Stories of Us: Oneshot Collection

duck and noodles (Jungkook/Lisa)

Based on the fact that Lisa wants to open a Thai restaurant someday and Jungkook dreams of running a duck place. Badda bing badda boom, ya know?

Competition arrives on a cloudy Thursday morning in the form of a foreign restaurant that seemed to poof right from of thin air and into existence adjacent from Jungkook's establishment. One of his employees, Jisung, casually waltzes into work with a book bag dangling from his left shoulder as he ever so politely bows to his boss. 

"What's that smell coming from?" Jungkook's nose scrunches up.

"What smell, sir?" Jisung innocently blinks.

"From your bag, boy. I smell something. Is that your lunch?"

"Ah, yes!" he springs up straight, slipping out a styrofoam takeout box - only intensifying the smell. It wasn't particularly unpleasant, but Jungkook seems to have an extra sense for the scent of outside food (a nightmare for customers attempting to sneak just one cheap item in with their overpriced dinner). "I got it from the restaurant that just opened up across the st-"

"Throw it out," Jungkook deadpans.

"Huh?" the younger boy takes a step back, "b-but sir, why? This is my lu-"

"Throw it out, or you can find another place to work."

Jisung heaves a defeated sigh with slumped shoulders, beginning to drag his feet towards the restaurant's garbage shoot. Yet what seems like a nanosecond later, Jisung can only presume some strange force in the universe momentarily possesses Jungkook's mind, he tells him to stop. 

"Hand it over," he orders swiftly. 

In what seems to be a blink of an eye, the white box is in his hands and the younger boy disappears into the kitchen. Some days it almost scares Jungkook how tyrannical he's become since he's run this place but it's what the business demands, Namjoon had told him once, having owned a few food chains of his own. 

He's not particularly hungry but the unfamiliar perfume the box emits intrigues him to no end. Though he can't read English nor Thai very well, from what he could make out from the overhead name of the shop " THAI-ED UP" he can only assume it's some play on words about Thai food. It briefly reminds him of the time Namjoon suggested he rename his restaurant "Se-DUCK-tive" before cracking up as Jungkook stood and looked upon him with dismay because he wasn't entirely sure what just happened. 

Nonetheless, he's amazed to find that the taste is exquisite. Some kind of noodle dish with an aromatic peanut sauce and flavourful beansprouts. He's reluctant to admit that never in a million years would he have been able to figure out such a concoction of seasonings. Such an uncomplicated looking dish manages to assault his taste buds, an almost euphoric feeling spreading through his chest at the warmth of it. 

No, absolutely not. He seizes up for a second, staring vacantly at the glistening noodles still radiating that unsettlingly addictive aroma. Snapping the box closed, he dusts himself off (though nothing had been spilled on his suit, he's not making a grand entrance with a single wrinkle that would retract respect) and heads towards the door. 

The atmosphere of this place is worlds away from his own restaurant. Just as the noodle dish had been simple, so does the decor of this neatly put together place. The aroma is a pleasant mixture of fragrant peanut sauce and some kind of flower essence he can't seem to pinpoint. Waiters and waitresses are dressed in very casual wear, although definitely still uniform as there appears to be some pastel colour pattern on every nicely buttoned up top and khaki pants. It almost feels like he'd stumbled upon a resort island.

"Hello! How may I help you?" A bright-eyed brunette with bangs neatly pinned to the side greets him with a tone far too cheery for this time of day behind the register. LISA - her name tag reads and underneath - RESTAURANT OWNER. 

"Umm..." For some unforeseen reason, Jungkook's usual assertive demeanor drops on him like an anchor, crushing his chest and seeming to knock the air from his lungs. His mind blanks as initial anger melts into what the actual fuck is happening?

"Would you like to see our menu?" Lisa asks after a minute of Jungkook's awkward shifting back and forth on his feet and muttering some incoherent gibberish as he struggles to string together a sentence that could convey that he does NOT want competition after spending his life on this enterprise, only to have it all amount to...

"Uh, y-yeah, that'd be, g-good." He mentally scolds himself for sounding like a nervous fifteen-year-old immensely struggling with a verbal book report. 

"Great!" That menu seems to come out of nowhere as one second her hand is behind her back and the next, it's right in his face - obnoxiously colourful like the rest of this place, and he momentarily catches a whiff of the pina colada lotion on her hand. "I think you'll really enjoy today's special. We've been getting rave reviews from the customers already."

"Is that so?"

"Mhmm, I came up with it myself. It's really a spin-off of my grandmother's old broth," she explains, eyes squinted into crescents with her smile to convey just how proud she is. 

Jungkook feels a faint burning in the pit of his stomach. Heartburn? Diarrhea? Both? He'd figure it out eventually. "What made you want to open this place?" he asks, surprising himself at how calm he'd become in a matter of seconds.

"My dad's a really famous chef, you see. Growing up in Thailand, he'd always encourage me to cook and I sucked at just about everything I made, unfortunately," she giggles, a light pink tinting her cheeks and spiraling that burning in Jungkook's stomach a little deeper, "but for some reason I excelled at noodles. Of course, it started with simple noodles, like the ones you get in those small packages. And eventually I found myself making them from scratch. It's really tasty when you do that and add a bit of..."

Her ramble seems to go on endlessly, eventually fading into an inaudible hum as Jungkook's mind wanders from paying attention to her life story to staring absentmindedly at the way her plump lips, accented by cherry rid lipstick, look so soft and innocent as they maintain that curve of her smile. He wonders how a person manages to smile for so long, and even more so, how one keeps a business running this well with such a childlike persona. 

He snaps out of his daze when Lisa suddenly gasps in the midst of her story and for a moment he wonders if she's choked on taking in so much air at once. Is this an opportunity to put his limited CPR skills to use and find out whether this soft lips are simply an illusion?

"You run that duck shop across the street right?" 

Establishment, he wants to correct but for once in his life in his life finally noticing how annoying that probably gets. "Yeah."

"Oh my god, I love the meat there! Sometimes I get some to eat with my noodles." 

It dawns on him that the two flavours would in fact be a good combination. The sophisticated spices and richness of his duck meat with her authentic, light and fragrant noodles. He feels himself salivate at just the thought. 

"Maybe we could work together sometime," he finds himself saying aloud, and is glad he does, because he couldn't buy with a million dollars that radiant smile that appears on her face and alights her cheeks. 

Maybe competition isn't that bad after all.