Conceal

5. Work

On his way to work, Kihyun thought about what Shownu said to him yesterday. The unanticipated phone call delayed him enough that he ended up being late to work, but that wasn't his concern at the moment. As far as he knew, the boss was always late himself. The thing that bothered him most was the fact that he haven't yet decided whether to do what Shownu had suggested: tell his friends what he really felt.

Even now, with a smile on his face as he bobbed his head to his favourite music coming from his earphones, he couldn't ignore, no matter how small, the corner of his heart that held his deepest nightmares of police knocking on his door one day. At the same time, it killed him to even think of the idea of putting his friends through so much trouble, especially when he wasn't a very helpful friend himself.

His train of thought was cut off when someone whacked him hard on his shoulder, causing him to lose balance and stumble clumsily on the street. Kihyun immediately put on the most agitated and furious face he could manage before turning to see whom the impolite idiot was.

It turned out to be his colleague, which turned all the complaints Kihyun planned in his head into one simple eye roll. "You're lucky you're you, Choi Jongho. Or else I would've shouted at you until your face blew off."

Jongho laughed at that, and Kihyun wanted no more than to strangle his best friend from work. "Why did you do that? It still stings."

"Hyung! Have you not noticed? You were about to slam face first into the door of our bakery." Jongho said, gesturing towards the entrance, located only a few steps away.

Kihyun almost couldn't believe how distracted he had been on the way to work. "Thanks for the warning, I guess," Kihyun replied begrudgingly, turning away to enter the building.

Looking at the dough in front of him didn't help as much as Kihyun wanted it to. Even when he was away from where the haunting event occurred, even when he was doing his favourite thing in the world, he couldn't let his brain rest. There was nothing he could do to get rid of the thousand what ifs that seemed to be perpetually ingrained into the walls of his skull.

At least the sounds of dough slapping gently onto the bench and the occasional soft 'dings' made by the oven created a relatively calm surrounding for Kihyun to work in. In fact, it was the perfect environment for him.

The vibration in his pocket broke him out of his trance and interrupted his shaping of bread. He wiped his hands on his apron and retrieved his phone from the back pocket of his trousers. He turned off the alarm and walked towards the oven right behind him, arriving just in time to hear the familiar 'ding'.

Putting on his oven mitts, he opened the oven door and the aroma of freshly baked bread drifted to him in waves. Smiling, he carried the tray that was at least twice his size back to his workplace, ready for the final step: decoration.

Since his bench was practically buried under other ingredients and equipment, a fifth of the tray was hanging over the edge. Normally Kihyun would never allow himself to do that, but the sugar he needed was literally one arm length away, at the far end of the table top. He reached over and grabbed a bag of sugar, then left it next to the tray to get scissors.

After obtaining the pair of scissors from the opposite end of the table, Kihyun swivelled around to face his tray again. At the corner of his eye, he caught the small pack of sugar lying on the table, and the resemblance was too high everything came rushing back, catching him off guard and ripping every single last bit of composure in him.

The images overlapped in his mind, and even though he knew it was just plain, old sugar, the irrational, panicked part of him insisted that the packet of white powder implied something more sinister, that the situation was more serious than it seemed to be, that...that it was happening all over again.