“Should I? Maybe I shouldn’t. But I need to. I should. I shouldn’t.”

Minho walked in a circle at the empty hallway, stopping for a second to stare at the door with ‘231’ engraved on the plate, thinking hard before pacing back and forth again. He’d been doing it for over 15 minutes now that if other guests decided to come out, he would be in deep trying to explain his presence there. After all, why would there be a need for the manager of the resort to stand in front of a random room like a dolt?

With a bag in his hand, too.

“Okay. Let’s just… make this quick. You got this, Minho. You got this. You’re a marine. He’s only a puncher who looks like a biter,” he affirmed himself with a solid hit on the chest then coughed unexpectedly from the force. Carefully, he rang the bell and stepped back, straightened up, then waited for the sole occupant of the suite to appear.

On the other side of the room, Taemin was busy biting his pen. It was another awful working day for him and, as declared yesterday, he didn’t come down to the café. He kept that promise knowing for a fact that Minho was not playing around with the cake treats either. The knock on the door caught him off guard that his leg fell from the chair, hitting the cold tile in a quiet tap as he perked up.

“KibumㅡKibum, give me a second. I think that’s my room service,” Taemin said while buttoning up his shirt haphazardly.

“Okay. Make sure you wear your pants.”

He huffed indignantly. “Shut up. It’s just room service. They wouldn’t mind seeing me in my briefs and excessively huge shirt. Now be quiet, I’ll get to you again in a bit.”

Right after that, Taemin stood up and walked across, his humming accompanied every step of his way to raid the food that he thought was coming. When he opened the door, however, Minho came into view and he immediately groaned, forehead pressed against the doorframe in despair. “God, not you again.”

“Hey, that’s such a romantic way of greeting somebody,” Minho clicked his tongue in faux disappointment.

Taemin hummed in reply and swatted his hand dismissively, “Hello is traditional, darling. Now skip the boring bits. What do you want?”

“Aren’t you going to welcome me inside, at least?”

To Minho’s surprise, Taemin didn’t chicken out at the request. He didn’t say yes either. The only thing that he did was stare Minho in the eyes and stayed quiet, lips clamped into a thin line of a mean smile. Maybe he was only thinking about it, so Minho decided to wait impressively long enough for his nonexistent patience to bear but Taemin was clearly having fun with the silence that closed in on them because he didn’t stop smiling.

That brat didn’t stop smiling at all.

Just that this time he became muted. Like his body was there and present, but his soul had vanished, the mind had gone a million miles away.

Unable to withstand the silence further, Minho clapped his hands loudly to snap the other out of his imagination. “Hello? Come back to reality, excuse me?”

“Hm? Ah, yes.” Taemin faked his beam, the reply woolly as he crossed his arms on his chest. “What was it?”

“I asked, aren’t you going to welcome me inside? Didn’t you hear me?”

“Hm? I did. I just pretended not to hear you,” Taemin pushed the door open slightly wider, voice soft yet haunting with the reasoning as he smirked to himself. “Because that’s exactly how you behaved when I asked for the key card two days ago. Come in.” 

Ouch.

Minho felt dizzy from digesting his remark alone. The words were so powerful that they felt like a sharp blow on the nape, a remorseless punch on the jaw and a high knee kick on the gut to him - a combination that was ultimately wrong and just easily void of humanity.

“You will never let me walk past that moment, will you?” Minho questioned after recollecting his wits, stepped into the suite and closed the door behind his back. A hum was returned as a reply, so Minho took it as a no. Taemin was only a few metres away, half-listening, half-humouring. More mischievous remarks were cooking in that nasty, pretty little head of his, Minho assumed. He only had to be ready for when the other was set to shoot him down.

But instead:

“Nope. Just wanted to make you look like a fool because I saw three guests coming out of the lift” was heard. Nowhere brutal, but still cruel. 

Taemin stood in front of Minho again, arms still crossed with his head tilted, “Now tell me. What brings you here? Please don’t say you bring chocolate cake. I will punch you.”

“For real?”

“Never been so serious before. Straight, a black eye.”

Minho snorted in disbelief, “Cute. Anyway, I came here because of this.” He lifted the tote bag, waiting for Taemin to study it properly before lowering it again. “I foundㅡ”

“It was you!” The younger man cried out without giving Minho the chance to finish his sentence, grabby hands already smothering anywhere and everywhere to take hold of the bag. “You stole my bag! G