ACT A FOOL IN IT, CHAPTER ONE.
AND THE FINE ASS GUY WAS. . .? 𝄞 PREV. | MASTERLIST | NEXT
“It's Phi.” Sehyeun announces.
“WHAT!?” Siwan slams his palms down on the iron surface of the BBQ top, metallic utensils clattering at the sheer force of incredulity induced. He stands up in utter bafflement and leans across the table like he's ready to personally strangle you, as if he was interrogating you for The Betrayal of 1920. There's that psychopathy in his eyes that clearly says he will not hesitate to jump over and jump you. “The fine shit you were talking about is Phi Fucking Hanwool!?”
You blink, slow and uneven, not quite catching up with the conversation happening at your own table, and not understanding why Siwan and Hyunwoo look like they're ready to tear somebody's limbs off. “I didn't know he was a Phi. I've never met or seen the YB heir before.”
Hyunwoo looks just a whistle away from disintegrating into chalk wind, jaw dropped with his hands on his head as he communicates with you through his widened eyes (he's saying that ‘you have got to be terribly joking’). “Noona.” He starts, putting a hand on your shoulder like you just doomed the whole of Korea. “Noona. Do you not know who exactly this Phi Hanwool is?”
You deadpan, far too off the point. “Am I supposed to know this guy?”
Sehyeun audibly laughs out loud when Siwan and Hyunwoo grasp at their own hair and groans far too loudly with visible dread and irritation; at both you, and the person of the topic, as if they're re-experiencing the most painfully humiliating moments of their life.
“Out of everyone in the whole uni, you decided to let cupid shoot you for the guy who almost ruined everyone's lives?” Siwan cannot believe his ears, plopping back down on his chair, the wooden rear striking against tiled floor. He drapes an arm over the top rail, pinching the bridge of his nose to contemplate his friendship with you. “I knew your standards were shit, but holy shit.”
“Am I missing something here?” You try again, only having gotten questions in return to your question the entire time, your eyebrows furrow to display your dim anger. “I feel like I missed an important press conference for this group.”
Sehyeun continues to huff a long amused sigh at Siwan and Hyunwoo’s reaction, crossing his arms as he leans back on his chair before fixing you a reassuring smile, despite the end of it trembling in silent distaste. “He went to Yuseung High with us, noona.”
You tilt your head, a question mark popping up beside your head. “Okay…? How am I supposed to know him then? I went to Chungma, you guys know this.”
“How do you not know this Phi Hanwool!?” Hyunwoo exclaims once more, albeit a bit too loudly. He grabs you by the shoulders once more, and starts shaking you along with his words. “Noona, he was literally, like, the ruler of the south of Incheon. The one who single handedly instilled fear in all of the other schools in the south, and kept the Northern Alliance from pushing downwards!? That absolutely monster of a human!?”
“Oh!” You snap your fingers, Hyunwoo ceasing his rattle. “He's that Phi. I know him, I think. The same Phi who made Minseong crash out at even the slightest sight of a Yuseung student?”
Siwan strangles the air in front of you as a substitute for you, you are sort of relieved it's not actually you because he might have genuinely killed you with it.
“Exactly the same Phi.” Sunchul confirms.
“JESUS—” You near jerk off of your chair at the freight of the sudden appearance, holding your palm against your heart while leaning against Hyunwoo to overdramatise your shock, who was just as spooked as you. “Sunchul-hyung… Are you trying to get back at me for crashing your bike by scaring me to death?”
“I was not.” Sunchul forms a straight line with his lips, unimpressed beyond his fondness. “But I still haven't forgiven you for that.” He more than kindly rests the three bottles of soju he held with one hand and three glass cups on the other down on the table, a resounding clang sieving through the air.
You watch the alcohol descent with an awfully craned neck, staring at it for a moment with an anticipating gaze, before looking back up at Sunchul when the stacks did not multiply magically as you hoped. The hyung in question, with his crossed arms as if there was nothing wrong at the table, merely raises an eyebrow at the blank look you press onto him. You take it upon yourself to spell it out, slowly counting one, two, three, four; Sehyeun, Siwan, Hyunwoo, you with your finger to make it clear. Blinking up at Sunchul again, you smile. “Hyung. There's four of us.”
“I don't want to drink tonight.” Sehyeun unhelpfully adds, inevitably falling on deaf ears.
“You're the only person who wants a bottle for one each. Damn alcoholic.” Sunchul flicks your forehead, to which you respond by acting as if he shot you with a gun. “Besides, I did say nothing for you on my tab.”
“Wha—” You slam your fist on the table in genuine offense, glasses clanking, and Hyunwoo needing to hold the salt shaker so it doesn't slip off the table. “But hyung! I went to all my classes today!”
“You’re an university student,” Sunchul folds his arms over his chest again. “You're supposed to attend your classes.”
“Do you hate me and want me to die?”
“You won't die just because you don't drink for one night.”
“She might.” Siwan quips, flicking off the cap of the beverage with his finger. “You never know with her. I certainly don't. Especially how she managed to have a crush on Phi Hanwool, all people.” He pours himself a glass, ignoring Sehyeun’s fuss over it.
“It's not a crush, hello?” You attempt to defend yourself, stealing his glass and downing it in one go, almost choking when Siwan fucking pierces his heel down on your foot. Your first instinct is to throw the cup at him, but Sunchul grabs your wrist before you could do so. “I'm going to kill you, Cheon Siwan.”
“You just took my drink!”
“It didn’t have your name on it!”
“I poured it for myself.”
“You don't pour drinks for yourself, Siwan. That's not proper etiquette.”
“You quite literally just drank it without toasting with anyone else.”
“Stop being such a crybaby about etiquettes.”
“Settle down.” Sunchul breaks the banter by grabbing both you and Siwan by the back of your collars, far too easily, far too casually, and far too effective. Sehyeun and Hyunwoo snickers at the way you both can only blink speechlessly. “Stop fighting all the damn time. You're disturbing the other customers."
“He started it.” You argue, trying to put yourself in the right.
“I did not.” Siwan hisses.
The two of you immediately fall quiet again when Sunchul tightens his grip. Like obedient cats.
“Hyung, what was the occasion for treating us to drinks?” Sehyeun chimes in like the good amidst evil he is, receiving thankful blinks when Sunchul drops his hold on you and Siwan. “What are we waiting for?”
“Well.” Sunchul scratches his nape, stealing a cautious look at Hyunwoo, who raises an eyebrow at the hesitance from the older. “About that—”
A black tray is set down on the table; filled with the usual order for the group; The Chinatown Special. And the world stills. Curious eyes trail from the mass of grub, to the rubber gloved hands of the waiter, along the red apron with the print of Bul-Yeou’s logo at the front, up to the desolate vast grey that dimmed of certainty and vain, before recognition phases through the haze. Then it clicks, and the boys’ jaws slacken. It is Hyunwoo who shrieks,
“Who?” You ask, again. You are beginning to regret not having gone to Yuseung, because this was just getting ridiculous.
“[F/n].” Sunchul trails off, wrapping an arm around the ‘Park Gunyeop’, and patting his shoulder. You saw past the faux casualty of his action, cringing at the buried awkwardness from the hyung. “Meet Park Gunyeob. He was a junior at Yuseung, same year as these guys.” A pause, for the dramatics, and for a moment to let everyone blink. “And the new worker here at Bul-Yeou.”
“Nice to meet you.” Gunyeop mutters, bowing slightly specifically to you, and only you it seems.
“Hyung,” Siwan starts immediately, nearly pointing at Gunyeop with a finger before immediately taking an unopened soju decanter, and holding it up so it's doing the directing for him instead. “He's the junior you said you were going to help out?”
“Yeah, basically.” Sunchul shrugs, letting his arm around the younger’s shoulder fall; feeling the action to be a little too gauche. “There's really no other juniors left at Yonsei for me to help out.”
“This is,” Sehyeun swallows, an awkward lump forced down his throat, and an equally awkward chuckle slipping past his lips. “Quite the, uh, surprise.”
“Thoroughly unwelcomed.” Hyunwoo adds, the slightest of a glare on his eyes as he watches the impassiveness of Gunyeop while chewing on his inner cheek.
You find yourself observing; listening to the pitch of your boys’ voice with words, and their variants of reactions to the sudden reunion at your designated spot akin home, and noticing something quite sombre for the mind.
You believe you know a thing or two about human behaviour, having tragedised into building a weapon over it. How the crest and trough of voices decipher and immortalise the resolve hidden behind it, the edges of the gazes that see all but nothing at all dragging through the gutter, and the lips that spews out choruses that betrays the mind before the sanctity of it holds true; all is known to the one who hears. There are graveyards in the eyes of some, cadaver rotting behind the pupils with woeful ache bruised purple and grey—and you find it in Gunyeop, with his eyes pouring dull that weighs his shoulders heavy.
“Oh boy.” You blurt out, once again stealing the drink that Siwan was pouring for himself, and chugging it down while continuing to watch every little emotion that chipped past everything on your junior's face. “You have that dead look in your eyes that I've only seen adults have.”
Gunyeob’s expression does flinch at that, despite the attempts to bury it deep. His eyebrows furrow, and a question peeks through. “What do you—”
“Alright!” You suddenly exclaim, standing up abruptly with a loud drag of your chair, evoking surprise onto everyone's faces and nerves. Your grin stretches far too wide, and your objective ringing clear in your head. “So, it's your first day at the job, Gunyeop-ah?"
“Hah?” Siwan chimes in unhelpfully.
“Huh?” Gunyeob parrots him, a little more dumbfounded than Siwan at the moment. “Well, yeah, it's my first day. My first job too, for that matter.”
“That's brilliant!” You take the liquor bottle from Siwan’s hands, pulling up the sleeves of your shirt as you ignore his strings of curses. You hit the bottom of the soju with your elbow, swiftly whisking your wrist to outline the thalassic whirlwind inside the decanter, before easily flicking the cap off with your finger, just as previously done before. “Here you go, Gunyeop-ah.” You pour a glass, fill it to the brim, and pass it to the confused junior.
Gunyeop takes the alcohol handed to him, not because he wanted to, but because he is still polite enough to not refuse a senior, and he cannot quite grasp what is happening, and why you're the one spurting drinks for all the others too, and why Sunchul is also easily taking the drink despite still being on his shift, and how you're holding the whole ass bottle up instead of pouring yourself a glass too. And why you're smiling at him like how his mother would when she used to talk about her favourite student back in High School. A wave of something irks him, but it gushes out calm. “What…”
“A toast to Gunyeop!” You cheer, wrapping an arm around his shoulder to which he staggers as he needs to crouch a little, holding forward your drink for a celebration. “For his first day at the job, and for being stuck serving us for as long as he works here!”
Huffed laughter and rolled eyes with no choice of endearment follows after your words, through reluctance to forgive, and memories that leak fresh of cuffed fists, your bottle is met with youth pressed together in the form of reprise and reliving; glasses clanking against one another to form a melody of path chosen to stray or to lead, all up to the beholder and the one who dares to grasp. Everyone drinks the first cup for the night, and the moon hangs comfort over the crown of her people.
“Am I on grill duty for today?” Hyunwoo asks, slamming his glass down on the table, and getting ready to start having the long awaited dinner. There's a bit of anger left at his teeth, but there is also always room for meat from the grill, and understanding through time. “I did it yesterday.”
“I'll do it.” Sehyeun offers, already knowing that Siwan was not going to offer. Siwan cackles, wrapping his arm around the other’s and singing a ‘thank you’ in a manner that pisses off the spiky-haired greatly. He points the steel tong at Hyunwoo, a sneaky little smirk on his lips. “You're on noona duty tonight, be prepared to pour drinks infinitely.”
Gunyeop does not know when to blink, or which of anything to question. But it all dies at his tongue when you suddenly feed him the pork bit of the tangsuyuk from your table, chewing at it absentmindedly as you do the same for Sunchul. He looks at the senior, who merely shakes his head to reassure him that it's normal, that they feed him while he's working all the time, and that it's happened far too often that it's already overlooked by the staffs. Gunyeop thinks you're a little weird, but there's a ringing in his cortex that died down upon the remembrance of someone close to him when he looks at you. He thinks it's stupid.
“Taehya-ah! Fox in the henhouse, please!”
THE CORPSE SPEAKS: lol heres chapter one
★ all rights reserved. do not copy, repost, or translate my works.