Jinyoung looked about the waiting room anxiously, wondering what he was doing there. No one looked back. They all looked perfectly natural, as if being there was perfectly natural. The woman across from him, who was styled, coiffed, manicured, and dressed like a crazy mother-in-law from weekly dramas, was examining her nails. The couple on his right were flipping through a gardening magazine, discussing perennials. The teenage girl on his left was going through her cell phone, a bored look on her face. Nothing felt unusual or out of place. Nothing but him.

Not for the first time, Jinyoung wondered what he was doing there. It was probably a bad idea. Most likely a terrible one. Making spur of the moment decisions really wasn't his thing. He was a planner, a man of lists and check boxes and carefully thought out consequences. Doing something like this really wasn't like him. But then again, he only knew himself tenuously at best. Perhaps this was, in fact, something that was in his nature and he'd just never tried it until now.

He pulled out the handout that had been forced on him in the streets of Seoul last week by a bored looking college student who was probably trying to earn a little beer money in between classes. Jinyoung had been planning on chucking it in the nearest trash can just like everyone else, but something about the handout had caught his eye as he'd hovered it over the bin. It was minimalist. The paper it was printed on was bright red and eye-catching, but the message was short, written in chunky block letters at the center of the paper.

Need Anything?

We are Anything.

There was nothing else on the handout but a web address. No explanation of what the message meant. No company name. No nothing. Just anything. Jinyoung didn't like unanswered questions or loose ends, so he took the handout with him to do an internet search so he could get a handle on why this seemingly meaningless message had been upon him when he'd been on his way to school.

He looked up the website, which automatically loaded an intro video on the homepage for a company called Anything, Inc. Jinyoung watched a little girl holding a paper which read “I want someone to fix my teddy bear” walk up to a big white desk with a smiling employee sitting behind it. A second later, another smiling employee was stitching up the arm of a damaged stuffed bear and handing it back to her. Next, a middle aged man approached the desk with a request of “I want to improve my golf swing.” Cut to him practicing at the driving range with a talented employee. Cut again to him on the golf course with his friends, flashing his suddenly amazing score card. The screen cut again, showing an elderly woman approaching the desk, wanting “Someone to read novels to me now that my eyesight isn't good.” Sure enough, a few seconds later she was tucked into her armchair, her eyes closed blissfully as an employee read to her by the fireside.

The same message from the handout flashed again: Need Anything? We are Anything.

The video closed, revealing a surprisingly sparse ABOUT US page. Anything, Inc was a convenience service, similar to the Benriya workers in Japan. Customers could bring in requests—pretty much any request—and the employees would perform the requested task. Repair work? Check! Housework? Check! Running errands? Check! Handling stressful phone calls? Walking the dog? Assisting the elderly? Conversation partners? Stand-in wedding dates for the single and miserable? Check, check, check, check, and check. There was a small list of things they wouldn't do (ual acts, criminal activities, things deemed too high risk), but overall, it didn't seem like they were lying with the “Anything” name.

Jinyoung was a bit put off at first. Wasn't it a little suspicious to have a company that promised workers who could do anything? Did people really trust this kind of business, or was it as shady as it sounded? But the more he thought about it, the more interested he became. The thought of every small and inane concern being solvable by someone else at a workable fee (not that he'd had to worry about money, ever) was a soothing one. And the thought that his big concerns, the anxiety inducing ones, were solvable outright made him flustered. He wanted to see if it was possible. Would Anything be able to take all the jagged puzzle pieces of his life that had never been able to form together to create a full picture, a complete person, and finally, at long last put him back together again?

So here he was, ready to find out. Ready and anxious, but he was hoping the anxiety part would be something they could take care of. They could do Anything, after all. Even if it was a big Anything.

After a few minutes, the overhead speaker crackled, and a voice said “CLIENT 704, PARK JINYOUNG, PLEASE BRING YOUR REQUEST TO DESK 3. THANK YOU.”

Jinyoung rose, a little shakily, to his feet. No one else in the waiting room even looked up. They were wrapped up in their own concerns, awaiting their own names. Jinyoung took a deep breath. Here went nothing. Or everything. He wasn't sure yet.

He took the door leading out of the waiting room and into the desk area. It was just like the video on their website: big, white desks in a spacious white room which gave you the impression you'd ascended into heaven and were leaving a message with God's assistants. The employees only added to the impression. They all wore white and regularly flashed straight, pearly teeth at whoever their clients were at the moment. Most of them seemed to have dyed blonde hair, too. Jinyoung was almost surprised Anything didn't just stick them in angel wings to top it off.

The receptionist behind desk three was also blonde and in white from head (a somewhat out of place snapback) to toe (presumably; Jinyoung couldn't actually see his feet, but he was imagining pristine white sneakers to go with the snapback and the rest of his get up). He glanced up at Jinyoung, smiling kind of wolfishly before taking his request slip from his hands. It was just like in the video—Jinyoung had been required to write in big, clear letters exactly what he wanted, plain as day. Except it felt way more embarrassing and pathetic than it had in the video. Jinyoung wanted to wilt into a heap as the guy behind the desk read his request.

“Intriguing,” the guy said. Jinyoung stared hard at his name tag: Jackson Wang. Jackson Wang had one of those voices which made the word “intriguing” sound like a joke. Jinyoung shifted from foot to foot, his anxiety increasing. He didn't want to feel like he was being made fun of.

“You want someone to teach you how to be a friend,” Jackson continued, as if Jinyoung didn't remember what he'd written. “That's nice. A really important thing to make an effort with. Great. And we have a lot of people here who can help with that.” He looked at Jinyoung, sizing him up. And not in the subtle sense. He literally put his hands together to form a camera-like rectangle and framed different parts of Jinyoung in his rectangle one-by-one. His darting eyes, his quivering lips, the way he rhythmically swayed side to side to keep himself calm. He didn't like being looked at and wished Jackson would stop.

“You know what,” Jackson said suddenly. “You don't talk a lot.”

Jinyoung stared at him blankly.

“And now that I think about it, you're kind of similar...not as cute, maybe...but the hair...” He tilted his rectangle to the side, blinking one of his eyes. “A better fit. Maybe. It's this feeling I get. A perfect match.”

“A perfect match to who?” Jinyoung asked, finally.

“Oh, don't mind me. Just trying to figure out the right worker to assign to you. This is important business. And I like to think that Anything helps our clients, and that our clients can help us in return. And I'm thinking there's someone on our staff you can really help.”

Jinyoung shook his head adamantly. “No, no, no. You don't understand. I can't help people. I can't even help myself. That's why I'm here.”

Jackson simply nodded. “Actually, it's because I understand, man. But don't worry about it. You're a client. You don't need to worry about anything. Let us take care of you. Everything else will take care of itself.” He turned his attention to the computer on his desk, typing something in and occasionally asking Jinyoung basic questions. Age (20). Relationship status (Single and miserable). Family (Two parents, only child). Interests (Books?). Goal (To have a life). Jackson got a little belligerent at the last answer. “You have a life, and I know it's gotta be a beautiful one. You wouldn't be here if you didn't think it was worth living, got it?”

At long last, Jackson finished typing, and the printer on his desk whirred to life. A piece of paper shot out, and he passed it to Jinyoung. “Your assignment,” he said.

Jinyoung read the paper quietly, to himself. ROOM 107. MARK TUAN.

“A greenhouse condition,” Jinyoung's therapist called it.

“It's an unfortunate risk factor among those who grow up in wealthy families,” she'd explained, sliding her glasses down her nose. She always did that when she thought she was saying something important. “It seems only natural to raise a child in the perfect environment if you have the means to. Cater to their every need, give the best food, send them to the best schools, give them every advantage they need to succeed. But just like when you take a greenhouse plant out of its ideal environment, you have no idea what to do in this strange, less-than-perfect world. That's the root of it, Jinyoung. You have no idea how to face up to the environments you're not used to.”

Jinyoung hated thinking of himself like that, as a cultivated plant, a cleverly bred thing that only knew how to exist one specific way. It was like he was programmed with a limited data bank, and he faltered when he couldn't match what he knew to the situation he was in. He could probably live a simple life in his greenhouse, just like his parents and his rich “friends” who were similarly programmed to like him because they were supposed to, but it didn't feel like enough most of the time. He didn't feel a genuine relationship with his “friends,” or a deep interest in their world of luxury cars, flings with top models, and taste for expensive liquor. He didn't feel a real genuine interest in anything.

He couldn't figure himself out as a person. It felt like his personality, likes, and dislikes were just as programmed into him as everything else, and he didn't exist as a real person, just a concept of rich boy. Heir. Silver spoon. All the blanks filled in with the right stereotypes, nothing about him special or unique or distinct.

So he'd tried to take a few faltering steps out of his greenhouse. He'd gone to a good school for university, but not necessarily one of the elite ones. He'd tried going to the school events everyone else was going to—soccer games, drama performances, charity events. But he was a greenhouse plant in a cold, unpredictable world. He didn't know how to talk to people. He didn't know how to present himself when he didn't really get who Park Jinyoung even was. He usually just wound up sitting by himself, talking to no one, bubbling over with anxiety as each new and unsolvable social demand presented itself to him.

And his classmates hated him, he could tell. They knew who he was, Park Jinyoung as in Peach-Kiss-Park-Jinyoung, and they took his silence as aloofness. Oh, look, the rich snob doesn't want to talk to the peasants. How predictable. Why is he even here?

Jinyoung couldn't answer that. He had no clue himself. Why am I even here?

He thought of dropping out all the time. Going to one of the upper crust schools. Not going to school at all, and just taking his job in his family's empire as he was. But he wanted to know the answer as much as the kids who hated him did. Why am I here? Who am I? What is this world beyond my greenhouse, and can I survive here?

The therapy wasn't really helping (plus if his parents found out, they'd flip. A Peach Kiss Park with a less than perfect mental condition? Perish the thought!), and he felt like he was on his last leg. If this didn't work, he didn't know what he could do.

That was what he was thinking as he opened the door to room 107. He was putting the last of his remaining faith into this. If this blew up in his face, there was nothing left to do. Just falling back on his programming and living his cloistered life, the silver spoon non-person who wore the name and body of Park Jinyoung without really knowing or caring what that meant.

Mark Tuan's office wasn't white. That was the first thing Jinyoung noticed. Nor was it clean. There was a half eaten convenience store lunch on his desk. The headphones plugged into his phone were dangling off his desk in a tangled mess. His trash can was overflowing. There was a random basketball on top of his filing cabinet and a massive tool box poking out of said cabinet, sporting some very prominent rust spots.

Mark Tuan himself, the guy behind the desk, also didn't match the whole pure-white-god-like figure Anything, Inc had been going for in the desk area. He was wearing a heavy duty shirt jacket which had a few paint stains up the sleeves paired with equally stained work pants and work boots. The only thing truly pristine about him was his face, which was, in a word, angelic. It reminded Jinyoung a bit of some of the foreign rich boys he'd met in the past, the scrubbed faced, pink cheeked, cherubic ones who inevitably had blue eyes, blonde hair, and a habit of using their visual innocence to get what they wanted in life. Mark had the blonde hair (dyed), but not the blue eyes (brown). And at a glance, Jinyoung could already tell he wasn't the type who would deliberately use his looks to fool anyone. Something about him just seemed glaringly frank: what you see is what you get.

Mark lifted an eyebrow when Jinyoung walked in, then wordlessly pointed to the chair opposite his desk. Jinyoung took a seat, sliding his request paper over to Mark. Mark picked it up, again wordlessly, and studied it for a moment before setting it down. After that, he simply stared at Jinyoung. Not saying anything. Barely blinking. Jinyoung already felt his anxiety clawing to the surface. He hated being looked at.

“Are you going to say anything?” Jinyoung asked, sitting on his hands.

“Sorry,” Mark said finally. “I was just trying to get a grip on Jackson's train of thought. Why he would pair you with me.”

Jinyoung's face paled. Great. He hadn't even done anything yet, and already this guy didn't like him.

Mark noticed Jinyoung's reaction and shook his head. “That wasn't an insult towards you. It's just, I'm never given tasks involving communication. Just handyman stuff or assisting the elderly. So I was confused. But I trust Jackson's judgment, I guess. I'll take your request.” He pointed to the request paper. “Talk to me about it.”

“There isn't a whole lot to say,” Jinyoung said with a shrug. “I want to make friends.”

“Why?”

Jinyoung stared at him. Why? Isn't it obvious?

“I mean,” Mark said, leaning back in his chair. “Why can't you now?”

“Oh. I don't know how.”

“Which part?”

“All of it.”

“Starting with...?”

“Small talk?” Jinyoung sighed. “My therapist says I have a greenhouse condition.”

“Yeah, I mean you certainly look rich with what you're wearing,” Mark agreed, nodding to Jinyoung's off-the-runway Michael Kors fall fashion ensemble. He glanced at Jinyoung's request sheet, his eyes widening. “Wait you're Park Jinyoung? The Park Jinyoung whose family runs Peach Kiss Cosmetics?”

Jinyoung instantly felt his stomach sinking. How would some random convenience worker just know that? It wasn't as if he was a famous name. Sure, his family was well-known among the chaebol set, but Jinyoung himself wasn't some popular socialite, and Park was a common enough surname to where you couldn't just assume any random rich Park was a Peach Kiss Park. Ask any random guy on the street who Park Jinyoung was, they'd either say the music producer or say “Oh, that's my high school friend,” because there was probably a Park Jinyoung in every other high school.

“You're a cosmetics fan...?” Jinyoung asked blankly, because he wasn't sure why else this guy would know his name.

Mark shook his head. “Nah. I just know someone who knows you. My main client is the heir to Choi Holdings and Associates.”

“Choi Youngjae?” Jinyoung asked. What a small world. Youngjae was part of Jinyoung's circle of acquaintances, one of the more genuine and friendly ones even though he completely outranked Jinyoung when it came to wealth. The Park's precious Peach Kiss cosmetic brand raked in a ton of money thanks to how beauty-obsessed their country was, but Choi Holdings was a business juggernaut that was involved in so many retail stores that Jinyoung half-way wondered if 60% of Korea was employed by them in some way or another.

“Yeah, Youngjae,” Mark said. “So I've heard of you before. Since you're rich and have the same name, I thought you might be him.” He tapped his thick boots against his desk, making an ugly metal sound. “If you have trouble making friends, does Youngjae not count?”

“He's not really a friend-friend,” Jinyoung said. “Just someone who's at a lot of brunches and social dinners I have to go to. I didn't choose to become close to him myself. All of us kids were always just kind of...forced together. So I guess it doesn't feel like a real relationship.”

Mark nodded. “I get it. But please explain. How exactly do you want me to teach you to be a friend?”

Jinyoung shifted awkwardly. “I thought you were going to decide that for me?”

“I could. But you're the customer, so I should know what you want. You could try being friends with me, but I wonder if you'd find that too much like your rich kid friends—someone being forced on you, someone that you're paying to be a friend. Not genuine, I mean. I could try giving you friendship lessons, but...” Mark gestured helplessly, as if to suggest he would have no clue how to do so, if asked. “So I'd like it if you gave me an idea of your expectations,” he finished. “To start us off.”

Jinyoung thought for a moment. Answering the question What do you want? had always been a hard one for him. He didn't have many strong opinions, and his anxiety kept him from taking risks for the most part. But this question Mark was asking was important—it could determine everything that was to come. He couldn't just cop out of it the way he did with everything in his life.

“I think,” he said slowly, “that I want to try talking to you in low stress situations. Where there's no pressure to do it perfectly. So I can get used to it. And if I can do that, maybe we could try doing something a little bigger...going out somewhere like normal people, or something. I'm not going to force you to be a real friend or anything. Just... help me be a normal human being. If I can do that, maybe the rest will start coming naturally.”

Mark studied him for a few seconds, then nodded shortly. “What's your schedule look like?” he asked.

Jinyoung passed him his planner, which had all of his university classes written down and color-coded. There wasn't much else on his schedule—he'd stopped attempting to go to school events, and had also pretty much started turning down every single society event his parents tried to drag him to. His life was an open book, waiting to be filled.

After a minute, Mark handed the planner back to him. “OK,” he said. “I have a lot of contracts going on with Youngjae at the moment, but they're mostly inventory jobs where I'm by myself in warehouses or empty shops all day. You can be there with me, and we can try talking. Is that low stress enough?”

Jinyoung had a momentary flash a prissiness over the idea of spending a lot of time in a dirty, smelly warehouse, but it up. He wasn't in the position to be making demands when he was fortunate enough someone was willing to help him in the first place.

But there was one concern he had. “Will Youngjae be there?” he asked Mark. He didn't want to have someone from his greenhouse life around when he was trying to make a change in himself.

“Youngjae?” Mark bit his lips for a moment, before clearing his throat. “No. Not usually. It'll for the most part be just you and me. Is that fine?”

“Yeah,” Jinyoung said finally, taking a breath. “That would be fine.”

There was one piece of rebellion that Jinyoung hadn't successfully executed in trying to distance himself from his rich-boy-existence, and that was moving out of the luxury family home in Itaewon. He'd tried, but it hadn't gone terribly well. His interfering butler (yes, of course he had his own butler) Yugyeom had found the house listing pamphlet Jinyoung had picked up from the local real estate office, and made a dramatic show of having to pack his bags because “the young master is moving out, so it looks like I have to move out too, poor me.” This naturally caught the attention of Jinyoung's mother, who had several my-baby-is-running-away-from-me related fainting attacks, which forced the entire household to hold an intervention where it was decided, without Jinyoung's input, that if Jinyoung had to move, he should at least have his own luxury penthouse apartment, and naturally be accompanied by Yugyeom who would tend to all of his needs as normal and report back to Jinyoung's parents.

Jinyoung couldn't bear the thought of living alone with Yugyeom, so he'd docilely decided to stay in the big house, which is what Yugyeom, who enjoyed living in privilege even if it was only as a manservant, had wanted in the first place. God, he hated his evil butler.

So when Jinyoung came home at a much later time than he would have usually arrived back from his university classes (and hadn't even asked for a complimentary limo ride from the family's loyal chauffeur, Kunpimook), he was immediately swamped at the door by his pearl clutching mother, trailed after by her own manservant Jaebum and a dramatically annoyed looking Yugyeom.

“Sweetie, you have to call Mommy if you're going to be late or she'll worry,” his mother said, clapping her gloved hands against Jinyoung's cheeks. “Where were you? You could have been carried off by ruffians for all I knew!”

“Or accidentally confused for a fast food employee and forced into service!” Yugyeom added, grinning sneakily.

“Oh no, Yugyeom, don't say that,” Jinyoung's mother cried, looking on the verge of another fainting episode. “Jinyoung, sweetie, tell me you weren't in any kind of trouble!”

Jinyoung rubbed his head, feeling an oncoming headache. “I wasn't in trouble. I was just meeting a... friend.”

“A friend? One of your nice friends, right?” 'Nice friends' was code for rich friends. Jinyoung's parents didn't know he actually didn't have any college friends, but they seemed to find said non-existent college friends unsophisticated on principle.

“Uh, sure,” Jinyoung said. “He's a friend of Youngjae's, so...”

His mother perked right up. “I just adore Youngjae! Any friend of his is a friend of ours. But please, Jinyoung, could you be a dear and call next time? Or at least give Mommy a copy of your schedule to put on our master calendar?”

Jinyoung nodded stiffly. He was going to have to write in his appointments with Mark, giving another explanation for them, if he wanted to avoid the welcome home party every day.

Yugyeom followed him up to his room under the guise of helping him with his backpack and jacket, though he wasn't actually a helpful butler, partly because Jinyoung didn't want him to be. Jinyoung didn't like being touched or monitored or brushed or combed or anything remotely butler-y. He didn't even want Yugyeom to fold his clothes since he usually did an inferior job of it compared to Jinyoung anyways.

So Yugyeom was mainly the conversation butler, which Jinyoung didn't really want either, especially not with someone like Yugyeom, but since it was necessary to talk to someone if he didn't want to explode under the weight of self-isolation, Jinyoung usually wound up biting the bullet. Though an overlarge brat, Yugyeom could be reliable when he wanted. Other than the issue with getting an apartment on his own, Yugyeom didn't tattle Jinyoung's other secrets, and he was a straight forward thinker, which was often more beneficial to Jinyoung than the abstract ideas of his therapist. At his heart, he was a good person, and Jinyoung secretly appreciated that he wasn't deferential or nicey-nice because butlers were supposed to be. He was just himself and always had been.

“So who's the friend?” Yugyeom asked once they were inside Jinyoung's room. Room seemed like too small a word for it. It was more like a suite, complete with his own bathroom, flat screen TV and lounge area so he would never have to leave if he didn't want to. He was expected downstairs for family dinner, but occasionally he'd make Yugyeom bring it up to him on a platter so he could eat alone. He loved his parents, but they could be exhausting. They were two of the greatest minds of the Korean beauty industry, but when they were around him, they reverted into some crazy kind of baby-talking-two-headed-love-monster with sappiness pouring out of their skin. He hadn't even liked that back when he was a baby.

“Like I said,” Jinyoung answered, throwing himself onto his bed. “I was with a friend of Youngjae's.”

“Your friend, too?”

Jinyoung considered the contract he had Mark had drawn up. He'd stuck to his word and hadn't contractually obligated Mark to be his friend. They were more like conversation partners working towards a common goal of making Jinyoung capable of having friends in the first place.

“Not exactly,” Jinyoung said. “But he's going to try and help me out with some of my social issues.”

“Ah,” Yugyeom said. He knew all the truths about Jinyoung that his parents didn't—his lack of friends, his crippling social anxiety, his distance from his affluent lifestyle, his terror of romance on top of the fact that he wasn't even interested in a traditional romance since he was pretty sure at this point that he wasn't ually attracted to women...it was terrifying to have someone who knew all that, but liberating as well. At least he didn't have to put up a front around his own butler. “So this isn't a one time thing?”

“No. I'm thinking of dropping therapy and doing this for awhile instead. Basically just meeting after classes for conversation every few days.” He glanced at Yugyeom. “What do you think?”

Yugyeom shrugged. “You can't get any worse than you already are.”

“Thanks.”

“But if he's Youngjae's friend, isn't he part of your little rich boy club?”

“You should see this guy, seriously. He has paint stains all over. He's not some silver spoon. Youngjae just happens to be a client.” Jinyoung sat up in bed. “By the way, can you find me some clothes that aren't designer? I'm going to feel weird hanging around this guy looking like I do right now.”

“What's in it for me?”

“Money?”

Yugyeom waved his hands disinterestedly.

“Backstage perks to hip-hop concerts?”

“Deal.”

A second later, Jaebum was popping into the room, straightening his spotless bow tie. For being so unpopular, Jinyoung did have a pretty steady stream of staff coming in and out of his room most days. Mainly because he was quiet and didn't have a habit of going into hysteric episodes like his parents and their friends.

“So you mentioned Choi Youngjae earlier,” Jaebum said, inserting himself in the conversation as if he'd been invited to be there. “Are you hanging out with him again?”

“Not really. Why?”

“He's cute. You know those dirty-butler-punishing-innocent-employer videos? They're made with guys like him in mind.”

Jinyoung wrinkled his nose. He really did not need to think of Youngjae or Jaebum or both that way. “Too bad you're not his butler, then.”

“Yeah, his real butler is an 80 year old geezer who's worked for the Chois since the dark ages. What a waste.” He sighed to himself. “Not like I had a shot, anyways. If he has any interest in guys, he has a few who'd go for him. Someone even told me that the richest guy in your age group has been trying to get him recently. If not, he's got every heiress in Korea after him too. He's all set.”

“What 'richest guy in our age group'?” Jinyoung asked. "Youngjae is the richest guy in our age group as far as I know."

Jaebum shrugged. “One of the guys from your birthday parties when you were younger. The name is slipping my mind, but you'd know it if you heard it.”

Jinyoung could barely remember half the names of those kids himself. It was all about family names—the Peach Kiss Parks, the Choi Holdings Chois, the DigiComet Jungs. Now that he thought about it, there was a TeleKomMart Bang his age, and now that smart phones were so widespread, it was very likely his family outranked Youngjae's. Jinyoung had always thought that the TeleKomMart kid had had a crush on him, but maybe he'd gotten it wrong or the guy had transferred his affections since Youngjae had grown up to be far more charming than Jinyoung.

Not that it mattered. It wasn't like it would change anything. The Chois would probably arrange Youngjae with some pretty female heiress so they could grow even richer. Same thing as would probably happen to Jinyoung.

It depressed him a little. Even if Mark and Anything could grant his wish, wasn't he still going to head down the same path he'd been going down already?

Still, he had to try. He knew that. Even if he had to be a Peach Kiss Park for the rest of his life, he wanted to add the flavor of Jinyoung, whoever that was, back to his name.

“I can't wait to see you looking like a commoner,” Yugyeom mused, glancing at Jinyoung's helplessly designer wardrobe. “Bougie Young Master Jinyoung wearing discount clothing. This is going to be fun.”

“Bougie?” Jinyoung asked.

“You're going to turn Young Master Jinyoung into a commoner?” Jaebum asked curiously. “Why?”

Jinyoung gave Yugyeom a look. Don't tell. Jaebum was generally trustworthy, but he was the manservant of his parents. He wasn't as strong as he looked—if you poked him just the right way, he'd break down and admit to everything so the beloved Master and Mistress wouldn't dislike him.

Yugyeom shrugged. “He goes to a commoner school. It's about time he started fitting in.”

“Ah,” Jaebum said. “I won't tell the Mistress that. It might kill her soul.”

“Thank you,” Jinyoung said. It wouldn't kill for Jaebum to know that much.

“Be sure to take a commemorative photo,” Jaebum added, turning to Yugyeom. “We'll put it in the photo album and tell his future children about the Young Master's rebellious phase.”

Yugyeom snorted. “Don't worry, I'll be taking plenty of photos.”

Jinyoung didn't get the fuss. He was just a twenty year old wearing a logo t-shirt (NIKE—Just Do It! written in huge letters across the chest), sneakers, and bargain bin jeans for the first time in his life, but Yugyeom was laughing hysterically, snapping pictures as if his life depended on it.

“This is great,” Yugyeom said, wiping the tears from his eyes. “It's like I'm sending you to kindergarten.”

“I'm older than you.”

“Yeah, but you're a baby when it comes to having firsts in your life. I wore these kinds of things when I was two.” He took a few more pictures. “I'll buy you some more stuff later. You really should be wearing this kind of thing to school, too. It'll help people relate to you a little more.”

“They know I'm a Peach Kiss Park.”

“And I'm sure you haven't proved that you're more than that yet,” Yugyeom shot back. “I barely think you're more than that, sometimes. So I hope whoever this guy you're talking to is can figure you out. I hope you figure yourself out.” He sighed, setting his phone down before walking up to Jinyoung and giving him a big smack on the arm. “Good luck.”

“Thank you.” Jinyoung adjusted his bag and squared his shoulders.

Time to find out if Anything was possible.

A/N: Waaah, so today is my 27th birthday, and it looks like I'm starting off by giving all of you a present? It's OK though-- I have to work today, so coming home to your comments will be a nice gift~

Can I get a little sentimental, though? This past year writing for all of you has been really wonderful, and I'm grateful you've shown me and my stories so much kindness and love. You're all very important to me, and this year I'll be spending my birthday with my coworkers, friends, and family, but I feel like I'll also be spending it with all of you too through this story. So I hope you like it so far!

Also, this story will be posted bi-weekly, alternating between this and Pirates of the Seven Seas: The Dread King. So if you haven't checked that out yet (and you're of age to read M fics), please do!