There was a time, a very pleasant time devoid of student loans and the need to pay actual money for what was barely considered as food, a time before college stripped him of all dignity, when the most common words used to describe Joshua Hong were kind, gentle, chivalrous, sweet (or whatever words his mom felt like spouting, anyway, to get her darling son to paint the house or visit his cranky great-uncle in the institution so she wouldn’t have to).

But now, the only proper adjective to use in describing the cranky Korean-American was broke.

“Welcome to Pledis Petting Zoo!” he chirped. It was seven-thirty on a bleak, drizzling morning. Joshua’s smile was frozen on his face and eyes were unnaturally wide under his neon-pink hat, shaped to resemble a flamingo head, perfectly matching the hot pink flamingo suit he had on. Why he was dressed like a flamingo he had no idea, since there weren’t any flamingos in the sorry excuse for a petting zoo he had to work for. They might as well have dressed him as a chicken. Everyone knows that chicken could heal anyone’s heart.

He supposed that he was better off than his friend Minghao, who was stationed the at the other gate, but the younger man had brought it on to himself, really, after confidently claiming that he was “like a bird,” in his job interview, only to hastily retract this ill-thought statement with a feeble, “Not a turkey!” after their manager, Jihoon, handed the Chinese dancer a dusty brown suit to contest his birdness.

Joshua certainly never claimed to be like a bird, but Jihoon, dear, sweet, multi-talented, manager-of-the-zoo-at-twenty-two Jihoon, was evil like that, anyway.

Joshua grinned widely at a bunch of random strangers. “I hope you enjoy your stay!”

His voice cracked a little, causing a gaggle of girls to look at him and giggle as they passed him, less in the gosh-oppa-is-so-cute way and more of in the ha-look-at-that-loser-in-a-flamingo-suit way.

He gritted his teeth behind his smiling lips, and turned to a little girl holding an ice cream cup. “Hi, there!” he yelled, trying for cheerful but instead succeeded in causing the girl to shrink behind her mother’s leg. “Are you in the mooooo-d to see the cows? You’ve goat to see the…uh, goats!” he gushed, all the while thinking that he wasn’t getting paid enough for this. Well, okay, he was the one making the lame puns, but if they wanted him to be funny, they’d have to pay extra for that. Half-assed jokes was all this kid was gonna get. Unless he’d get in an even worse mood and start rapping, which would probably drive customers away and cause his boss to yell at him.

The toddler stared at him blankly before promptly dumping the contents of her cup on his skinny flamingo leg, much to the delight of her parents. “Aww, she’s so cute! Quick, honey—take a picture!”

Joshua dropped his smile faster than the kid dropped a frostbite infestation on his foot, but not nearly as fast as the way he dropped his hopes and dreams for the future the minute Jihoon forced him into this suit.

He didn’t really know HOW he became friends with Jihoon at all, especially since this was how Jihoon treated the same dude that graciously loaned him like ten guitars every time he’d accidentally destroy his in an attempt to mutilate somebody.

Joshua sighed. He really did need the money, though, and so did his friends Soonyoung and Minghao, because they were all performance majors that were already warned by their parents, friends, and random people they happened to strike a conversation up in subways that this sort of road often turned out to be a dead end, no matter how talented Joshua is with a guitar, or how amazing Soonyoung and Minghao  are with their dance moves.

Jihoon was just as talented, with deft skill of composing music, dancing, singing, and playing like thirty different instruments, but unlike his friends, he pursued the more “practical” road and took up business in college. But Joshua knew where his friend’s real passion lay, and it wasn’t in forcing friends to wear degrading costumes or spending hours managing bills in an air-conditioned room.

Anyway, Joshua’s Saturday morning still pretty much continued to , with people either ignoring or mocking his existence. Thirty minutes later, it rained, and he had to stand there helplessly in his bird outfit as the families scrambled for shelter under their umbrellas, staring at him with judge-y eyeballs. He prayed for a bit of sunshine in his horrendously dreary life.

Two hours later, the sun hit him full force, the rays beating down his back and burning holes on the back of his neck. Damn climate change.

Jihoon walked by, a cup of coffee in his hands and a fedora perched on his pink head. “Hey,” Jihoon barked, “shift’s over, go muck out the stables.” In a gentler tone, he said, “You did great, Jisoo. I mean, it doesn’t really take much to stand around looking like an idiot, but you passed with flying colors. Congratulations.”

“Thanks, Jihoon,” a very unhappy flamingo replied.

Jihoon raised an eyebrow. “Don’t look so ecstatic or anything, hyung. You can always quit, you know.”

“No, I can’t,” he grumbled. “You’d hunt me down on Nestor’s back and get him to on my couch.” Nestor is a donkey. (And so was Joshua, in a figurative sense, but don’t tell him that.)

Jihoon scoffed. “Stop swearing, church boy, there are kids around.”

“Sorry,” Joshua said quickly. As much as possible, he didn’t swear, but he figured that dressing up like a flamingo in the hot sun with the morning drizzle drying up on your synthetic feathers was enough to entitle him at least one curse word.

Joshua shuffled to the employees’ lounge, where an equally soulless Minghao sat on one of the lumpy couches. The Chinese boy stared blankly at his cup of lukewarm water. For some reason, he was still in his turkey suit.

Joshua gently tugged the turkey hat from Minghao’s head and ruffled his blond locks. “Hey, Hao-Hao. What are you doing next?”

Minghao groaned in distress. “Jihoon-hyung’s office.”

Joshua nodded in sympathy. Jihoon was a perfectionist and would just make them clean his office over if they cleaned it “incorrectly.” How you could possibly get vacuuming wrong was still a mystery to Joshua, but after cleaning and re-cleaning the manager’s office five times in a row three days ago, he didn’t really care enough to know.  “Wanna trade? I got the stables.”

“Oh…Soonyoung-hyung might want that,” he said. “He’s got the bird section and, yeah, he’s scared of birds. Especially that eagle.”

“What eagle?”

“They got him yesterday. I think they call him Seungcheol, or something.”

“Huh. Cool name.”

“Soonyoung wouldn’t think so. I don’t even know why he hates birds so much. But you’d fit right in, hyung,” he said with a smirk, eyeing the older guy’s costume.

“What did you say, turkey-boy?” Joshua shot back, chuckling lightly.

Minghao groaned. “Go back to your kind, hyung,” he grumbled, nodding towards the bird enclosure, which could be seen right out the window.

Joshua peered outside, too, and his breath caught in his throat when a large thing suddenly swooped down around the netting, before gracefully perching on a tree branch.

“That’s something,” he admitted. He glanced at his dongsaeng and frowned as the Chinese man slid further down the couch, looking dejectedly at the turkey head.

Joshua laughed wearily. “Hey, look at it this way,” he offered. “We managed to survive one week of this, right? In a few months’ time, we can get that apartment and move out of that roachy place. And then you can finally dance all of this away, when you work at that dance studio while I play guitar in coffee shops. How’s that sound, Hao?”

Minghao blinked at him slowly, as if in deep deliberation of these words. Then he jolted and looked at Joshua in alarm. “It’s only been a week?”

 

“Why the ,” Jihoon said, with gritted teeth, “are my satin blankets in the cat pen?!”

Soonyoung gulped. He chuckled nervously. “Um, because Jeonghan and Seungkwan were cold? Cats are very finicky creatures, ya know—”

“My blankets,” Jihoon repeated, “are stained with dirt and kitty litter.”

“But you’re a good manager who could look past that, right? Think of the animals!” Soonyoung blurted, eyes still uncharacteristically wide. “Also, Jihoonie, please stop screaming. You’re scaring the kids. Look, that kid looks like he’d need ten years in trauma therapy.”

Jihoon snarled at him, before his face transformed with a sugary smile at the kid behind him. “Hiya, kiddos! Free caramel popcorn at the food court! Just tell Wonwoo-ssi that Jihoonie-hyung said so, okay?”

The kids cheered and immediately ran off, leaving Soonyoung with no one to serve as witnesses for his death except for a pair of bored-looking cats.

He swallowed as Jihoon took two menacing steps towards him. A person of average height would have only needed one big step, but Jihoon needed two because he was Soonyoung’s little baby bean Jihoonie who also happened to be scary but in the most amazingly attractive way and what the was going on in Soonyoung’s head right now?

Jihoon paused, glaring up at the bleached-haired guy. “I’m docking your salary,” he said stiffly, “on account of these blankets.” He knew he was being too nice. If it were another employee that dared to do this, Jihoon would have fired them on the spot, even if it were his Jisoo-hyung or Hao-Hao.

Thankfully, nobody else but Kwon Soonyoung was stupid enough to do this.

It still didn’t explain the show of mercy on his part, though, but he refused to dwell on what it could mean. He pouted as he took in the dust on his blankets. He’d just had them dry-cleaned yesterday, too.

Soonyoung, apparently, didn’t recognize the manager's amazing act of martyrdom. His eyes flew wide in panic. “But—Jihoon! It’s not my fault your cats have a taste for the, uh, finer things in life! They take after you! Back me up here, you guys!”

Seungkwan huffily turned his back on Soonyoung, his bushy tail lashing out in dramatic offense. Jeonghan just gave a little cat smile and rolled over on his back, promptly falling asleep.

“Traitors,” Soonyoung muttered. “And after what I’ve done for you!”

“I’m going to pretend,” Jihoon said icily, “that you did not just hold a conversation with two cats, right in front of your boss, no less. You can expect a twenty-percent decrease on your next paycheck.”

“Twenty—” Soonyoung sputtered. “Were those blankets sewn with spun gold or something? Why not just ask for my firstborn child next?!”

For some reason, Jihoon’s face turned as pink as the hair stuffed in his fedora. He coughed a few times, before croaking, “What?” With a slightly dazed expression on his face. “You want me to have your baby?”

Soonyoung scratched his head. “I meant…the old fairy tale? Rumpelstiltskin?” Seeing no reaction from the manager, Soonyoung groused, “Man, didn’t you have a childhood at all?”

“No, I just thought…you meant something else,” Jihoon mumbled, staring at the felines sprawled on his ruined sheets.

“Okay…” Soonyoung sighed, placing his snapback on top of his head and sitting on the bench. He rubbed between Jeonghan’s ears, falling silent for a moment. “Fine, you can take twenty percent, whatever.” His dance studio dreams were slowly being dashed.

But he smiled a bit, eyeing his pink-haired manager. Well, maybe staying here for another month wouldn’t be so bad. “I’m gonna go feed the birds now, okay, Jihoonie? See ya.”

Just as he was about to leave, a small, delicate hand reached out and all but broke his forearm.

Soonyoung squeaked in pain. “What is wrong with you?!”

“You can keep the twenty percent under one condition,” Jihoon said through clenched teeth.

Dumbly, the dancer nodded, still wincing in pain from Jihoon’s tight grip.

Jihoon glared at him, before his eyes softened and he let out a defeated sigh.  He snatched the two cats from the floor and hugged them gingerly, without the mutant force he’d used on Soonyoung’s arm earlier.

 Soonyoung suppressed a smile, loving how natural Jihoon looked with a bunch of cats in his arms. He looked like he was their mother, or something. “Hoonie?”

“Buy me dinner.”

“Hoonie, it’s barely even lunchtime yet. But I guess I could get you some kimbap—”

“Not right now, you hamster-faced imbecile,” he spat. “Tonight. After all our work is done. Okay?”

Soonyoung’s teeth flashed, much to the annoyance of the two felines, and his eyes were swallowed up in bliss. “Sure!”