late nights in a supermarket
Title: Late Nights in a Supermarket
Pairing: Jongyu
Rating: G
Jinki remembers The Night He Fell In Love With Supermarkets.
He was twelve, balled up tightly under his covers desperately trying to tune out the shouts of his parents in the room next to his. The walls aren't thick enough, his blanket isn't thick enough, his palms aren't thick enough. He runs out of the house-- no one hears him-- keeps running till he 's winded but still there is so much noise cars motorcycles whizzing zooming ding dong and suddenly there is quiet.
He looks around, it's a 24-hour supermarket. It's quiet, finally quiet. He walks through the fresh produce section and into an aisle. The shelves are packed tightly from ceiling to floor. As his eyes take in the visual harmony of color on clean white, he feels a calm he hasn't felt in months. The two elderly staff on duty don't notice him at all, and he is only found next morning, curled up on the rice bags, smiling in his sleep. They chivvy him home, but he returns the next night, the night after, and so on.
The house is peaceful again a few months later, after his father leaves for someone else and his mother for someplace else. His grandmother moves in to take care of him, and he loves her best because her smiles are soft and her voice is a gentle balmy breeze and she never ever shouts. Jinki himself leaves for the city several years later, after receiving a scholarship to the top university in the country. He brings along
his grandmother's love, and his new nocturnal habit.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Tonight he has a good book with him. He hums a happy tune as the automated doors slide open for him and he walks through the cold blast of air.
"Hi hyung!" Taemin is here again tonight. He met this kid a few months back, when they were the only ones in the store and Taemin had struck up a conversation with him.
"Hi Taem." Jinki smiles and cocks his head to the side. "Hungry so early?"
Taemin is similarly a late-night visitor to the supermarket, but his agenda is entirely different. He has the biggest appetite Jinki has ever seen, and the words Jinki hears from him the most are "I'm hungry". When night falls and there are no shoppers to judge him for it, Taemin comes to the supermarket to guzzle down the food samples. Jinki joins him occasionally, and sometimes even Minho and Kibum come along.
"I didn't eat dinner!" Taemin says defensively, and jabs a Chinese dumpling with a toothpick. "Want one? These are good."
"No thanks." Jinki smiles at him then moves off towards the aisles. He sees Minho checking for expired items on the shelves, and waves at him. Minho is a part-time shop assistant who had changed from the day shift to the night shift because too many shoppers were asking him for assistance and "assistance".
"Hey Jinki!" Kibum shouts across from the cashiers. He is the only other worker in this shift. Jinki was scared of him at first because he has this too-cool-for-you aura emitting from him, especially when he puts his boot-clad feet up on the counter and paints his nails in gothic colours. But he's actually really friendly. For example, he always calls Taemin and Jinki freeloaders, but then directs Minho to warm up the samples for them.
Jinki waves back at him, grabs a bottle of juice off the shelf and then wanders down the main aisle. He picks the canned food aisle, sits down with his back against the shelves, and delves into his book.
Normally, he reads till 3am, then he pays Kibum for the drinks and snacks he took and goes back to his dorm for a short nap before lessons.
Today though, the universe has other plans for him.
"Whoa hey you actually come here to read?"
Jinki looks up. A boy around his age with hair in three different shades of gold is grinning down at him. Jinki blinks, he has never seen hair like that before.
The guy seems unperturbed by his lack of response, as he continues on cheerily. "I know people hang out at Starbucks and Macdonald's and parks late at night but I didn't know people hang out in supermarkets.
Jinki finally gets over the visual shock and gives a rather unintelligent reply. "Uh yeah."
"Do you do this every night?"
"Uh... yeah."
"That's kinda cool."
Jinki has never been described, even remotely, as a cool person, and he blinks again. "What-what are you doing here?" he manages.
"Me? I dunno... just couldn't sleep and wanted a walk. And this place is big and bright. I hate dark places." He wrinkles his nose.
Jinki can't think of anything else to say, so he throws out an "Okay."
The guy's grin falters for a bit, and Jinki realises that he's just killed the conversation and quickly scrambles to revive it. "I like supermarkets at night."
The grin returns almost instantaneously. "Do you really?" he says, and sits down next to Jinki. As Jinki looks up at him, he notices that the guy has really pretty eyes.
He gulps. This is new, he thinks to himself.
"My name's Jonghyun. You?"
"... Jinki."
Jinki finds out that Jonghyun is a chatterbox, and to his relief, all he has to do is answer the questions Jonghyun asks. He tells Jonghyun that he's a computer science major, to which Jonghyun goes "No shit! I thought you were an arts student because of your book!" and that he's in his third year -- "that makes you my hyung by a year"-- and that he stays on campus. Jonghyun freely recounts his own story: he's a literature major, he stays with his parents and elder sister and two dogs, and his dream is be a lyricist.
Jinki doesn't notice the hours falling away, until Minho comes by and says "Jinki hyung? It's almost 6."
Jinki starts-- how could he have chatted to a stranger for almost 3 hours?!-- and stands up quickly. His book falls to the floor unnoticed as he whips his phone out.
"Shit!" he curses when he sees that it is most certainly 5.53am and remembers that he has a lesson in about 2 hours' time. In his fluster, he forgets about his book and the two men looking at him bemusedly and runs out of the supermarket.
------------------------------
Jinki crashes at the end of his lessons. It's 1pm, and he's about to collapse because he's just had three lessons back-to-back. Some part of his fatigued mind is still energetic enough to complain about his circumstances. This wouldn't have happened, he thinks, if that stranger hadn't approached him, hadn't talked to him, hadn't been so chatty. Then he could have been home by three-thirty, had a few hours' sleep, and not feel like absolute shit right now. A sudden thought jerks him awake. His book!
He slumps onto his table again with a sigh. He'll just get it back tonight. Minho's probably kept it for him anyway.
"Oh my god Jinki, what's wrong with you?" His roommate Changsun smacks him on the shoulder as he settles down in front of him. "You look terrible."
"Didn't sleep at all last night..." Jinki mumbles. His eyelids are growing heavier.
"Just go back to the dorm then."
Jinki is already fast asleep.
"Yah. Yah. Jinki. Jinki! You can't sleep here! Jinki!"
Changsun lets out a long-suffering sigh and proceeds to drag Jinki back to their dorm, which is pretty far away and because the idea that he can just dump Jinki at one of the benches doesn't occur to him.
Jinki returns to the supermarket that night as usual. He looks for Minho, and finds him restocking packets of soya milk.
"Hey Minho, is my book with you? The one I left here yesterday?"
"That yellow-haired guy took it. He said he'd be back tonight to return it to you. Pass me some of those, will you?"
Minho finishes restocking, and Jinki shuffles off. Today he chooses the baking aisle. It feels wrong to start a new book without finishing the current one, so he just plugs into his music and reads all the recipes off the backs of the instant mix cartons. He amuses himself like that for
an hour or so, then Jonghyun turns up.
"Hey Cinderella."
"Wh-what?"
Jonghyun laughs and holds out Jinki's book. "You dropped your book while running away. Doesn't that sound like Cinderella?"
Jinki reaches a hand out for the book. He's not quite sure why he's blushing. He chalks it down to embarrassment. Looking at Jonghyun grinning unabashedly at him, he thinks there probably won't be any reading done tonight.
"Why were you reading recipes?" asks Jonghyun as he eyes Jinki curiously.
"I don't know, I just like it?"
"You like reading recipes?"
"Yeah. It's like... reading the recipes make me feel like I'm eating the food for real."
Jonghyun bursts out laughing, but not in a mean way, so Jinki laughs along.
"I almost died today because of you," he says.
Jonghyun's eyes shine with mirth and leans in, closer than necessary. "Why so?"
"Because yesterday you talked to me for so long, I forgot the time and had to go lessons without sleep."
"Is this a subtle way of complimenting my conversational skills?"
Jinki laughs. "Shut up."
"You could have drank some coffee," Jonghyun says.
"I can't take coffee. It makes my heart beat really fast."
"Seriously?"
"Uh-huh."
"That's... that's really sad."
"Well I don't really need it, my problem is more of being unable to sleep."
"You're really weird, Jinki."
"Like you're any less weird than me!"
"Hey, there's a good weird and a bad weird! You're the good kind! I mean, well yeah."
"... Minho said there's a batch of yoghurt that's expiring tomorrow, do you want some?"
--------------------------------------------
They occasionally join Taemin for supper, sometimes supplementing it with cup noodles from the shelves. They cook them with the hot water dispenser from the coffee sampling counter.
Jonghyun has the strangest ideas ever. Thanks to him, Jinki has drawn eyes on milk and juice cartons, raced live prawns against each other, and had an ice fight with the ice chips from the fish section. Minho almost had a heart attack when he saw them (Taemin included) flinging ice all over the place. Jonghyun and Taemin quickly cajoled him into joining in order to stop his nagging. But fate is a bitch so in the end, they got thrashed real bad by Minho while Kibum cackled delightedly from the sidelines.
Jinki's favorite, however, was the trolley race. Minho had again tried to dissuade them, but Kibum had clapped his hands gleefully and forced Minho into a bet ("I bet you five dollars that Jonghyun will win!"). In the end Jinki won, and Minho, in all his joy, had forgotten all his past misgivings. Kibum had sighed as he reluctantly handed Minho a five-dollar note. "I should have known," he'd said mournfully, "Jonghyun's legs are so much shorter." "Yah who're you calling short!"
Most of the time though, Jonghyun and Jinki just sit and talk.
--------------------------------------------
"Why are you in a different aisle every night?"
"Different aisles give different feelings and I have different moods every night."
"But it makes it hard for me to find you."
"Then don't."
"But I want to."
"Jjong, you realise how creepy that sounds?"
--------------------------------------------
"I'm becoming an insomniac thanks to you."
"You're welcome."
"Bitch."
Jinki laughs, and Jonghyun glares at him before reaching over and clamping his jaws on Jinki's shoulder, causing Jinki to squeal and pelt him
with cereal.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Look look my sister! Isn't she pretty?"
Jinki nods wholeheartedly. His sister has a sweet smile and eyes that shine with warmth, much like Jonghyun's.
"You two seem very close," says Jinki.
"We are. Sometimes when we walk on the street, people think we're lovers."
Jinki smiles at the mental image. "Must be nice having a sibling," he says wistfully.
"You're the only child?"
Jinki nods. "It was a bit lonely growing up, but I have a roommate now who's almost like my brother."
"Changsun?"
"Yup."
"Is he in Com Science too?"
"Oh god no he's from Theatre."
------------------------------------------------------------
"Can I ask you something?"
"Yeah?"
"Why did you uh... why did you approach me that day?"
Jonghyun doesn't answer immediately, and Jinki starts panicking. He shouldn't have asked, no one in their right mind asks questions like this-
"I just... thought someone who sits in a supermarket and reads at 12am should be a pretty cool person." He shoots Jinki a grin. "And I was right."
For a moment, just a short one, Jinki forgets how to breathe.
----------------------------------------------------------
On Jinki's birthday, Jonghyun tells him to sit in the trolley while he pushes him around the supermarket.
"You can take anything you want off the shelves, it's my treat."
Jinki has a blast, directing Jonghyun all over the place and grabbing everything that catches his eye. His happiness is short-lived though, because halfway through, Jonghyun abandons him in the middle of the fresh produce area.
"Come back here you asshole!"
Jonghyun laughs and laughs till he collapses onto the floor, because Jinki's head is sticking out from the pile of snacks and drinks and gradually turning redder as he yells at Jonghyun.
Minho and Kibum come to see what the fuss is about and promptly joins Jonghyun on the floor in peals of laughter.
It is only after much yelling that Minho decides to extricate Jinki from the trolley. Jinki yells a bit more, but is appeased when Taemin turns up with a cake and candles from the little patisserie in the supermarket. The four of them sing happy birthday to him, with Jonghyun and Kibum punctuating the song with giggles at random places. He makes a wish and blows the candles, and the cake is immediately shoved into his face.
All in all, Jinki has never felt so alive before.
----------------------------------------------------
"Jinki?"
"Yeah?"
"Are you in love?"
Jinki chokes on his saliva. Changsun quickly moves over to pat his back.
"Wh-what- I- no- what?"
"This past month. You've been... glowing."
"I have not!"
"Jeez now you're glowing even more. Just admit it."
Jinki throws himself under his covers in response.
Changsun laughs. "Wish you luck with that person, buddy." He pats Jinki's hip through the blanket.
------------------------------------------------------
Jinki is content with life so far, until one day Kibum asks him a question.
"Do you and Jonghyun meet up outside too?"
The answer dies on his lips, attacked by a mental barrage of questions triggered by Kibum's words. Why have they never contacted out of the supermarket? He has never noticed this, perfectly content with their nightly meetings. Is it because they meet every night, so there isn't a need to meet up outside as well? He also remembers that they haven't exchanged phone numbers. Why?
Kibum takes in Jinki's silence, understands what's going on in a flash of insight, and slowly fades back to his counter. He hopes that his innocuous question won't cause too much trouble.
Jonghyun asks about Jinki's strange quietness that night.
"Are you alright? You're awfully quiet today."
"Me? Uh... I guess I'm just tired."
"I thought you were insomniac?"
Jinki laughs, and Jonghyun is relieved.
The next day, Jinki steps out from his lecture hall into the sunshine. As he raises his head to enjoy more of the sun's warmth, he suddenly
understands. His nights with Jonghyun in the supermarket belong to the night. Like dreams, they have no place in the day. From nowhere, a
sense of melancholy settles onto him. Is this what Jonghyun thinks too, he wonders, that he is also a dream, visited only in the night?
----------------------------------------
He bumps into Jonghyun at school for the first time. It was Changsun's idea, rambling on and on about a new restaurant in the Arts Faculty that is "super awesome!" As they approach the building, a group of students exit it. Amongst them is a familiar head of yellow hair. Jinki's face lights up as he waits for the boy to notice him.
Jonghyun finally turns away from his friend, and his eyes lock with Jinki's. Jinki grins back brightly. To his surprise, Jonghyun's eyes widen in shock, and then... horror?
Jinki watches, dumbfounded, as Jonghyun quickly immerses himself in conversation with his friends, pointedly avoiding Jinki's gaze.
Changsun stares after Jonghyun. "That your friend? Jinki? Jinki?"
"No. I think I mistook him for someone else. Let's go."
He doesn't go to the supermarket that night. He goes to the one on the other side of town, where the young girl at the cashier pops her gum and snarls at him for not buying stuff, and the male staff mopping the floor keeps glaring at him. He gives up after a while and goes home.
His dreams are full of a yellow-haired boy, and pretty eyes. For some unknown reason, his parents, whom he hasn't thought of in years, also appear halfway through.
------------------------------------------------
The next night, Jinki decides to go back to the supermarket. He is surprised to see Jonghyun huddled up at the entrance, looking all morose.
"Jinki!" Jonghyun shoots up when he sees him, and Jinki is overcome by a wild urge to run. It must have shown on his face, because
Jonghyun hurries forward and grabs his arm.
"Jinki I'm sorry I'm so sorry Jinki I didn't know what I was doing it was just so strange seeing you in daylight and I just didn't know how to react and I felt so weird and then you didn't come last night and I felt so horrible and I'm just really sorry Jinki!"
Jonghyun looks up at him tearfully, and in that moment Jinki swears he looks just like a puppy so he's quite certain he ought to be excused when his heart melts into a puddle of goo and he promptly forgives Jonghyun on the spot.
"Okay."
The soft smile on Jinki's lips seems to give Jonghyun the courage he needs. "And I really, really like you okay! Like really, really like!"
"Me too."
Jonghyun starts swinging his arms wildly. "I mean I really, really like you! The really, really-"
"Your vocabulary is pretty limited for a Lit major."
Jonghyun glares at him, effectively sidetracked. Jinki smiles at him.
"I know. I really, really like you too," he says.
Jonghyun blushes and looks down at his feet, then Jinki suddenly starts blushing too, and they stand like that in red-faced glory until they hear a burst of laughter and discover Minho, Kibum and Taemin concealed behind a wall.
-----------------------------------------
A few days later, as Jinki exits the classroom, his handphone starts vibrating.
Lesson ended?
He smiles, types back a yup.
Waiting for you on the steps.
Okay coming, he types back. He walks towards the exit of the building, where he can already see Jonghyun and his newly dyed brunette hair.
Jonghyun hears him as he pushes the glass doors open, and turns to beam at him. "Let's go for lunch," he says, and slips his fingers into Jinki's.
Jinki understands that there are some things he may never get over, but it's okay because as there are things to break his heart, there are also things that will heal it.
Pairing: Jongyu
Rating: G
Jinki remembers The Night He Fell In Love With Supermarkets.
He was twelve, balled up tightly under his covers desperately trying to tune out the shouts of his parents in the room next to his. The walls aren't thick enough, his blanket isn't thick enough, his palms aren't thick enough. He runs out of the house-- no one hears him-- keeps running till he 's winded but still there is so much noise cars motorcycles whizzing zooming ding dong and suddenly there is quiet.
He looks around, it's a 24-hour supermarket. It's quiet, finally quiet. He walks through the fresh produce section and into an aisle. The shelves are packed tightly from ceiling to floor. As his eyes take in the visual harmony of color on clean white, he feels a calm he hasn't felt in months. The two elderly staff on duty don't notice him at all, and he is only found next morning, curled up on the rice bags, smiling in his sleep. They chivvy him home, but he returns the next night, the night after, and so on.
The house is peaceful again a few months later, after his father leaves for someone else and his mother for someplace else. His grandmother moves in to take care of him, and he loves her best because her smiles are soft and her voice is a gentle balmy breeze and she never ever shouts. Jinki himself leaves for the city several years later, after receiving a scholarship to the top university in the country. He brings along
his grandmother's love, and his new nocturnal habit.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Tonight he has a good book with him. He hums a happy tune as the automated doors slide open for him and he walks through the cold blast of air.
"Hi hyung!" Taemin is here again tonight. He met this kid a few months back, when they were the only ones in the store and Taemin had struck up a conversation with him.
"Hi Taem." Jinki smiles and cocks his head to the side. "Hungry so early?"
Taemin is similarly a late-night visitor to the supermarket, but his agenda is entirely different. He has the biggest appetite Jinki has ever seen, and the words Jinki hears from him the most are "I'm hungry". When night falls and there are no shoppers to judge him for it, Taemin comes to the supermarket to guzzle down the food samples. Jinki joins him occasionally, and sometimes even Minho and Kibum come along.
"I didn't eat dinner!" Taemin says defensively, and jabs a Chinese dumpling with a toothpick. "Want one? These are good."
"No thanks." Jinki smiles at him then moves off towards the aisles. He sees Minho checking for expired items on the shelves, and waves at him. Minho is a part-time shop assistant who had changed from the day shift to the night shift because too many shoppers were asking him for assistance and "assistance".
"Hey Jinki!" Kibum shouts across from the cashiers. He is the only other worker in this shift. Jinki was scared of him at first because he has this too-cool-for-you aura emitting from him, especially when he puts his boot-clad feet up on the counter and paints his nails in gothic colours. But he's actually really friendly. For example, he always calls Taemin and Jinki freeloaders, but then directs Minho to warm up the samples for them.
Jinki waves back at him, grabs a bottle of juice off the shelf and then wanders down the main aisle. He picks the canned food aisle, sits down with his back against the shelves, and delves into his book.
Normally, he reads till 3am, then he pays Kibum for the drinks and snacks he took and goes back to his dorm for a short nap before lessons.
Today though, the universe has other plans for him.
"Whoa hey you actually come here to read?"
Jinki looks up. A boy around his age with hair in three different shades of gold is grinning down at him. Jinki blinks, he has never seen hair like that before.
The guy seems unperturbed by his lack of response, as he continues on cheerily. "I know people hang out at Starbucks and Macdonald's and parks late at night but I didn't know people hang out in supermarkets.
Jinki finally gets over the visual shock and gives a rather unintelligent reply. "Uh yeah."
"Do you do this every night?"
"Uh... yeah."
"That's kinda cool."
Jinki has never been described, even remotely, as a cool person, and he blinks again. "What-what are you doing here?" he manages.
"Me? I dunno... just couldn't sleep and wanted a walk. And this place is big and bright. I hate dark places." He wrinkles his nose.
Jinki can't think of anything else to say, so he throws out an "Okay."
The guy's grin falters for a bit, and Jinki realises that he's just killed the conversation and quickly scrambles to revive it. "I like supermarkets at night."
The grin returns almost instantaneously. "Do you really?" he says, and sits down next to Jinki. As Jinki looks up at him, he notices that the guy has really pretty eyes.
He gulps. This is new, he thinks to himself.
"My name's Jonghyun. You?"
"... Jinki."
Jinki finds out that Jonghyun is a chatterbox, and to his relief, all he has to do is answer the questions Jonghyun asks. He tells Jonghyun that he's a computer science major, to which Jonghyun goes "No shit! I thought you were an arts student because of your book!" and that he's in his third year -- "that makes you my hyung by a year"-- and that he stays on campus. Jonghyun freely recounts his own story: he's a literature major, he stays with his parents and elder sister and two dogs, and his dream is be a lyricist.
Jinki doesn't notice the hours falling away, until Minho comes by and says "Jinki hyung? It's almost 6."
Jinki starts-- how could he have chatted to a stranger for almost 3 hours?!-- and stands up quickly. His book falls to the floor unnoticed as he whips his phone out.
"Shit!" he curses when he sees that it is most certainly 5.53am and remembers that he has a lesson in about 2 hours' time. In his fluster, he forgets about his book and the two men looking at him bemusedly and runs out of the supermarket.
------------------------------
Jinki crashes at the end of his lessons. It's 1pm, and he's about to collapse because he's just had three lessons back-to-back. Some part of his fatigued mind is still energetic enough to complain about his circumstances. This wouldn't have happened, he thinks, if that stranger hadn't approached him, hadn't talked to him, hadn't been so chatty. Then he could have been home by three-thirty, had a few hours' sleep, and not feel like absolute shit right now. A sudden thought jerks him awake. His book!
He slumps onto his table again with a sigh. He'll just get it back tonight. Minho's probably kept it for him anyway.
"Oh my god Jinki, what's wrong with you?" His roommate Changsun smacks him on the shoulder as he settles down in front of him. "You look terrible."
"Didn't sleep at all last night..." Jinki mumbles. His eyelids are growing heavier.
"Just go back to the dorm then."
Jinki is already fast asleep.
"Yah. Yah. Jinki. Jinki! You can't sleep here! Jinki!"
Changsun lets out a long-suffering sigh and proceeds to drag Jinki back to their dorm, which is pretty far away and because the idea that he can just dump Jinki at one of the benches doesn't occur to him.
Jinki returns to the supermarket that night as usual. He looks for Minho, and finds him restocking packets of soya milk.
"Hey Minho, is my book with you? The one I left here yesterday?"
"That yellow-haired guy took it. He said he'd be back tonight to return it to you. Pass me some of those, will you?"
Minho finishes restocking, and Jinki shuffles off. Today he chooses the baking aisle. It feels wrong to start a new book without finishing the current one, so he just plugs into his music and reads all the recipes off the backs of the instant mix cartons. He amuses himself like that for
an hour or so, then Jonghyun turns up.
"Hey Cinderella."
"Wh-what?"
Jonghyun laughs and holds out Jinki's book. "You dropped your book while running away. Doesn't that sound like Cinderella?"
Jinki reaches a hand out for the book. He's not quite sure why he's blushing. He chalks it down to embarrassment. Looking at Jonghyun grinning unabashedly at him, he thinks there probably won't be any reading done tonight.
"Why were you reading recipes?" asks Jonghyun as he eyes Jinki curiously.
"I don't know, I just like it?"
"You like reading recipes?"
"Yeah. It's like... reading the recipes make me feel like I'm eating the food for real."
Jonghyun bursts out laughing, but not in a mean way, so Jinki laughs along.
"I almost died today because of you," he says.
Jonghyun's eyes shine with mirth and leans in, closer than necessary. "Why so?"
"Because yesterday you talked to me for so long, I forgot the time and had to go lessons without sleep."
"Is this a subtle way of complimenting my conversational skills?"
Jinki laughs. "Shut up."
"You could have drank some coffee," Jonghyun says.
"I can't take coffee. It makes my heart beat really fast."
"Seriously?"
"Uh-huh."
"That's... that's really sad."
"Well I don't really need it, my problem is more of being unable to sleep."
"You're really weird, Jinki."
"Like you're any less weird than me!"
"Hey, there's a good weird and a bad weird! You're the good kind! I mean, well yeah."
"... Minho said there's a batch of yoghurt that's expiring tomorrow, do you want some?"
--------------------------------------------
They occasionally join Taemin for supper, sometimes supplementing it with cup noodles from the shelves. They cook them with the hot water dispenser from the coffee sampling counter.
Jonghyun has the strangest ideas ever. Thanks to him, Jinki has drawn eyes on milk and juice cartons, raced live prawns against each other, and had an ice fight with the ice chips from the fish section. Minho almost had a heart attack when he saw them (Taemin included) flinging ice all over the place. Jonghyun and Taemin quickly cajoled him into joining in order to stop his nagging. But fate is a bitch so in the end, they got thrashed real bad by Minho while Kibum cackled delightedly from the sidelines.
Jinki's favorite, however, was the trolley race. Minho had again tried to dissuade them, but Kibum had clapped his hands gleefully and forced Minho into a bet ("I bet you five dollars that Jonghyun will win!"). In the end Jinki won, and Minho, in all his joy, had forgotten all his past misgivings. Kibum had sighed as he reluctantly handed Minho a five-dollar note. "I should have known," he'd said mournfully, "Jonghyun's legs are so much shorter." "Yah who're you calling short!"
Most of the time though, Jonghyun and Jinki just sit and talk.
--------------------------------------------
"Why are you in a different aisle every night?"
"Different aisles give different feelings and I have different moods every night."
"But it makes it hard for me to find you."
"Then don't."
"But I want to."
"Jjong, you realise how creepy that sounds?"
--------------------------------------------
"I'm becoming an insomniac thanks to you."
"You're welcome."
"Bitch."
Jinki laughs, and Jonghyun glares at him before reaching over and clamping his jaws on Jinki's shoulder, causing Jinki to squeal and pelt him
with cereal.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Look look my sister! Isn't she pretty?"
Jinki nods wholeheartedly. His sister has a sweet smile and eyes that shine with warmth, much like Jonghyun's.
"You two seem very close," says Jinki.
"We are. Sometimes when we walk on the street, people think we're lovers."
Jinki smiles at the mental image. "Must be nice having a sibling," he says wistfully.
"You're the only child?"
Jinki nods. "It was a bit lonely growing up, but I have a roommate now who's almost like my brother."
"Changsun?"
"Yup."
"Is he in Com Science too?"
"Oh god no he's from Theatre."
------------------------------------------------------------
"Can I ask you something?"
"Yeah?"
"Why did you uh... why did you approach me that day?"
Jonghyun doesn't answer immediately, and Jinki starts panicking. He shouldn't have asked, no one in their right mind asks questions like this-
"I just... thought someone who sits in a supermarket and reads at 12am should be a pretty cool person." He shoots Jinki a grin. "And I was right."
For a moment, just a short one, Jinki forgets how to breathe.
----------------------------------------------------------
On Jinki's birthday, Jonghyun tells him to sit in the trolley while he pushes him around the supermarket.
"You can take anything you want off the shelves, it's my treat."
Jinki has a blast, directing Jonghyun all over the place and grabbing everything that catches his eye. His happiness is short-lived though, because halfway through, Jonghyun abandons him in the middle of the fresh produce area.
"Come back here you asshole!"
Jonghyun laughs and laughs till he collapses onto the floor, because Jinki's head is sticking out from the pile of snacks and drinks and gradually turning redder as he yells at Jonghyun.
Minho and Kibum come to see what the fuss is about and promptly joins Jonghyun on the floor in peals of laughter.
It is only after much yelling that Minho decides to extricate Jinki from the trolley. Jinki yells a bit more, but is appeased when Taemin turns up with a cake and candles from the little patisserie in the supermarket. The four of them sing happy birthday to him, with Jonghyun and Kibum punctuating the song with giggles at random places. He makes a wish and blows the candles, and the cake is immediately shoved into his face.
All in all, Jinki has never felt so alive before.
----------------------------------------------------
"Jinki?"
"Yeah?"
"Are you in love?"
Jinki chokes on his saliva. Changsun quickly moves over to pat his back.
"Wh-what- I- no- what?"
"This past month. You've been... glowing."
"I have not!"
"Jeez now you're glowing even more. Just admit it."
Jinki throws himself under his covers in response.
Changsun laughs. "Wish you luck with that person, buddy." He pats Jinki's hip through the blanket.
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Jinki is content with life so far, until one day Kibum asks him a question.
"Do you and Jonghyun meet up outside too?"
The answer dies on his lips, attacked by a mental barrage of questions triggered by Kibum's words. Why have they never contacted out of the supermarket? He has never noticed this, perfectly content with their nightly meetings. Is it because they meet every night, so there isn't a need to meet up outside as well? He also remembers that they haven't exchanged phone numbers. Why?
Kibum takes in Jinki's silence, understands what's going on in a flash of insight, and slowly fades back to his counter. He hopes that his innocuous question won't cause too much trouble.
Jonghyun asks about Jinki's strange quietness that night.
"Are you alright? You're awfully quiet today."
"Me? Uh... I guess I'm just tired."
"I thought you were insomniac?"
Jinki laughs, and Jonghyun is relieved.
The next day, Jinki steps out from his lecture hall into the sunshine. As he raises his head to enjoy more of the sun's warmth, he suddenly
understands. His nights with Jonghyun in the supermarket belong to the night. Like dreams, they have no place in the day. From nowhere, a
sense of melancholy settles onto him. Is this what Jonghyun thinks too, he wonders, that he is also a dream, visited only in the night?
----------------------------------------
He bumps into Jonghyun at school for the first time. It was Changsun's idea, rambling on and on about a new restaurant in the Arts Faculty that is "super awesome!" As they approach the building, a group of students exit it. Amongst them is a familiar head of yellow hair. Jinki's face lights up as he waits for the boy to notice him.
Jonghyun finally turns away from his friend, and his eyes lock with Jinki's. Jinki grins back brightly. To his surprise, Jonghyun's eyes widen in shock, and then... horror?
Jinki watches, dumbfounded, as Jonghyun quickly immerses himself in conversation with his friends, pointedly avoiding Jinki's gaze.
Changsun stares after Jonghyun. "That your friend? Jinki? Jinki?"
"No. I think I mistook him for someone else. Let's go."
He doesn't go to the supermarket that night. He goes to the one on the other side of town, where the young girl at the cashier pops her gum and snarls at him for not buying stuff, and the male staff mopping the floor keeps glaring at him. He gives up after a while and goes home.
His dreams are full of a yellow-haired boy, and pretty eyes. For some unknown reason, his parents, whom he hasn't thought of in years, also appear halfway through.
------------------------------------------------
The next night, Jinki decides to go back to the supermarket. He is surprised to see Jonghyun huddled up at the entrance, looking all morose.
"Jinki!" Jonghyun shoots up when he sees him, and Jinki is overcome by a wild urge to run. It must have shown on his face, because
Jonghyun hurries forward and grabs his arm.
"Jinki I'm sorry I'm so sorry Jinki I didn't know what I was doing it was just so strange seeing you in daylight and I just didn't know how to react and I felt so weird and then you didn't come last night and I felt so horrible and I'm just really sorry Jinki!"
Jonghyun looks up at him tearfully, and in that moment Jinki swears he looks just like a puppy so he's quite certain he ought to be excused when his heart melts into a puddle of goo and he promptly forgives Jonghyun on the spot.
"Okay."
The soft smile on Jinki's lips seems to give Jonghyun the courage he needs. "And I really, really like you okay! Like really, really like!"
"Me too."
Jonghyun starts swinging his arms wildly. "I mean I really, really like you! The really, really-"
"Your vocabulary is pretty limited for a Lit major."
Jonghyun glares at him, effectively sidetracked. Jinki smiles at him.
"I know. I really, really like you too," he says.
Jonghyun blushes and looks down at his feet, then Jinki suddenly starts blushing too, and they stand like that in red-faced glory until they hear a burst of laughter and discover Minho, Kibum and Taemin concealed behind a wall.
-----------------------------------------
A few days later, as Jinki exits the classroom, his handphone starts vibrating.
Lesson ended?
He smiles, types back a yup.
Waiting for you on the steps.
Okay coming, he types back. He walks towards the exit of the building, where he can already see Jonghyun and his newly dyed brunette hair.
Jonghyun hears him as he pushes the glass doors open, and turns to beam at him. "Let's go for lunch," he says, and slips his fingers into Jinki's.
Jinki understands that there are some things he may never get over, but it's okay because as there are things to break his heart, there are also things that will heal it.