😊 (or anything in your plots tag)
x - accepting! - 😊 for me to make a starter based off the first thing in your wanted plots tag
Three o’clock finds Kyungsoo in the 24-hour laundromat, crammed between a two-story dental office and one of six convenience stores on this block alone. The latest number one hit echoes in the tiny building, distorted by the monotonous drone of drying machines and the beep-boop-blip’s coming from the portable gaming device that the kid at the counter seems entranced by. It’s one of the latest versions of the Pokémon series, if Kyungsoo remembers correctly, but he could be wrong. He hasn’t kept in touch with television-turned-videogames since he was thirteen. Or much of anything, really, save for bus schedules and when the ahjusshi selling ddeokbokki closes up for the night.
When the machine buzzes with a dreadful screech, the boy dumps his laundry into a basket and carries it to the wall lined with dryers, steps feather-light and virtually silent. Just as his mother had taught him to do, he shakes his t-shirts free of wrinkles before tossing them into the machine. The scent of fresh cotton and sugar tickles his nose and earns a soft sneeze from him, a mild disturbance to the ordinary peace of the laundromat. With a sniff, Kyungsoo shuts the machine and rummages through his pockets, but halts abruptly when his fingers grasp at only one coin. His heart skips a beat and begins to pulsate twice as hard as he searches his pockets again, searching through those of his jeans and his jacket. But again--there’s only one coin.
An awful weight settles deep in his stomach, churning restlessly and thrashing about. Blood rushes to his face and tinges his cheeks with red, the heat spreading all the way to the tips of his ears. Shame is a sentiment he experiences rarely these days, especially on those nights when he digs through garbage for dinner. Those nights, he’s especially desperate. That same sort of feeling cloys in his throat and claws its way into his lungs as he glances around nervously. The middle-aged woman he’d spotted upon entering the building had slipped out the back for a smoke just minutes ago. There’s the college student busy with his videogames at the counter, lost to the rest of the world. His only hope of clean laundry comes in the form of a woman with big eyes and sharp cheekbones, the slope of her slightly rounded nose shining under the yellow-green-tinted lights. Palms sweaty, Kyungsoo approaches her quietly and makes eye contact briefly before asking,
“D’you have some change?”
