⇀pixelated
@ccxjooheon
“hey! knock it off!”
a light swat to the back of the head was enough to end the child’s determined battering of the old pac-man machine in the corner, his little friends’ encouraging shouts ceasing with it. he knew this kid, and his gang of pint-sized followers, with their stained star wars t-shirt and their horrible haircuts and their grubby little fingers leaving the machines sticky with the residue of food coloring and processed sugar. he knew the ringleader lived down the street from him and he knew they rode their shiny new bikes in the road and shouted and shrieked at each other obnoxiously until the streetlamps came on. they weren’t going to break another machine, not on his watch.
“hey, you can’t hit me!”
“knock it off, or i’ll throw your bikes into rush hour traffic.”
“you’re not the boss of me!”
“actually, i am. you’re on my turf. it’s my job to be the boss of you. now get lost before i tell your mom you’re ditching study hall for video games.”
he watched them file out of the arcade in a begrudged clump, still sticking their dirty hands into a shared bucket of kettle corn as they went.
“rude little shi-”
a familiar voice interrupted his perturbed musings before he could earn himself another bored, fruitless lecture on bad language in the workplace. a greeting from a close friend whose face was a welcome sight after a long day of babysitting and handing out trading cards to nerds with too many tickets and wiping slushie grease off of joysticks.
he quirked his chin in a wordless greeting and, after wiping down the pac-man machine, started a game himself as he waited for jooheon to approach.
“i’m never having kids,” he told him flatly, narrowly dodging the orange ghost as he rounded a corner, a cherry in sight, “i hate them.”
