“Hyunghyunghyunghyung, don’t you think this old lamp a little bit weird?”

         A young man rushes in to the tent, his boot kicks sands around him recklessly, making the dirt flies everywhere and other man called ‘hyung’ glaring at him (but being ignored, as always) before coming closer to the taller between the two to see an old golden lamp in Jongdae’s hand. His eyebrows furrow a bit and shake his head hesitantly.

       “Nope. It looks okay for me.”

       Jongdae snorts. He puts the lamp on the table near the camp’s window; the lamp faintly reflects the sunlight that passes through the window.

       “Everything always looks okay for you, Minseok-hyung. There, look at the lamp’s handle. There’s a Chinese writing. Is it normal to find an old lamp, in the middle of Egypt desert, which has Chinese writing on it? It’s strange you know”, he sits comfortably on the couch while rubs his temple continuously.

        “We already dug for five days straight only to find nothing, but that.”, Jongdae rolls his eyes in annoyance.

          “Let me see it.” A 25-old-year man named Kim Minseok reaches the lamp and carefully looks at it. There, a tiny Chinese writing written on the handle of the lamp and it has smudged, but still recognizable. However, since he and Jongdae both had failed Hanja –Hanzi-Class when they were in university (but managed to pass the class after two times failed at it and their professor already gave up on them so he let them pass miserably on third try after giving c+ to each of them), they can’t read it, though.

          “I think it reads ‘Genie’”, Minseok laughs and Jongdae just snorts at Minseok’s remarks –which he did a lot since yesterday- , “Since that lamp is so damn similar with the one in Baekhyun’s favorite music video.

          Well, we can learn about it other time as we have to find Yixing’s request- a unicorn’s fossil, no- I mean, uniquely shaped horse- or whatever it called as soon as possible and go home,” he corrects hurrily when the other boy throws a glare to him.

         “Where you found it, by the way?”, Minseok rubs his neck, plopping himself beside Jongdae’s side.

          “Buried in 3 meters depth.”

          “Wow, that’s deep. You dug that deep?”

          “Hyung, how long we’ll search for that stupid request of Yixing hyung, huh? Five days for nothing! Like I believe unicorns do exist.”, the younger man points out.

          Minseok sighs as he pats his junior’s head, “Neither do I. But you know that Yixing, right? He wouldn’t stop begging to us-me, actually- until we said ‘ing yes’.” Minseok rises from the couch and flashes Jongdae a smile, “Just find him a random fossil bone and convince him that’s a unicorn’s fossil, and he’ll shut off his mouth.”

                                                                                             -----------------------

          Minseok actually never expects that one day, Yixing will come to him with teary eyes and shaking hands, begging Minseok to find unicorn’s fossil for him.

          “Minseok-ah, you know, I met an unicorn last night, in my dream”, explains Yixing while gripping Minseok’s both arm tightly with water-dwelling eyes, “He said in my former life, I was a unicorn ”, that statement (making) Minseok shoots the skinnier man with what-the-hell-you’re-talking-about- glare and pushes Yixing off.

        “Yixing, you’re being delusional. Listen, that was a joke. Jongin and Sehun were joking, trust me. You don’t even look like unicorn.”-‘Except your nose’, Minseok adds mentally.-“So stop talking such.”

          Yixing takes one big step towards Minseok and nudges his chest continuously just enough to make Minseok cringes, “I.am.ing.serious.kim.minseok.” Yixing starts to explode. “Listen, he-“ - Minseok cringes every time Yixing nudges his finger -”tells me that I have to find his fossil-“ -the older man squints- “in Egypt.”

        Silence.  

       Then Minseok feels like his eyeball plops out from its socket.

          “WHAT?”, he asks incredulously, staring Yixing dumbfoundly before flicking Yixing’s forehead.

          “Yah! It hurts!”, Yixing rubs his forehead furiously just enough to make flicking mark more visible to see and Minseok just snorts at Yixing’s stupid demeanor. Pretending not to hear anything, Yixing grabs Minseok’s hand and shows him his-one-of-kind-unicorn-face (sometimes Minseok is impressed by Jongin  and Sehun jokes, which seems more convincing everytime he sees Yixing face).

          “Please, Minseokkie? I’ll tell Wufan to take care all of the cost.”

          “Did Wufan know about this?”

          “Nope. He will throw me from window if I tell him about my dream.” Yixing smiles sheepishly.

          “Then how you convince him to pay all of my cost for this errand?”, the older man demands, hoping Yixing can’t answer this question.

          “It’s a piece of cake. Will show him his photo that I took last week.”

          “What photo?”

          Yixing looks troubled at first, but gesturing Minseok to lean closer to him. “Last week, I managed to make a sudden visit time..” Minseok rolls his eyes. “And caught red-handed Wufan and Tao making out.”

          “Huh? What’s the problem? They’re dating anyway.”

          This time is Yixing who rolls his eyes. “I haven’t finished it yet, Kim Minseok”, he sounds annoyed. “But.. Tao was on the top, you know. Being a real alpha male, it’s a shame to Wufan when he’s caught red-handed being.. yeah.. you know the rest.”

          Imagining the scene, Minseok bursts into laughter. Wufan’s horrified face is the one of thing that should be graced over the world. (His face barely shows any emotion, mind you). “So, you’ll blackmail him with that?”, says Minseok between his laughter.

          “Well, being smart I am, of course.”, the taller-but-not-so-tall man nodding proudly. “I won’t miss this opportunity, though. “…So, Egypt then?”

          Removing laughter tears from his eyes, Minseok sends Yixing a grin. A mischievous one. “Send me the photo first.”

                                                                             ---------------------------------------------

          The decision which Minseok has made to bring Jongdae along with him probably is not wrong at all. Even though two years younger than him, Jongdae’s appearance somehow shows otherwise. Jongdae helps Minseok efficiently digs the ground beneath them, and he can’t help but be proud of his junior’s skill. On the sixth days, Jongdae and him successfully find a unicorn fossil (actually it’s more like a camel or horse’s head bone but neither of them care about it).

          “FINALLY WE CAN FLY BACK TO KOREAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!”, Jongdae runs crazily, shouting some words like “KOREA I’M COMING”, “I MISS KOREAAAA”, “SUHO BABY I’LL BE BACK SOON”, and such as if he had left Korea for million years before entering their camp and sleep peacefully while hugging the just found fossil. (which Minseok finds it cute and weird on the same time).

         Later on that day, in the middle of night,  the chubby man wakes up because his throat feels dry. Night is pretty cold and thick fog surrounds the camp, which makes Minseok hardly to see anything. He gets up from the bed carefully and manages to take a sip from a bottle located on the table near the window. Unfortunate for him, the bottle is empty. Having plan to wake his partner, Minseok approaches slowly toward Jongdae’s bed only to find him sleep-talking about “Joonmyun Gangnam Style” and other incoherent mumbles that Minseok fails to recognize.

          He opts to leave Jongdae and his mumbles and walks back to the table. In the middle of thick fog, it’s hard for Minseok to see clearly, but his fingers finally touch something a like glass and grip its handle. Sighing, he thinks there’s no other option to get water without go out from the camp since the source of the water is from the small oasis beside it.

          ‘Seven steps from the camp’, Minseok keeps reminding himself, walking slowly. The small oasis is found accidentally by him on the second day since they arrived to unknown Egypt’s desert, making the both men decided to move their excavation site near of it for easier water access.  

          ‘One..Two..Three..Fo-‘ he is counting the steps when his left leg unexpectedly steps on a sharp-shaped rocks, resulting him wincing ‘ ow ow ow ow’ uncontrollably and throwing the glass –or so, Minseok thinks- to the oasis.

          There’s a splashing water sound.

          Minseok mentally facepalms.

          “What a good job, Minseokkie. Now you have to go back to the camp and find another glass”, he says to himself while rubbing his leg hopelessly. He is about to walk back when suddenly someone yells.

           “WHAT THE HELL?”

          A curt man’s voice makes Minseok jumps slightly, eyes narrowing in the middle of thick fog, trying to search where the voice coming from. Before he can realize, a shadow is running towards him and pushes him down.

          “YOU!! HOW DARE YOU TO THROW ME OFF?!”

          Minseok blinks. The last time he remembers, he throws off a glass, not a person, especially a very cute person standing in front him right now. But seeing this person all wet drenched makes Minseok unsure he was only throwing a glass.

         “I am dreaming, aren’t I?”

          A slap on the left cheek followed by a pain which still lingers for six seconds long obviously isn’t dream, Minseok frowns, then looked up to face the person who slapped him minute ago. A doe-eyed boy is staring furiously at him, but it’s hard to say it furiously because, this boy’s appearance shows him hard-resist cuteness instead.

         “Are you lost, kid?”, Minseok asks the boy carefully. Water still drenches out from the boy’s clothes, which makes him frown again when he realizes the clothes. It’s Chinese traditional clothing.

        “Do I look a lost kid to you?”, the boy replies, clearly annoyed by Minseok’s question. “And I’m not a kid, mind you. I’m a genie.”

          He said genie. Ge-nie. A genie wearing Chinese clothing. In the middle of night. In Egypt. …Hell right.

          It takes one minute and twenty-three seconds for Minseok’s brain to process the whole sentence, which contain g-word, or genie, or-

          Wait.

          Isn’t genie supposed to be a girl? Woman? Or creature with mound on their chest… Indeed. Specifically, it should be a beautiful, young woman wearing cute clothes and speaking softly and doing aegyo or similar gesture, and apparently is not like someone –or something- (Because Minseok is torn whether he should address a genie as someone or something) who/which standing in front him right now.

          Minseok is confused. Baaaaadly.

          “…Okay?”

      “You’re not okay”, the genie retorts back, his tone a little bit unpleasant to hear. He keeps rubbing his hands and stomping the ground beneath him, causing the water drips a bit faster than it should as he keeps glaring at Minseok.

         “Three wishes.”

         “..What?”, Minseok frowns. Really, is this real? He still can’t comprehend what happened minutes ago, and receiving unending glare from someth-someone  he doesn’t know in the middle of desert is not helping him. At all.

       “You have three wishes to grant, my dearie masteeer.”

       He suddenly has an urge to slap his new master face once again when the genie sees Minseok staring back at him as if the genie is an odd creature (well, actually he is, genie is) with mouth-gaping (which is widely open and he thinks he can stuff that open mouth with something like… just forget it) and flushed cheeks that Luhan finds cute.

       The genie snaps his fingers and ‘BOOM!’, white smoke suddenly appears from nowhere –Minseok coughs helplessly, shocked and amazed on the same time- as the wet-drenched clothing is now changed to pale white casual shirt, which is similar with Minseok, and navy-colored jeans. Then, he sits beside Minseok before sighing deeply, as if he can read ‘what-are-you-actually’ look from now-sitting-comfortably-on-the-cold-sand Minseok.

        “You’re my master now. My name is Luhan.”

        Minseok repeats the name slowly, ‘..Luhan’ and weirdly, that word slips easily from his mouth. “Okay, Luhan.”

         Luhan nods, a little smile creeps across his mouth. Somehow, it feels right, the way of his new master calls him. Other masters whom Luhan has served for many years never voice out his name that soft, sincere like this one. They always call out ‘Luhan!’ harshly, no respect on it. Those people, Luhan realizes, only talked to him with sickeningly sweet tone which makes Luhan cringes everytime they wanted to say their wishes, and after that, those harsh tones –sometimes pleading too- and profanities was thrown at the genie when those greedy masters of him noticed the wishes they asked was backfired on them, and Luhan could only stare at them with pity. But this person is different. But he can feel it. Kim Minseok is different.

         Minseok clears his throat nervously as the genie keeps staring at him, making him embarrassed and uncomfortable at the same time.

         “So, Luhan? Err.. Would you like to explain? I mean, I still don’t understand the whole situation right now. Like, you’re a genie, three wishes, master, and all.” The chestnut-brown haired man looks away, avoiding Luhan’s gaze. (It’s too cute, Minseok can’t stand it.)

         “Well, honestly, you ruined my peaceful slumber..”, Luhan trails off, “which had lasted for 267 years.”

        Minseok’s jaw slightly agape when he hears Luhan’s confession. “You sleep that long?”

        “Uh-uh. Not to mention, you made my lamp wet too“, Luhan scowls, pointing at the small oasis.

        “Oh, I’m so sorry! Look, I thought that your lamp as-“

        “-a glass, of course.” Luhan says mockingly.

         The wind ruffles the both men hair softly, and the fog surprisingly has gone somewhere because Minseok can see Luhan clearly from his seat.

          “I’m sorry.”, Minseok says, sending the golden-brown haired man apologetic look, then averting his gaze to the camp behind them, checking if Jongdae has woken up yet .

           “Never mind, I can dry it later”, answered the genie, before following Minseok’s gaze to the camp. But then, Minseok turns his head abruptly, making their noses touching each other accidentally. Both jumps out, a strange electricity sensation runs through their spine.

            “W-what..?”, Luhan widens his eyes in disbelief, while Minseok rubs his nose tip awkwardly. They refuse to look into each other, making the situation more awkward than before. Minseok takes initiative first as he gets up and brushes the dust away from his pants.

            Suddenly he doesn’t feel thirsty anymore.

           “I’ll better get going or Jongdae will throw some tantrums to me if he knew I left him all alone in the camp”, he flashes Luhan a small smile before walking towards the camp.

          Before Luhan can say anything, Minseok turns again to Luhan, ruffling his already disheveled hair and thinking deeply for a mere second.

          “I still have three wishes right?”, Luhan nods in confusion, “Then, I wish you can  sleep peacefully in your- uhh.. lamp. Sorry for disturbing you, Luhan? Good night.” After he said so, the chubby man drags himself to the camp, walking slowly to his bed and hoping the moment before is just dream as he shuts his eyes off.

         Maybe he just too tired. Maybe.

Sorry for the late update and sorry for typos and bad grammar  m(_ _)m

enjoy!