Nam  Woohyun was intrigued. That kind of feeling hadn’t happened to him in a while. Lately, his life had been routine: waking up before sunrise, baking until the sun shone, filling out special orders, sometimes emerging from the kitchen and giving his girlfriends ‘special service,’ and then he went to bed (sometimes even before the sun had set). Outside of the people in the bakery, Woohyun hardly saw anyone else. He went for long periods of time when he never stepped foot outside the bakery (he lived in the apartment above his shop). There was hardly anything exciting or unusual about his days lately, until yesterday, and it left him perplexed.

He had expected a critic from a major newspaper to come in and review his food and had also expected it to be a woman, given the nature of his shop. He didn’t expect the critic to come with his favorite sports writer and to look the way she did. There wasn’t much diversity in his part of the city, so this half-Korean food critic had caught his eye. Her eyes were a light brown with flecks of green; her long hair cascading over her shoulders in waves looked dark brown at first, but when the light hit it in a certain way, it shone brilliant red. Yet in spite of her mixed heritage, her skin was as white and clear as fresh fallen snow.

However more intriguing than all of that was the way she reacted to him. She seemed to enjoy and yet be utterly repulsed by his actions at the same time. Woohyun was used to having a few unwilling customers dragged into the shop by some of his more fanatic ‘girlfriends,’ but those people would consistently reject his and his servers’ ‘service.’ Choi Bonnie, on the other hand, reacted so inconsistently that he didn’t know what to do. Did she like him? Did she hate him? Or had she not made up her mind yet? If it was the last one, that irritated Woohyun the most. Woohyun could live with people disliking or even hating him (grudgingly), but those people teetering on the edge of like and dislike, he could not stand. He would feel this incessant  urge, wanting desperately to win them over, and he only felt more crestfallen when they had finally decided to hate him despite his efforts.

“Which one will it be, Tokki-ssi?” he muttered under his breath as he kneaded the dough in front of him.

“Nam-goon!” A voice called out to him. Footsteps thumped down the stairwell from the apartment upstairs. Woohyun didn’t need to see who the voice belonged to in order to know who it was; he was already very familiar with that gentle yet excited cadence.

“Dongwoo-hyung, I’m in the kitchen,” Woohyun announced, now taking the dough in his hands and methodically throwing it on the countertop.

The kitchen’s swinging doors burst wide open and a breathless Dongwoo emerged. “The review…it’s out,” he said in between pants. Woohyun looked at his hand and sure enough, Dongwoo was clutching a newspaper in his hands tightly, his knuckles turning white. Dongwoo then walked over to the baker’s side and placed the newspaper on the countertop. “I hadn’t read it yet,” he admitted. “I didn’t think it would be right to read without you and Myungsoo.”

“Soo is still asleep,” Woohyun stated as he picked up the paper and flipped it to the food section. “I don’t think he would mind, if we took a peek.”

“Are you sure? He hates being excluded from things,” Dongwoo debated with Woohyun verbally but the older man was already peeking over the baker’s shoulders,  trying to catch a glimpse of the print.

“Well, then that’s what he gets for being a lazy and sleeping in,” Woohyun joked as he searched the pages for his review. When he found it, the both of them read it silently. Not even a breath passed their lips until they had finished reading the review.

Woohyun sighed and threw the paper on the table with his head hanging. Dongwoo was hugging his back, resting his chin on his shoulder, in an effort to comfort him. Well, I guess Tokki-ssi decided on hate, Woohyun’s mind concluded.

“Hey, Tokki!” Bonnie looked up and saw Howon poking his head over their shared wall. “Nice article, but I expect to get some credit for the ‘host club’ comment. I came up with that, you little plagiarist.”

“Fine,” Bonnie gave in and took the newspaper from Howon grasp and jotted something in the margins before handing it back.

Howon took back the newspaper and read it out loud, “Article by Choi Bonnie, sass provided by Lee Howon.” He put down the paper and smirked. “Good, now just do that for the thousand or so other newspapers, and I won’t sue.”

Bonnie just smiled at his weak threat. “We both know that you’re not going to sue.  I’m pretty sure your wife would divorce you if you did. She loves me more than you.”

“I doubt that,” Howon scoffed. “You may be her sister, but I’m her husband. I can do things for her that you cannot.”

Bonnie immediately covered her ears and started humming loudly. “Dear God! I don’t want to hear about your life with my little sister!” she whined. She looked up at Howon who was silently and maniacally chuckling above her head. He all the sudden reminded her of one of those cartoon devils, whispering nefarious things into someone’s ear. Bonnie pulled the fingers out of her ears. “I regret setting you up with Aine every day.”

Howon hit her on the top of her head lightly with the rolled up newspaper. “I was talking about opening up jars and other manly things. You’re the one who made it dirty,” he chided. Then he rested his chin on the top of the wall and smiled. “Did I ever thank you for forcing me into that blind date?”

Bonnie smiled contently. “Every day,” she softly responded. She would never tell Howon lest it would inflate his already puffed up ego, but she honestly enjoyed having him as a brother-in-law. He turned out to be the teasing but good-natured brother that she had always wanted. He also made her little sister happier than she’d ever been in her life with each passing day. And to imagine that if I hadn’t practically blackmailed Hoya into that date, none of this would have ever happened, she said to herself.

Bonnie saw Howon ducking his head back down, returning to his work. She let out a big sigh. She was truly happy for Howon and Aine, but every time Bonnie saw Howon practically have hearts sprouting out of his eyes when he talked about her little sister, it was a grim reminder that she was still single. And from the looks of her current lifestyle (being practically married to her work) and from the men she had been meeting lately (like that flirtatious, womanizing baker Nam Woohyun), her single status wasn’t going to change anytime soon. But she still held out hope for one man, her forbidden office crush.

“Oh by the way,” Howon spoke out again, his head hanging over the wall like a vulture. “The boss is back from vacation. And I think that he misses his little pet rabbit.” Bonnie blushed. She had read the memo too about their boss’s return, and it sent her heart aflutter. Of course, Howon being the observant little bastard he was, knew full well of Bonnie’s penchant for their boss and about it every time he possibly could.

“Don’t say that, Hoya,” Bonnie said quietly, pretending to be typing something into her computer (although she hadn’t received her new assignment yet). “I’m pretty sure Sungkyu-ssi didn’t even think about me for a second.”

Howon smirked and looked across the room. Then he gasped. “If that’s true, then why is he coming over right now?”

Bonnie jumped up and peered over her cubicle walls. There was no one. She turned around and saw Howon smiling wolfishly and silently giggling. “Haha very funny,” Bonnie said dryly.  “You got me. I don’t know why I believed you. No one ever comes into this corner of the office except the errand-boys. We never get any visitors.”

“Oh, then what am I?” a familiar voice came from her side. Bonnie cringed, and Howon smirked amusedly. It was Nam Woohyun, clutching a newspaper in his hand, opened straight to the page of his review. “I guess maybe I’m technically not a visitor because I’m here on business. I’m a complainer. I’m here to lodge a complaint,” he announced with that practiced smile of his.

“Woohyun-ssi,” Bonnie started, standing from her chair. Howon returned back to his work to give them privacy. “Is there a problem with the article?” Bonnie asked but then she winced. Of course there was a problem. She basically attacked his character and exposed him and his bakery for what it truly was, “a charming facade with no substance” to quote herself directly.

Woohyun leaned against the cubicle wall, crossing his arms. “Well, it’s your opinion so there’s not much that I can do about that,” he said staring at the ground, but then he looked up and pouted sadly. “But do you really think that I have a ‘disingenuous smile’? Or—“

“Yes,” Bonnie said honestly. Then she saw the hurt in Woohyun’s eyes, and it made her feel guilty. “I’m sorry,” she apologized. “It was just a feeling I got when I saw it.”

“Which smile was it?” he asked with all sincerity.

“Huh?”

“Which smile? Was it this one?” He showed her his tight-lipped smile. “Or this one?” He smiled widely exposing only his top row of teeth. “Or this?” This time he smiled with his mouth hanging open, resembling a bit of a fool.

“Huh…I,” Bonnie was stuttering as she watched the baker showed her a series of smiles. She was wondering how one person could have so many different expressions (the one where he smirked and bit his bottom lip had especially taken her aback), but every expression seemed to prove her original sentiment. They all seemed practice and rehearsed in front of a mirror. “I don’t know. All of them?” she tried to make definitive statement, but it came out more as a question.

Woohyun’s face fell. “A-all of them,” he whimpered.

All of the sudden a crumpled piece of paper flew over the wall of the cubicle and hit Bonnie in the head. It was a note from Howon. Bonnie smoothed it out and read it to herself:

 Tokki,

Stop flirting. The boss is coming this way. This time I’m not joking.

-Hoya

P.S. On second thought, keep flirting. It might make Sungkyu-ssi jealous to see someone else playing with his pet.

“Um,” Bonnie began after finishing the note and putting it in her pocket. She looked up and saw Woohyun trying to slyly catch a peek at the note. “Maybe you should leave. I’ll work on a apology in my next article, and I’ll send you a fruit basket. A very nice fruit basket,” she promised as she forcefully ushered him out of her cubicle.

“B-but my smile,” he whined, trying to grip on the walls of her cubicle to stay his ground. Bonnie consequently gave him a harder push, causing Woohyun to collide with the man right outside of her cubicle opening, Kim Sungkyu. Bonnie hid her increasingly reddening face behind her hands and began to open so that she could profusely apologize, but before she could do so, one word slipped from Woohyun’s mouth that shut her up, “Hyung!”

Sungkyu facial expression immediately morphed from one of annoyance to a warm, friendly one. “Woohyunnie?” he said in surprise. “What are you doing here? Did you miss your hyung?”

“Nope,” Woohyun plainly stated putting his hands in his pocket. Sungkyu looked a little saddened by that statement, which made Woohyun giggle in delight. “I came here to talk to one of your writers. She didn’t write a very nice article about me,” he said with an expression of a hurt puppy.

Sungkyu walked up to him and him under the chin. “Who was it? I’ll fire them right now,” the editor said in all seriousness. Woohyun deepened his pout and pointed over to a surprised and stunned Bonnie. “Bonnie-ssi? You?” Sungkyu asked in disbelief noticing the woman for the first time since he approached her cubicle. Bonnie just nodded, utterly confused at the two’s relationship. Sungkyu turned to Woohyun and shrugged. “Sorry, Hyunnie, I can’t fire her. She’s one of our paper’s best reviewers. She always write her honest opinion and that’s what I like about her.” Bonnie couldn’t hide her smile at her boss defending her from her new rival (both of them now vying for Sungkyu’s favor).

“But hyung…” Woohyun whined, trying to win over his hyung with every cute weapon in his arsenal (Bonnie tried to take note of it, seeing how easily Sungkyu gives into Woohyun’s whims).

“Fine, let me see the article. I haven’t been able to read it yet because I was on vacation,” Sungkyu gave in. He turned again to Bonnie. “Bonnie-ssi, meet me in my office with the article.” After ordering her, he his heels and left (not before patting Woohyun on the head).

Bonnie turned to Woohyun and didn’t know whether to slap him for trying to get her fired or to hug him  for giving her private time with her crush. But after looking at Woohyun smiling triumphantly at her, she decided on hitting him on the with her newspaper like the bad dog he was.

“Here it is, sir,” Bonnie presented the article to Sungkyu, sitting behind his oak desk. “Like always, I wrote from my heart,” she defended herself as he quickly skimmed through her piece.

“Maybe from the wrong place in your heart,” Sungkyu muttered under his breath, barely audible. He roughly put down the newspaper and looked at Bonnie with an expression that she wasn’t accustomed to get from him, disappointment. “Some hateful place,” he spoke more loudly this time.

“Sir?” Bonnie’s voice cracked.

“Write it again,” he ordered.

She couldn’t believe her ears. Disappointment from Sungkyu she could handle, but him telling her to redo her article, articles that he usually praised, cut her deeply. Maybe she had misheard. “Beg your pardon.”

Sungkyu folded his hand and rested his elbows on his desk. “Write it again,” he repeated. “Your facts are wrong. You didn’t even conduct a proper interview.  Do it again, and actually talk to Woohyun. Get to know him. Get your facts right,” he reprimanded. He picked up the paper and glanced at it again, scoffing. “ ‘Disingenuous smile’? Did you even look at the kid properly?”

Bonnie felt her temper rise. She took a deep breath, trying to control it, but it barely helped. “Yes, I did, sir,” she said more curtly than she intended. “But you asked me to write my opinion—“

But Sungkyu cut her off with a simple wave of his hand. Bonnie clamped tightly. “I can’t defend Woohyun’s baking skills. What you wrote there may be true,” he tried to defuse Bonnie’s temper. “But—I’m not saying this because he’s a good friend—Nam Woohyun is seriously one of the best people I know. He deserves a second look. Now get out of my office. I have important editing business to take care of,” he commanded as he picked up the phone on his desk and began dialing.

Bonnie wordlessly bowed and left his office, but not before eavesdropping on his phone conversation. “Hello? Mommy?” Sungkyu said in a soft voice. “Yes I ate…Do you really need to know that?!” Bonnie sighed, not only letting go some air from her lungs but also letting go of some of the respect she held for her boss.

“Stupid, biased jerk,” Bonnie mumbled at she stomped back to her cubicle. Luckily, Howon was attending a baseball game and could not harass her about the recent turn of events; however her luck wasn’t that good nor her cubicle empty. When she returned, she found Woohyun spinning around in her swivel chair, making ‘whooooooooosh’-ing noises. Bonnie cleared . He immediately jumped from the chair and chuckled embarrassedly. “You’re still here? Shouldn’t you be at the bakery?” she asked.

“The bakery is closed today,” Woohyun announced.

Bonnie walked past him and sat down in her chair. “Why? It’s not a holiday.”

“It is for me,” he retorted. Bonnie rolled her eyes, wondering if the baker seriously took the day off just so he could harass her.

Bonnie chose to give him a report of the meeting she just shared with Woohyun, hoping that he would leave afterwards. “Well, your dear friend is making me rewrite the article. You win.”

“He’s a good hyung,” Woohyun shared, leaning against the wall, rooting himself into her cubicle like a tree.

While he decided to linger, Bonnie decided to indulge her curiosity. “How do you two know each other anyway?”

“From school, like most people,” he divulged playing with the edges of her wall calendar (of rabbits, courteously of Howon). “You might not know this, but he and I minored in music together.”

“You play an instrument?” Bonnie asked. She wondered if she could consider this weak report an interview, to satisfy Sungkyu’s wishes.

“If you count our vocal chords as an instrument, then yes,” he joked. “We used to sing together at recitals.”

Bonnie’s curiosity was ignited. She spun towards Woohyun and arched an eyebrow. “It’s hard to imagine my boss singing,” she argued.

Woohyun nodded. “You should hear him. He has a voice like an angel.” There again was his practiced smile.

As if I need any more reason to be attracted to my boss, she thought, but then she shook that thought from her head. “And what about you?” she asked.

Woohyun looked up at the ceiling and thought for a second. “Hm…a seraphim. That’s a high order of angels, right? In comparison, Gyu-hyung’s just a little cherub,” he declared, chuckling.

Bonnie had just enough of Woohyun’s hot air. “When are you going to leave? I have work to do,” she declared, turning to her computer.

Woohyun walked over and put a hand on her chair spinning it around. “Aren’t I your work now? I’m still your assignment,” he reminded her. He then extend a hand in her direction. “Come with me.”

Bonnie looked at his hand skeptically. “Why?”

Woohyun rolled his eyes. “Research for your article,” he said, his hand still outstretched. He wiggled his finger tips in order to make his hand look tempting.

“The bakery is closed today,” Bonnie repeating what he had told her.

“Trust me. Today is the most important day of the year for the bakery,” he spoke with sincerity. “If you want the whole truth, come with me.”

Bonnie stood up on her own, rejecting his hand, but that didn’t faze the baker. “Let me get my coat,” she responded, hating herself a little for following the man’s whims. She hoped that she wouldn’t regret it later.

Woohyun pulled her coat from behind him. “Already have it.” He then insisted on helping her put it on. Bonnie was already starting to regret following him.

Within the hour, Bonnie found herself in Woohyun’s apartment, wishing that she was wearing anything else besides her pink peacoat and kelly green dress. She rubbed her sweaty palms against her knees as she was kneeling in front of a makeshift altar with a photo of a middle-aged woman in the middle of it. Woohyun was busy arranging various foods around the framed photo. After he was done, he pulled back, kneeled next to Bonnie, and smile with his forced smile. “This is my aunt,” he announced pointing to the photo. “She was the original owner of the bakery.”

“Oh…hello,” Bonnie said with a awkward bow, not knowing the proper decorum for greeting the deceased. “I’m Choi Bonnie. It’s nice to meet you.”

Woohyun chuckled. “Auntie,” he began. “Tokki-ssi wrote a very bad review about your bakery. You should haunt her for the rest of her life.” Bonnie looked at him with wide-eyes, and her face grew pale. Woohyun saw her reaction and laughed even harder. He nudged her in the side. “I’m just kidding, but I guess you can tell why the bakery is closed now. It’s her anniversary.”

Bonnie let out the breath of air she was unconsciously holding in. She was relieved that Woohyun was joking around, but there was something about the dead in general that made her uncomfortable. To say that she was a tad bit superstitious was an understatement. Bonnie had inherited crazy superstitions about the dead and luck from her mother, even causing her to perform silly routines (like throwing salt over her left shoulder to ward away the devil).  So now in this situation, she was feeling very uncomfortable, wearing bright colors in a funerary ceremony and getting ‘cursed.’ She shifted in her spot as if that would shake her of the uncomfortable feeling and cleared . “It is sort of a holiday,” Bonnie quietly admitted. “So what was the bakery like when she owned it?”

Woohyun faced the photo and smiled with tight lips. “It was different. Very different. Back then it was called—“

“Love Love Bakery,” a voice coming from behind him finished for him. Bonnie jumped up in shock; she turned around slowly wishing that the voice didn’t belong to Woohyun’s dead aunt. Then her eyes met with familiar pitch-black eyes. It was the sculpture-like waiter from the shop, posing in the doorway with his arms crossed across his chest.

“Oh, you’re—“ Bonnie began but her voice drifted away. She could not recall his name, and now it was dancing somewhere on the tip of her tongue.

The waiter didn’t seem to care and politely smiled. “Kim Myungsoo,” he answered stepping forward and kneeling on the other side of Bonnie. “I’m his cousin,” he said nodding towards Woohyun. “And her son.” He faced the framed photo with a grave face. Then he turned to Bonnie and smiled crookedly. “And co-owner of the bakery. Am I the person with the ‘disingenuous smile’?”

“Huh? You’re an owner too?” she asked. Bonnie mentally slapped herself in the head. Sungkyu was right: her facts were wrong. She had not conducted her investigation of the bakery properly at all. She had wanted to get it done as quickly as possible, and it resulted in sloppy work. And now, she quite possibly ruined their reputation wrongfully. No, Bonnie counter-argued in her mind. They are still making profit on playing with people’s feelings.

The smile dropped from Myungsoo’s face. “You didn’t know…did you think that I was just a waiter?” he asked with his head bowed towards his lap. Although Bonnie didn’t say anything, her silence was her answer.

Woohyun sensed his cousin’s distress and reached behind Bonnie to pat Myungsoo’s back.  “Soo is way more than the co-owner. He’s the savior of the bakery,” Woohyun said proudly and a small, embarrassed smile appeared on his cousin’s face. “Without him the business would have gone under already. He’s a genius with numbers.”

Myungsoo raised and turned away his head. “I’m not,” he dismissed with the wave of his hand. “I just like them…a lot. And it’s my mom’s legacy. I couldn’t let it die like—“ His voice stopped in his throat. His eyes fell on his mother’s portrait. Woohyun moved from patting Myungsoo’s back to smoothing out the hair on his head. Bonnie, still caught in between the two cousins, awkwardly leaned forward because Woohyun’s arm had been rubbing against her own back. She winced, wondering if it would be inappropriate to excuse herself. Right as she opened , a loud crashing sound cut her off.

Unlike Bonnie, the cousins didn’t even flinch when they heard the thumping sound coming up the stairs into their apartment. They just calmly turned around to the source of the sound. “Hey guys, am I late?” the noisemaker asked as soon as he reached the top of the stairs. It was the waiter with the sharp features. He was fumbling with the black bag he was carrying that seemed to be fighting against him; something was alive and squirming in the bag. “You won’t believe how much trouble I went through to find a live octopus. But we have to get it because it was Mom’s favorite. She had weird tastes,” the waiter said in exasperation as a tentacle gripped the outer edges of the bag and he tried hard to force the octopus back in. Finally triumphing over the creature, he lifted his gaze and saw Bonnie staring at him with a gape.  “Oh, hello,” he smiled brightly, practically exposing every tooth in his mouth.

“Hyung, you remember Choi Bonnie,” Woohyun re-introduced the writer to the newcomer. “Tokki-ssi, this is Jang Dongwoo,” he said softly,  raising his hand towards Dongwoo.

“Ah! The one who wrote the article. Good to see you again,” Dongwoo cheerfully spoke as he walked over to the altar and placed the octopus in an empty bowl. Bonnie watched the sea creature wiggle like gelatin, tentacles gripping the rim. Dongwoo took a seat next to Myungsoo who automatically began to lean against the other unconsciously. But Dongwoo’s gaze was fixed on Bonnie. “We’ve been having an argument over who’s the owner with the ‘disingenuous smile.’ Is it me?” he asked with a slight giggle.

Bonnie stared at him, blinking in disbelief. “Dongwoo-ssi, you own the bakery too?” she asked. Her eyes flickered over the three boys’ faces. “How many owners does this bakery have?” she exclaimed.

“Well, legally,” Dongwoo carefully began, “only Nam-goon and Myungsoo own it. They inherited it from Mom, and I guess they inherited me too. But they were nice enough to give me a share of the bakery.” Bonnie narrowed her eyes on the speaker’s face. This was the second time he had called the owner ‘Mom.’ He looked nothing like the woman in the portrait nor the man leaning against his side. Wasn’t Myungsoo’s family name ‘Kim’? Bonnie could’ve sworn Woohyun introduced the newcomer as ‘Jang Dongwoo.’

As if he could read her mind, Woohyun leaned closer towards her and explained, “Hyung isn’t blood-related as you can tell. My aunt took him in after he ran away from his home in Jeonju.”

“But it doesn’t make him any less of a brother,” Myungsoo said as he draped an arm on Dongwoo’s shoulders. Dongwoo smiled brightly and rest his head on top of his ‘brother’s.’

“You ran away from home?” the question came from Bonnie’s mouth before she could realize how sensitive the issue might be for the other.

Dongwoo, on the other hand, was more than happy to indulge in her curiosity. “Yes, when I was seven. My birth parents weren’t the best; they had their problems.” He then bowed his head and shook it. “To be honest I don’t remember much about them. But I remember that I had two sisters. They had ran away one night and left me alone with my parents. And things got worse. So when I got enough money, I ran as far as I could and somehow ended up at Mom and Dad’s doorstep.” He looked towards the photo of his adoptive mother, and his eyes were shining. “They were really the best parents I could ask for. And they raised me as their own son.”

“As far as I can remember, hyung’s been a part of our family,” Myungsoo added.

All the sudden, Bonnie wished that she had brought her tape recorder (Woohyun had whisked her away before she could grab it). She put her hands in her coat pockets as she scanned Dongwoo’s face again, and saw it in a new light. He was happy. He was genuinely happy in spite of his horrible past and today being the death anniversary of his mother. That smile was perhaps the truest smile Bonnie had ever witnessed in her life. As she studied his face, another prying question fell past her lips, “But what about your birth parents? Didn’t they look for you?”

“They’re both in jail now,” the smile fled his face with his answer.

But Bonnie’s curiosity was unrelenting, especially with Dongwoo being so accommodating and open. “Why didn’t your mom hand down the bakery to you? Why only Woohyun-ssi and Myungsoo-ssi?”

“At the time, I was a dancer,” he answered, and his body began to sway rhythmically to silent music. “And I was about to entire a major dance troupe. I had my career almost set. But then I got into a car accident with a drunk driver that shattered my ankle.” Bonnie’s eyes drifted down towards his legs, and he wasn’t kneeling like the rest of them, with their thighs resting on their heels. He was sitting cross legged, taking the pressure off of his ankles.

“After listening to his sob story, you’re probably not surprised why we gave him a share of the bakery,” Woohyun joked giving Bonnie a hard nudge in her ribs. She shot him a nasty glare, which only made him grin in delight.

“Hey,” Dongwoo interrupted their little staring match. “The settlement from that accident paid for the renovations.”

“Can you get hit again? I’ve been thinking of expanding,” Woohyun asked with a chuckle.

“Is that all I’m good for? Getting into car wrecks?” Dongwoo asked in mock pain, playing along with his cousin.

But Myungsoo interpreted his brother’s fake pain as real. He looked up at him and encouraged him, “You’re also good at advertising, hyung.”

“What advertising?” Bonnie asked with furrowed brows. “ I’ve never seen a flyer or an ad in the newspaper or anywhere for that matter.”

“It’s a different kind of advertising,” Dongwoo said proudly. “Our business thrives on our boyfriend image, and no boyfriend promotes himself by handing out flyers.” He laughed at his own joke. Myungsoo joined in, as did Woohyun. Bonnie found herself awkwardly laughing along as to not feel left out.

“Then what do you do?” she asked when the laughter died down.

Dongwoo explained, “Nam-goon would bake something, and we’d package it, attaching a love note with the name of the shop at the bottom. Then we'd go and hand them outside of schools, shopping malls, theaters, places where you’d typically meet up with your boyfriend.”

“Sounds like a lot of work,” Bonnie concluded. Her eyes flittered over to Woohyun who was unexpectedly quiet this entire time. She had pegged him as a talkative type and was surprised to see him give way so easily to Dongwoo.

“But it’s worth it,” Dongwoo called back her attention. “It’s also how we express our love and gratitude for our customers.”

“Don’t you mean ‘girlfriends,’ “ Bonnie remarked with a raised eyebrow.

Dongwoo and Myungsoo broke out into a fit of laughter. Woohyun looked away sheepishly. “Only Woohyun-hyung insists on calling them that. It’s so cheesy,” Dongwoo explained in between heavy breaths.

“And even then he doesn’t consistently call them that,” Myungsoo wheezed. His sculpture like image was gradually chipping away, exposing the child-like innocence underneath his marble exterior.

 “We should probably start the ceremony,” Woohyun huffed as he crawled up to the altar to make some finishing touches. Bonnie began to giggle seeing how much it bothered Woohyun to be mocked by his cousins. But the laughter was immediately caught in when Woohyun suddenly turned back towards her with a hurt look on his face. As he crawled back into his position, Bonnie looked towards the other two, and the three of them silently laughed together.

After the ceremony finished, the triad of owners insisted that she stay for dinner. Even though she claimed that she wasn’t hungry, she still found herself sandwiched in between the two handsome brothers as they struggled over the side-dishes and the left-over bread from the bakery. Woohyun was busy making another dish. She watched him carefully as arranged he arranged the food on the plate and sat down. Woohyun only ate the food from that dish and did not indulge in the other items scattered across the table. He just smirked as he saw his cousins fight over the last sweet roll. Then his eyes fell on Bonnie, who was moving the food around on her plate. She looked up from the plate and noticed that Woohyun was staring at her curiously. She coughed awkwardly and averted her gaze.“What was the original bakery called again?” Bonnie asked, resuming her interview.

“Love Love Bakery,” Myungsoo answered cramming into his mouth the roll that he just wretched from his brother.

“I think I remember it,” Bonnie said in a daze. “It was a really small, quaint place, but the food was good.”

Woohyun nodded and added, “She baked with every ounce of her heart. That’s why is was called ‘Love Love.’”

“She said that it was her special ingredient,” Dongwoo remarked, taking some of Myungsoo’s meat from his plate.

Myungsoo didn’t even notice because he was in the middle of reminiscing. “Yea, Mom used to even press little hearts into the cookies. Do you remember that?” he asked turning to his brother, who just nodded in response because his cheeks were bursting full of stolen meat.

“Eung,” Woohyun answered his cousin. “Her goal was to have everything taste like it was made by your own mother,” he explained turning his attention back to Bonnie.

“Well, she was my mom, so it always tasted like that,” Myungsoo remarked with a laugh. Then he looked at his plate and noticed it was empty. He turned to Dongwoo with killer eyes, and his brother just grinned in return, swallowing the last traces of his thievery. Myungsoo punched his hyung in the arm.

Bonnie laughed at the bickering brothers, and she studied Myungsoo’s face. He looked so much like his mother. Bonnie had lied when she said that she ‘thought’ she remembered Love Love Bakery. That establishment was seared into her memory; it was a crucial part of her childhood, visiting it almost daily. On more than one occasion, she had come to the bakery with tears in her eyes, finding solace in the homemade breads and cookies. The food back then did eminate some kind of homemade nostalgic goodness that warmed the heart right as it hit the tongue. No before that, when the smells wafting from the bakery entered into young Bonnie's nose, all of her cares drifted away. Also true to her mission statement, Myungsoo's mother did serve as a motherly figure, taking the time to get to know each and every one of her customers, Bonnie included. And on every single one of those occasions when Bonnie raced into the bakery with tear-filled eyes, the owner would give a nice, warm hug, like her own mother would have. Love Love Bakery was a comforting place; it was a second home. And now, Bonnie felt as if it was degraded into a fantasy land for teenage girls and lonesome women.

 “The bakery has changed a lot since then,” Bonnie muttered.

“Well, I can’t exactly bake like a mother, can I?” Woohyun bombastically commented, shattering Bonnie’s reverie. “That’s why we went with the boyfriend concept.”

“It was my idea!” Myungsoo exclaimed, slamming his chopsticks on the table for emphasis.

“And he won’t let us forget it,” Dongwoo retorted, ruffling his little brother’s hair. “Besides, didn’t you get it from watching a drama?”

“Yes,” Myungsoo confessed, fixing his hair. “But I thought it would be fun to work with friends like they did in the show. And we all happen to be good-looking.”

Bonnie looked at him incredously, remembering the nerdy waiter from the day before. What was his name, Sungyeol? Of course, her weak heart would recall the name of the outcast of the group. Then her head perked up. “The other servers are your friends?” she asked for clarification.

“Yes,” Woohyun answered, biting his lower lip. “That’s why I didn’t answer your question about it during the interview. I thought it would reflect poorly on the bakery if I said that there was no real hiring process and we just hired friends.”

“Howon would be sad to hear that,” Bonnie remarked with a smirk. “He really wanted to join the bakery after seeing all the fangirls you guys have.”

With that comment, the three owners looked at each other with resigned looks and sighed. Dongwoo was the one who broke the silence.“We didn’t expect the bakery to become like this, to be honest,” he started. “We’re just five friendly boys. We always said nice things to customers, maybe a little more so than your average waiter. But we just wanted to show them that we appreciate them coming to our little bakery. Then…it sort of got out of hand.” He ended gesturing with his hands to convey his feelings.

Woohyun shot a nasty glare at Myungsoo. “I blame Sungyeol,” he snarled.

Myungsoo threw his hands up in the air. “Don’t look at me. I don’t control him.” He then gave his trademark crooked smile. “Plus we’re making more money now, and I don’t hear you complaining about that.” Woohyun blushed and averted his gaze.

Bonnie still was still bursting with questions, “But what about all ‘prince’ names?”

“Those were nicknames given by the customers. We kind of took them up and ran with them,” Woohyun admitted.

“Your customers did?”

“Yea, they even write fanfiction about us,” Myungsoo added with a childish giggle.

Dongwoo’s head perked up. “Really? Where?”

“I’ll show you,” Myungsoo said pulling out his cell phone to bring the site on his screen. Woohyun glared at him and mouthed at him to stop. “I’ll just send you the link later,” his cousin gave in.

“Send me the link too,” Bonnie interjected. The three boys gave her amused looks. “For research!” she clarified, but they didn't look convinced.

“Riiiiiight,” Woohyun said with a cheeky smile. He stood up and began to gather the dishes. “We should clean up. We have to get up early. Myungsoo, why don’t you show Tokki-ssi—what are you doing?” He stopped what he was doing and watched Bonnie as she picked up the remaining dishes.

She looked up at him, wondering why he was so taken aback. “You fed me dinner. It’s only right that I help to clean up,” she answered as she walked over to the sink.

“Myungsoo and I will clean up and prepare the kitchen,” Dongwoo said as he pulled his baby brother by the collar down the stairs into the bakery. Myungsoo just waved as he was helplessly dragged by his hyung.

Woohyun chuckled seeing his cousins fool around. Then he approached the kitchen sink apprehensively, watching Bonnie carefully lay the dishes inside of it. She then picked up the rubber gloves which were laying next to the sink and put them on, easily assimilating herself in his kitchen. Her rubber encased hand reached towards Woohyun as it wrested the plates from his grip. Woohyun raised an eyebrow, surprised that this nasty food critic appeared to be only cruel in print. In reality, she was…pleasant. He had thought the same the first time they met too. But there was such a strong disconnect between her two sides, which left him wondering which of the two sides was real. Then her voice broke his line of thought. “You’re kind of a health nut, aren’t you?” she asked, scraping the residue off of his plate.

“Huh?” Woohyun murmured. He rolled up his sleeves and started to dry the dishes that she had finished cleaning.

“You eat way healthier than the other two,” she explained, barely lifting her gaze from the bowl she was furiously scrubbing. “And it looks like you don’t eat carbs in general.”

Woohyun took the bowl from her hands and dried it like it was the most precious thing in the world. “I do it’s just,” he admitted, hesitating before he continued.  He didn’t really like confessing his weakness, but he knew that he had to clear the air between them. “I’m gluten-intolerant…and a diabetic. So running a bakery is hard sometimes.” And life is hard sometimes.

Bonnie stopped what she was doing and stared at him with a gape. He could practically see her mind slowly connect the dots. “Then why don’t you bake things you can actually eat?” she asked with a drawl.

“I might as well make it vegan while I’m at it,” Woohyun joked with a snort. “No one will buy that stuff. Hand me that plate,” he ordered pointing at the half-cleaned dish in Bonnie’s hand. Snapping out of her daze, she quickly scrubbed it clean and handed it to him, who smiled with closed lips before continuing, “Besides, what we’re selling goes beyond just cakes and cookies. It’s an experience. It’s your boyfriend taking the time to whip up your favorite dessert. It’s essentially love through food.” He glanced over at Bonnie who rolled her eyes in his direction. “Just because I can’t taste what I make doesn’t mean that I bake without an ounce of love,” he defended himself as he pouted.

“Can I see it?” Bonnie suddenly asked. She then turned her attention to the last dirty dish. “See you bake, I mean,” she needlessly clarified.

Woohyun’s face shone smugly as he threw the towel over his shoulder and leaned his back against the sink. “Of course,” he replied.

“Good. What time should I come in?” she asked as she handed him the last dish.

“3 AM,” he answered nonchalantly, whipping the towel from his shoulder and used it to wipe the plate clean.

“3 AM?!” Bonnie exclaimed. She was in the middle of taking off the rubber gloves when she received the startling news. She let go of the rubber, and it snapped back and stung her skin.

Woohyun looked pleased and the practiced smile appeared again on his face, causing Bonnie to frown. “Yep, and if you want to get a full night’s sleep, you should probably go home soon,” he comment glancing up at the clock. But Bonnie’s eyes drifted towards the window and saw the sun’s rays filtering through the flimsy curtains.

“It’s still light outside,” she whined. She heard a chuckle come from behind her, and she turned to see Woohyun with her peacoat In his hands. She bit the inside of her cheek and reluctantly let Woohyun help shove her arms into its sleeves(but she was later grateful that he did help because her still wet hands stuck to the lining, making it difficult to put on).

“Trust Papa Woohyun, Tokki-ssi. You’ll want to sleep,” Woohyun warned and stepped away from Bonnie.

Bonnie scoffed as she buttoned up her coat, “Why?” She roughly her hands in her pocket and narrowed her eyes. “Plotting revenge for the article, Papa Woohyun?” She pronounced the last part as if it were venom.

Woohyun eye’s practically closed as his smile raised his cheeks. “No—“ he began but a crashing noise came from downstairs. Dongwoo suddenly appeared in the room with his eyes wild. He put a finger to his lips and he crawled softly but quickly underneath the table. Bonnie turned towards Woohyun who started counting down, “3, 2, 1.”

“YAH! JANG DONGWOO!” Myungsoo shrieked as he ran up the stairs. Once the youngest entered the kitchen, Bonnie immediately brought her hands to , trying to stifling the laughter that was slipping out through the gaps in between her fingers. Now Myungsoo did look like a sculpture, entirely white, covered head-to-toe in only what Woohyun could assume was flour. Myungsoo was blinking wildly, the powder falling into his eyes. “Hyung! Where is he?” he demanded.

Woohyun shrugged, but Bonnie, having no allegiance and feeling bad for walking sculpture, pointed to the table. Dongwoo caught her actions out of the corner of his eye. “Yah! Traitor!” he exclaimed as Myungsoo was pulling his brother out from under the table by his collar. Dongwoo cast a glance back to Bonnie and pouted, “I thought you were nice, Bonnie-ssi.” Bonnie’s voice was caught in , not knowing whether to say ‘sorry’ or that he deserved to be brought to ‘justice.’ Woohyun, on the other hand, laughed with abandon. Dongwoo faced his brother and apologetically smiled. “I’m sorry. It was an accident, I swear.”

“Accident or not, you still need to pay me back,” Myungsoo threatened, his eyes looking more fierce and empty than when he discovered Dongwoo had stolen his food. He tightened his grip on Dongwoo’s collar and began to lean in closer, his lips puckering.

“Ack! NO!” Dongwoo leaned away from his brother and his brother’s lips and wriggled free of his captor. “Don’t come any closer, Soo-ah! I’m warning you!” Dongwoo threatened as he backed into the hallway. He then sprint down it with Myungsoo close on his trail, leaving little flecks of flour in his wake.

With those two now gone (Dongwoo had locked himself in his room and Myungsoo was currently trying to break down the door), Bonnie looked at Woohyun, who gave her his practiced smile and said, “Like I said, you should go to bed soon, especially if you want to keep up. And those two are the least of your worries.” He then politely showed Bonnie to the door and they exchanged farewells. As soon as the door closed, she could hear Woohyun yell at his cousins to clean up the flour mess in the kitchen, probably thinking that Bonnie couldn’t hear.

Bonnie sighed. Kim Sungkyu had been right. Flower Boy Bake Shop appeared to be not what she had thought it was. Nor was Nam Woohyun. What kind of place is this?

A/N: I really really really like the idea of Dongwoo and Myungsoo being "brothers," especially since I think that they are the members with the most contrasting looks. Look at exhibit A below!

But even more than that, they are two of the sweetest members, more alike personality-wise than you would expect. So I think that because they act so similar, it might be believable that they were raised by the same parents...might be believable.

Also, can you imagine these three goofballs running a business together?

These three would actually try to run a place similar to "Flower Boy Bake Shop."