chapter two;

“Pssstt!”

Minho opened his eyes and looked around. It was already morning. How long has he been sleeping? He glanced to look for Changmin but he was gone. Training, perhaps. Minho hoped Changmin hadn’t eaten his share of breakfast. God knows how Changmin can forget everything else in the world when he was faced with food, the love of his life and the sole reason he was alive.

“Pssstt!”

Minho turned to search for the source of the voice that had interrupted his beauty sleep. Who on earth dare to wake Minho, Seoul’s No 1 tracking dog and perhaps the world’s best? Outside his cage, stood a little girl he had never seen before. The girl had a long silky black hair with fringes in front that fell just above her eyebrows. Her skin was as fair as milk, and her cheeks were so chubby that he wondered if they contained any poisons. However, despite her pretty appearances, there was something off with the little girl. She looked like a boy.

“Yah, come here!” the girl called Minho, signaling for him to go near her. Minho obeyed. “Are you the famous Minho?” she asked in a Busan dialect.

Minho’s ears perked up. The famous Minho? Really? Is he the center of people’s discussion outside there? Minho wriggled his tail in delight. “I am, I am!” he wanted to reply.

“Aigo, you’re such an adorable doggie,” the girl praised, sticking her chubby hand inside the cage to pat Minho’s head. “Don’t you have any work today?”

Speaking of that, Minho suddenly remembered Mansoo. Where was Mansoo and why did he let a strange Busan girl come here? Minho glanced around to look for his trainer, but there was no sign of him.

“Yah, are you hungry?” she asked. Minho blinked at her. Seeing him giving no response, the girl questioned further. “Do you understand Korean? Are you hungry?” Then she repeated in English, “Aaaaaarrrrreee chuuuuu huuuuuuunngrrraaaaayyy?”

Minho frowned. Why English? Is this girl retarded or something? He was a German shepherd, not English. Geeerrrrrmaaannn.

The girl dug something out from her pocket and threw it in front of Minho. It was a sausage, still red and cold. “Actually, that was for my dog. But you can have it,” she explained with a smile.

Well, whether the girl was strange or not, Minho liked anyone who gives him food. He happily took the sausage and ate it right away.

“Wooyoung ah!” A voice came all of a suddenly.

Minho looked up from his breakfast meal and saw a middle aged man running approaching his cage. The little girl rose up and ran towards him. “Appa!” he yelled back joyfully.

“I was looking for you everywhere!” the man spoke to the little girl.

“I was just talking to Minho,”

“Minho?” he raised an eyebrow. Then, he glanced at Minho who was still frowning at the bizarre sight of the father-daughter pair. “Ah, this Minho,” the man let out a sigh of relief.

Minho eyed the man suspiciously. He remembered meeting him once or twice at crime scenes, but the man never spoke to Minho directly. He was wearing a grey and white checkered coat with a black turtleneck underneath. His hair blonde, and it reminded Minho of some weird guy he saw in some music video before. Minho recalled one of Jonghyun’s many gossips regarding the man’s hair. It was said that the blonde hair was actually a wig. The man mistook a toilet cleaning liquid for shampoo while showering one day. His hair never grew again.

Is this really the same respectable Sir Park Youngjin everybody was talking about?

For the record, where on earth did Jonghyun hear this sort of thing, Minho never knew and never bothered to.

Youngjin returned his gaze to his daughter. “Where’s your puppy?” he asked the girl called Wooyoung.

“I left it in your office,” Wooyoung replied.

“Oh? I just came from there. Your puppy wasn’t there,”

“Are you sure? I really left it there under your desk,”

“Then let’s look for it again,”

The pair started to walk away without even looking back at Minho was still observing them. Minho sighed and turned back to his sausage, but another voice caught his attention.

“Pssstt!”

Minho glanced up to see Key, a Kurilian bobtail peeking inside his cage. For some reasons Minho could never seem to understand, this cat which had a purple and green highlight on top of his head always came to this cage. Aren’t cats and dogs supposed to be enemies?

“Yah, Minho yah!” the bobtail called.

“What?”

“Did you hear they were talking about a puppy just now?”

Minho rolled his eyes. Somehow, he understood why Key and Jonghyun got along well despite their differences in types ― they both were super busybodies and gossipmates.

“I think I saw the puppy just now in the park,” Key rambled on.

“So?”

“I think the puppy’s lost,”

“So?”

“The puppy’s cute,”

Minho glared at the cat.

“What? Can’t I praise a cute puppy? It’s a Chihuahua by the way, with blonde-ish fur. I wonder if it’s imported,”

“Go away, Key!”

“Yah, you may be bigger than me in terms of size, but I’m still older than you by months!”

Minho groaned.

“Alright, alright! Aish, really. You and your temper,” Key shook his head and continued to mutter some things under his breath as he walked away.

How can there be so many odd people in the world? Minho wondered.