The Crown | myg

ten

"Where did you disappear to yesterday?" Chanyeol asks when I walk into the bakery at eight o'clock the next morning.

Ignoring his words, I walk to the apron rack and grab the pale blue apron with my name on it. I slip it over my head before tying the strings into a bow around my waist, then I walk over to where he is standing and begin to help him in making the baked goods to sell for the day.

"Should we make double the amount of chocolate chip cookies?" Chanyeol asks, overlooking the fact that I completely ignored his previous question. "The elementary school kids don't have school today, they're going to come flocking in with their parents."

"I suppose we should make double the amount of cake pops, too, then," I say as I spin around and write down the inventory for the day on the chart hanging on the wall. "We might make double our usual profit."

"Because parents don't know how to say no to their children," Chanyeol chuckles. "You can thank the children when you become a billionaire."

"So can you," I respond quickly.

"Why me?"

"Well, I'm gonna pay you," I smile as I turn away from the chart and look back at him, my eyes sparkling with some unknown emotion.

"I-"

"Don't even try to talk your way out of me paying you," I say as I crease my eyebrows. "You are my only employee and I refuse to let you work for free."

"I'm not even your full-time employee," he shrugs as he pours a few ingredients into a large metal bowl.

"Do you want to be?" I raise my eyebrow as I proceed to mix together ingredients to make a batch of the macaron special of the day; cookies and cream. My eyes avert their gaze back to Chanyeol and see him staring at me with shock smeared over his face. "I mean do you want to be a full-time employee? Be on my payroll?"

"I have conditions," he breathes, seeming scared by the abrupt interview.

"You can make your own hours, come in whenever you want," I smile, going back to mixing the ingredients together.

"How much will I get paid?" He mumbles, his eyes dropping back down to look into the bowl in front of him.

"Twenty dollars an hour," I say with a kind voice as I drop a spatula into the mixture and begin to fold it together, making sure not to let the air bubbles escape. "If you work overtime on any day, I'll raise your pay by ten dollars for every hour you work overtime."

Chanyeol is still standing silently on the other side of the table, his jaw hanging wide and his eyes glued to me with a shocked expression swimming within them.

"Of course, overtime only counts for when I personally ask you to come in early or ask you to stay late or work on your days off."

"How much will I make a week?" He looks away from me and twiddles his fingers together awkwardly. "Will I be able to quit my other job?"

"I'll be paying you weekly instead of every two weeks," I walk over to a clipboard on the wall to mark off how much batter I made for the macarons as well as how much dough Chanyeol has made for the chocolate chip cookies. Then I turn back to face him. "You will make eight hundred dollars a week, without overtime, which is thirty-two hundred dollars a month."

"How many hours will I have to work a week to make that kind of money?" Chanyeol has now begun to scoop the cookie dough onto the cookie sheets, careful to make them all the same size as to not waste dough and reduce product.

"Forty hours a week," I say as I begin pouring the macaron batter into a piping bag and putting it onto the cookie sheets in perfect circles. "Whatever you work overtime, you will get thirty dollars an hour. But, overtime isn't always guaranteed."

Chanyeol falls silent for a moment before his face lights up with nothing but pure joy. "I'll do it! When do I start?"

"When you walked in this morning," I say with a smug smile before putting the tray of macarons off to the side to rest for an hour.

"What?"

"I knew you were gonna take the job, Chan," my face has a serious expression on it. "You hate your other job."

There is a silence in the room for a moment before Chanyeol chuckles. "Let's just get all these things baked and put on display before the store opens. We can talk more about this later, boss."