~

“Hello?” Kyuhyun's sister, Ahra answered the door the following morning to find Jongwoon on their doorstep. “Can I help you?”

“Good morning. I’m a friend of Kyuhyun and have something of his,” Jongwoon announced, tapping the cooler hanging off his shoulder.

“You’re not one of his usual friends,” Ahra accused.

“Ah, well. We've only known each other for about a month now.” Jongwoon awkwardly stood there waiting for Ahra's response as she stared him down.

“Alright. I think I heard him get up a few minutes ago. You can wait in the entry here,” Ahra announced allowing him into the house. Once she made sure he was staying put she went to go get her brother.

Oh, it's you Jongwoon,” Kyuhyun announced when he saw him. “Sorry about Ahra, she's a lawyer and tends to scrutinize everyone she meets.”

“Yeah, sorry to drop in so early, but you forgot this yesterday,” Jongwoon said and passed the cooler over. “Don’t worry about your sister, it’s fine.”

“I shouldn’t have said anything about forgetting this yesterday. Guess I jinxed myself with that.”

“Maybe a little,” Jongwoon teased.  “So,” He began again after a moment, fidgeting with his sleeve, “uh, I have a little bit of time before I have to be back to open the shop, want to grab breakfast?”

“Sure. Just give me a few minutes to get ready?”

“Of course. Take your time.”

“I’ll be right back. Ahra is in the kitchen, just through there, if you don’t want to just wait in the foyer by yourself.” Kyuhyun pointed out the kitchen before he made his way back to his room.

“Well, I guess my brother does know you,” Ahra announced when Jongwoon walked into the kitchen.

“Do you have a lot of people showing up pretending to be his friend?” Ahra laughed a little at his question.

“No. But my brother has always had a small social circle, so it’s a little odd. That and he tells me most things and I have never heard of you before. I don’t even know your name.”

“Jongwoon. Kim Jongwoon.”

“Ahra, though I think I heard Kyu tell you that already. So, how old are you?” Ahra sat up straighter, hands interlaced, resting on the table in front of her, looking like she was about to question a client.

“Twenty-six.” Jongwoon decided he would play it the same as her and took a seat across from her, making sure to keep his expression as neutral as possible.

“What do you do?”

“I own a bookstore near the university.”

“For how long?”

“Going on six years now.”

“How’d you meet my brother?”

“He stopped in to my store to escape a thunderstorm one night.”

“And friends, just like that?”

“No. He’s been back multiple times since. We talk.”

“How’d you know where he lived?”

“I’ve dropped him off. Including last night.”

“Why?”

“It was late, and I knew he lived far.”

“Why was he there so late?”

“A project, probably. He uses some of my books for reference.”

“Your store instead of the library?”

“It’s quieter, has food, and not as difficult to find a table to work at.”

“What kind of food?”

“Whatever my two in charge of food decide to make in the morning.”

“Do you have a license to serve food?”

“Of course. Pass all my inspections without issue too.”

“Since when is the kitchen an interrogation room,” Kyuhyun questioned when he joined them. “What are you doing Ahra?”

“Just getting to know your friend since you have never told me about him,” Ahra answered, attempting to seem as innocent as possible.

“I don’t have to tell you everything Ahra. Especially not right away.”

“I’m hurt Kyu. I thought our relationship was closer than that,” Ahra said, pouting.

“Really?” Kyuhyun sighed at his sister’s antics while Jongwoon just watched in amusement. “Besides, he hasn’t even met my other friends, yet.”

“Ooh, so I’m the first to meet him. I can forgive you then.”

“I’m ready to go, if you are,” Kyuhyun said to Jongwoon instead, ignoring Ahra. Jongwoon agreed and they both said their goodbyes to Ahra and headed out.

“So, I was thinking this little café by the store, if that’s good with you.”

“I’m good with anything. Should I ask if you know the owners?”

“If you mean, are they mages who frequent my store, then no. Not that you should be asking that anyways.”

“I know, you can’t expose other mages to me without them telling me themselves or agreeing to it. Though you did kind of out Hakyeon to me.”

“No one ever said whether Hakyeon was a mage or not.”

“I could over hear your conversation and while you may have not said it directly, I could put the pieces together.”

“Who says you have all the pieces for the full picture? Don’t get ahead of yourself. But to answer your original question, yes I know the owners.”

“Of course, you do,” Kyuhyun said, amused and not at all surprised.

“To be fair, they are another pair of guys Heechul and I’s age, who own a small business in the same area as us. How could we not know each other,” Jongwoon explained. “That, and I had a couple classes with one of the them while I was still in school. And not surprisingly, Heechul knew them both at university.” Jongwoon found a place to park just down the street from their final destination and they walked the remainder of the way.

“Hey, Jongwoon. No Heechul or kids today,” the man at the counter greeted as soon as they walked in. “Or at least not your usual kids,” he corrected himself upon seeing Kyuhyun with Jongwoon. “You pick up a new stray?”

“He’s just a friend Youngwoon. And don’t refer to Taek as a stray.”

“But he kind of was one.”

“Even so, no need to call him one. Go help your other customers while we decide.”

“Isn’t Heechul supposed to be the bossy one,” Youngwoon teased but left nonetheless.

“He knows about Taekwoon,” Kyuhyun asked.

“Only that we took him in. Everyone who knows us knows that much. It’s kind of obvious information. As for the details, no one outside us at the shop and Wonshik knows.”

“Oh, I guess that makes sense. It would be hard to miss someone new living with you and working at the shop. So, as you like to come here, what should I get?” Jongwoon instantly leaned over the table and began pointing and various different items on the menu for Kyuhyun. He explained which ones were the café’s most popular and his favorites, though he didn’t limit it to just the breakfast items. Additionally, when Youngwoon was in earshot, he added which were best to get on the days Youngwoon wasn’t working in the kitchen. Thankfully, when Youngwoon did take their order, Kyuhyun had decided on what he wanted, which happened to be the same as what Jongwoon was getting. Jongwoon also ordered something for them to take back to Heechul afterwards.

“So, I forgot to apologize for my sister’s behavior earlier. I didn’t think she would full on interrogate you like that.”

“Don’t worry about. It was kind of fun. It’s been awhile since I’ve been interrogated like that.” Kyuhyun nodded, accepting the fact that Jongwoon was obviously not affected by his sister at all. He stopped though, when he realized what all he said, and just starred at him, slowly blinking.

“You’ve been interrogated before? What did you do?”

“Nothing,” Jongwoon said between laughing. “You know about the alias. It’s exactly why I use it. There have been those who have reported our store to the police under the claim of us being dangerous. Of course, the police never find anything out of the ordinary. And now, they don’t even bother coming to see us for the claims.”

“How?”

“We’ve made friends with one of the officers who seemed to always be the one to check this out and he knows that it’s just a crazy rumor that just never seems to go away.”

“Okay, I wanted to know that too, but I was more wondering about them physically investigating the shop.”

“Kyuhyun, really,” Jongwoon asked, gesturing to himself.

“No, I know that. I was wondering more specifically than just that.”

“They just look around the store and the storage room, occasionally they peak at the house, but it’s not like there is a lot to see there except for the basement since that’s our main entertainment area, so to speak.” Jongwoon emphasized on the storage room and entertainment area, so Kyuhyun could put everything together. And thankfully it seemed like Kyuhyun did as he didn’t any other questions.

“So, you got something for Heechul too,” Kyuhyun asked, when their food was dropped off along with the to-go containers with Heechul’s food.

“It’s a peace offering.”

“Did you make him mad?”

“Not yet, but I will in,” Jongwoon looked at the time on his phone, “about eight minutes when we are not walking in the door.”

“Am I making you open the store late today?”

“Only if Heechul decides that he’s not opening it by himself.”

“Where are Ryeowook and Taekwoon?”

“Wookie went home with my brother last night to visit his family and Taekwoon has something to do later this morning, so we gave him the day off. He is being nice enough to make the snacks before he goes, but that’s as far as his help will be today.”

“Hangeng not able to help today?”

“He and Kibum left on another trip earlier in the week. Just a short one, they will be back next week. But it means Heechul and I are by ourselves today.”

“Will you guys be alright alone?”

“It’s not a big deal. It’s what we did nearly everyday when we started since Ryeowook didn’t join us until after we were open for almost three years. It’s actually during those first years where the joke of me making everyone work at the store came from. Since on busier days or days where I didn’t have Heechul, Hangeng, or Kibum, other friends would volunteer to help out for a while. Once Ryeowook joined us, that slowed down, especially since Heechul was also done with school by that point.”

“Why haven’t you hired anyone else?”

“Originally, because it was too expensive to be paying someone else when we were first starting out. Then, it became the fact that it’s hard to hire someone who has to have one major requirement. Especially when the requirement is impossible to advertise.”

“At this point, don’t you have enough connections to just verbally advertise amongst your customers?”

“Probably,” Jongwoon shrugged. “But at this point it’s now the four of us and we have three others we can call on from time to time. It hasn’t felt necessary recently.” Kyuhyun hummed, understanding what Jongwoon meant and glanced at his phone when it lit up to signal a text message and noticed the time.

“So, how late do we have to be for Heechul to call? Since we are already past those eight minutes.”

“If we’re lucky we have a couple more since he hasn’t messaged me yet either. Hopefully he just hasn’t noticed the time yet. But I also have him on a technicality, so we will be fine as long as we are back in the next twenty.”

“You are so late. You should have been back forever ago. Where were you,” Heechul bombarded them as soon as they opened the back door to the apartment.

“Hey, I said I would be back before the store opens.” Jongwoon looks at the time. “And I still have three minutes. So, I am on time.”

“No, you were supposed to be back a half hour before open to help me open. And why did you bring Kyuhyun with you?”

“Hi. We brought food.” Kyuhyun held up the containers from the café.

“You went to Youngwoon and Shindong’s without me? Everyone is so rude this morning.”

“Chul, it takes like ten minutes to open the store. What are you even complaining about? Tell me you at least got the registers running.”

“Yes,” Heechul said curtly, taking his breakfast to the kitchen.

“Good. I’m going to go unlock the door then,” Jongwoon announced and motioned for Kyuhyun to follow him. “You planning on just hanging out today,” he asked Kyuhyun, when he noticed him setting himself up at one of the tables.

“Yeah, told you the other day, I still have that paper to work on.”

“Oh right. Don’t you have like another week to do it?”

“Week and a half, yeah. But I also know one of my other classes will be assigning us a big project at the end of the week, so I would rather have it out of the way.”

“Damn it Heechul,” Jongwoon suddenly groaned out.

“What?”

“He didn’t fill and start the coffee machine.”

“Should I ask, is opening the store even that difficult,” Kyuhyun asked between laughing at Jongwoon’s pouting face.

“No. He just doesn’t like doing it for whatever reason I have never been able to understand. It takes like ten minutes and most of that is getting the registers to boot up and start the day’s records. Otherwise, it’s mostly just putting the chairs back down after we put them up to mop at the end of the day, getting the coffee machine going, and filling the cases with whatever Wook and Taek made.”

“Sounds easy enough.”

“And it is. But for whatever reason, he never wants to do it.”

“Jongwoon,” Taekwoon softly called out from the doorway to the magic shop. “I’m heading out now. Wonshik’s here.”

“Alright. Any idea when you’ll be home?” Taekwoon thought about it for a moment.

“Sometime in the evening. I’m not a hundred percent sure. I’ll text you and keep you updated when I know.”

“Good. Have fun. Call if you need something.”

“Mhmm. Bye.” Taekwoon waved to Kyuhyun as well when he saw him, before he left again, barely giving Kyuhyun the chance to wave back.

Hey, Kyu.” Jongwoon called out to him a little later in day. There had been a few customers in and out through the morning, and Jongwoon made lunch for everyone, but otherwise it had been quite and Kyuhyun diligently worked on his paper. When he looked up at Jongwoon, he was gesturing him to follow him into the shop.

“What’s up,” Kyuhyun asked once Jongwoon closed the door behind them.

“So, I had been going over all the information of your curse and how your treatment has been going now that we have a couple sessions done.”

“Alright,” Kyuhyun said, urging Jongwoon on, but noticing his serious tone.

“While you may not be seeing the outward effects of the curse between the sessions too much due to Heechul draining out your negative energy, the curse is regenerating at a rather fast rate.”

“As in there was no difference in the week from when we started or…,” Kyuhyun trailed off.

“Not quite. There is some difference. Basically, in the week, the curse regenerated roughly ninety-five percent.”

“Meaning, we only removed about five percent last time,” Kyuhyun filled in.

“Exactly. The good thing is that it didn’t fully regenerate, but it is going to take time to get rid of it.

“How long?”

“Three months? Maybe,” Jongwoon said, shrugging not really sure how accurate his estimate is himself. “The hope is that, each session will remove a larger percentage and it won’t be able to regenerate as fast. I’ll of course let you know how it goes, but that’s what the initial results show. And if we have to, Heechul and I will come up with a different tactic if this one proves to be inefficient.”

“Well, it’s just the first results and it’s still positive. So, I don’t think there is much reason to look at it too badly. You said it yourself, it’s a mutated curse. They behave differently, that’s the nature of it. I wasn’t expecting it to be mostly cleared already. If, it’ll take us three months, then it takes three months.”

“And here I was thinking you would be upset by this news.”

“Well, when Heechul starts you out saying you’re going to die. If it’s left to progress. Makes taking the news of only slight improvement, much easier,” Kyuhyun joked. “Besides, I’m not going to complain about having to see you guys at least once a week for the next three months.

“I suppose we are a perk you are getting out of this,” Jongwoon teased.

“Have you told Heechul your findings yet?”

“Yeah, I told him just before you. He said it is improvement, what more do I want?”

“Then it sounds like we’re all on the same page.”

“I guess we are. Sorry to pull you away from your work when you seemed to be on a roll.”

“Thanks for the update, Jongwoon,” Kyuhyun said, getting up and heading for the door. “I’m glad my friends gave me your information,” he said at the last moment before returning to the bookstore.

~

“So, how did speaking with your master go,” Donghae asked Sungmin when Sungmin showed up at his place a couple days later.

“Not super helpful,” Sungmin complained, plopping down onto the bed next to Donghae.

“What happened?”

“Well I asked him about mages with double symbols as well as if symbols can look like they are one if the container is small enough.”

“And,” Donghae said, encouraging Sungmin to keep talking.

“He said that yes, there are known cases of very powerful and talented mages having double symbols. But he also said, it is possible that on a very small container that two symbols could run together to appear like a double symbol.” Sungmin groaned, grabbing a pillow and hiding under it. “I was hoping he would give me something more definitive than that.” Donghae could just barely hear him from under the pillow.

“I got some similar information at Lady Maeng’s. Though in one of the books I looked through that mentioned double symbols, it said there should be a definite connection linking the symbols to each other. Like an outline or the bleeding of colors or something.”

“Really,” Sungmin asked, throwing the pillow to the side and sitting back up. “So, did it have something like that?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? How can you not know? You’re the one who saw it between the two of us.”

“It was days ago now; I don’t remember all the little details.”

“That means we are going to have to get ahold of one of his potions.”

~

A/N: So I managed to write most of this yesterday. I honestly forgot what the original plan was for this chapter, since them going out for breakfast was originally supposed to be on the last chapter, but I cut it in order to actually make an update. Kind of a good thing, since it expanded on itself while I was writing it. Either way it doesn't matter as long as the story is still progressing in the right direction.
I worked on this all yesterday in the hopes of actually having something to post for Kyusung day today. (Going to be honest, I forgot it was coming up until I saw posts on twitter about it yesterday.)
Anyways, hope you all like this chapter. I will attempt to work a little more efficiently again, but we will see how it goes.

^^♥