9. New Man

Pairing: Taemseul [Taemin & Seulgi]

Concept: Ordinary life!Au

Inspiration: New Man | Ed Sheeran

[Completed]

White curtains. Black couch. Grey blanket. White pillows. Black table. Grey carpet.

Taemin didn't need to walk too much around the shop to find the right items. As long as it wasn't red, blue, pink, yellow, green, orange or purple he was fine. He wished there was a section for black and white furnitures but this shop was all about colours and it was disturbing.

The worst of them all was yellow.

It was such a bright and flashy colour. It was joyful, happy and lovely. In fact, it wasn't exactly about the colour but what it reminded him of.

He walked to a clerk to inform him that he was ready to pay and to sign the delivery papers. They then walked to the cash where the other clients paid to finalize the purchase and it was pretty much empty. It was normal as the shop had opened not too long ago and not many people were aware of it with its antique concept and odd designs. That was totally a shop for him, Taemin hadn't even hesitated once to buy all his apartment's furnitures there when he saw the weird plastic animals staring at him and the chairs with missing parts in the vitrine.

"Would that be all?" the clerk asked as Taemin took out his credit card to pay.

Taemin looked around one last time to see if he wouldn't find one last object with unique motifs. His eyes caught onto a lean figure with long brown hair and a leather jacket. He squinted to make sure that it was who he thought it was and mentally cursed himself when the man next to her tapped onto her shoulder to point at him with a frown. Seulgi turned around to see with surprise who it was and smiled brightly when she recognized Taemin.

The said man pretended to not have noticed her and quickly continued with his purchase. Taemin signed the delivery papers without even asking the clerk when he should expect his products and walked to the exit. He was maybe 2 metres, 1 metre or even less away from the doors when she called his name.

"So close!" Taemin whispered as he stood right in front of the exit.

He turned around to see Seulgi waving at him with her usual warm and cheerful smile.

"Long time no see!" she greeted. “What’s wrong with you? I thought you were avoiding me for a second."

"Me? How could I?" he smiled.

"You say that yet you didn't even answer my email.”

"You sent me an email? I didn't receive anything," Taemin frowned. He was lying and it was obvious even to the usually clueless Seulgi.

"I sent it by mail last week and since I didn't receive any answer from you I also sent an email," Seulgi explained. "You should have received one of them. At least."

Taemin shrugged and gave her an innocent smile although they were both aware of his lie.

“What is it?”

"You should give me your answer pretty soon even if you don't plan on coming Taemin, the organizer keeps asking me how many places to prepare and who responded to the invitations. It's so stressing."

"Invitations?" Taemin raised an eyebrow. At this point he clearly wasn’t fooling anyone and Seulgi was tired.

"To my wedding Taemin, stop pretending you don't know what I'm talking about," she hit his arm lightly. "I sent you an invitation twice."

Taemin wondered if he should just keep pretending he didn't know what she was talking about or just admit that he saw them. Of course he saw them. He spent hours looking at the paper version with their way-too-perfect premarital pictures with all their way-too-pretty flowers and their ridiculous way-too-professional shots where they looked way-too-happy. It was worse with the animated picture from the email where they were both asking each other if XXX would come to their wedding, it was childish and funny at the same time. Worse, it was cute, disgustingly pretty and well thought. Even though Taemin would never admit it, Seulgi and her idiot fiancé could have been on the cover of any high-end wedding magazine.

As Seulgi scolded Taemin for not checking his mail and ignoring her, he came by. Taemin liked to call him the triple treat: dumb, dumber and dumbest all together.

"Taemin, it's been a while," Seulgi's fiancé Minjae said with a grin before proposing a handshake to Taemin.

"Not that much," Taemin answered with a smile and tried to keep it on his face as he shook hand with Minjae. "What are you doing here anyway?"

"We needed a few things for the house before officially moving in," Seulgi answered with a radiant smile. She looked so excited to get married and finally live her little girl's dream. Too bad it's with the wrong man, Taemin thought. "And you?"

"Just renovating my place, there were too many old stuff laying everywhere."

Taemin indeed threw everything out after he learnt Seulgi was getting married as everything seemed to remind him of his ex-girlfriend, even the old couch that belonged to his parents back in the days.

"That's great! You can finally stop being a has-been," Minjae joked. Taemin cringed at the remark. Seulgi’s fiancé was never funny and made jokes that were only funny to him. Taemin never understood what Seulgi saw in that man.

"I guess there's hope for everyone. You might even stop be a complete idiot if you work hard enough Minjin."

"How many times do I have to tell you that it's Minjae?" Minjae sighed.

"He's obviously doing it on purpose," Seulgi said before lightly hitting his arm for not noticing something so obvious. They knew each other for years now, how could Taemin still not know his name.

"You're awfully dumb Minjae," Taemin said with a smile.

"Excuse me?"

"I said you're awfully lucky," he lied with the exact same smile to trick the taller man. Taemin knew when to stop before Minjae (who was almost twice his size and pretty fit from all the hours he spent at the gym) would actually get offended. He knew that he wouldn't even last one minute in a fight with Seulgi's fiancé so he backed off when it was time. "