Warning(s): cursing
Length: 5.2k words

“So who’s this Baekhyun guy again?”

“I told you. He’s my friend and the mechanic that fixed my car for me.”

“Great, so he’s old and fat?”

Kyungsoo slaps Ange’s shoulder, and she wants to slap him back, but he’s driving and disapprovingly shaking his head at her. “No,” he corrects, “he’s only a year older than me. Don’t be rude.”

Ange’s anger from earlier makes her sulk, and she keeps shut as Kyungsoo closes the windows and turns up the car radio. The two of them are driving down asphalt that cracks the further they go down it, and trees start to thin out to make room for what looks like farmland. It’s just grass and sky for miles until the small tips of a nearby city’s buildings create disturbances in the view.

Eventually, they reach a building at the end of the road. There’s a sign nearby that might have once said something, but it now only has illegibly faded letters. A lone man sits in a motorcycle covered by the shade of an awning. His right finger and thumb pinches at a lollipop’s stick while his left hand rests on the motorcycle’s throttle. Ange tries peering at him from a distance, try figuring out who he is, but before she can, Kyungsoo tells her.

“That’s Byun Baekhyun,” he says as he parks the car. Kyungsoo exits and opens Ange’s door, and she hesitates to leave because they’re in the middle of nowhere, but it only takes one forceful glance from her brother to make her move.

Ange follows Kyungsoo to the shade of the awning, and it’s then when she gets a better look at Baekhyun.

He’s definitely not old and fat.

When Kyungsoo told Ange about Baekhyun, she admittedly zoned out and rolled her eyes because she had this stereotypical view that car mechanics were leery, old, fat men with toothy grins and greasy hands. However, her first meeting with Baekhyun changes everything she thinks she knew about car mechanics—because Baekhyun is anything but those things.

He’s actually decent looking: brown hair covering his forehead neatly, dark eyes slightly downturned, nose bridge semi-high, mole by his lip and cheek… If she didn’t already know, she would have guessed that he’s another one of Kyungsoo’s engineer friends.

“So you’re Kyungsoo’s little sister,” Baekhyun says while he looks down at Ange. It’s not her fault that she’s short, but she wants to flick Baekhyun’s nose and tell him that she has a name, and she would—if only Kyungsoo wasn’t standing next to her.

“My name’s actually Ange,” she corrects. “It’s French for Angel.”

Baekhyun grins, making his cheeks rounder than they already are. “Sorry about that, Angel.”

“That’s not—”

“Anyways,” Kyungsoo interrupts Ange, “I came here to drop her off for her first day.”

Right, about that…

Kyungsoo told her—warned her—not to be rude, but it’s hard not to be.

After dropping out of college and losing her internship one month into the fall semester, Kyungsoo thought that it was time for her to come home and start pursuing a more “traditional” career. Ange would be happy if the career he has in mind is something like pottery making, but unfortunately Kyungsoo thinks car mechanic is the perfect fit for her.

“Right,” Baekhyun says, still grinning while he maintains eye contact with Ange. “Her very first day as my apprentice.”

Ange wants to tell him to off, and she wants to throw hands at Kyungsoo too, but she stands there and smiles since she’s younger than they are, and Kyungsoo did say that this is a potentially paid opportunity—and money makes anyone shut their mouth.

“You know,” Baekhyun continues, “Kyungsoo also told me you that you don’t have your license yet. I could teach you how to drive if you want.”

“That’s a great idea,” Kyungsoo answers for Ange, and she actually agrees with him.

Kind of.

She’s 20 now. Sure, she doesn’t have her driver’s license yet, and sure, she has never really driven a car for herself—but the thing is, she doesn’t want to learn how to drive what’s essentially heavy machinery. The chances of getting into an accident are higher than what a normal person thinks they are, and she isn’t willing to risk that just so she can get from Point A to Point B—especially when Ubers and taxis exist.

“Yeah, I’m pretty good at driving,” Baekhyun notes. He twirls his cherry red lollipop by its stick and nods. “You’ll learn from the best.”

“That sounds good, right?” Kyungsoo asks you, nudging Ange by the shoulder. Since money’s tight between the two of them, she have no choice but to act grateful—and she is, but she just doesn’t think driving is a necessary skill anymore. “Well, in that case,” Kyungsoo goes on, “I’ll get going, and Baekhyun can show you around.”

Kyungsoo starts to walk off, leaving Ange and Baekhyun to look at each other—him smiling, and Ange frowning. Before Kyungsoo can get back to his car, however, she runs after him under the guise that she has forgotten something.

“Kyungsoo,” she gasps when she has caught up to him. “I don’t want to do this. Don’t leave me here.”

“Oh my, god,” Kyungsoo mutters to himself. “Ange, I’ve told you a million times. You need to make something out of yourself.”

“And I will! But really? Fixing cars is boring.”

“Well, you’ve exhausted all of your options, okay?” Kyungsoo shoots back. “You said you wanted to be a lawyer, but you dropped out of normal college after a semester. Then you wanted to be a chef, so I let you go to culinary school—but then you dropped out.” Ange opens your mouth to object, but he’s not finished. “Then you wanted to study fashion, so I let you go to ing France—but then you dropped out after a year.” Kyungsoo crosses his arms and points back to where Baekhyun is standing out of earshot. “This is the only option you have left since obviously you hate everything else.”

“But—”

“And you don’t even know how to drive,” Kyungsoo goes on. “I can’t keep being your personal taxi, okay? Mom and dad aren’t around anymore, so you have to do something with your life because it’s not cheap to live.”

Ange wants to roll her eyes, but he’s right as usual. After their parents died, Kyungsoo had to step up and start providing, and he’s been doing well for the past six years, but there’s only so much he can do. Now that Ange is 20, she has an obligation—no matter how much she doesn’t like having one.

“Fine,” she mutters, “but if I don’t like it here after a week, I’m doing something else.”

“That’s fine by me, but you can’t be sitting at home and doing nothing.”

“Fine.”

She and Kyungsoo have a brief stare-off, but she eventually gives in and leans in for a hug. He’s the only family that she has left, after all. Kyungsoo hugs her back and sighs into her hair.

“Be good for me,” Kyungsoo mumbles. “And be nice to Baekhyun. He’s a good friend of mine, he’s more like us than you think.”

Ange has no idea what that means, but she leaves it at that, and Kyungsoo bids her goodbye until 7PM.

When he drives off, she has no choice but to walk back to Baekhyun who has now popped the hood of a car open within the large workshop with ceilings so high that she notices it has a second floor.

“So what are you doing?” she asks Baekhyun while he hunches over its engine.

“Well, that’s what I’m trying to figure out,” Baekhyun says. He has a small flashlight in his hand as he continues inspecting the car. “Owner said that they hear weird sounds when they’re driving, so I think they’ve been having problems either with their fuel filter or the spark plug.”

“Their what?”

Baekhyun lets out a breathy laugh and turns back to you. “Right,” he murmurs. “Today’s your first day.”

“And it’ll be my last,” Ange retorts, “if I don’t like it here.”

“Really?” Baekhyun tilts his head to side and grins. “I heard you give Kyungsoo a week.”

“Huh?”

Baekhyun’s smile only gets wider. “I’m a mechanic that works with several parts that could rattle and shake. It’s my life to have good hearing.”

Ange tries not to get creeped out by that, but she already has goosebumps on her arm. “Okay…” she mutters. “So what about it? I’m here for at least a week. What are you gonna teach me to do?” She tries to think of all the things that she knows about cars, but literally nothing comes to mind.

“What about this?” Baekhyun puts his flashlight in his pocket and smiles at her. “It’s your first day, and I don’t want you to feel bored, so I’ll let you choose.” He points to the engine of the car in front of the two of you. “We can get our hands dirty right away, and I’ll show you how to fix this car’s spark plug and change its oil. Or,” Baekhyun nods off to the empty land just past his workshop, “I can start teaching you how to drive.”

“What if I don’t want to do either?”

Ange’s question takes Baekhyun back, and he lifts his brows in disbelief. “Really? You don’t even want to learn how to drive? Isn’t everyone excited to learn when they’re like 15?”

“Not me,” Ange says, shrugging. “I never wanted to learn.”

“Why not?”

Ange thinks about that time when she was 14 and sitting in the backseat while her father was driving, her mother sitting at the front, the light turning green, the side windows shattering… and shakes her head. Kyungsoo was lucky that he already knew how to drive at that time because for her, there was no more going forward. Unlike everyone else her age, she never wanted to sit at the driver’s seat—and she still doesn’t out of fear.

“I just didn’t,” Ange mumbles. “It’s not my thing. It’s boring.”

“Boring,” Baekhyun repeats. He lets his workshop go silent for a few moments, and Ange stares into his eyes and thinks about what he’s thinking only to come up blank. “You think driving is boring?” Baekhyun asks. “Really?”

“Yeah,” she mutters despite knowing how untrue it is. She doesn’t think that driving is boring; she thinks that it’s terrifying.

“Have you ever driven before?”

“No, but—”

Baekhyun snaps his fingers. “That’s it! You’ve never even driven a car by yourself. No wonder you think it’s boring.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. I don’t need to hear how great it is.” Ange rolls her eyes and gestures towards the car workshop. “Are you gonna give me a tour or something?”

“Right, let’s get to business.” Baekhyun beckons for Ange to come follow him further inside. “This is the main workshop,” he says, pointing to all the machinery. There are a few cars parked within, some propped up in the air, the others resting. “This is where I get most of the day’s work done, but sometimes I get a customer with a motorcycle, and I can fix it at the front.” They walk past a set of restrooms. “Those are for the customers,” Baekhyun says. “But you can use the one upstairs since I turned off the hot water down here.”

The two of them keep walking, and Ange is amazed by the sheer size of the workshop. Though it’s mostly empty and there’s nothing much to look at, it’s still impressive. Baekhyun continues to give her a tour of the downstairs portion and points at tools and other machinery before leading her to the second floor.

“It’s just light storage up here,” Baekhyun says as he motions towards a few boxes. Ange’s attention, however, turns to the bed and makeshift living area that he has.

There’s a double-bed with one pillow and unmade sheets, a long couch, and a table with an electric stove and microwave sitting atop it. Further away from all that is a treadmill, a bench press set, and some free weights. Although there is a television set, it’s sitting on the ground, and it isn’t even plugged into the wall. The bathroom that Baekhyun mentioned earlier is just another few steps to Ange’s left, and if she peers inside, she can see that it’s complete with a shower.

“Do you live up here?” Ange asks, trying her hardest not to soun