FIC for NERVELESS! Pick a Part That's New (Kyung/U-Kwon, others)

"YARD SALE", the sign reads, red poster paint on the brown insides of an old cardboard beer carton. It's small, roughly the size of a shoebox, and the 'E' of the 'SALE' is squashed into a corner, but it's the best that Kyung can do for now considering how broke he is. It's the same lack of digits in his bankbook that got him into this whole mess, his landlord threatening to kick him out of the battered, old, one-storey house he's been living in if he doesn't pay his rent on time by the next month.

His parents aren't much of a help to him financially—at least, not right now. Kyung knows that if he hasn't managed to scrounge up the money by the time it's time to transfer money into his landlord's account, a quick call to his mother (along with some pitiful whining) would be enough to ensure him another month of considerably comfortable living.

For now, he has pretty much everything he owns out on his lawn. Sure, he's kept his bed and a futon, his laptop, a standing lamp, and a microwave, but if worse comes to worst, he figures the bed would have to go.

If people would even want to buy it, Kyung thinks, and his mind wanders to the discoloured sheets on his mattress, not to mention the mysterious stain on one edge that he hopes is pizza sauce and not some other unknown fluid.

Kyung's settled out on on his lawn, sitting back on a creaky poolside chaise he thinks he inherited from Jiho one year after spring break. The town's public pool had put up notice about one of their chaise's going missing, but even if Kyung suspected Jiho of furniture snatching, he highly doubts the pool's management would want their chair back with the amount of spray paint and carved in profanities on it now.

He's broken out of his thoughts when someone taps him on the shoulder. It's a man who looks around his age, though the stranger is taller, tanned, and has much tinier eyes.

Triple T, Kyung muses to himself. "Hi," he says instead, eager to do business with possibly the first (but hopefully not only) patron to his yard sale.

"Hey," Triple T, greets in return, and he rolls on from the sidewalk over to Kyung's place on his chaise. It's only then that Kyung notices that he's wearing rollerblades, but Kyung has never really been interested in details concerning footwear, not even his own, apart from the possibility that he can fit insoles into them.

"Kim Yukwon," Triple T says and motions to himself, and Kyung quickly throws out the name he'd created off Yukwon's appearance from his head. “I’m just looking.”

"Good to meet you, Kim Yukwon. I'm Park Kyung; welcome to my yard sale. "

Yukwon blinks and looks around a little, scrunching his nose up before he turns back to Kyung and smiles. Kyung narrows his eyes a little. Yukwon's smile is nothing but charming, but Kyung know for certain that he'd be able to use his charm to get his way when bargaining and trying to cut prices.

"Is there anything you'd like? We have trinkets, everyday appliances, and furniture, all owned by yours truly!" Kyung smiles, wide and as friendly as he can; he's not going to lose to this Kim Yukwon and his seemingly natural charm.

"How much is your rice cooker going for?" Yukwon asks, stepping up to it and lifting the lid to peer inside it.

Kyung turns in his seat to face Yukwon quickly. "About 40 thousand won, I'd say," he tells him, and Yukwon lifts an eyebrow.

"You're not going to make anything from this sale if you're selling used stuff for the same price as it would in a department store, you know."

"Well," Kyung says, mind whirring and ready for a price battle, "This is a really special rice cooker," he tells Yukwon. It's really not special at all, truthfully, paint peeling off the outer coat and switch cracked slightly, but Kyung isn't going to lower his price without some negotiating.

"Okay," Yukwon says, slowly, and he seems amused. There's a quirk to his lips now, and Kyung knew there was more to him than his smile. "Tell me what's so special about it, and I'll consider buying it."

"This is a rice cooker that is crucial in a story of love, of passion, of a couple at odds at times and smitten at others—"

"Please don't tell me this is some kind of story called 'Kyungie-o and Juliet," Yukwon interjects.

"No, nobody dies in this. God, I'm still here, come on." Kyung hushes him with one hand. He points to a short children's stool an arms-length away from his chaise, legs barely as long as the weeds that have taken over his lawn. "Sit down, and I'll tell you about us and the rice cooker. "

Yukwon trudges through the overgrown grass the best that he can, rollerblades squelching in the slightly muddy soil. "I am a willing customer here you know," Yukwon tells Kyung, and there's something in his voice that Kyung thinks sounds like he expects Kyung to give up his chaise for him. A lifted eyebrow tells him that this is, in fact, what Yukwon wants.

Kyung looks at him cooly. He grabs the ratty cushion from behind his back and tosses it at the stool. Yukwon just manages to grab it with his fingers and stop it from landing straight in the muddy grass.

"There," Kyung says, and that's as much as he's willing to give Yukwon at this point. "And for the record, Juliet's name in this story is Jaehyo."

Christmas. When Kyung was a child, Christmas was spent opening presents, carolling and going to church with his family. Now though, the days leading up to Christmas aren’t spent looking forwards to feasts or present opening, but rather thinking up favors that he’d be able to scrawl onto tiny sheets of Post-Its as his own personal Park Kyung Coupons in lieu of actual present buying. Back when he was little, he didn’t have to think about cooking either. Shit, Kyung thinks, as he stares into the rice cooker. He's pretty sure he set the timer right at RICE and not at PORRIDGE. It's at that moment that Jaehyo bounds into the kitchen. "Kyung, Jiho has pretty much eaten half of our roast. Also, at least a quarter of the potato salad has been inhaled by Jihoon, and I'm pretty sure that was before he brought it over as his dish for the potluck—what is that." The starchy white gloop stares sadly up at them both, and Jaehyo turns to look at Kyung, eyes hard. Kyung thinks he might as well have set the rice cooker to DEAD MEAT. Kyung fiddles with his sweater sleeve and pulls it back from where his hand is still at the rice cooker's dial. "It was set at RICE," he opts for, finally, but Jaehyo's gaze doesn't waver. "How much water did you put in." It's more of a statement and less like a question, and on normal days, Kyung would tease Jaehyo for his shit emphasis on keywords in phrases, but today the day of their first ever Christmas party as a couple, and Kyung figures he should spare Jaehyo from his witty quip before Jaehyo chucks his Christmas present out the window of his 13th floor studio apartment. “Ah,” is what he says instead.

“So, while you’re telling me about all of this merry making, eating, and getting wasted,” Yukwon butts in, and Kyung pauses in his tale of Christmas past, “What say we have a little something to drink?”

He isn’t carrying a bag of any kind, and Kyung is pretty sure his pockets aren’t deep enough to carry anything other than a cell phone. Kyung gives him a once over. “You’re not hiding beer somewhere are you, because there is no way I’m going to drink any kind of beverage that has been anywhere near your rollerblades—”

“Actually,” Yukwon stops him, “I was thinking maybe you’d like to break out the six-pack of boxed juice over there with your one and only first customer—”

“How did you know you were my first and only customer?” Kyung asks, and he sniffs a little for effect. Yukwon is getting quicker and more charming with his retorts, and Kyung is reminded of his own self-honed antics to charm his way in and out of any situation.

“Kyung, your sign is made out of the back of a beer carton. The very least you could have done was to laminate a printed sign in order to attract customers; your current sign is damp from the drizzle this morning and the paint has pretty much run off the board by now.”

Yukwon’s sharp words remind him of himself, but there is no way that he’s better looking than Kyung. “Hmph,” he grunts, and Yukwon points beyond his chaise again. Kyung turns and brings the six-pack of juice to his lap, rips two boxes out of the plastic wrap and tosses one to him.

Yukwon catches it with ease, and Kyung has to give him points for the agility that Kyung has pretty much been lacking his entire life—not that he’s ever needed it, though. “That’ll be 2500 won.”

Yukwon sighs around his straw and motions for Kyung to continue with his story.

“Ah,” is what he says instead, and he ducks when Jaehyo flings the unused rice ladle at him. “Hey,” Kyung starts, indignant, but Jaehyo just picks up the rice cooker. “Hyung—” Jaehyo covers his mouth with one hand. Kyung licks at his fingers, defiant, and thinks that he’d much rather have had this happen in the bedroom when Jaehyo speaks again. “I’m mad at you, okay,” Jaehyo tells him, and his mouth is set in a grim line as he wipes his hands off on Kyung’s shoulder. “We’ll settle this later.” He brings the rice cooker it out into the hall, shouting about porridge and the health benefits of softer foods. Kyung stands in the kitchen, bewildered and the tiniest bit turned on, then he hears Jiho cussing about eating old-people’s food on Christmas and decides to rejoin the group in the dining room. Jaehyo handles the situation perfectly fine, if accidentally tipping Jiho’s can of beer right off the table and onto his pants can be counted as fine.

“And that was that,” Kyung finishes.

Yukwon stares at him. “That’s your story?” he asks, seemingly incredulous. It makes Kyung a little bit uncomfortable because he hasn’t even said anything about wanting to buy the rice cooker.

“Pretty much.”

“There’s got to be more than that.”

Kyung bites at his juice box straw and hums. “We had dinner, and the porridge was perfect. After we washed up, he dragged me into the bedroom and we made sweet, sweet love—”

“Okay this I actually do not need to know—”
“—except it wasn’t really sweet, sweet love because he was still kinda pissed at me but trust me he gets kind of really hot when he’s mad and we fuck so—”

“Okay, I get it, I won’t ask anymore!” Yukwon half shrieks. He’s covering his eyes with his hands as if he can see Kyung and his sexy antics right in front of him. Kyung scoffs, because Yukwon should really be basking in his presence, be it in his mind or not.

“So, are you going to take it?”

Yukwon drops his hands from his face. “There is no way I’m taking a faulty rice cooker, and definitely not for 40 thousand won.”

“Ah, but you see, the rice cooker I have here is not faulty at all!” Kyung tells him happily.

“Kyung,” Yukwon deadpans, “You just told me an entire story about it.”

“I told you that this rice cooker was crucial in this story,” Kyung says, “And it is! Because I replaced the faulty one with this one.”

Yukwon stands up from his stool, and he might be taller than Kyung but he’s not the slightest bit intimidating with his hands on his hips and his feet in rollerblades. “You didn’t tell me that.”

Kyung chucks his now empty juice box at the trashcan he’s also selling, but it bounces off the rim and ends up on top of his bedside table with the wobbly leg. He shrugs. “You didn’t give me a chance to tell you about what happened after Jaehyo and I got in bed, so...”

Yukwon takes a look at his watch briefly, then reaches into his pocket. He hands Kyung a thousand won bill, and Kyung takes it without knowing what he’s actually paying—or underpaying—for.

“Thanks for the juice,” he says, “I’ll be back tomorrow to tell you a story and get that ricecooker given to me for free. And maybe your toaster too.”


*


The next time Yukwon comes back, the chaise and stool have disappeared from Kyung’s yard, and Kyung is squeezed into the corner of a burnt-orange loveseat reading a tattered looking volume of One Piece.

“You’ve lost your wheels,” Kyung notes, and he points at Yukwon’s blade-less feet with his comic book.

Yukwon rolls his eyes. “You’ve lost your chaise.”

“And my stool!” Kyung tells him quite happily. He’d managed to donate the chaise to the public pool, undoubtedly where it originally came from, but now it had a splash of color on it that would bring some originality to the poolside. As for the swear words scrawled all over it, Kyung figured that not too many of the town’s people would be able to make out Jiho’s chicken-scratch scrawl in a mix of English, Japanese and Korean. The management even let him throw in the stool as an extra gift.

“Your couch isn’t very big.”

“I’m not exactly the largest of people.” Kyung deadpans. He pats the couch cushions, offering the space to Yukwon, who declines with a shake of his head. “I’ve got somewhere to go right now. But I’m here to offer you a goods trade.”

Kyung perks up at that. “What have you got in mind?”

Yukwon reaches into his pocket and pulls out a single sock for Kyung to inspect. It’s mostly black, a few cartoony stars printed onto the ankle, but it clearly has character, from what Kyung can see of the faded cartoon zebra sprouting out from the toe portion of the sock all the way up the top of the foot. “Cute,” Kyung says, “What do you want for it?”

“I’ve seen your old sock collection. I’m willing to trade you this one sock for your pair of argyle ones.”

Kyung scratches at his chin, contemplative. “The black and grey, or the neon pair.”

“The neon,” Yukwon says, and Kyung walks over to his goldfish bowl of old socks to fish them out of the pile.

“Tell you what,” Kyung says, “I’ll give you one for one. One of my neon argyle socks for one of your smiling zebra socks.”

Yukwon seems to think about this. Kyung hopes he knows that procuring a neon argyle sock, whether in a pair or one alone, is already a steal, especially for such a low cost. Kyung himself had found the pair in an old shop in Dongdaemun market, where he’d traded half a bag of roasted chestnuts with an old lady for them.

Yukwon doesn’t say anything for a moment. Then he flips his zebra sock over to show off the bottom arch of the sock. Kyung peers at the printed details of the back of a zebra, mane and all. It’s a double sided character sock, and Kyung knows a bargain when he sees one. He reaches out a hand, and the two of them shake on it.

“Deal,” Kyung says, and hands the neon socks over.

*

A few days later, Kyung finds Yukwon sprawls across most of the loveseat, considering Kyung hardly takes up any space at the end of it. He tilts his head back, and Yukwon shifts to get comfortable.

“So,” Kyung says, then pauses. “I’m waiting.”

“Hmm? For what?” Yukwon sounds confused.

Kyung lets his head roll to the side to face him. “I’m waiting for you to get on with your toaster story.”

“You’re serious?”

“As serious as I can be!” Kyung chirps, “I’m waiting for whatever you have that you think will win you my rice cooker.”

“Your rice cooker and your toaster.” Yukwon looks thoughtful.

Kyung squints at him. “Let’s see what you’ve got before we start bargaining, okay?”

“Fine,” Yukwon says, and there’s a look in his eyes that tells Kyung that his story is either going to be one big fib, or so ridiculous that it has to be true.

Kyung presses himself back into the couch, bringing his knees up and squishing his ankles into the lumpy cushions, set and ready to listen and criticize. Yukwon snorts at his antics, then stretches his hand out towards the pavement in a swooping motion, palm out and fingers spread, as if casting a scene in his head.

“Picture this,” Yukwon starts, “A friend and I are on a vacation in Jeju as a weekend trip, and he almost burns the hotel down...”

The hotel is large and luxurious, bigger and far grander than any hotel Yukwon has ever stayed in, let alone chanced upon, in his entire life. He’s lucky that Minhyuk managed to acquire a weekend away at the hotel, and even luckier that Minhyuk decided to bring him along to Jeju. His parents had won the weekend getaway in a lucky draw organized by their credit card company, but had to attend a relative’s wedding in Mokpo that weekend instead, leaving the accommodations to Minhyuk. They had a two bedroom suite to themselves, and each of them had taken a turn in the near pool-sized bathtub the night before when they’d checked in before knocking out on the thousand-threadcount sheet covered beds, sinking their heads into the plush pillows and falling almost instantly asleep. Now though, it was time for breakfast. Yukwon stares at the multiple buffet tables in the hall, each one ladened with dish after dish of breakfast food and thinks that yes, he is very, very lucky indeed. Minhyuk seems just as awed, and probably just as hungry, judging from the sounds of a gurgling stomach that reaches Yukwon’s ears from his right, where Minhyuk is standing. He looks back and forth from table to table before looking at Yukwon. “I don’t know where to start,” he confesses, a wide grin on his face. Yukwon smiles back. "Well, I do," Yukwon answers him, "I'm going to order and omelette from the eggs station." "Cheese?" "Lots of it!" Minhyuk laughs. "I'll guess I'll head to the bread to pick up some toast." "Hyung, you can make toast easily at home." "I know that, but when have you ever seen such a huge toaster in your life?" Yukwon has got to admit that he has a point there. The toaster is gigantic, a half-meter wide conveyor belt designed to lead slices of fluffy break into the mouth of the toaster, where its insides are complete with hot-lamps on each of its four walls, ensuring that the bread gets toasted evenly on every side before it slides out to be grabbed and consumed at the other end, browned and crisped to perfection. Minhyuk looks ready to drool at this point, and Yukwon flicks his nose before his spit has the chance to hit the floor. “I’m going to run over to the eggs before you catch me in your droolfest.” Minhyuk flips him off with a laugh, and that’s the last Yukwon sees of him for the next ten minutes.

“While we have a few minutes of you not seeing this Minhyuk in your story,” Kyung cuts in, bored out of his mind, “do you think you could speed things up a little bit?”
“No.”

“The longer you take to get to the point of your story, the less I’m going to be willing to give you my ricecooker.”

“And toaster.”

“There is no way in hell I’m giving you my toaster. All this talk about the hotel and your foodporn is nothing compared to my story.”

Yukwon kicks him in the side, and Kyung thanks the heavens he’s not wearing his rollerblades today. He stretches his legs off the edge of the couch when Yukwon speaks again. “Your own story about your loverboy was shit.”

“It’s not my fault that you don’t want to listen to my recollection of him going down on-”

Yukwon throws an old sock at him from the growing pile on Kyung’s sidetable. “Shut up. I’ll get on with it.”

Ten minutes doesn’t seem like a long time when you compare them to an hour or two, or maybe even a day or a week. But in ten minutes, Yukwon managed to place his order for his omelette with the hotel’s standby egg-chef, grabbed a few pieces of crackers and an assortment of cheese slices, and picked up two portions of every fruit on the hotel’s fruit platter. Ten minutes, if you had asked Yukwon when he first woke up that morning, would simply be those glorious extra minutes of sleep you’d wish for after the blear of an alarm clock. Yukwon would have never imagined that ten minutes would be all it takes for an amateur arsonist to start a fire in a four-star hotel’s breakfast buffet hall, using an industrial toaster and a slice of bread. “And a slice of cheese,” Minhyuk would chime in later, years after That Incident with the Toast, or so he liked to call it. Yukwon can still smell the smoke and hear the shouting, but most of all he can remember Minhyuk’s frantic face and sheepish look when the hotel’s manager came running into the breakfast hall. Yukwon at the time didn’t care so much for how the fire was started, but more so for how Minhyuk managed to start a fire by failing at the simplest task of toasting bread. “I had the toast all buttered up and ready,” Minhyuk tells him, in the manager’s office, when the manager is busy telephoning Minhyuk’s parents in order to get some kind of confirmation that yes, their son has no reported past of being a grand arsonist. “I put on the slice of cheese because i wanted cheese on toast-” “That’s all fine, Minhyuk, but how did you let the toast catch fire in the toaster?” Yukwon has had plenty of time to vouch for his friend’s innocence, if retelling the story of his parents’ winning draw in the competition and proof of their identities can be called that, especially if it’s to five different hotel employees. Minhyuk hums at him thoughtfully. “See, I put the cheese on the butter on the bread, and then I set it on the conveyor belt.” Yukwon waves his hand, tells him to get a move on with it because Minhyuk clearly isn’t the greatest person to trust when it comes to getting out of trouble, and he’ll have to hurry with his explanation if Yukwon is to be their saving grace, judging from the furried looks on the manager’s face from where he’s standing across the room, still connected to a call with Minhyuk’s parents. Minhyuk sighs. “After I put it in the toaster, I walked around a bit. I picked up a roll or two, some jam, some little packs of honey too! And I just. Kind of forgot about the toast...”

Kyung starts laughing before Yukwon can say another word, forcing Yukwon to stop until Kyung is done. Only when Kyung is wheezing does Yukwon poke at his thigh with his toes. “Done?” he asks, and Kyung nods. “Your friend sounds absolutely ridiculous.” Yukwon just shakes his head and sighs.

Yukwon’s eyes widen, incredulous. “You didn’t pick it up at the other end of the toaster.” “Nope.” “You let it continue on the conveyor belt and it fell to the bottom of the toaster and got burnt to a crisp.” Minhyuk winces at that. Yukwon has been known to be blunt when he needs to be. “Pretty much,” Minhyuk says slowly, “I didn’t expect the added cheese to make things close to explosive though. And the added layer of breadcrumbs at the bottom of the toaster must have added to the flammability. Of my, uh. Toast.”

“So. That’s my story.” Yukwon finishes, looking serious. Kyung has got to hand it to him: it was a great story. But Kyung isn’t that easy to break. He reaches behind the couch for the rice cooker—and only the rice cooker. Yukwon doesn’t seem so amused by this.

“What the fuck, Kyung, I told you such a great story.”

Kyung hushes him with the wave of a hand. “You’ll have to give me much better than that to get the toaster too. For all I know, there’ll be a slightly more willing customer who’ll want my toaster here.”

Yukwon’s glare isn’t particularly menacing, but Kyung holds his tongue from telling him so. He knows how egos can be wounded, especially after one has been denied a toaster from the great Park Kyung, so he keeps his mouth shut about Yukwon’s inability to be intimidating. Yukwon takes the rice cooker gingerly by one of it’s lacquered handles before jumping up from the couch.

“I’ll be back,” he says, and he shakes the rice cooker as a goodbye, the pot cover clanging away as he walks.

Kyung smiles. “I’m looking forwards to it!”


*


When Yukwon stops by next, it’s on the day after the morning that Kyung woke up to find that a disaster hit his yard. He’s attempting to scrub what he can out of the fabric of his couch, not that it’s doing much good.

“Is that...” Yukwon asks, squinting at Kyung’s newly vandalized loveseat. “Yes,” Kyung says with a long-suffering sigh. “Since I’m not selling my bed, my best friend seems to have thought that by not letting him carve actual notches on my bedposts, he’s decided to add scribbles to my loveseat instead.”

The previously orange and plain couch is now covered in what looks to be considerably authentic ‘stains’, probably painted in whitish translucent glue and made to look like the couch had housed an orgy the night before. Each stain is coupled with an arrow that points to it, random numbered dates along with “XMAS” and “1ST ANNIV” written in black permanent marker to label them. In what looks to be baby pink paint, there are scribbles of “Hyung~♡”, “Jaehyo~♡” and “Kyungie~♡”. Kyung has to give Jiho points for creativity, though it doesn’t make him any less pissed off.

“I gotta say,” Yukwon tells him, “this is pretty amusing.” He picks up a half dried up marker from Kyung’s old pencil holder to fill in one of the multiple hearts floating about Kyung’s couch.

Kyung throws down his washcloth. “Just wait until it’s dark; he used glow in the dark paint.”


*


Kyung has a thing for remixes. It’s just something that he’s come to like over years of listening to various genres of music and thinking up how certain songs would sound with another song’s lyrics or artist.

What he’s come to learn, however, is that remixes don’t stop just at songs, but at stories too. It’s not stealing, really, when he starts a great tale about a hotel and burnt toast, not when he mixes things up a bit, especially when he has willing customers and the smell of money pretty much right under his nose.

“And get this,” Kyung finds himself saying quite enthusiastically, “he puts in the toast and forgets all about it, cheese and all!” He doesn’t see Yukwon coming up the driveway, this time with his rollerblades on, but it doesn’t really matter all that much, especially when Taeil has his wallet in his hands and Kyung’s toaster tucked under his arm. Jihoon delightedly presses down on the toaster lever over and over again just to see it spring back up.

“God,” Taeil huffs, close to breathless by the force of his laughter. “What a spacey guy. What’s his name again?”

“Yukwon.”

Yukwon rolls up at that moment, and Kyung hurriedly introduces him to Taeil and Jihoon. “Yukwon, lover of neon socks and owner of my ricecooker, not to mention the very star of the true story I just told you. Yukwon, this is Taeil and Jihoon, roommates and my old friends.”

Yukwon bows slightly, eyes trailed on the toaster in Taeil’s hands. He looks pretty livid when Taeil introduces himself as the proud new owner of Kyung’s old toaster.

“I just couldn’t say no,” Taeil tells him, taking out a few ten thousand won bills, “Not after the story about how you nearly burnt down that hotel in Busan!”

Yukwon’s lips thin, and Kyung dodges the blades on Yukwon’s feet that have suddenly started to gravitate towards his own. “It was Jeju, and I didn’t—”

“Hey now!” Kyung stops him, and he whips the money out of Taeil’s hands. They disappear quickly into the pockets of his jeans. “Let’s not get Yukwonnie here embarassed, okay, guys!”

Jihoon smiles at them and lets go of the toaster lever, and it jumps back up to the top of the groove. “It’s okay, though! Being spacey can be really endearing!”

Kyung looks at him as if he’s lost it, and Yukwon is a little lost for words. Taeil on the other hand simply rolls his eyes. “It’s because he’s seeing someone now,” Taeil says, “Some guy my age who honestly sounds like he doesn’t have much up there, if you know what I mean.” He points at his head for emphasis, and Kyung is sure that Jihoon isn’t dating someone who’s balding.

Jihoon elbows Taeil in the side. “It’s not his fault,” he starts, slightly pink cheeked. “Minhyuk is just the tiniest bit slow when it comes to understanding how things work!”

Kyung is ready to explode at this point, but he manages to mask his laughter with a whooping cough. Taeil thwacks him on the back, hard, and Yukwon wheezes something out. “Minhyuk? Lee Minhyuk?”

Jihoon blinks and nods. Yukwon bursts out into laughter and Kyung punches his shoulder.

“There is sure to be more than one Lee Minhyuk in Seoul,” Kyung hisses to him. To Jihoon he says: “I’m happy for you, Jihoonie! I’m sure your Minhyuk is great!”

“He is!” Jihoon tells them happily, and Kyung couldn’t insult him even if he tried.



When the two have made it down the street and turned the corner, finally out of sight, Yukwon jabs his fingers into Kyung’s ribs, causing him to double over. He then rolls over Kyung’s flip-flop clad feet with his rollerblades, hard enough to sting but not hard enough to bruise.

“You owe me something huge for that story, you thief.”

Kyung manages to let out a small, pathetic sound, his toes still smarting. It doesn’t hurt all that much, but Kyung is a master at the drawing things out and being as dramatic as possible when he wants to be. He flops back onto the loveseat. “Go ahead and take the couch, free of charge, if you want.”

Yukwon raises an eyebrow again, a look that Kyung has become quite accustomed to, and Kyung knew from the beginning that Yukwon would be trouble.


*


Two months later, Kyung finds himself on the same couch surrounded by the same furniture and stuff that he’s had for most of the entirety of his bachelor life. There are old socks tacked to the wall in a spiral pattern, his large goldfish bowl sits on his low coffee table, filled with dirty laundry, and a pack of juice boxes balances on the rim. There’s a text saved in Kyung’s phone from Taeil from a month back, jihoon’s boyfriend just blew up our toaster, and Kyung thinks that life couldn’t get any better than this.

This is Yukwon’s tiny flat, and in one summer, Kyung has managed to not only sell out at his yard sale, but also acquire a friend.

Life is pretty good.