Puzzle

Chapter Four

~In which they start filling in the blanks~

It's Saturday and Jongdae and Minseok both have no lectures to attend or essays to write, well at least none that definitely have to be finished tomorrow. They have a puzzle to work on though and since there is nothing else to really do they decide to spend the whole day with it. Jongdae gets frustrated five minutes in.

"Why is everything so green?", he whines, dropping the puzzle pieces he tried to connect so far. Minseok just shakes his head with a slight chuckle.

"Because this is a jungle Jongdae", he explains. Jongdae angrily stares at the picture on the box of the puzzle. Why did he buy this stupid thing in the first place? There are maybe two thousand pieces left now and all of them are different shades of green. The puzzle has a bunch of holes, some of them smaller some of them rather large and now it's up to them to somehow fill them with the remaining pieces.

"Maybe sorting the left pieces by shape could help", Minseok suggest. He points to a certain spot on the puzzle. "You see this, there are two holes here", he starts explaining, but Jongdae interrupts him.

"So the piece that goes there has to have two of those puzzle thingies at least. That already eliminates a bunch of pieces", he says, feeling proud for understanding something.

"Puzzle thingies?", Minseok asks while giving Jongdae an amused look. Jongdae can feel his face turning a slight shade of red, or maybe someone just suddenly cranked up the room temperature.

"I don't know what they are called, so I just call them thingies", he admits, staring down at the puzzle pieces. Minseok laughs before he picks up another piece and inspects it for a moment.

"I don't think they even really have a name, I usually call them nubs but I think thingie actually describes them quite well", he finally says. Jongdae smiles.

"So we're sorting them based on how many puzzle thingies they have?", Jongdae asks and Minseok nods.

"Yeah, and by where the puzzle thingies are, most pieces have two holes and two thingies, on opposite sides, like this one." Minseok picks up a piece to show Jongdae what he means and then puts it a bit to the side. "I'll collect those over here, you start by finding the rare pieces, like those with just holes or just thingies, since their shape is so unique it's usually easy to find their place."

"Like those?", Jongdae asks, picking up a piece with four holes that he found next to his left foot. Minseok looks at it before he gives him another affirming nod.

"Exactly. See, you're already good at finding them."

By noon they have sorted all the pieces and already filled in some holes. For Jongdae it's still a process of trial and error and he usually just ends up trying all pieces that might fit in one place until he finally finds the one. But Minseok seems to be doing the same, so for once, Jongdae doesn't feel like that much of an idiot. They started with the small holes, Jongdae is working on closing the gaps between the legs of the leopard while Minseok fills holes between flowers. Slowly but surely it's coming together.

"Hey, do you want to get some lunch?", Minseok suddenly asks and Jongdae looks up from the pieces.

"At the cafeteria?"

"I guess, I don't know what they have today though, but it's usually good, or at least edible", Minseok says with a shrug of his shoulders. Jongdae takes a moment to think about it. He's not too fond of the cafeteria food because most of the time it's too bland for his taste but at least it's cheap and easy, so he eats it anyway.