V!x ♡˖

A grandiose granny no taller than a hundred and forty-five centimeters walks past five other tables with two full trays in her hands like she had been serving via rollerskating.

“My Baddies!” She yelled, “Come sit down my children! Where’s the alpha in command?”

Rui randomly picks up a basket of chicken wings and blindly serves it to the nearest table.

Which was empty.

“Ahhh auntie, Muti-noona is at the office.” Rui leans in closer, eyebrows furrowed and lips pouted. “But don’t worry about it auntie, you know as long as I’m still here, we’ll be ordering lots!”

The Kyochon auntie screamed, yelped, gurgled, all at the same time. 

She raises up her trays to do a half-committed leg-work exclusive version of the 1&Only choreography, bust bumping and all. Where Kyochon auntie lacked in details and handwork, Rui makes up for it with insane precise choreography whilst Hyun enabled their behaviour and sang along the lyrics of the chorus, all while Haru proudly threw it back in a circle.

The Lavenderz ain’t playing these games no more.

Hyun spoke first. “Give it up, Haru…”

Haru, mid-chew, surrendered his soy garlic chicken wing to Hyun. “Here you go.”

“Not the chicken, silly boy.” Rui sipped her ice lemon tea in between speaking like how a detective in a murder mystery would blow his pipe before dropping his next grand-revealing sentence. “I mean your secretssss. Your feeeelingsssss.”

“You mean lover boy.” Hyun corrected, looking at his seatmate, and then Haru from across the table, still on the same chicken wing. “We know something is up girl, we can smell it.”

“I’m a cool boy, first of all, and you both are just smelling chicken.”

Hyun does a quick google search of a not-so-random small business social media page with his one clean hand. “Nothing going on with–” Hyun flips his phone over for Haru on the other side of the table to see. “–her?”

“Nope!” Haru states ever-so-confidently before it clicks in his head whose business page Hyun had shown him. “... Nope… okay maybe a little. It’s not like we’ve talked or anything…”

“But you did though!” Rui butted in, leaning closer to the table. “You were the first to talk to her, don’t you remember?”

Hyun furrowed his eyebrows. “I don’t know what you’re talking about either, Rui.”

“The University. Three seats to the right, one slot on the left–”

“OH YEAH YEAH YEAH I KNOW!“ Hyun went from staring at Rui all confused to looking at Haru with a ‘backstabbed’ expression. ”Haru! You didn’t even spare us a glance! You were just talking to your seatmate and looking her up and down and all of that!”

“Who’s looking at who now???” 

Kyochon auntie spawned out of nowhere with two baskets of honey-glazed chicken wings.

“Haru and Y/n!” Yelped the Lavenderz.

“HAH?! There’s no other ‘Y/n’ in this universe other than me!”

“CLOCK IT QUEEN!”

Haru not-so-discreetly steals two whole bags of honey chicken from Kyochon auntie’s mind-bogglingly massive tray. “I’m hungry.” Which, as the certified fried chicken loving guy himself, translated to: I think I’m not that hungry but I actually probably am and this tea spilling session will only make me hungrier so if we all want to survive through the brunt of my emotional crisis we might as well order ourselves plenty.

Rui nodded, turning towards neither of the maknaes. ”Auntie…”

“Yes Rui?”

“Four more honey glazed chicken baskets please.” Rui pleaded with her hands together as if in prayer. “And an extra bowl of butter rice, just for me.”

Kyochon Auntie didn’t have to be told twice.

Haru was on his third honey wing (not basket) when he finally processed everything he felt and wanted to say to his hyungs.

“I feel like after her speech at the University, I felt so moved, as did everybody else in that auditorium. Similar to when we showcase our songs and comebacks, we tend to feel excited knowing that by putting ourselves out there, we’ll at least affect one evol positively. And in the same light, I hope that by us seeking interest in her craft, she can feel that way about herself too, from us. I just… don’t know how to approach her.”

Hyun inquired. “You don’t know how to tell her you think she’s cool without it being awkward or striking the wrong first impression?”

Haru nods, seemingly indifferent to the situation, at least on the outside.

At least until he started speaking  again. “I don’t even know if I like her that way. But I want to approach her, but it’s kind of difficult when it seems like she’s taken more of an interest in everybody else in the group except me.”

Upon hearing that… Hyun and Rui look intensely at each other for a moment before Hyun decides to talk first. “Well, she never said that. She never told you word for word ‘I don’t like you’, girl.” 

Rui spoke next, “If she never told you that, then you cannot assume her thoughts for her, Haru. That is unfair to Y/n. It is true that the other members have coincidentally met her or interacted with her more on a whim, or maybe she initially has eyes on other members before you, but that does not distinguish the fact that you’re any less of a lovable, interesting person.”

“Even then,” Haru says after going for his fifth wing of the basket. “It still feels unfair to approach a person when you yourself don’t know how you feel about them. Is it that I really like her or do I simply like the version she presented herself in during that seminar? Or through her business socials? Or because everyone in the group has also taken a decent liking towards her so I’m obliged to do so, too? I genuinely do not know.”

“Because you haven’t even talked to the damn girl!” Hyun clocked Haru. “When you say you don’t know if you like her that way, that thought also doesn’t matter in my opinion, because regardless of waiting around to see how much or in what way you like a person, that shouldn’t allow you to sink into this inertia.”

“Hyun’s right, Haru, there’s no point in dwelling over it. If you want, we can shoot her a text right now, tell her we’ll meet up and–”

Hyun immediately, once again, bursts someone else’s bubble, and that isn’t Haru’s. “Rui, that’s not a good idea babe...”

“What? Why?”

“Yeah man, why?” Kyochon auntie respawns with another basket of chicken no one asked for, sliding it next to Haru’s hefty stash of chicken wings.  “Here Haru, have more chicken.”

Haru politely bows his head towards the Kyochon auntie while reading her name tag over because he had forgotten her name. “Thank you, Auntie Joo.”

Hyun replies… by placing his hands on either side of his chest, palms facing upwards, and moving his chest from side to side like a corkscrew in a bottle. 

A lightbulb explodes over Rui’s head. “Ah right…” And Haru gets it too, so he quickly saves Rui’s face.

“It’s okay, I’ll text on my own terms.”

Haru stands up from his seat, scooting over to Rui and Hyun’s side of the table, “Thank you girls so much for the advice.” In Haru’s hand, he plops down a handful of honey glazed chicken wings onto the soy garlic chicken wings. “I can’t hug you guys right now because my hands are dirty so I’ll introduce to you this underrated chicken wing combo.”

The Lavenderz looked at the chicken wing combo like Haru had just offered them a kilogram’s worth of real gold.

“My sanctuary.” Sighed Hyun.

“My *✧・ﾟ:* ˚₊ heaven*✧・ﾟ:.” Sighed Rui.

And then, simultaneously, “Thank you, Haru!”

A/n: AUNTIE JOO AND KWONFOO MENTIONEDDDD

(Messed up the timings in the twt posts again, please ignore!!)