Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
SEOL Juyeon is used to seeing odd people on a daily basis. After all, she attends an all girls private school for the some of the richest kids in the country, and some of them are all kinds of ridiculous. But on top of that, she also works at a theme park, and the amount of people they get rolling in the doors on a daily basis is a lot, and there are several odd encounters that Juyeon can remember, each one weirder than the last.
Seriously, Juyeon's come across some really strange people, and despite how amusing the situations can be at times, they're still straight up bizarre, and Juyeon doesn't think she gets paid enough to be able to keep a straight face throughout it. People are weird.
But this boy is quickly making his way to the top of Juyeon's list, because she can't for the life of her figure him out. She's spent the past two months working several of the same shifts as the boy, and the only things she knows about him is that his name is Kim Seungmin, and that he's the same age as her. And that he, unlike Juyeon, does not have a fear of fireworks.
(A fact that she found out in the middle of a rather embarrassing freak out during the theme park's anniversary which involved celebratory fireworks and a very panicked Juyeon hiding out in one of the store closets with her hands over her ears in an attempt to wait it out. Seungmin was the one to find her, and stay with her until she calmed down, which Juyeon will admit was pretty nice of him. Except they haven't really talked since, and Juyeon doesn't really know what to make of it. Besides, how do you just casually start a conversation with a boy you've barely spoken to, but has already experienced your deepest darkest fear firsthand?)
So, yeah. Juyeon's not really sure what to think of him.
"I heard he's super rich, too," Rang Heiran had whispered loudly to Juyeon during one of their shared shifts. And while Heiran is one of the few people at her job that she actually likes, the girl has absolutely no sense of noise control, and Juyeon's almost positive that Seungmin heard them gossiping from across the store. "I heard Evangeline Young talking about it. Rumour has it he goes to some fancy private school, too."
(And yeah, Juyeon probably should have payed more attention to that detail, but it was the least of her concerns at the time.)
Instead, she focuses her energy on displaying the assortment of headbands from the box her manager all but dumped in her arms as soon as she walked through the front door, before disappearing to the back of the store to do everything but her job. Juyeon tries not to be annoyed. She hates working in the gift shop, especially since she much prefers working in the lagoon lake as Ariel from The Little Mermaid, but the theme park only let her work there on weekends, so on the few mid week shifts she's given, she's stuck working wherever they'd short staffed.
"The manager said to restock all the keychains, too," comes a voice from her left startling Juyeon, and she turns to see Seungmin looking at her sheepishly, nodding towards the box in his hands. Juyeon resists the urge to groan. It's not like she even needs this job, since her family are loaded, but she doesn't want to give the theme park a reason to start cutting back her weekend shifts when that's something she genuinely enjoys.
"I'll help you," Seungmin adds, already opening the box of keychains to start hanging them up for display, organising them neatly. Heiran has conveniently disappeared, which Juyeon supposes she shouldn't be surprised about anymore, since she always manages to slink away unnoticed when there's work to be done.
"Thanks," says Juyeon absentmindedly, and she glances across the store, locking eyes with Heiran, who's busied herself in front of the cashier, even though there are no customers present.
He's cute, Heiran mouths aggressively from across the store, not subtle at all. Juyeon only furrows her eyebrows at the girl, and her response is what prompts Seungmin to turn around, trying to find the source of her attention. Heiran ducks behind the counter, and nothing about her actions are subtle.
"Please ignore her," says Juyeon.
"What is she doing?" Seungmin asks, eyebrows furrowed.
"I have no idea," Juyeon lies.
Seungmin looks amused, but at least he doesn't question Juyeon about Heiran's embarrassing tendencies anymore. Neither of them speak for the next ten minutes as they arrange all the keychains, and Juyeon tries not to stress out over not knowing how to fill the silence.
In the end, she doesn't have to, because the manager somehow manages to knock an entire box of teddy bears and other assorted stuffed animals on the floor, without even moving from the stool she's perched upon. The woman only curses loudly, but she makes no move to go and clean any of it up, and instead focuses her gaze on Juyeon and Seungmin instead, raising an eyebrow silently, with an expression that clearly reads clean up this mess, will you?
Juyeon probably should have expected it, because their manager had done absolutely nothing productive the entire time she'd been there, and Juyeon's more than used to having to do all of the dirty work for her.
"I'll do it," Seungmin says, waving Juyeon off. "You can stick with the keychains. There's not that many left. I'll go sort out the mess."
Maybe Seungmin's not so bad after all.
.
DO IT / kim seungmin. sadults [ NOVEMBER 21, 2019 ]
