[Super]Hot À† Minsung 14 ; Dandelion Wine .ᐟˎˊ˗

His alarm fired off sooner than he would’ve liked.

Groggily, Jisung rolled himself onto his stomach, stretching his arm out to smack his phone screen until the brutal noise stopped blarring inside of his eardrums like a crying child. The silence that followed an immediate relief to the pounding of his head and the sensitivity of his ears waking still from the intoxicated cloud evaporated off of his mind. The sunlight pouring in from his window blinds at even this early hour another burden to address. Judging from the clinginess of the clothes and the discomfort from his waistband cutting into his hips, he didn’t change from his clothes last night. He didn’t slip underneath his comforter at any point in his brief sleep either. As he retracted his hand from his nightstandー

Something solid met his hand. Something hard, that hit his carpeted floors below with a heavy thump and the sloshing of liquids swaying from the impact. Still absorbed in a half-asleep stupor, Jisung forced the lead in his body to respond as he wormed himself to the edge of the bed and squished his eyes open to peer over the edge of his mattress.

Some sort of… Electrolyte drink? There was a bottle of painkillers left on his nightstand too, though his headache wasn’t so severe he was in desperate need to take one.

Did Minho leave these for me?

Jisung snatched the drink up, finally sitting up properly as he kicked his legs over the side, finally raising himself upright as a dead man walking as he unscrewed the plastic cap and guzzled a few mouthfuls of that bitter drink. Plus, to entertain the kindness of who he assumed was the bounty hunter (Because it certainly wasn’t himself, drunk Jisung had never been insightful enough to leave hangover Jisung a replenishing drink and some painkillers for the morning), he took a painkiller to dull the slight headache. Most likely, he could’ve powered through the day without taking one, but… Seriously, that gesture was too kind for him to simply pass off. He made a mental note to thank Minho when he saw him again, before slowly standing up to grab his typical standard teacher uniform. Slacks. Button-up. Set on taking a cold shower with his electrolyte drink in hand.

Cold showers. Some hybrid of a masochist’s daydream and a businessman’s haven, a magic trick up his sleeve that shocked him awake despite the hours he stayed up. Or the hangovers he endured. Adding onto his relief as the painkiller began to dull the edge of his headache’s blade while the minutes ticked on, the abrasive chill of shower water pouring onto his back allowed him a moment of reprieve. A soothed body accepting him into the living world as he quickly dried off, dressed himself in his outfit, combed his hair out, brushed his teeth [A/N: Brush your teeth before breakfast to protect your enamel kids], and snatched his drink off the sink ledge to sludge out to his living room, thoughts of breakfast already plaguing his mind as he stepped closer to the quiet sound of a running television.

His TV. Playing some weekday morning children’s cartoon show, the volume hardly loud enough to have disturbed him while he slept, much less be a nuisance to him now that he was up wandering. No. Not a nuisance. Not an irritation. Unlike a certain someone who barged into his house with careless abandon on most days, somehow he didn’t feel the same way about the person laid on his couch now. Perhaps it was because his shoes were neatly by the doorway instead of on the coffeetable, or it was because he was laid crooked to keep his socked feet on the ground rather than on the couch, or the fact he was using one of Jisung’s coasters instead of placing his drink directly on the coffeetable, or maybe the manner he was keeping politely to himself, not stealing food, not watching distasteful memes on his phone, simply huddled with one of the decorative pillows to his chest as he watched the cartoon.

Either way, the hitman couldn’t deny the slight relief he felt at seeing Minho that morning, “Feeling alright now?”

“A bit hungover,” Jisung sighed in response. He mandered his sleepy pathway to his kitchen, taking another swig of the half-full electrolyte drink before he set it on his counter and began to contemplate the most important part of his routine: Breakfast. What should he eat today? While he peered into his fridge to see what he could cook up with the time he had; Some eggs, leftover beef strips from yesterday’s lunch, container of rice, yogurt, some strawberries, greens to make a salad, eggs didn’t sound too bad of a breakfast. Some sunny side up eggs, rice on the side, some strawberries, if he cut up the leftover avocado too, that would be a decent meal wouldn’t it? Plus, there was enough if Minho was hungry too. Before he began cooking, he glanced to the bounty hunter, “I’m making breakfast, do you want some? I’m going to brew some coffee too, do you want a cup?”

“I’ll get breakfast on the way, but coffee sounds good,” With his answer, Jisung shot him a swift nod from over his shoulder and busied himself with starting on his breakfast. First, setting the coffee pot to brew up a few servings of delicious coffee. Occasionally sending the bounty hunter glances to where he laid on the couch while he collected what he needed on his counters, Minho simply kept his eyes on the television. Or, he kept his eyes to himself, rather than through Jisung. Still, speaking up underneath the sound of his children’s cartoon, “You’re a teacher, right? Why don’t you call out of work today?”

“I can’t do that to them,” Jisung shook his head, his eyebrows furrowing together as he clicked the heat on his stove up, “My kidsー”

“KIDS?!” Minho startled. His eyes went wide, neck snapping to stare toward Jisung, “You… You have… kids…?”

“Sorry, my high school students. I call them my kids,” Then following into the heated pan, eggs. Cracking them into the oiled and scalding surface, he turned the temperature down slightly before moving onto the next step of his breakfast. Rice. Heat up the rice. Hurriedly snatching up the container, spooning out a decent serving for himself, before popping it into his microwave for laziness to do anything more complicated than that, all the meanwhile rambling off to the bounty hunter despite knowing what he said wasn’t all too relevant for the purpose of their collaboration, it had nothing to do with Seo, yet still he talked, “That Kuromi sticker on my guitar case was given to me by my student. Really sweet kid. But, usually spends her breaks alone. She’s brighter than a lot of her classmates, and doesn’t get along with them because of it. She’ll often come to talk with me instead.”

Remaining crooned at what Jisung observed to be nearly a 90-degree angle at his knees, Minho hugged his companion of the decorative pillow closer to his chest as he flipped himself off his side and onto his back. His head casually propping up against the armrest as his gaze dug into Jisung’s movements in the kitchen, “You must like teaching. You talk about it like it’s your life’s passion or something.”

“I like being a safe spot for the kids to freely talk and seek help. A lot of them don’t have anyone to turn to when they’re in a tough spot, so I try to be there for them,” The hitman tried to explain, in a sense, his own version of a life’s passion as Minho implicated. Now that the eggs were bubbling slowly, the rice was almost finished heating up in the microwave, he moved onto his strawberries. Washing a handful or so of them, cutting the stems off to dump in his disposal, “I was an awful student growing up. None of my teachers cared. So I didn’t either.”

Maybe…

He halted his movements. Looking at the freshly washed and cut stems collecting up in the bowl.

I should cut some extra for Minho. Just in case. He might still want a few, he’s snacky like me.

“Then, in my second year of high school, my literature teacher pulled me aside. He asked me how I was, and how my parents were doingー I had a shit home life and everyone knew it,” In the absence of an answer from Minho behind his back, Jisung grabbed up a few more strawberries to wash off for the bounty hunter to share with him, “When we finished talking, he gave me his copy of Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury. He had this one quote underlined and circled; ‘Some people turn sad awfully young. No special reason, it seems, but they seem almost to be born that way. They bruise easier, tire faster, cry quicker, remember longer and, as I say, get sadder younger than anyone else in the world. I know, for I’m one of them‘. That was the first book I ever read start to finish. It’s stuck with me since.”

Okay. Strawberries, cut and washed in a side bowl, check. His rice, pulled out of the microwave and steaming up with sticky moisture, check. Eggs, roasted on the sides but perfectly bubbled and gooey in the middle, check. His plate, prepared and ready to be eaten? Check. One cup of coffee, hurriedly grabbed and poured with some sugar plus creamer? Check. Another cup poured to pass off to Minho? Check. Abandoning garnishing Minho’s coffee with anything, coffee was one of those overly personal type tastes that only the person drinking can customize how they like. He settled with simply giving the creamer and sugar to Minho along with his coffee.

“I started teaching because I wanted to reach out to students in the same way he reached to me,” Finishing up his rambling, Jisung shuffled in a hastened pace to set the two cups of coffee down. His. Minho’s. Minho’s accompanied by the creamer and sugar, one of his weirdly favored tiny spoons so he could stir up his drink. As the bounty hunter pressed himself upright to craft his perfect coffee cup, Jisung jogged back to the kitchen to grab his breakfast.

“And what about being a hitman? Those are pretty contradictory jobs, you know?” Minho asked him, the clinking of the spoon against his ceramic mug accompanying a steady rhythm underneath his words.

“I met this fuckface asshat of a government worker while I was playing darts in my first year of uni. He told me I had steady hands and sharp eyes, that he could put it to good use,” Jisung grunted as he wandered back with the bowl of strawberries and his zero-efffort breakfast, setting them both down on the coffee table as he slipped himself onto the ground. Wedged between the edge of the table and the ledge of the couch digging into his spine, Jisung got to work on mutilating the sunny egg until it mixed up with his piping hot rice, “I’ve been trapped doing his dirty work ever since.”

The bounty hunter finished with dressing up his coffee, which to Jisung’s surprised seemed to be filled with primarily creamer and a spoonful or two of sugar (Compared to Jisung’s cup still pitched black from a lack of anything else to blunt the taste), not that he should’ve been surprised but Minho didn’t seem like the type to like sweeter drinks. Though, perhaps he should’ve guessed, with the watermelon gummies and ice creams the older always seemed to be snacking on. Resting the pillow into his lap, Minho wrapped his hands around the mug and slumped back in the couch. Slightly sipping on the top layer as his gaze broke through Jisung’s facade without hesitation, “You didn’t start because you needed the money?”

“No. I’m doing it because I can, and I began because I could,” He shook his head, careful not to stab his cheeks on his chopsticks as he shoveled the meal into his mouth, “What about you? Why the bounty hunting?”

“I had a close friend all through childhood. He was taken a while back, when he was about thirteen. I was tipped off the last people who saw him had a bounty on them, so I went after them. Never found anything though,” Minho mumbled around the lip of his coffee cup. When he glanced back to take a look at him, the bounty hunter’s gaze seemed entirely occupied by the blistering red strawberries sitting undisturbed in their bowl. Unbothered, undisturbed, perhaps the color reminded Minho’s distant eyes of something else from long ago. But how honestly he spoke almost a shock to Jisung, yet speaking without a restraint that would have many would have tripped and stumbled over top, “I’m trying to find answers. The money too, but, mainly answers.”

The hitman snuck a strawberry into his mouth before he asked, “What was his name?”

“Jeongin. Yang Jeongin. He was a squirrelly little kid, and like my little brother,” His words fell meek, quieter than Jisung had known the man to talk in absence of his characteristic mannerisms. He balanced the coffee mug in one hand as his other fished down, reaching into his pocket to produce that Doraemon keychain. Holding it out for Jisung to see as his voice came ever so silently beneath the drone of the television, “He gave this to me for my fifteenth birthday, a few weeks before he disappeared. Maybe something in me is hoping one day he will see it and recognize me.”

“I hope you can find him.”

“Me too.”

“This world is very bleak, isn’t it? It’s all shades of gray with no black or white. There’s no color to it anymore,” Jisung turned back to his breakfast, rotating between taking hurried bites of his rice and egg, before washing it down with some coffee, trying to speak around the cluster of unsavory flavors blending together in his mouth without miraculously choking on a single grain of rice, “Especially when you’re in our line of work. Killing and hunting for a living…”

“Would you do it over? If you could? Would you pick something different?”

“No, I wouldn’t. Would you?”

“Naaaahhhhhh,” Minho dragged out as he clipped the Doraemon keychain back onto his belt loop. Then, he reached to snatch up a strawberry from the bowl too. As Jisung predicted. There wasn’t much he knew about that man, but if there was one thing he knew, it’s that he was always snack-ish. A strawberry or two extra for him was almost a requirement in Jisung’s mind, especially with the painkillers and drink he left for him. Not to mention the fact he stayed the night instead of leaving him and his front door unlocked for anyone to break in whenever they would’ve liked. Sparing some food for him was nothing. Not to mention, the slight gratitude that Jisung caught in the brief glance Minho chased onto him, “I like bounty hunting. Anyway, it’s a good way to get stories to write about.”

“How so?” He turned over his shoulder, furrowing his eyebrows at Minho’s comment. Stories? Writing? Was he an author of some sort? Did he write stories about his bounty hunting, like… a bibliography? No… would that be an autobiography?

“I’m a journalist. Normally. You know? Like how you’re a teacher. I do freelance writing for news columns,” Minho sipped again at his coffee, sneaking small slurps from the top between his words. The gestures almost would’ve been cute if not for the fact Minho was staring through Jisung once again. Eyes piercing directly through him, as if he was a ghost, a target of an object, nothing at all to be seen in front of him, and perhaps Jisung now understood partially why. Perhaps there was something else in Minho’s mind that kept him looking beyond, “That’s another reason I want to find Seo so badly. If I can find him, maybe I can do some right for once, and publish what he has on those drives before I turn them in.”

Instead, Jisung forced himself to look away from that piercing gaze. Purposefully avoiding any eye contact as he dug up another scoop of his breakfast, “You still have morals then.”

“Do you?”

“I just go where the paycheck is. If I kept my morals, I would’ve been dead a long time ago.”

The answer earned him a flat hum. Not one of judgement or irritation; An awfully melodic sound like the chiming of a bell or a stricken key on a piano, somewhat reassuring as if to send a message he understood the hitman’s words. If they could even be understood. But how incredibly cruel he must’ve been to want that, to even ask for that. For someone to understand him. For someone to pretend to sympathize or feel for him. A killer. In a sense, in the end when and if he would ever be judged or buried below, a hitman or a sniper, those labels he placed upon himself would boil down to their core: He has taken countless lifetimes again and again. For no real reason either. Not for money, not for moral high ground, simply because he wanted to. How could he ever ask for someone to understand, for them to get it. That maybe there was nothing in his mind but bleak black, white, grey, that maybe when he saw hollow eyes, he could see another color within them.

The clinking of the coffee mug against his coffee table (More accurate atop one of Jisung’s coasters, possibly the most attractive thing anyone has ever done in front of him, even if the mug he had was polished off from any drink that was inside moments ago), returned him outside of his own thoughts in time to witness the bounty hunter snag another strawberry out of the now half empty bowl. Proceeded by Minho standing up from the couch, and for some reason Jisung couldn’t explain, patting the top of the hitman’s head before he headed for the door, “Well, Firecracker, I think I’ve kept you long enough, and I know you need to get to work without me being here distracting you. Thanks for the coffee. And the strawberries.”

“Thank you for the drink. And the painkillers,” Jisung followed suit, wobbling to stand up as he escorted Minho to the front door and opened it for him. Still, why pat his head…? Such a strange person…

“Sure, anytime. It wasn’t a problem for me to do. I’ll see you soon,” Minho sent him one last flickers of his charming smile before he stepped outside of the threshold. His hands in his pockets as he approached his park car in the small parking spot.

But…

Before he could disappear inside, Jisung called to him, “Minho.”

The bounty hunter stopped, whipping back to him with an almost alarming speed. Eager might be the better word for it.

“Thank you for staying too. It was kind of you to do,” Jisung slumped against his doorway, turning his lips up at him to send him his own faint smile.

“Hey, no worries, anytime! Just wanted to make sure you didn’t go wandering and ask anyone else to put a gun against your head,” Minho’s laughter was unlike anything Jisung had heard from anyone before. Short. Choppy. Pronounced. As if each syllable of his laughter was articulated with care. Less like a fluid river or a chiming angelic harp, more like fireworks that explode in the summer sky. More like a firecracker. More like gunshots that ring in your eardrums. But a proud noise nonetheless. A sound that had Jisung melting in his knees and weakening in his heart nonetheless. His features peeling into a wide grin as he teased him, “Maybe my pistol will be loaded the next time you ask.”

Languidly, the bounty hunter pulled his hand out of his pocket. Curling his fingers up as if he was holding a gun.

He pulled his trigger.

“Bang.”

Jisung grunted, clutching at his shoulder as he pretended to be shot by an invisible bullet. Playing along with him if for nothing else than to entertain that twisted glint of something exciting inside of Minho’s eyes.

The bounty hunter offered him a cheeky grin. He turned over his heel, slipping into the driver’s seat of his car before driving away.

▄︻デ ══━一ᝰ.ᐟˎˊ

Dialogue heavy chapter, sorry everyone

Sooo what do we think of Minho so far? Of Jisung? 👀