Sooyoung's POV

The meeting finally ended and Kris drove me back to the office. Everything went really well, except for the part which the Ministry of Health asks us to send them a detail report on the food in health perspective. I can just ask the company’s dietitian to do the part for me, but somehow I think it’s better to get another point of view from a dietitian who is not in the company. My connection regarding this is none other than one of my best friend, Minseok. 

I put my phone on speaker to let Kris hear our conversation. Being really helpful as always, he told me to come over to his clinic to discuss about it.

“Do you want to go to the food lab together or you want to go to the office, and I can go there with my car?” I ask Kris, wondering if he wants to follow me to hand the assignment to the company’s dietitian.

“I’m going straight to the office. Tired. I need to get some rest.”

I nod and walk heading to my car once we arrived at the building’s parking.

I noticed how silent Kris was during the whole meeting. Usually he will be the one who speaks about everything, but throughout the day, my mouth feels like it will loosen up-too much talking I guess.

I must admit, this is the first time I’ve seen him tired. The very first time he actually SAID that he is tired.

I am at the traffic light in front of the lab when Kris messaged to my phone that he will be taking vacation for a week. The workload I gave him for leaving a company must have been tough on him. So, I texted him back, telling him to proceed with his plans. I felt really sorry for him.

Thinking about Kris, he actually has been acting really weird today. He wasn’t that excited about the toothbrush campaign like before and sometimes here and there he’s been referring me as “Ma’am.” I know I’m older like ten months and my position in the company, but as far as I concern, our long friendship has lead him to call me by my name. He might have just been tired.

After I handed the Ministry of Health project to the company's dietitian, I drive to Minseok’s clinic. 

Minseok’s clinic- I find it’s funny to call that a clinic. Few years back, when Minseok has finished his education in medical school, he was supposed to work as his parent’s company doctor.

I remember, the first time I met him was during our parent’s business party when my parents introduces us. He already entered a university at that young age, and I was surprised when I knew we were born in the same year.

We contacted each other and hang out together whenever we have time, and every time we met, he will be complaining how stressful his life is, trying to reach his parents expectation. His determination of setting himself free from his parents has been his goal since he was a child. He knew the only thing that will bring him out from them, is by pursuing and achieving the education and use that certificate to set him free.

The ‘war’ between he and his parents went more than a year. I supported him by helping him out, buying an old building at the downtown Seoul. Those are all the money I got from a small delivery online business I did as an assignment when I was in the business school.

When his parents knew about it, they were blaming me for their child to decide such thing. That family’s war of son-parents has declined as time passes, but his parent dislikes of me increases corresponding to the mending of their family relationship.

I was one of the people helping Minseok in his clinic business. Yixing has been helping us too, and has been using our business as his final project to get him a law degree.

Because of those hardships Minseok faced at that time, I found many great sides of him. I would be lying to myself if those did not get my heart flutters. Yixing knew about it all along, and he has been pushing me to confess my feelings.

The timing was wrong, I got rejected. Minseok was in period of patching up his relationship with his parents, and there I was, asking him to be with me, a person who his family somehow mistakenly thought the origin of their broken bond. He apologizes for not being able to handle another argument.

I smiled, making fun of it, telling him it was a joke. I have mix feelings of embarrassment and pain, due to the stab of rejection.

I tried to be rational. I keep on working with him for another two months. The clinic expands- adding workers, wards, cafeteria and more specialized medical equipment in designated rooms. It is more like a private hospital than a clinic. Yixing helped us with that building to remain its name as clinic because the word ‘clinic’ somehow is a very precious thing to Minseok.

When the time was right, I politely asking him to let me leave the clinic and entered my parents business. Working in my parents company to help them and gain experience are merely excuses I gives to my parents; when the actual reason is to give my heart a little space and trying my best to get over him.

Yixing has been an awesome friend. Without him, I might have lost contact with Minseok.  He helped me going through those times and finally I could see Minseok as best friend and nothing more. It was painful at first, but time has been a great supporter.

I am a step ahead of the clinic’s entrance when I see a chaos at the receptionist area.

“What’s going on?”

At that precise moment, a couple of wasps are flying in front of me and around the room while the waiting patients are moving far from the insects.

Receptionists are screaming asking someone to get rid of them. I’m definitely not brave enough to get myself near the wasps, nor do I have any knowledge in getting them out from the room; but my feet won't move.

The wasps are flying closer to my face. I close my eyes as I try to bear of whatever going to happen next.

The sound of people clapping triggers me to open my eyes.

I was shock. 

Two inches right in front of me, both two wasps are stuck in the middle of two chopsticks. Slowly my eyes follow the owner of the hand that holds the chopsticks.

“Tao!” His entire body is like sliding on a chair, while his right arm holds the chair for balance and the other one extend forward with a chopstick, catching both wasps in one go.

“Next time, please be careful.”

I nods, “Thank you.”

He helps himself standing up, and walks away. I find the situation is really awkward. I clap along with people around to reduce the awkwardness as I follow him.

Baekhyun, Sehun’s friend, suddenly appears beside me, expressing him amazement on Tao’s quick action. “OH MY GOD! Is that a pure coincidence that you manage to get those bees or you were just born with quick hands?! That was AWESOME!!!!!” 

“These are not bees. These are wasps.” He mumbles quietly, but loud enough for both of us to hear.

“Whatever it is, you are still AWESOME!! Teach me, MASTER!!!”

I chuckles at this little guy’s wish for Tao to be his ‘sifu.’ Tao didn’t say a thing, but we somehow follow him going outside the building and to the nearest river bank. I watch him as he softens the chopstick grip, hoping that the two wasps will be release and fly away.

But it didn’t happen that way. The wasps fell off the chopstick and into the river.

“Eh? Why didn’t it fly?! Sooyoung, does wasp swims too?” Tao’s stupidity amazes me.

Even Baekhyun’s mouth is in ‘O’ shape, couldn’t believe what he just heard from Tao.

“No. They don’t swim, they fly. It’s either they died because your grip on the chopstick is too much for them, OR the chopstick broke their wings making them unable to fly, so they fell into the water and drown.”

“But that wasn’t my intention! I just want them to fly far from people, that’s all.. Please believe me, I love animals! They are my friends..” I wonder if Tao is an innocent person or a stupid one. Baekhyun and I laugh as we pat him, telling him that everything will be alright. 

As we are heading to the clinic, Baekhyun has been pleading Tao to teach him martial arts. I’m not sure if Tao actually listens to him or not, but there isn’t any word coming out from his mouth.

“Okay..okay.. at least if you don’t want to teach me, that’s fine. I can learn that from the martial arts school center. But please tell me how to make a face like yours?” 

Tao and I pauses our steps.

“What do you mean by that? How to make face like him? Ask his parents.” I ask him confusedly.

“No.. I mean the sharp, evil, fighter kind of face. You have it all. I’m sick of people calling me cute. I want to look cool like Tao. Teach me, MASTER!”

I think my stomach is about to burst. I laughed so hard that I got muscle pain on my waist.

“Who call you cute?” Tao asks him. I guess he is being sarcastic.

“Well, my mom and Sehun.”

“Sehun calls you cute?” We speak in unison. He nods with the ‘what’s wrong with that’ face.

“When?” I ask him again.

“I think it’s the day he moves into my apartment.”

“He’s living with you?”

“Yup.”

Tao giggles, “He must be bluffing.” I give Tao thumbs up for that and we high-five.

Baekhyun got really mad and he continues to nagging about how perfectly cute he is back in his old days. He is now sick of it, and wants to go with the bad boy image. Yeah, whatever Baekhyun.

We are already in the clinic when I realized something in the conversation, “Baekhyun, Sehun has been living with you? How long has it been?”

“I guess it’s almost a year.”

Tao seems to catch my point when he joins me asking Baekhyun for further explanation. “Have you ever involved in fighting since last year?”

“No. Everything is fine. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Is there anyone came to your house?”

“Except for my family members, there’s no one that I can think of.”

That’s very weird. The gang could locate Luhan immediately, but for a year they were unable to find Sehun? Luhan used to have a tracking device in him and that’s enough to indicate how strong the gang is.

“Is there anything?” He asks us.

“No.” We reply him in unison. He gives us a very suspicious look but luckily the cleaning manager called him and Tao for suddenly absent from their duties.

I watch them got scold before telling the manager about the wasps. They ran from the scene, grabbing a mop and a dustbin along the way after were forgiven by their manager.

I chuckle as I made my way to ask the receptionist the end of Minseok’s work time. 

“It’ll be around half an hour from now without emergency.” I understand those words in instant. Minseok might be working overtime if there’s patient badly injured coming at the end of his shift. He did that to make sure every detail about the patient is handed correctly to the next doctor in charge. I was trying to find something to do by wandering around the clinic before remembers that Luhan is actually working in the cafeteria.

As I leisurely walking towards the hallway, from far, I could see Luhan leaning on the wall while scanning a file. He nods as he closed and handed them to a chef. The chef smiles at him, gives him a pat on his shoulder and leaves him after saying ‘good work, see you tomorrow’ – I guess the word from his lips movement.

Just then, Luhan caught me staring at him. He waves back at me and I reply him while running towards him.

I am five feet away from him when I heard another voice from my left yelled, “Hyung!” Automatically, upon hearing a sound, we turned our head to the direction. It is Sehun.

“Woah” Sehun go one step behind the moment he saw me.

“Do I look like a ghost to you?” I somehow felt really irritated when he does that.

“No..no..Seriously, I’m sorry.. no” He looks me in horror.

I must admit I was trying my best not to let even a single chuckle slip out of my tongue. To be honest, somehow I think he quite funny.

“Sooyoung, let it go. I already forgive him. Please forgive him too.” Luhan is indeed a very kind brother. I have no sort of attention to mingle his family problems but as long as Luhan is alright, I guess there’s no point making a fuss about it.

But looking at Sehun, I thought of not letting the matter goes too easily for him. He has a brother protecting him and yet he didn’t find him to tell him he’s in safe condition.

“I’m watching you.” I point my index and middle finger to Sehun’s eyes.  I walk away from them to the menu board displayed on top of the cafeteria counter. Pretending as if I didn’t want to look at those two brothers, I unconsciously smile as I saw Luhan patted his brother through my peripheral view.

“You’re acting all cold but unexpectedly rooting those two.” A big round eyes chef grins in front of me.

Curious of whom he is, I read his nametag. “Do Kyungsoo.” He saw my eyes on his nametag while nodding.

“Yes, that’s my name. And you are? Luhan’s friend, I supposed?”

I nodded while shaking his hand. “Sooyoung.”  

“Sooyoung? That name sounds familiar. I think I heard someone said that name countless time.” I immediately told Kyungsoo about my friendship with Minseok, hence answers his doubts. I told him about my intention on asking Minseok’s help to find a good dietitian to review food produced by the company. Luckily, Kyungsoo was a certified dietitian and offers his help as he shows interest in the project.

“Come to my office on your day off and I’ll show you around the factory.” I thank him.

Suddenly, Yixing come running clumsily towards us, using my body to brake his motioning legs while breathing heavily as his eyes fixed on me.

“~~Help me.. Kris… He..”

Kris? I grab Yixing’s shoulder worried if something bad might have happened to him. “What happened to him? Is it about the gang? GOD! He came to my house last night! Those people might have wanted to use h-”

Yixing shook his head, took a deep breath to calm him from the tiredness of running, “He forced me to join him to Mount Halla tomorrow.”

“Mount Halla?” I give him a weird look. “Huh? What’s so desperate about it? Just tell him you hate hiking.”

“He won’t accept a No. He told me something about you going there last week.”

“Me? Mount Halla? When di-” At that precise moment when I saw Luhan’s horror face, I remembered about the fake husband plan. Luhan must have told Kris about it last night.

“Sooyoung, help me. I don’t want to go. Kris is not my only client. Gosh, if the company isn’t yours, I would definitely resign.”

“This is not just about Kris forcing you; this is also about the place he wants to go. Leave it to me, I’ll handle it.”

“You didn’t go to Mount Halla last week. Am I right?” Yixing, the forever best lawyer I ever met recompose his posture. I wonder if it’s merely a trick, trying to get me into his trap.

“Huh? What are you trying to say?” He saw right through me, again. This is the worst part of having a sharp thinker lawyer as your long time best friend.

“Sooyoung, Luhan, we need to talk.” We excused ourselves from Kyungsoo and Sehun, making our way to the nearest café down the street.

Luhan order a hot chocolate for me while nervously facing Yixing who didn’t even leave his view from us.

“I’m sorry Sooyoung. I shouldn’t say that to Kris.” Luhan apologized. I nodded, letting him know it isn’t his fault to begin with. I made up a huge part of the story and Luhan did nothing wrong. I’m the wrong one.

“Yixing, please don’t mad at me.”

“I’m not. I’m just curious why.” He took a sip his flat white coffee while waiting for my answer.

“It’s just a way of us trying not to let others made it awkward for both of us living in a same roof. That’s all.”

“But lying to others about your marriage is out of hand. You have done so many weird things in the past and you never give a damn with what people badmouthing behind your back. You are keeping secrets too much from me, Sooyoung.”

I pissed off so much listening to Yixing so called advice. Why in the world must I report him everything I want to do? “You have secrets too, but did you see me begging you to tell me about it?”

“You hired me for the company. I believe this matter does have connection with the company and thus I am at the authority to know the real reason behind this so-called-marriage you had with Luhan!” Minseok was right behind Yixing when he heard him scolding. He was frozen shock.

Our eyes were on him as he slowly made his way next to Luhan. “You’re married to Sooyoungie?”

“Minseok, why are you here?” Yixing asked him for his sudden appearance.

“She was looking for me to discuss about dietitian and food project.” He stares at me for a couple of minutes without a word and immediately left us dumbfounded.

“I’ll go and explain to him.” Yixing follows him.

Luhan and I stay silent the whole day.

Author's note: 

I must apologize for such a late update. Too many things happen and I barely have time updating my fanfics. Telling the truth, I have forgotten how I want this story to go. Thus, gives me huge time to reconstruct the whole story again and save it in my laptop. I apologize again for that.

Please bare with my poor usage of vocab and grammars. Thank you so much~!!!