lgchaneul:
after having his pictures taken, haneul is escorted into a room where the rest of the trainees assigned to his group are waiting to pick up their id. a big yawn escapes from his mouth while he stretches out, slightly exhausted from the long hours he makes as a student and trainee, and he quietly joins the others. it shouldn’t take much longer before they’re done, he thinks, and his mind starts to wander to what he should eat after he gets out of here. he hasn’t cooked for himself in a while, maybe he could try one of the recipes his parents sent over a couple of weeks ago; hopefully his dorm mates won’t be too upset if he ends up burning anything, but those are worries for later. he smiles to himself.
he doesn’t expect his thoughts to be disturbed by confetti raining from the sky, much less by one of his senior trainees clinging to him, and he can’t help but giggle at the other. cute. it takes more than a few pieces of paper falling from the ceiling to get him—and it helps he was too lost in thought to jump at the surprise like kangmin did, but that is something he doesn’t want to admit, even to himself. the staff ushers them towards the bathrooms so they can clean themselves up before they retrieve their ids. haneul doesn’t understand why it matters if there’s confetti in his hair or on his clothes for him to pick it up, but doesn’t get the chance to question it. maybe they’re just being considerate, he thinks to himself. yeah, that must be it; the legacy staff is pretty cool.
“it’s good practice for the future though, isn’t it?” he asks when kangmin speaks to him, ever the optimist. haneul plucks a piece of confetti from the other trainee’s hair and chuckles. “let’s get cleaned up quickly. don’t want to keep everyone else waiting for too long!” he pushes the bathroom door open, allowing his senior to go in first before following after him, and only then does he notice the room is filled with balloons. “what the—” but much further than that he doesn’t get because one of the balloons pops and this time it’s haneul’s turn to yelp in surprise while finding cover behind kangmin. it isn’t much use when he’s surrounded by them, but he isn’t thinking about that right now. “i hate this,” he whines loudly, “i want to go home.”
“maybe, but surely there’s other ways to practice? ways that don’t involve us getting scared half to death?” the complaints accompanied by pout and slightly reddened cheeks as haneul brushed confetti from kangmin’s hair, the other trainee hastily shaking his head to clear away any more wayward pieces of paper once haneul’s withdrew.
ugh, what a mess, acting like this in front of a junior. still, kangmin internally took a breath in and let a well practiced smile grace his features. kicking up a (bigger) fuss would only reflect badly on the both of them, after all. “at least it was only confetti. that’s easy enough to clean up, after all.” he mused as they walk down the hallway, eyes darting around suspiciously, still expecting someone to jump out at them. kangmin says nothing, but he can’t help but be wary. it was just too quiet. unless he’s just overthinking it, an occurrence that was completely normal for him.
“still, I suppose it could be worse, right? i mean what else could happ--”
words come to a suddenly halt as they enter the bathroom to see it adorned with balloons, every inch seemingly covered in the things. “you gotta be kidding me,” were the first words that left his mouth, brow twitching a bit in annoyance and a grudging kind of respect at the lengths the staff were willing to go to in order to fulfill their pranks.
any further commentary is halted before kangmin can even speak it, the sound of a balloon popping causing him to cringe away in shock. though it is nothing compared to haneul’s reaction; of crying out and hiding behind him. despite it all, a small smile forms on the senior trainee’s lips at the reversal in fortunes for them.
“what happened to this being ‘good practice?’” kangmin good-naturedly throws back the other’s words at him before shaking his head. in all honestly, he couldn’t say that he disagreed with haneul in the slightest. but the quickest way to get home was to endure all this nonsense, was it not?
“it still could be worse, y’know? we haven’t been splashed with anything or had someone throw stuff at us yet. but, let’s just try and get through these... ah, be careful where you walk! if we’re gentle, we might just get out of here without anymore popping..”
