Chapter 19
Chasing XiuminUsually, Yixing hadn’t a care in the world when he was on a food date with Yoojung. Usually, he was content to sit back with a full belly and watch Yoojung enjoy her meal, her eyes blissed out and half rolled back in her head the way they always were when she had tasty food in . Usually, he would be forcing down another spoonful of food every so often to make sure Yoojung didn’t feel uncomfortable being the only one still eating.
Today was not the usual. Staring unseeingly at the half-eaten tonkatsu on his plate, Yixing felt his head throb. It had been a long day for him. The day had started innocently enough, with Yixing bringing Yoojung home from the hospital with strict instructions from the doctor to make her rest. She wasn’t concussed, but that didn’t stop Yixing from fretting over her and scowling at Baekbaek until the dog whimpered and hid in a corner looking so pitiful Yixing caved and offered a treat as a peace offering.
No, what troubled Yixing was what had come after. The passing comment Officer Do had made about Park Chanyeol’s pizza addiction had stuck with him, so Yixing spent half the day waiting for Chanyeol to emerge from the station for his pizza run and another hour following the policeman as he took the windiest, most convoluted path possible to the Kim house. Doggedly, Yixing had tailed him through suburb after suburb, careful not to make himself too obvious. By the time Park Chanyeol had reached into the Kim mailbox, Yixing had harbored no doubts about his employment as a Jade Dragon agent; no normal person would ever take such a complex route anywhere.
Park Chanyeol, a mole for Jade Dragon, Yixing thought, poking the tonkatsu absentmindedly. Lu is going to find this interesting. And infuriating. He had that letter in his hands right in front of me. Right in front of me! And then I lost him!
He’d hardly been able to breathe for excitement when Chanyeol slipped away from the Kim mailbox, letter tucked away in his coat. This was his big break! He was going to show Luhan he was as capable as any of them, and he was going to make his brothers proud. All he had to do was follow Chanyeol to wherever he handed off the letters to his handler, and then they’d have an enormous advantage in dismantling Jade Dragon.
Of course, Yixing’s penchant for attracting trouble at the worst of times, or causing it, depending on who was to be believed, struck at the most inconvenient of moments. Focused on not losing sight of Park Chanyeol, he hadn’t been watching where he was driving and accidentally ran over a pet bunny making a run for it across the street, resulting in an explosion of devastated tears from both the seven-year-old owner and Yixing himself. By the time Yixing had been hauled over the coals by the girl’s angry parents and offered a box of tissues when he started bawling upon learning the bunny’s name had been Fluffers, Chanyeol was long gone. So much for his big break.
“Lay? Are you alright?”
He started, jumping a little. “Hm?”
Yoojung’s eyes dropped to the table, and her cheeks flushed as she fiddled with the hem of her skirt. “Sorry if I’m being nosy. I just… I noticed you haven’t really touched your food, and you sounded so excited about this restaurant yesterday. Do you not like the food... or something?” She looked up, then pretended to look at the wall behind him upon accidentally making eye contact.
Yixing couldn’t help a grin.
“Or… or if you don’t feel like hanging out, I can go home and leave you to enjoy your meal in peace,” she continued, disconcerted by his uncharacteristic silence. “I don’t want to bother you.”
“You’re not bothering me,” Yixing said, taking a big bite of his food to assuage her, “and the food’s good. I’m sorry I’m not as talkative as usual today.”
“Don’t be sorry!” Her voice was raised, eyes darting up to hold his gaze for a moment before she shied away again. “You don’t always have to talk a lot if you don’t want to.”
Feeling the corners of his lips twitching, Yixing set down his chopsticks and took a sip of his water. “I guess I’m just not feeling like eating meat. I ran over a little girl’s pet bunny today, and now I can’t get the image of out of my head.”
Not a complete lie, he thought. I did run over a bunny, and I am awfully sad about it. Not as sad as I am about losing Park Chanyeol, but I still cried for poor Fluffers.
“What?” Yoojung dropped her chopsticks, looking so horrified Yixing couldn’t hold in a grin. “You ran over a bunny?”
“Ah, yeah. It was an accident.” He didn’t find it funny at all that he had killed a bunny, really he didn’t, but... Her expression! You’d think I killed one of her family members instead of a bunny! His cheeks trembled with the effort of suppressing laughter.
Yoojung’s eyes dropped to the pork cutlet on her plate, and she pushed it away, looking queasy. “Oh, Lay! Why didn’t you tell me earlier? We could have gone somewhere else to eat, somewhere that doesn’t serve meat. Oh God, that poor bunny! Oh, Lay!”
“His name was Fluffers,” Yixing said as solemnly as he could, watching for her reaction out of the corner of his eye. “He had a patch of grey fur over his left eye, like a pirate’s eyepatch. Quite a handsome bunny, he was.”
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