Seungcheol/Jiae. 685w.

Unlike most people, Jiae’s coping mechanism when she was stressed was to bake. When everything else in her life was going awry and disorganized, baking was the only thing that was precise; with the ½ cup of sugar and 1 teaspoon of baking soda.

She gave everyone on her floor the results: from shortbread to thumbprint cookies, which her neighbors were always so nice and delighted about, but none of them knew that she stress baked. No one, except for Choi Seungcheol from the 2nd floor.

She knew him from the day she moved in when he helped her with the boxes, lugging them up the stairs to the 3rd floor, and she baked him brownies the next day. He was really excited about it, so he became the only one in the 2nd floor who received her breads and cookies ever since.

Jiae would always leave him for last so she could talk to him longer, and tonight was no different.

She knocked on the door, a plate that was covered with a tea towel on her hand. As she was waiting for him to open the door, she looked at the end of the hall where a girl was holding a laundry basket at her hip, looking like she was waiting for a door to open as well. That reminded her to do her laundry tomorrow, and clean the bathroom too.

But before she could make a complete to-do list in her head, the door was opened, revealing, to Jiae’s surprise, a sweaty Seungcheol looking like he’d just ran a mile.

“Hey, Jiae,” he greeted her, wiping the sweat off his forehead with a towel. His hair was drenched and she could even see sweat gleaming on his bare arms. She had never seen him this wet, not even after bringing all her boxes upstairs.

“Uh, hi, Seungcheol,” Jiae greeted back, a bit warily. “What’s going on?”

“Oh, I just got this treadmill,” Seungcheol replied, moving back a little so Jiae could see the treadmill standing between the couch and the dining table. “I accidentally set it to high speed and I didn’t know how to undo it so I just rolled with it,” he continued, before huffing out a breath.

Jiae let out a laugh, couldn’t believe such an adorable person existed, before she pulled the tea towel on the plate off to reveal a dozen macadamia nut cookies. “I brought you cookies. White chocolate macadamia nuts,” she said, smiling.

Seungcheol had regulated his breath and didn’t sound like he was wheezing anymore, but he was still panting, and just staring at Jiae. He looked like he wanted to smile, she could see the corner of his lips hesitantly pulling up for a second, but didn’t.

Jiae’s mind started to panic. Did he not like macadamia nuts? Or white chocolate? Was he allergic? Did he not like her baking? She couldn’t remember any instances where he had mentioned any of that, but he could be any of the above and was just trying to spare her feelings all this time.

Seungcheol sighed, and a small smile finally made its way onto his lips, which eased Jiae’s mind a bit, but that smile could mean anything.

“You know, when you bring me cookies at 11 PM like this, I don’t know if I should feel happy for getting them, or concerned for you,” Seungcheol said, the smile now gone completely, replaced with a slight frown. The raised, worried eyebrows and his soft eyes were enough for her to let her guard down, for the smile to drop, and remember why she would always leave him for last.

“Do you wanna talk about it?” Seungcheol asked, already moving aside to make way for Jiae to come in. Jiae looked inside, worrying on her lips, and looked up to see him smiling. “We can do it while eating your macadamia cookies,” he said, poking on her arm jokingly.

Jiae’s lips pulled up slowly before she nodded and stepped inside, feeling Seungcheol’s hand on the small of her back as he closed the door behind them.