✔️My Magical Stranger// GeminiFourth, FirstKhaotung

*21* The only one right choice

Before the butterfly becomes beautiful and useful, pollinating flowers, it is first not very pretty and considered by many to be a pest caterpillar that feeds on plants, destroying them, but this is only an appearance.  In fact, both the plant and the caterpillar get along well.  New felt the same way.  He and Fourth were like a plant and a butterfly, they grew up together, New likened himself to a caterpillar that fed on leaves from a plant called Fourth and now it was time for it to turn into a butterfly and repay its debt by giving Fourth to Gemini.  Gemini was supposed to be pollen transferred from one flower to another by him to create something beautiful, unique, a sweet fruit called love together with Fourth.  Fourth had always been there for him all these months, a person who understood him, always comforted him, had a kind word for him, sometimes waiting for him in their secret cottage with lunch or dinner, just as if they were a good old married couple.  New knew he would miss it.

“You did well,” a familiar deep voice snapped him out of his gloomy reverie.  Standing to one side was none other than Zee, his hands in the trouser pockets of yet another fashionable suit.  He smiled kindly at New, which was so unlike him that it shook the young man, causing the phone to fall out of his hands and land on the floor.  They both bent down to pick it up at the same time, and then their foreheads collided.

“Ouch!  Oh, you've got a hard skull,” Zee joked, rubbing the sore spot.

“Huh?!”

“Why are you looking at me like I'm an alien? Have I grown a pair of rainbow horns?”  Yes, Zee was definitely joking, and he looked like he was enjoying it, as if teasing a boy nine years his junior was rejuvenating him as well.

“Zee?  Are you sure you're okay?”

“And you New?  Are you sure you're real?  Because I still don't believe a boy as cute and perfect as you can really exist.”  Zee smiled seductively at him, winked and moved closer, his breath tickling New's neck as he said the last words.  New froze.  There was no doubt Zee was flirting with him, or at least trying to.  New felt himself turn red, so he covered his cheeks with his hands, avoiding the fire of his boss's gaze, who was staring at him stubbornly.

“Zee, jokes are on you today, start acting normal,” New chided him.

“First, I'm not joking.  Secondly, what's abnormal about me wanting to hit on you?  I like you, I'd like to be with you, we're both not in a relationship, what's the problem?”   He simply said, expressing freely what he felt.  If he'd learned anything from First and Khaotung and Fourth and Gemini, it was to always be honest and open about his feelings, then he had a better chance of succeeding and being understood.

“I... do you like me?” New asked uncertainly.  He had a feeling it couldn't be true.  This icy cold, heartless workaholic who can't see beyond the end of his nose and the Institute just told him he liked him?  Is it possible?  This Zee who reacted allergically to manifestations of love in his environment now admitted to having similar feelings?

“Yes, New.  Is there something incomprehensible in what I said?  I think I made it clear: I would like us to become a couple”.

“P'Zee...”

“I'll give you time to think, you can take as much as you want. However, I have a request: don't reject me right away.  I understand that now you feel nothing for me and you are only my subordinate, but I guarantee you that I will do everything to gain your trust and heart.

“No, you're not P'Zee, P'Zee would never say that."  P'Zee wouldn't fall in love with his underling.” New tapped a finger against Zee's chest.

“You think so?  Then touch me and feel for yourself how fast and hard my heart beats next to you.  Do you really think I'm lying?  That I can change the rhythm of my heart just like that?”  Zee grabbed New's hand, pulling him to him and pressing his hand to his own chest.  Now New had at his fingertips the living, throbbing evidence of the sincerity of Zee's words.  “I wanted to be with you for a long time, but you had Fourth, I didn't want to spoil it, that's why I was so cold and mean to you, but I promise it will change.  I will make you love me”.