“wait outside”, haneul quietly tells cerberus before he enters the pokémon center. the three houndoom nod and sit, out of the way of the passersby but close enough to the glass pane that they can see both haneul and zoroark walk inside the center.
haneul still thinks it’s a bit too much, especially now that he’s a full adult with a job completely unrelated to the family’s business. no one ever tried coming for him, after all, and he still has no reason to think anyone should.
it’s warm inside the center, so he removes his scarf and gestures for zoroark to let him remove his matching pink one, folding both over his arm before they make it to the front desk.
(he knows the scarf is a bit overkill, considering zoroark’s already clad in a very pretty pink turtleneck, but haneul thinks it’s better to be safe than sorry; they’re there for a quick checkup, anyway)
“good afternoon”, he tells the man at the front desk, “we’d like to– oh goodness.”
he stops mid-sentence, a little dumbstruck but mostly very, very fascinated by the attendant in front of him. he looked gruff, a little rough on the edges, his forced smile showing off sharp teeth. his dark demeanor contrasted, overall, with his very pink uniform.
haneul smiles, eyes sparkling with mischief. “you look–you look just like my zoroark”, he coos. “this has to be the cutest thing i’ve ever seen.”
zoroark knits his eyebrows together in confusion at haneul, as if asking why are you bothering this young man for, but all haneul does is let out a giggle at his own comment, still looking at the attendant like he’s something precious to be watched.
Most definitely, it was his most hated position to be at, and for some reason the nurses kept pulling him back there. The front desk, that is. If he hated something, was to smile towards everyone and take their pokémon in for a check-up.
If he had to choose, he’d be on the back, actually helping with the pokémon care. At least he knew pokémon weren’t gonna talk to him - usually? At least he’d never heard of talking pokémon that made him feel uncomfortable for any reason. The creatures were full of personality, but never had inherent human traits and never played on power and manipulation. It was relaxing to take care of them.
The front desk, however, were a bait for everyone to mess with his flow. Which means, basically, he was at the mercy of people being nice, being rude, being anxious or desperate, or simply wanting to chat when he did not want to. Being at the front desk meant he had to conceal every single negative feeling he had into one forced smile that was absolutely terrible. Being called cute from time to time was also a thing that happened, when he thought to himself - the last thing he could be was cute.
Today seemed to be no exception, he noticed, when the simple sentence made him stop on his tracks. Obviously, this wasn’t his first cute-calling rodeo - as he learned how to handle that - but it was the first time he was compared to a pokémon.
His eyes darted up, examining the big guy, dark type and wearing an almost obnoxious pink sweater, which would allude to his own uniform. He had to blink once before his stare would fall back onto the face of the perpetrator, smiling very proud of his comment as if he’d found a new toy on the way back home. Jaehoon inhaled, deeply, eye twitching for a moment before biting his lower lip and entering defense mode, “… Um, how can I help you today? Is there anyone who need healing?”
His hands hid behind the counter, fingers balling up into fists as he tried to calm down, deciding that ignoring the comment altogether might make the guy change his mind about pursuing this line of thought. At least he hoped it did.
