Stumbling Backward(JOOKYUN✔️)

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Detective Shin spends hours after Changkyun's departure organizing his thoughts and his papers. He feels horrible for the young man, unable to imagine how distraught he himself would be if his younger brother would be named as a suspected murderer. An attempted serial one at that. It's only when his personal phone rings into the hollow room of his station office does he shake himself from his rampant mind.

Glancing at the two other detectives that share the large office with him, Detective Shin pulls his phone from his pocket and glances at the screen.

UNKNOWN NUMBER

Sighing, Detective Shin swipes right across the screen, picking up the call and lifting the phone to his ear. "Detective Shin, may I ask who's calling."

A thin voice on the other end gasps before speaking loudly, "You didn't tell me you were a detective!" Groaning as he holds the phone from his face, the detective glances around the office before turning himself and his chair away from the others in the room. "I figured you were just some coffee house singer-"

"Who am I speaking with?" The detective does not like playing games. He is typically a very forgiving and generous person, but he hates, more than anything, to be withheld information. "Tell me now or I'm hanging up."

"Oh right, sorry!" The man laughs at himself over the line, a nervous wreck as he rests atop his bed at home. He can hear his mother bustling about in the kitchen as she prepares supper, his grandmother in the den shouting at one of her stories on television. "This is Minhyuk. From the pet store. Precious Paws," he adds for good measure.

Detective Shin sets his right elbow atop his chair's armrest, his chin on his fist as his left hand presses the phone hard to his cheek. "And how did you get my number, exactly?" The detective would be lying if he said he hadn't found the young man from just a few days prior attractive, but this would not be his way of going about that venture.

"I stole it from the computer. You signed up for the rewards system, remember?" Minhyuk sounds so proud of himself over the phone, but the detective works hard to keep his reply as stoic as he can, knowing if any of his coworkers were to hear the excitement he feels, they'd mock him for weeks.

"You know, I could report you for theft and attempted stalking if I felt like it." Detective Shin's ears pick up the slightest tonal difference when the shop worker next speaks, smiling to himself upon realizing that he's scared the young man.

"I uh, well I didn't think anything would come of this, I just wanted to call and ask you about your skunk." Minhyuk titters out the smallest of giggles, nerves evident as he stands from his bed to pace the length of his room. "And okay, maybe I thought you were cute." Minhyuk, with a hand in his hair, watches his reflection as he wanders across his vanity's view every few seconds.

Detective Shin smirks to himself, leaning back in his desk chair and folding his free arm around his middle comfortably. He is still aware of the others in the room with him, so he keeps his words casual. "A lot of people seem to think that," he admits confidently, recalling to mind the store clerks face as best he can. He distinctly remembers half a second of the man's impossibly bright smile before his pale hand had lifted to hide behind it; Detective Shin loves a shy chase. "Not a lot of them make the first move, however."

Detective Shin hears the almost imperceptible sound of another desk chair in the office squeaking, one of his fellow detectives swiveling in his place to key in on the conversation. "Hoseok... Are you flirting right now?"