Ain't Like That

Chapter 1

"Fucking hell! When is this shift over?" Hyoseob groaned loudly as he stacked boxes at the back of the empty market with his coworkers.
"You just clocked in 10 minutes ago," One of his coworkers replied.
He rolled his eyes and kept stacking and organizing boxes. Being a normal person was honestly hell, in Hyoseob's opinion. He had to do physical labor from 9 to 5. He had to pay rent, iron his clothes, take the city bus. Too broke to travel, too broke to eat expensive foods, too broke to buy expensive shoes. But he liked it. Sure, people recognized him off the street often, but that's only if he didn't wear a mask. But being normal was special; yeah, composing music and performing was hard work (especially as a solo artist), but this physical labor and everyday struggle he went through.. Nothing could compare to that.

Around 1, he took his hour long break. He made his way to the basement of the market, back hurting like hell from lifting so many heavy boxes. When he got to the ideal lunch room, it was empty. It was always empty, actually. Rarely anyone ate their lunch at work, they all drove or walked to some fast food joint or something. Being the old fashioned person he was, Hyoseob fixed his lunch at home, brought it to work, and let it sit in the staff fridge until break. Every other day he had the same thing, his version of a cheap meal and an expensive meal. The cheap meal was ramen and the expensive meal was salad. Salad was more expensive than everyone thought, so it made him feel he had some sort of respect left for himself when he ate it.
Today though, was Tuesday, a ramen day. He popped the plastic container into the microwave and set it to 5 minutes. That microwave heated up pretty damn quickly. For the time he waited, he strolled around the break room and checked his notifications. It was all likes and comments on every social media app he had, and texts from friends and guys in the music industry, asking for collabs and for him to feature in their new releases. Even Zico's icon was up there,
<<When are you gonna drop a new album?>>
Luckily, he didn't pay his phone bill, so his phone would get cut off today, so that'd be his excuse for not answering. The microwaved beeped obnoxiously and he put his phone back in his pocket. Before going to get his noodles, he got a plastic cup from the stack in the corner of the room and filled it with water from the faucet. After putting that on the table he got his noodles and a plastic fork from the cupboard, sat down and ate in silence. It wasn't complete silence, there was a faint buzzing from the lights above, and then there was also Hyoseob's thoughts. But his thoughts were always irrelevant things like, do the prepackaged vegetables in ramen make the ramen any more healthy than they already are?
Anyways, this is how he spent his hour lunchbreak. When he clocked back in, he was headed back to the storage room, but he was stopped by a coworker.
"Boss says he wants you working the register for the rest of your shift."
Hyoseob sighed. Being on register duty required him to wear his work snapback. So he had to go back downstairs, to his locker, get his hat, walk back upstairs, then walk all the way to the front of the store. After that, pretty much everything went by smoothly. Until the last customer came in before his shift ended.
At first glance, Hyoseob muttered in shock, "Holy shit!"
The customer looked like Zico. Hyoseob watched him as he kept passing by and there was no doubt it was him, now. When he came to the register with a few food related items, Hyoseob kept his head down. He didn't greet him like he was supposed to. He just rang up the items and charged the other.
The whole time, Zico stared (or at least tried to) at him right in the face. He kept seeing it from under the brim of his hat. Before handing over his card, Zico paused.
"Crush?"
Hyoseob turned his head and didn't respond, basically giving himself away.
Zico continued, now looking at his name tag, which read Shin.
"Crush, is that you?" he ducked to get a look under the hat.
"Sir, please-" Hyoseob started, but Zico didn't stop.
"Don't 'sir please' me! Man, I know that's you!" Zico chuckled and swiped his card, "What are you doing working in a market?"
Hyoseob gritted his teeth and looked back at Zico head-on,
"It's a long story."