The smell is horrible. He enters the room anyway. The door glides open at the push of his hand and for a second all he can see is his own silhouette in the light the door lets in. The brightness is met by cries of pain, and he habitually run inside and close the door behind him. It takes a few minutes for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, but because he has to leave soon he steps further into the room before he can see clearly and is rewarded by the cold, disgusting feeling of wet, mushy something under his foot. He no longer cares if it is vomit or blood or , he just wants this to end. He cleans up swiftly after having removed his sock and washed his foot. Somewhere in the dark they’re lying there, cramped together in pain and fever and dirt. They’re constantly , constantly begging for relief, constantly calling his name. It has taken him years of training to block out their sounds. He only notices when they scream, now. He hates it when they scream. Not just because he is tired and it gives him a head ache and he feels so sad and broken when they do – but because he cannot afford medicine to help them. Not to relieve the pain, not to cure them, not to stop the suffering… He never liked to think about that scenario, but lately it had been just about the only thought in his mind. He feels the tears welling up in his eyes. “Unbelievable,” he thinks to himself. “After all these years, I still have tears left.” He violently wipes them away, throw away his cleaning equipment and seek out the bodies in the dark. He finds the largest hand among them somehow and uses it to guide his way to her head and kisses her forehead. He walks back to the door and opens it, but he leaves it open until he hears them crying in pain again. It is the only way he knows he’s got their attention. He steps out of the room and as he closes the door behind him he whispers into the darkness surrounding the three bodies.
“Get well soon.” The door closes completely and so does all hope for his mother and sisters.

---

I’d had always liked getting to work early, and after helping Luhan moving his stuff to the storage room and get settled in the boss’ office yesterday, I wanted to get there early to see how he’d done spending his first night there. But I wasn’t the only one with business to take care of that morning, because as soon as I got inside the café, Chanyeol came running in too.
“Hyung!! How could you do that to me?” Chanyeol looked at me in dispair.
“Do what?” I replied, honestly confused.
“Get Sehun the job!!” he threw his hands up in the air, turned around and hit his head against the wall in frustration.
“What, why is that so bad?” I can’t help but snicker a bit at the sight.
“WHY is that bad??? Are you kidding me?? I can’t have him around here, I’d just…”
“You’d just what? Have to talk to him? Ooooh, scary.”
“No, hyung. I’ll make a mess of things!”
“Relax! All of us others will be here and he won’t be working until the evenings. Besides, you don’t work Wednesdays, so you won’t get to see him that much.”
“Especially not at first, as Minseok has to train him with me,” Luhan added. Chanyeol spun around on his heel and stared at Luhan in terror standing in the doorway to the office – obviously he had expected the two of us to be alone. Luhan just smiled at him as he closed the door behind him and went to put on his uniform.
“Don’t worry, we’ll find out if he likes you back before we place him in your care,” he shot over his shoulder, and neither Chanyeol nor I could really believe our ears. Had Luhan changed his mind in regards of the whole homouality issue? Or had I misjudged him? Or was he just mocking? I left the confused and horrified Chanyeol alone in the café and went to get my uniform with Luhan.
“So, how’d it go?” I asked as we stood side by side and tied our aprons.
“It was surprisingly comfortable. I’m very grateful… To the both of you.” I gave him a smile in response, as I knew fully well how he felt. It might not be much, but sleeping on a mattress on the Black Pearl café office floor was both as he said “surprisingly comfortable” and very helpful, not to mention convenient, when you stand without an apartment and you don’t have a lot of money.
“I’m sorry for not telling you what is going on, and I’m sorry but I haven’t been quite honest with you, but-…” I put a finger to his lip.
“I don’t want to hear anything about it until you feel like it is okay to tell me. Never think you have to tell me anything unless you’re okay with it, got it?”
“You’re doing a whole lot for me on trust,” his shoulders fell down as he adjusted himself to relax his guilt more. “What if I tell you and you regret your decisions?”
“I’m not sure I ever will regret helping someone out,” I replied and tried not to think about how much of a lie that could be. “At least I can stand by that I will always be here for a friend. If I later think I shouldn’t have helped this person, I still have my honour as a good friend to fall back on.” Luhan measured me with a quizzical look.
“I had a feeling there would be this sort of depth to you, even when the others said you never open up.” And with those words he left. I would have followed him, but his words struck me a little too hard. They were right, on both accounts, but I hadn’t really stepped back and fully looked at how things were going until now. My Chinese friend must have put something weird in that soup he gave me, because ever since then I have been almost completely focused on him and no matter what I do he is either with me or I think about him while I’m doing it. How bizarre, that I would become this close and dependant on someone, I who have been alone all my life. But before I got to delve deeper into the pits of my thoughts to find the reason as to why I was so interested in Luhan, Chanyeol came into the room.
“Does he know? Did you tell him? Hyung, how could you??” He sat down in despair before I even got to defend myself.
“What, no! Chanyeol, I never said a word to anyone about out little conversation.” He looked at me with suspicion in his eyes.
“Seriously! I swear!” I may have left a little too much of a pause after that last word.
“...Buuut?” He raised an eyebrow questioningly.
“Buuuut… Everyone may have already guessed. Honestly though, the sort of fool you make of yourself whenever that boy is close – you’d have to be blind, deaf, and stupid not to get it.” As I said this, I realised that I had had no clue until Jongdae had told us – and the same seemed to be the case with Luhan. So how had Jongdae known?
“Are you kidding me??? Everybody knows???” Both his eyebrows were raised and his child like features made him look like a surprised five year old.
“No one knows anything but you and me - and the boy. But they all suspect. There’s a difference. However, you’ll be happy to know that no one has said a single bad word about it, so you could probably relax and breathe a bit more around us now.” I didn’t have time to let him continue – due to my short conversations with both him and Luhan I was now running a little late in my duties, and I didn’t particularly like that.

---

“Hey, Jongdae?” The short waiter turned to look at me as I was cleaning a table close to him.
“Could I ask you a question?”
“Sure, hyung – what do you want?” He finished off the table he’d been cleaning and came over to me.
“How did you know about Chanyeol and how he felt about Sehun?” The boy’s face turned bright and his signature grin fell into place.
“How about we finish up here first, let Chanyeol leave, and I’ll tell you over a cup of coffee after hours?” His hand fell to the back of his neck and for a second he looked like a brat from a manga.
“Sure, but do you mind if Luhan hears it too?”
“Luhan? Does he have to?” He asked a little bewildered, but before I could reply he added:
“No, not that I mind though – not at all. I meant to ask; is he staying behind anyway or something, or does he want to know too?”
“Actually, both,” I replied.
“He is going to stay behind anyway, but he’d probably want to know too. And by the sound of it, so would Chanyeol I presume, seeing as you’re determined to keep it from him?” The younger only snickered and urged me to finish up my duties so he could tell us his story.
            It wasn’t hard to convince Chanyeol to go home before us, as he needed to gather his strength after both finding out that we all knew about his crush, and because Sehun would be starting his training with us tomorrow and that would take quite a toll on him, even though it was a Wednesday and he wouldn’t be working, the idea of it all would still be a lot to handle. And he would have to come back on Thursday knowing that a) that Sehun would be there and b) that we had spent the previous day with Sehun alone – knowing fully well how Chanyeol felt about him. He left dragging his feet, and we closed the door – Luhan made us some coffee and sat down.
“It’s not much to tell, but I don’t want Chanyeol to know. …At least not yet! Maybe when they become a couple, then I’ll tell him how much he owes me.” The smile he sported right then was the reason I lovingly nicknamed him ‘little devil’, and I felt my curiosity rise.
“A while back,” he began and took a deep sip of his drink. “I was invited to this party. Or rather – I was set up. My friend invited me to their friend’s house, but when I showed up I realised a little too late that I had been set up as a blind date for this really weird girl who just loved insects and bugs so much – she even wore glasses designed to resemble one! I wouldn’t mind being there on a blind date, and this girl was really pretty even, but she was a little too weird for me and so when she told me to wait in the kitchen so she could go get one of her bugs to show me I sort of decided to get the hell out of dodge – I didn’t really know where to go though, so I decided to take refuge in one of the other rooms, as this house was really big. I opened a door and fell into a tiny hallway which only let to another pair of doors. For some reason I decided to enter that room rather than just stay hidden in the hallway I had found. Behind the doors were a huge library, but I didn’t get to enter properly before I saw Chanyeol standing in the middle of the room, hugging some brown haired boy. And then he leaned in and kissed him, and the boy he was holding sort of grasped on to Chanyeol and kissed back, and I was really surprised – I didn’t know what to do, so I just decided to go back where I came from and hope they didn’t notice me. Not that I mind anyway, people can love whoever they want – I’ve even tried kissing a guy myself, though it was definitely not my thing, and it was only on a dare – but I know not everyone is as open to the idea as me – and I guess you guys too.” He looked at us, and I registered that both of us nodded in agreement. I guess Luhan had either changed his mind, or I had misunderstood his reaction last time we talked about this.
“But what he really owes me for is what happened next. As I re-entered the party I got myself a few shots and a drink, just to prepare myself for the lovely company of the bug lady once she found me, but I tried to move around and talk to different people just to avoid having to meet her again. That’s when I heard some guys saying that it was too crowded in the living room, and someone suggested that they opened up to the library, and that’s when I spotted two huge door in the room leading to the library, and as the word spread everyone agreed that this would be a good idea. Knowing what I did, that Chanyeol and that boy was in there doing who-know’s-what, I couldn’t risk letting my best friend be exposed like that, so I did the only thing I could think of doing…” He paused and gulped down some more coffee and closed his eyes as if to shake some horrible memory.
“And what was that,” Luhan asked.
“I made an idiot out of myself. I poured down my drinks and a few more shots and began acting super drunk – you know, the embarrassing kind – but when no one bothered to notice, I decided to… Well, I decided to climb the curtain. Except, the curtain tore when I got almost to the top, and I barely got a hold of the curtain rod, but the bar wasn’t designed to hold someone of my size – hold the short person jokes – and it broke and fell down, and so did I, and I landed right in the middle of a glass cabinet filled with porcelain figures and pretty much everything broke. It made a huge noise and the music stopped and everyone stared at the broken glass, and me sitting there knowing fully well I couldn’t afford replacing all of this, I just got up and ran as quick as I could, hoping I had somehow managed to save my friend in the middle of it all. I’m an idiot, but at least I did it for my friend. And his boyfriend, or whatever.” Luhan and I just sat there staring at him in awe for a long time, before I broke out laughing. Imagining our Jongdae climbing a curtain, only to break the curtain rod and fall into a glass cabinet and break all the porcelain figures in it in an heroic act to save his best friend was both the coolest, funniest, dumbest and greatest thing I had ever heard. It didn’t take long before Luhan joined me, shortly followed by Jongdae himself, and we sat there laughing until our muscles hurt and we had to dry the tears streaming from our eyes. It probably took us a good ten minutes before any of us managed to talk again.
“Wow,” Luhan started as soon as he was able to breathe again.
“That has got to be the best story I have ever heard,” I chimed in before Luhan could say more.
“How did you manage not to get caught,” Luhan asked.
“And how come you didn’t want to tell Chanyeol what you did for him, or what you saw?”
“Nah, he’ll tell me when he’s ready,” Jongdae explained.
“I may have indicated that we already know,” I hesitantly confessed.
“WHAT?” Both of the others stared at me in disbelief.
“I may have said that we have all guessed, because of the way he acts when Sehun appears…” Luhan hid his face in his hands, and Jongdae leaned back to think about it before he asked:
“Does this mean he has told you?” I noticed Luhan’s fingers spread enough to watch me.
“Is that why I told him, you mean? No, I told him because Luhan made a joke about finding out if Sehun liked him, making it seem like Luhan knew something he shouldn’t, and so he panicked and asked me if Luhan knew anything..” Luhan made a grunt in realisation and bit his lip in anger with himself.
“And he asked me that, because he has… He has told me some things.” I explained. Jongdae stared at me with wide eyes and shock in his face until I continued.
“I don’t think he meant to, and he certainly didn’t intend to let me know as much as he did, but I revealed on my own that I realised he was talking about Sehun. Now, I’m not going to reveal what he said,” I said defensively before they could even ask me to.
“As you said, he will reveal it when he is ready himself. And I think he would have wanted to tell you first, Jongdae – but he wasn’t sure how you’d take it, not how any of us would take it, and he had all of these things bottled up inside… In all honesty I think it was just a coincidence that it was me he revealed anything to. And then I told him I knew it was Sehun he was talking about, and then I said that all of us sort of already had figured that out. And lastly I told him that no one had said anything bad about him or the possible love interest between them. So my guess is that he will now slowly decide to open up to us about it. But I’m not sure.” Jongdae had first looked hurt that his best friend had confided in me instead of him, but my explanation seemed to help a little.
“Then,” Luhan finally said.
“The most important thing for us to do now is to take care of that kid, teach him well and leave him with Chanyeol, right?” No one really replied, we sort of all just silently agreed before we got up and Jongdae and I left. Jongdae’s eyes lingered with our Chinese friend’s silhouette in the café as we left, but he didn’t say anything or ask any questions. The kid was nice like that.

---

As usual I arrived early and greeted Luhan as I entered the café.
“Good morning,” I nodded as he came dragging out of the office, yawning and rubbing his eye. Before he closed the door I could spot the neatly rolled mattress and sheets in the corner of the room.
“Did you not get much sleep last night,” I asked as I saw what state he was in.
“Not really,” he replied.
“Let me make you some coffee while you go get ready,” I offered as I re-entered the café from the changing room, wearing my apron, and he smiled thankfully in return as we passed each other. I went over to the machine and turned it on – it usually takes a few minutes before it goes warm, so I was just standing there waiting when a couple of arms wrapped themselves around my waist from behind and I felt Luhan leaning against my body, resting his sleepy head on my right shoulder.
“Thank you Minsokie,” he murmured beside my ear.
“I don’t know what I did to deserve all this. But whatever it is, I would do it again – because it got me a best friend like you.” He made a fake kiss sound and left me again, and as I began making the coffee I could still feel his arms around me, how my heart was beating a little faster in surprise at the sudden gesture, and how warm I felt inside. Best friend. That’s what he had called me. I was his best friend. I don’t know what it was about that, but I spent the rest of my morning smiling like an idiot when thinking about it.
            Shortly after school ended, Sehun dutifully showed up for his first day of work. Luhan greeted him by the door while I took and made orders and Jongdae went around serving the customers. It was still warm enough for business to be slow, but right as he appeared so did a lot of other students who wanted somewhere to hang around and have a drink after school. I still had some orders left when Luhan appeared with Sehun again, this time both clad in uniforms. They placed themselves by my side, and Luhan carefully told him that since he was completely new and we had a good amount of customers right now, it would be best of they just observed me as I was working for a while.
“Do you have any experience with coffee or sandwiches,” Jongdae asked quickly as he passed us with a tray filled with dirty dishes.
“I had to work in the school cafeteria for a while once, as detention,” the boy replied in a low voice.
“A trouble maker, huh?” Luhan laughed and his eyes formed perfect little bridges as he smiled at the boy.
“A little,” the boy admitted.
“Well, don’t worry,” Luhan began.
“In here you’ve got competition,” I shot in and pointed my head in the direction of the little devil running around with a tray and drinks. The atmosphere loosened a little, and I noticed Sehun carefully scanning the café, his eyes never meeting satisfaction.
“He doesn’t work Wednesdays,” I stated.
“Who?” The boy attempted to look innocent, but his flushed cheeks revealed that I had caught him red handed.
“Chanyeol. You two know each other, right?” I decided to play along with him, I could see no need to push neither him nor Chanyeol right now – I wanted to make things better for them, not worse.
“Oh, really?” he nodded in badly hidden disappointment.
“Yeah, we knew each other when we were younger.”
“You don’t know each other anymore,” Luhan questioned.
“Well, uhm…” A little uncomfortable with the subject, the boy still continued.
“He moved away and we didn’t really talk and stuff. But some stuff happened at home so I had to move to my aunt and uncle a little while ago. My cousin and, erhm, Chanyeol, seems to have some classes together. We’ve, eh… talked a few times. At parties.” Luhan and I looked at each other and smiled, both remembering Jongdae’s story from yesterday and understanding every pause the boy was making when explaining.
“Ah, yes – Chanyeol mentioned something about that!” Luhan pretended to suddenly remember a vague memory of being told this by Chanyeol, and the boy’s eyes lit up brightly.
But before we could continue our conversation, more customers appeared, and both Luhan and I had to make orders, all the while explaining a few things to Sehun to prepare him for learning properly himself. The day flew by quickly and we showed the boy quickly what our cleaning duties were before we sent him off ahead of us so we could close the store.
“Well, if he’s not in love with Chanyeol too then I’m 6 feet tall and Michael Jackson is my brother,” Jongdae exclaimed as soon as he was out the door and far enough away to not be able to hear. We spent a good twenty minutes talking enthusiastically about how obvious it was that he liked him, and planning little things we could do to get him and Chanyeol together.
“I cannot wait for tomorrow,” Luhan said as we were saying our goodbyes in the doorway.
“It is going to be hilarious seeing the two of them together.” I laughed all the way back to my apartment, thinking of how Chanyeol would be acting tomorrow. That night I dreamt I was living in a huge, pink cloud and everything smelled of cinnamon and there were long, warm arms wrapped around me and my stomach was filled with so many butterflies some came out every time I opened my mouth. And when I woke up, I felt really happy.