𝐒𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐄𝐍 𝐀𝐑𝐌𝐄𝐃 𝐅𝐎𝐑𝐂𝐄𝐒

36; 𝙞𝙣𝙠

"hey, junhui," minghao says, striding to quickly catch up with the taller chinese. minghao's eyes stray to the loads of groceries on junhui's hands, so minghao stretches out his arm and opens his palm wide open. "come on."

junhui halts, looking at minghao's hand. he places all the grocery bags on his right hand to the left, before taking minghao's hand and intertwining their fingers. "okay, let's go!" junhui cheerily exclaims.

"that's not wha—okay, stop dragging me to the elevator, i'll burn you." junhui lets go of minghao's hand, running past him to go to the elevator first. what a child.

"i stretched my hand out for you to give me the groceries." minghao says, entering the lift.

"this is embarrassing," junhui says, looking up at the security camera. "i thought you were making moves or whatever."

"you're implying something else, you know."

"think of it this way." junhui says, finding the courage to turn around and face minghao with his beet red face. "a senpai kouhai trope in a bl anime. but no sexual things."

"if translated to kdramas, sunbae and hoobae trope? woah..." minghao trailed off. "hmm?"

junhui may be giving minghao the spotlight of his obscene thoughts, but who the hell is going to say 'i wanna give you hickeys' or something to the person they're secretly giving obscene attention to? a pedophile, apparently. and junhui was not a pedophile.

"so you have a crush on me?" minghao asks, chuckling while pointing to himself. the elevator dings, and junhui quickly exited. "unfair!"

junhui is a little too chicken for this talk with minghao. plus, what if his ex-girlfriend decides to get in touch with junhui again? okay, no. no!

no lovey-dovey things for now, work first. right? (the ex-girlfriend thing is probably not going to happen because she was the one who ghosted junhui in the first place.)

"oh, hey, junhui!" seungcheol called, grabbing some grocery bags from junhui's hand. the tall chinese man nods and smiles, avoiding minghao, though he was in junhui's peripheral vision. "look at my ring."

minghao watches junhui avoid him, laughing a little. this guy.

"this is from cartier, i saw it in a wedding expo last february. why did you buy it?" junhui asks, inspecting the piece of jewelry on seungcheol's ring finger. to junhui, it seems like seungcheol is boasting about this. "are you engaged?"

"me and chan were a married couple for a day, and it was so believable!" seungcheol cheerily says, dropping the grocery bags by the kitchen counter. "i haven't taken it off."

"he kissed our poor channie!" jeonghan adds, emerging from the kitchen. he sported a black apron on top of his grey sweater. "that disgusting mouth of yours!"

seungcheol instinctively touched his lips at jeonghan's attack. "excuse me, my beautiful lips are not dirty!" and then, they were bantering.

it was already noisy to begin with, since seokmin and wonwoo were arguing about something regarding 'hogging the bathroom', also because jihoon was playing loud ass bass, while mingyu was crying for some movie playing in the tv.

minghao sighed.

hey, but seriously though, junhui? not a bad choice. probably too childish, but it's a tad bit charming for minghao. wow, a half demon being attractive to minghao's eyes? minghao's not even surprised anymore. he once got attracted to a white blood cell from that one anime.

"hey guys," joshua's voice rang throughout the whole building, with the help of the speakers. as if his voice was a pause button, everyone stopped making loud noises to listen to what joshua had to say. "do you perhaps want a tattoo?"

"so, like, you can hear everything i say and do? what if i'm somewhere... bad?" mingyu asks, looking at the newly tattooed symbol on the upper left side of his wrist. it was as long as a centimetre, in a shiny gold ink. thankfully, seventeen's logo was properly designed, or else, mingyu would regret ever getting a tattoo. "not implying any dirty things, though."

seokmin snorts as joshua spoke. "once again, those tattoos are sub-dermal transmitters. they're to replace the usual earpieces we use, since those earpieces fall off sometimes and i'm tired of making illusions on the earpieces only for them to get destroyed later. sub-dermal transmitters are very small, can be hidden in simple and unnoticeable things such as the ink that i used for your tattoos. plus, less conspicuous."

"we will only hear each other when joshuji activates the communication option, through his phone or computer. plus," jeonghan smiles, placing thirteen small boxes on the tool table. "these earrings have small speakers on them, so we can hear each other. plus, those earrings are butterfly styled—secure, and pretty."

"so, basically," seungkwan takes a pair of earrings, inspecting it before he looked at the seventeen logo inked on his wrist. "when we're in a mission and we need to speak to each other, we bring up our wrist to speak through the sub-dermal things on our tattoo and hear a response coming from our earring?"

"yes."

"ingenious." wonwoo remarked, interestingly looking at the seventeen logo printed on his wrist in gold. i'm officially a seventeen member now, huh? "i must say that your inventions are amazing."

"yeah. better than wherever you were from," soonyoung adds. the seventeen members laughed, while wonwoo nodded in agreement. "why did we do this suddenly, do we have an undercover mission? a big one?!" soonyoung's eyes widen in excitement.

"no, just because i was proud of this one," joshua says. "seungcheol, any missions though?"

seungcheol raises an index, a sign that seventeen should wait wherever they were. their leader runs out, and after 3 minutes, he was back with three manila folders.

"alright, first," seungcheol raises the first manila folder, before setting it down in front of him. the man was so thrilled when he saw seventeen's 'tired of this shit' faces. "mine!"

"come on!"

"old geezer!"

"booooooo!"

"get out!"

seungcheol frowned, after getting jeered on. what was seventeen's problem, seriously? "okay, soonyoung, you get this. jeonghan, you get the next one."

"cool beans!" soonyoung exclaims, being handed over the manila folder. "thanks, cheol-hyung!"

sigh. only chan calls seungcheol a nickname without seungcheol ever giving something to him in return.

"yay!" jeonghan happily recieves the manila folder, skimming over the pages excitedly. "finally, it's killing spree time."

seventeen ignores what jeonghan said, in fear of being victimized by joshua's husband.