. She's your wife, you should take good care of her," Suho advised. "As much as you hate the marriage." 

"I knowww.." He mussed up his coma hair. "It's hard, you know? It's not as easy as you guys thought. Imagine you have to live with a completely foreign, unknown, strange and unfamilar girl and you were tied knots with the innocent girl. Just imagine, walk around and bump into her, eat with her, the last face before going work is hers. Just imagi- Ugh why am I talking about this to you? These peasants don't have brain to picture it. You won't know it, you guys are not even married yet." 

"Yeah, I know.. But can't you just try to mingle around her? She's lonely." 

Once again, Chanyeol heard himself sighed. "Alright."

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Short chappie! Welcome back after the long wait TT TT (I'm so sorry TT TT) I'll be working on the next chap right now! Thanks for reading! Muah!