A Sparkly Encounter (A JongKey Fanfic)

A Sparkly Encounter (A JongKey Fanfic) THIRTY-TWO

The winter season was already upon them and everything was all still horribly screwed up. Key was furious at JongHyun for being a player (but really he was just jealous); Onew was hung up over Key and trying to cope with the holiday rush in the store; JongHyun was a walking zombie plastering on fake smiles to fool everyone; TaeMin was trying to keep happy, but he knew he was being lied to, and MinHo was still struggling with that dark, ugly secret of his.

            In the shop, the early morning hour was making the holiday shopping crowds dwindle to a mere nothing – leaving the three employees in an awkward situation. Jessica was thankfully not involved since her parents had decided to take her to Florida for the holidays.

            A rope tying the three together was pulled taut and ready to snap in a moment's notice.

            “Where is that new test shipment I ordered?” Onew asked, staring at the yellow slip in his hands.

            “That small box that came in last night?” JongHyun asked.

            “Yeah, that one.”

            “I put it under the counter.”

            “Of course you would go touching other people’s things,” Key mumbled loud enough for JongHyun to hear as he walked by him.

            The older boy rolled his eyes at Key’s childish behaviour and joined Onew at the counter. He had an exacto knife out and was cutting through the tape holding the box flaps together. Curiosity bubbled inside of JongHyun’s chest. He had wondered what the box was for ever since it had arrived the day before. It was too small to be a regular shipment and now Onew had announced it as test batch for a possible future product so it was bound to be something interesting – and probably pink and full of sparkles.

            “What is it? What is it?” JongHyun asked. He leaned across the counter with semi-forced excitement.

            “I figured that since the majority of our clientele are girls and the holidays are here… I wanted to make some new things available to them, but I wanted to see if the product was of good enough quality first, so…” Onew hauled out a couple kits of… Nail polish?

            JongHyun studied the brightly coloured assortment of polishes while Onew unloaded some more make-up products. The nail polish had three outrageously bright shades of pink – light pink, hot pink, dark pink – three more bottles of the same pink, but with sparkles, a bottle of red nail polish, white and a very prominent sparkly silver. Stickers came with the kits. There were two sheets of mini Hello Kitty faces, mini Hello Kitty faces with Santa hats, stars, hearts, dolls… Only to be expected with Onew. It made JongHyun wonder why he had even chosen to invest in a store such as this one.

            The nail polish kits had to be the most interesting of the supplies even if Onew was still pulling eyeliner and other make-up items that JongHyun couldn’t identify out of the box.

            “You ordered a bunch of make-up?” JongHyun asked incredulously, holding up one of the tubes of eyeliner.

            At that perfect moment Key chose to stride by. In three seconds exactly (for real, JongHyun had counted) his face changed from the puckered up, sour expression that he had perfectly mastered to an expression containing a giddy, child like happiness. “Is that the new Janie collection make-up?” he asked, grabbing the liner from JongHyun. Despite the grabbing, the older couldn’t help but enjoy this side of Key more.

            “Uh…” Onew glanced at his papers. “Yes.”

            “How did you get this hyung?! Her new line wasn’t supposed to be released until next week!” Key yelled. He singled out the closest mirror he could find and dragged it back to the counter, not bothering to be shy about digging into the products.