Saturday. Finally. After a long week of court appearances, meetings with opponents to try to resolve matters in order to avoid litigation in court, drafting, sending out reminders for expiring registrations and proposals to prospective clients, and countless sundry things your friendly neighborhood intellectual property attorney usually deals with on a regular basis, a 12-hour workday is normally too short.

Which is why for Kim Kibum, Saturdays couldn't come fast enough. He loves Saturdays so much, he dreams of them on Mondays. Even on Sundays, when he's preparing his reports for Monday, because even with the amount of overtime he pulls from Monday all the way to Friday, there is always work that never gets finished. 

But he never thinks of them on Saturdays. In fact, he never schedules anything on Saturdays. If he has to hang out with friends, it has to be straight from work on Fridays. Sundays are for family lunches.

Saturdays are "me" days, and are, thus, sacrosanct. 

Which was why he could have killed whoever it was who rang his doorbell that particular Saturday morning at 8 am, when he fully intended to sleep until noon, order kkanpunggi from his favorite Chinese takeaway shop, probably head downstairs to buy a pint of ice cream, and catch up on The World of the Married episodes on Netflix while lazing in bed.

Ignore it. Maybe it will go away soon enough if it thinks you're not around.  

Yes, it. Anybody who knows him knows that Saturdays are his alone. That— thing ! his sleep-deprived mind vehemently supplied—was probably no friend of his.  A monster or a devil, most likely.

With that thought, he pulled the covers above his head and was about to drift off when the infernal doorbell started ringing again. What's worse, his mobile phone started ringing in tandem with the doorbell. 

"Damn it!" he groaned out loud. Blindly patting around himself, he managed to find the errant object with his left hand and growled at the phone without looking at the screen, "Speak." 

"Good morning, hyung! Ring me up!" 

Kibum's hand—and consequently, the phone—fell away from his face, and he smothered his scream of annoyance into his pillow.

He wasn’t wrong. 

***

Lee Taemin was the devil’s spawn hiding behind an angel’s face. He knew it and used the knowledge to full effect. Lord knows this wasn’t the first time he had used that shamelessly innocent look to get what he wanted. And what he wanted that Saturday morning was for Kibum to accompany him to a wedding expo.

“What?” Kibum stared at Taemin’s brightly smiling face. Down to the humongous iced americano in his hand. Back to his brightly smiling face.

God, it’s too early in the day for this.  

“Um. Hi?” he replied with an annoyingly bashful grin, jiggling the coffee in his hand. “Let me in?” With a roll of his eyes, Kibum reluctantly stepped back to allow the younger man to step inside. 

Taemin toeed off his Converse sneakers and walked into Kibum’s living room to sink into his sofa. 

“Hyung, I swear to God, your couch is the best. You know I’m Catholic, so I rarely take the Lord’s name in vain and I never do so lightly. I am going to get one of these once I move out of Jinki-hyung’s apartment.” Like a cat, he rubbed his face against the sea-colored velour throw. The look of delight on his face was just so childlike that Kibum found himself smiling affectionately against his will.

He wiped the smile off his face, swiped the coffee from the low table before it could form a ring of condensate, and crossed his arms in front of his chest. “Taemin-ah.”

“Hmn?”

“It’s Saturday morning.”

Taemin blinked his eyes guilelessly. “Yes.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Ah. Right. Sorry.” Taemin sat up from his comfortable stretch on the couch. “I need you to go to a wedding convention with me.”

“A what?”

“Wedding convention. Wedding expo. Whatever you call those. Come with me.”

Kibum sank down on the matching loveseat and rather viciously on the straw. Huh. Two brown sugars. Nice . “Why are you going to a wedding convention?”

“Jinki-hyung’s finally getting married!” Taemin replied, his eyes sparkling.

Wow. Jinki and Jonghyun are finally getting hitched.

“I should text him and Jjong my congrats. Why are you going?”

“Jonghyunie-hyung has a makeup class today, so he can’t go. He registered online some time ago and paid for the tickets and all.”

With a blank expression on his face, Kibum stared the other man down. “So, why am I going? You could have gone with Taesung.”

Taemin gasped in horror. “Go to a wedding expo with my brother? Ew. No.” 

“Jongin? Moonkyu?” Why me?

“Out of town, work thing. Besides, they probably wouldn’t enjoy it as much as you would.”

Kibum was slightly mollified when Taemin answered his unasked question. Fair point. “You couldn’t have told me that earlier this week? Or even last night?”

Taemin scratched his head, an amusingly odd mixture of sheepishness and irritation on his face. “I was going to tell you last night, but there aren’t any Type C cables at Jinki-hyung’s apartment. Mine broke. Darn you iPhone users, y’all should be using Korean technology!” He grinned as Kibum tried and failed to curtail a small chuckle, took out something from his bag, and continued, “I only managed to charge my phone when I picked up these cards from Jonghyun-hyung’s place earlier.”

Kibum spared the stack of Jonghyun's business cards a cursory glance and brought his stare back to Taemin. The younger man’s innocent gaze never wavered and even softened into a pleading expression. “Please, Kibummie-hyung. Jinki-hyung and Jonghyunnie-hyung asked me if I could scope out potential suppliers because they really don’t have time to do so, and these things are usually scheduled in June. You know, wedding month. You’re the only one I could ask.”

With that, Kibum bid his quiet, idyllic Saturday goodbye. It takes an unusually strong person to resist those pleading eyes, and he has never claimed to be one, not where Taemin is concerned. “Fine. I’ll go.”

The sight of those bunched-up mochi cheeks as Taemin delightedly grinned back at him almost made the sacrifice worth it. Almost.

“I promise, hyung, we’ll have fun.”

“Shut up. Let me go and get changed.”

***

"Hyung, would you like to make today more interesting?"

Kibum looked at Taemin suspiciously. "Depends on what you mean by interesting this time." 

Taemin's idea of interesting was, well, interesting (to put it quite mildly). That may mean anything like daring Kibum to sneak alcohol into a fast food restaurant that serves bottomless self-serve drinks at 2 am in the morning, enlisting his help in switching out the contents of Jinki's maple syrup dispenser into fish sauce syrup (which tasted surprisingly okay, come to think of it, but not on top of pancakes), or letting Taemin drift his car in the middle of nowhere with him on the passenger seat. The outcomes? Rarely as fun as they were in theory (Jinki + glazed fried chicken = all is right in the world).

Kibum wasn't Taemin's sole comrade in these little flights of fancies of his… but for some reason, he was always the one at hand when Taemin needed bailing out— in more ways than one. God knows why he still humored him. 

You're weak, Kim Kibum . Boy, didn't he know it.

Taemin shook the pamphlet that they were handed during registration at the front desk in his face. "Let's join this game."

Kibum looked at his own pamphlet. Couple games. He clears his throat. "Taemin, we're not even a couple."

"No, no! Jjongie-hyung told me that most of these are just trivia questions, to show how well the couples know each other. We've been friends for a long time, so this will be easy. Besides, have you seen the prize? A weekend stay at a guesthouse in Gapyeong!"

Kibum wasn't really sure about this. "I'll think about it."

Taemin grinned, knowing that he had it (Kibum) in the bag. He hooked an arm around Kibum's narrow waist, startling the slightly taller man.

"Taemin-ah! What are you doing?" Kibum whispered harshly. 

"Acting like a devoted fiancé. We need to do it to get in the spirit of it." He flashed Kibum a little close-eyed kissy face with his naturally pouty lips in a pucker and then laughingly danced out of reach as Kibum attempted to slap his arm. 

The convention hall looked like it exploded in flowers, with various flower shops all around Seoul gathered under one roof to showcase their blooms in the hopes of landing prospective clients. Kibum could tell that most of them were not big names in the industry, considering how he didn't recognize most of the brands—even so, he found himself in awe of the mad clash of different blooms and arrangements that somehow managed to be aesthetically pleasing to him.

On top of the decorations, the fair hosted a dizzying array of concessionaires—chain hotels with photo exhibits of how their halls are kitted out in wedding garb, travel agencies offering different packages to dream honeymoon destinations, photography and videography studios with lookbooks and presentations of their best work… Again, most of the participants fo