"Hi, uh, so." Wooyoung desperately tries to shake off the blankness that washed over him as soon as the pretty receptionist looked up from his laptop and smiled at him. "Do you have a phone?"
A moment passes. Wooyoung wants to facepalm.
~~~
Growing...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
San survives his first day of class without any major crashes, regrets or accidents. It's rather the contrary—his first day back on campus was so enjoyable, with classes that were surprisingly practice-oriented and interesting that he can't help but beam at Yunho who's sitting opposite him and who smiles back just as sunnily as the sun filtering through the windows of the cafeteria behind him.
"This truffle sauce is really good, have some." Yunho puts two mushroom pieces drenched in sauce in one of San's empty small bowls for side dishes.
San feels his smile grow shy and his cheeks warm before he averts his gaze. He's by now grown used to and adoring the intimacy of wordless understandings with Mingi, but with Yunho, he still feels unsure from time to time. "Thanks." He looks down at his own lunch, ramyun noodles with cheese, wondering if he should put some noodles with more or less cheese on Yunho's plate or whether it's okay if he doesn't.
"I'm good," Yunho says quickly, and San hates that his worries must have been obvious enough to make things awkward—but when he raises his gaze, Yunho has already gone back to eating his spaghetti, apparently undisturbed. San takes a deep breath, tells himself that reality is less complicated and putting him less at fault than his head sometimes makes him think, and nods in acknowledgement.
They continue eating in silence for a few minutes, until Yunho, unsurprisingly, finishes first and leans back in his chair with a satisfied sigh. "Maybe politics isn't what I'm best in," he muses off-handedly, "but the teacher in one of my classes has planned two field trips, one to the Blue House and one to the parliament, that I'm really looking forward to. The excursions already make it worth it."
"That's cool." When San's chopsticks scratch over the bottom of his bowl without picking up any noodles on the way, he puts them aside and leans back, too. "And you're smart, Yun. You'll probably be able to catch up on the stuff you don't know yet very quickly."
There's a somehow intense warmth to Yunho's gaze that San tries not to shy away from again. "Thanks, Sani."
San ends up being slightly late for work; late for his standards, anyway. He always feels antsy when he doesn't have more than ten minutes to spare, less so at school now that he knows some faces and can rely on having Mingi and Yunho by his side, but definitely in new environments, which still includes his workplace. San still feels slightly insecure when interacting with his co-workers and boss, though those interactions are mostly brief: usually, the customers that always seem to come in groups—after work, after school—keep them fairly busy.
Interacting with the customers of the café, at least, is no problem for San—on the contrary, he finds it relaxing compared to the hotel guests on the island. He would prefer having a busy person in suit order a decaffeinated vanilla latte and "one of those fudge choco-cara- anyway, one of the chocolate things in the jar, and please make it quick, I have a meeting in five" to almost any guest he had to converse with in the hotel.
