A/N: For all KaiSoo shippers, this is for you. Let's save the SuChen for the next update. Also, will you leave me more comments this time? Please? LOL!

As his brother’s best man, Jongin took some of the burden of the preparations so his brother can save his sanity. Baekhyun completely morphed in to what Sehun called a bridezilla. She was a control freak that matched his brother’s go-with-the-flow personality. But he can see that it was becoming too much for Chanyeol. She wanted everything her way and though he can understand her desire to make their wedding day no less than perfect, they were starting to have more arguments than they had for the last two years.   

Yesterday, he picked up the representatives from Brioni—the makers of one of the most expensive suits in the world—himself and rounded up the guys to get their measurements. It took a lot of cajoling to convince Taemin to wear a suit. “No, you’re not allowed to wear your corduroys to the wedding. Baekhyun-noona will have an apoplexy!” And Yixing helped choose the right fabric and the right color (it certainly looked all blue to Jongin but he didn’t say a word lest his sister-in-law swats him with the fabric swatch book) for the suits. And his brother looked like a zombie but graciously welcomed the party from France.

Today, he was on his way to meet up with the cake maker. He honestly didn’t want to go because he didn’t have any opinion about anything sweet honestly (to think that he’d been avoiding anything sweet for years now) but Baekhyun had to fly to Busan and how difficult it was to choose between chocolate and vanilla anyway?

The meeting will be held in one of the lounges in Seoul Trade Tower and not in the bakeshop or a restaurant like what he was expecting but it saved him a lot of time so who’s complaining? When he arrived, he saw a table setting for two people. A fridge and stacks of plates and utensils were on the side along with a selection of cold dinks and a percolator. The scent of freshly-brewed coffee wafted the air and it made him relax. He poured some coffee and made himself comfortable while waiting for them to arrive.

He checked his watch and they were five minutes late. He frowned. They were obviously here a while ago but where they were now? It was bad business to make clients wait. He was halfway through a newspaper article when the door opened and admitted the last person he’s expecting to see.

“Hi! Sorry for making you wait. I had to get a few more things from the ninth floor. How are you?” Kyungsoo’s smile lit up the room and she didn’t look surprised at all to see Jongin.

It literally took him whole five seconds to respond. “I—I’m good. Thank you and you?” He sounded generic and he can barely hear himself from the loud thumping of his chest. Kyungsoo’s making the cake for Baekhyun? Why didn’t she tell him? And why didn’t he have the common sense to ask?  

“So…ready to sacrifice one of your molars today? I think you’ll have to eat more desserts today than you did for the last five lifetimes.” She skipped (skipped!) to the table and put down a cloche-covered plate in front of him. He swallowed.

“Yeah. I think so.”

“Good. Shall we start?” She was talking to him casually like it was her first time to meet him. She lifted up the cover and it had an assortment of small veggie snacks—some roasted and some fresh. “I’m sure your mom told you to eat vegetables first before you can get your dessert.” She laughed at his flabbergasted expression. “It helps with too much sugar. You can eat them in between.”

“Oh. O-Okay.” If it wasn’t enough to see her up close, he’ll be tasting her cooking after so long. What did he do in his past life that he had to be tortured like this?

“Baekhyun-ssi was very specific with the design but she didn’t have any preference with the sponge. I brought regular favorites and some signatures. It will be a six-tier cake and two smaller ones for bride and groom’s cakes. We can stick to one flavor for the whole cake, use one flavor for each tier or use different flavors for one tier. Jongin didn’t need a mirror to know he had a deer-in-the-headlights look on. How can this be so complicated? Kyungsoo stood up and filled the table with small dishes of cake slices in what looked like vanilla and chocolate and array of different colors he didn’t recognize. How can a cake be red? Or green? Or pink? He shuddered.

“This is vanilla with Bavarian cream filling. This is chocolate with hazelnut ganache. The red one’s red velvet with almond cream cheese filling of course and—“

“Wait, wait. Can we just narrow down the choices?” He bit on a celery stick. He hadn’t even tasted anything yet and his stomach’s already flipping from too much sugar.

“No.” She said simply and Jongin didn’t have any thing to say to that. “Here. Try this one first.” She pushed a light green cake slice in front of him. Green cake? Seriously? “It’s pandan with coconut cream filling.” He wanted to say that everything she cooked should be good that’s why he didn’t trust himself to make a proper choice. He picked up a fork and tasted a small portion. His eyes widened comically. “Good, right?” He nodded repeatedly.

“Pandan? What’s that?”

“It’s a leaf native to Southeast Asia. Now, Baekhyun-ssi wanted the cake to be unique so I tweaked some regular favorites. Bavarian is so common for doughnuts but not for cakes.” This particular piece looked so ordinary but tasted heavenly. He ate everything on the plate. He tasted seven different flavors he thought it was impossible to decide on just one because they were all so good!

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“This one is Minyoung’s favorite.” She pushed him a plate with her signature Ruebli-Marjolaine cake. She was wise enough not to commit to anything when she first met Baekhyun. She didn’t do weddings and she was not ready to face Jongin, thank you very much. But the other day, she sent her a rough draft of the invites so she can streamline the design of the cake to the theme they came up with. The wedding will be held in London and Kyungsoo found a valid reason to say no but when she called her, “Honestly we don’t have much time for every detail so I can use all the help that I can get. Our best man will be with you for the cake tasting in our place and it might not mean anything to you but he is very good looking and very much available!” She hung up with a giggle without giving Kyungsoo any chance to argue—or say no for that matter. Along with the invites were phone numbers Kyungsoo was trying very hard to forget.

“Minyoung? My niece Minyoung? How come you know her? When did you meet? Where?”

Kyungsoo smiled bitterly. Really. She already wasted too much time stupidly assuming things instead of talking to Jongin directly. “They went to the café sometime ago and sampled literally everything on the menu.”

“Seriously? Must be the time they came here to visit her father.” He was smiling; his fondness for the little girl was very evident.

“I’m glad that you’re getting along with her and her…mother.”

“I went to Japan before…you um, we, uh—and that’s when I met Minyoung.” He scratched his nape. “She’s Krystal’s daughter with my cousin Minho.” He sighed heavily. “She really wanted him to know about Minyoung but she didn’t know how to approach him. For my cousin, she’s already dead.” He whispered the last word. “I was helping them so they could you know, talk. They’re not really friends now but they’re civil and they’re trying to work it out for their daughter so I guess it’s good.”

“Then I wish them the best.” Jongin was already eating the last one of the samples she brought and was already gushing about how good it was. “So, what flavor should we use?” Jongin looked like he didn’t want this new development but Kyungsoo won’t be deterred. Not this time.

“Uh, can you just decide and tell them I chose one?” He looked sheepish, already reaching for another serving of the pandan cake.

“I’ll think about it. And don’t touch that. We still have a lot more to cover.” She stood up and Jongin looked up in confusion. “Come with me.”

“There’s more?” He scrambled out of his seat to follow Kyungsoo. They entered another room and now there was a table of was that dirt and…vegetables?

“Baekhyun wanted a dessert bar but that was too passé. Please sit down.” He was seated at the head of the table but Kyungsoo didn’t join him this time. She remained standing beside him while he was gaping at the chaos on the table. “One day, a vagabond named Kai stumbled by a remote farming village. He waited for the villagers to fall asleep and went to scour a well-tended garden owned by a grumpy old woman. He was very hungry and the vegetables were very tempting.” She pulled up a curious looking carrot from the mess on the table and bit on it.

“Hey! Can’t you wash it first?!”

“Beggars can’t be choosers, Kai.” She pulled up a beet this time and handed it to him—soil and all. She looked liked he won’t see the light of day if he refuse to eat the beet so he did. And it wasn’t what he was expecting at all. The soil was loose sponge; the red peel tasted a lot like chocolate covering the orange-flavored sherbet.

“This is amazing! Are all these edible?!”

“Yes. It is a magic garden.” She watched him while he sampled everything on the table with gusto. The carrot was popped rice covered in orange-colored taffy. Pistachio-flavored cream was disguising as a lettuce. “After stuffing himself full with magic vegetables, Kai fell asleep.” She disappeared through an anteroom and came out with a huge wooden bowl of what he made out as piping hot liquid. He can’t even see her from the steam. “When he woke up, he was tied to a post while more than half of his body was submerged in a huge pot of boiling broth.”  

She placed the bowl in front of him. “The woman turned out to be a witch and everybody in the village knew that except for Kai. She hadn’t tasted any human for a long time and he looked tempting enough.” She urged him to drink from the bowl and it was good ol’ hot chocolate and he thought there was nothing special when a different kind of heat dominated his mouth. He put down the bowl with a loud clank.

“What the—!” He looked at her in confusion.

“It is a punishment for ruining the garden and eating all the vegetables without permission, what did you expect, marshmallows?” She huffed. “Drink more, it gets better.” And he did—hesitantly—and the chili wasn’t so bad the second time around. In fact, it jived with the bittersweet chocolate in a way he didn’t think it would. “He begged and begged until the witch relented. She said that if Kai told him something nobody else does, she’ll set him free.” She disappeared again and when she came back, she had another plate with her.

This time, there were three ugly white globs on the plate half-soaking in what looked like some leak soup. It came with a spoon this time like any regular dessert but it didn’t look too appealing. However, he already ate soil and raw vegetables so what’s the point? What he thought to be leak soup had subtle refreshing mint flavor along with notes of other herbs he can’t name and the white glob of the white was a chewy hazelnut-flavored meringue. It was so good! “Honestly, that was ugly but it tasted like clouds and flowers and I should stop.” He bit his lip. Kyungsoo was trying her hardest not to laugh out loud.

“Kai had a whole night simmering in hot liquid that surprisingly felt so good against his tired muscles. In the morning, the witch returned to get his answer. He confidently answered, Nobody knew that you’re a good witch. You could’ve cooked me and ate me for destroying your garden but you gave me a chance. The water wasn’t so hot and it helped my aching joints.” Jongin was so engrossed with the story that he didn’t noticed that she already gave him a new dish. White cylindrical thick cream topped with green and yellow crystals and fresh leaves sat in front of him. “The witch was speechless. A solitary tear fell from her eye and in Kai’s surprise, she transformed in to a beautiful young woman.”

And it was beautiful indeed. A thin layer of rice pudding was underneath a fluffy lime sorbet. The crystals were of an herb and pineapple. It was an enjoyable palate cleanser for all the heaviness of the last three desserts. “She freed him but he refused to leave. He asked for the witch to marry him and they lived happily ever after.”

“Whew. This is so intense. How can you come up with all these?” He asked in awe.

“That’s what you call a dessert degustation. It’s a new trend and people pay big bucks to sit in one. It consists of an elaborate edible table setting to get the excitement going and two or more desserts that told a story. Of course I am not planning to tell Kai’s story on their wedding but rather how they met. It’s a lot of work but since this will be my first stint in a wedding save for Sungjong’s, I want to make it special. That ugly one is called Brutti Ma Buoni.”

“Ugly but good. Yeah. Very fitting. What’s that green soup?”

“Mint and basil cream. The last one was Jasmine rice pudding with lime cloud and cilantro and pineapple sugar crystals.”

“They’re all very very good, Kyungsoo. Congratulations.” Silence ensued as they both didn’t know what to say. Jongin had a somber expression on when he spoke. “I guess Switzerland really did wonders to you. You’re already very talented before you left and now, you’re just wonderful. You I didn’t like desserts but I can’t stop eating them.”

“Geneva was all sorts of delightful. The people I worked with were so nice and my mentor really taught me a lot.” They were quiet again for a long time. “I was waiting for you to you know, say hi when I came back.” Jongin looked up from the very interesting carpeted floor. “I sent you an invite for the café opening you snubbed it.” She chuckled without humor.

“I—I was there.”

“You’re lying. You didn’t even congratulate me.” Her tone was suddenly sharp. “I sent you boxes and boxes of the new desserts I made and nothing.”

“You expect me to talk to you while your boyfriend gawks at us like a lion ready to pounce? And Lim Hyunsik? Really? I thought you had better taste than that.” He scoffed.

“Please refrain from saying foul things about Hyunsik. People can change and everybody deserved a second chance!” She hoped the room was soundproof because she already raised her voice before she can stop herself.

“And I didn’t? I told your aunt I’m going to respect your decision to be away for sometime. I didn’t follow you and I didn’t contact you! I waited for two long years!” His voice was equally high. “And the first time I see you, you’re kissing that good-for-nothing mutt!”