sleepless cinderella ☆ w.kh | ✔

03

You were in the lounge a couple days later, trying to type up the notes you'd taken when you'd been interrupted. Again. At first it was just Yukhei, who left you alone as he seemed to be taking a nap on the couch. Why he had chosen here to nap was beyond you, but you didn't care. He was quiet.

Then Dejun and Ten showed up, Sicheng being towed along seemingly against his will. While you were generally happy to see them again, you weren't too thrilled about your focus being broken. Then they woke Yukhei up, who made the whole affair about ten times louder.

"Y/N, why don't you sit with us?" Ten called you over from an armchair.

"I'm good, thanks," you replied from your high-top, rereading the notes you had managed to get copied over previously.

"Either way, I'm glad you came back, Y/N," Dejun said brightly from behind you, retrieving some snacks for himself and the others. "You want something?"

"I'm good, thanks."

You barely registered the elevator dinging, announcing the arrival of someone else. If it was Kun, Yangyang, and Kunhang, you might just scream. All seven of them again, that'd just be fucking perfect.

"Shouldn't you be at the lab?" Ten asked the newcomer, and you knew who it was without even looking at them.

"Shouldn't you be at the hospital?" Kunhang retorted, but answered his friend's question nonetheless, "Lunch break."

"Since when do you spend your lunch breaks here?" Sicheng questioned him suspiciously, and you could see the engineer in your peripheral, approaching you.

Kunhang didn't answer this time, stopping right beside you, "How's the article coming?"

"It'd be going so much better if you weren't here," you replied through gritted teeth.

"That's a bit contradictory, considering I'm the subject of it," he snorted, pointing out your clear fallacy.

"You're doing an article on Hendery?" Ten called out, and you were happy to have a reason not to look at the man in front of you. And an opportunity to get back at him.

"Yeah, he pretty much begged me to do it. On his knees and everything."

"No I didn't!"

"You kind of did."

Finally, what you had been waiting for. He snapped, "You were just too stupid to realize that I was joking, so I took pity on you—"

"Pity?" You spat out, completely forgetting about your split-second feeling of victory, as well as the others in the room. "You're taking pity on me? That's fucking rich coming from the supposed genius who's been working on an origami robot for two years that can't even make a frog without ripping the paper to shreds!"

"First of all, it's only been twenty months! And it's only a side project, and you know that!"

Finally, one of the others had snapped to their senses. Yukhei stepped between you two, hands out cautiously, "Hey, hey. Let's take a deep breath, guys."

You huffed, breaking eye contact with Kunhang to cross your arms and instead glare down his reflection in the TV screen.

"There we go," Yukhei's deep voice was calming, and you felt your blood pressure start returning to normal. "Now how about you say sorry, okay?"

There was a long stretch of silence before you finally mumbled, "Sorry, Kunhang."

"Sorry, Y/N," he shot back, clearly mocking your own tone of voice.