“Kkokko is, um. She’s pretty, and she looks like thiiis!”
The little client, six years old, squirmed where he stood and thrust out a sketchbook. On it was a half-grown chicken with no comb at all, just a thick, fluffy coat of white.
“How old is Kkokko?”
At Seojin’s question, the little client held up three fingers.
“Three years old?”
Older than I expected. Then again, for a kid to get that attached, they must have been together a good while.
“Ummm, nooo.”
“He means three months.”
Yoon Haegang cut in flatly, before the little client could even answer.
“Ah...”
“Ahem. Right, of course. You drew this really well.”
Flustered, Seojin scratched the bridge of his nose with his index finger and praised the boy’s artistic talent. Mostly it was to loosen up the kid, whose eyes kept darting back and forth between the two of them.
Even to Seojin’s eyes, Yoon Haegang was a bit much in the intimidation department. Delicate features set on a frame that was anything but, so the kid’s reaction made perfect sense.
“Hee...”
The gap-toothed grin was cute enough that a faint smile tugged at Seojin’s mouth too. It made him think of Euni, who’d be having the time of her life at daycare right about now.
“Okay, so how about you lend me that for a while?”
“Thiiis?”
The little client hugged his sketchbook tight to his chest and shot Seojin a wary look.
“Mm-hm. I think it’ll help a lot when we’re looking for Kkokko.”
“Ummm...”
“And our client should wait at home. Deal?”
He heard a snort from beside him, but Seojin didn’t turn around. Coaxing the deeply conflicted little client came first.
It bothered him, honestly, that a preschooler who should have been at kindergarten or daycare at this hour was out on a playground instead.
“You’ll really find Kkokko?”
The question came out adorably through the gap in the boy’s front teeth, and Seojin nodded at once.
“Yep. That’s exactly why us ajusshis came out here, so don’t you worry.”
“Okaaay...”
Smiling, Seojin took the sketchbook the little client handed over. Now it was time to send the kid home.
“Where’s your house?”
“Ooover theeere...”
Empty hands clearly felt strange to him, because the boy fidgeted as he pointed, and Seojin followed the line of his finger. The residential alley was packed with near-identical multi-unit houses and low-rise villas, which made it hard to tell which one he meant.
“Okay, then let’s go home and wait. Here, take my hand.”
“Yes...”
Seojin’s steady stream of gentle talk seemed to have thawed him out, because the little client grabbed hold right away. The two of them walked down the alley side by side, Seojin matching the boy’s short stride. Yoon Haegang trailed a step behind them.
Walking the direction the boy had pointed, Seojin checked the building numbers as they went, and tilted his head at a street name that felt oddly familiar.
What is it? Where have I seen this?
He was still puzzling over it when the little client’s shout snapped him back.
“We’re here!”
It was a three-story multi-unit house.
“You live here?”
“Yes!”
After answering with great gusto, the little client wriggled a key ring out of his pocket. He picked one key out of the bunch, slotted it in and turned it like an old pro, and Seojin found himself clapping.
“Wow, you’re really good at that!”
“Heehee...”
The praise clearly delighted him, and he beamed, missing teeth and all. Seojin ruffled his hair and pushed the heavy front gate open for him.
“All right, now go inside and wait quietly for...”
He was partway through telling the boy to sit tight when his eyes met, head-on, those of someone coming down the stairs. The other person seemed just as startled, catching a foot mid-step and stopping dead.
“Seyoung hyung!”
At the little client’s happy shout, Seojin took a second, closer look at the man.
A face so smooth and white it looked without a single flaw, features that seemed to have been sculpted with painstaking care, a neck curving as gracefully as a deer’s, and a slim, swaying body.
The fresh, unmistakable air of I’m an omega about him. But Seojin’s attention had latched onto him for an entirely different reason.
So that’s why Yoon Haegang suddenly wanted me along. He knew this was where Shin Seyoung lives.
No wonder the street address had rung a bell. Of course it had, it was the home address of the main bottom, the one he’d been studying so diligently back at the office.
Seojin’s gaze went automatically to Yoon Haegang. He’d had his eyes fixed on Shin Seyoung from the very first second.
Wasn’t this the kind of moment where a drama’s ending theme should start playing? Sadly, reality offered nothing but an awkward silence.
“Juni! Who are they?”
On top of that, Shin Seyoung was giving them a thoroughly suspicious stare, and a cold sweat broke out down Seojin’s back. Everything hinged on what the little client said next. But the kid was flustered, and his eyes just darted back and forth. What this moment called for was quick thinking!
“Our young friend here lost his Kkokko, so we’ve been helping him look. Isn’t that right, Juni?”
“Y-yes...”
“Kkokko?”
Shin Seyoung’s face stayed dubious.
“Yes. But we figured Juni would be better off waiting at home, so we walked him back.”
Seojin said it with a sociable smile pinned in place, and Shin Seyoung’s suspicion seemed to thin out a little. The way the little client nodded along for all he was worth probably helped too.
“Did Kkokko run off again?”
“Mm-hm.”
So this wasn’t Kkokko’s first excursion, apparently.
“What do we do? Hyung has to head out for work right now, so I can’t help you look...”
“It’s okay. The ajusshi said he’d find her! Juni even paid him mon...”
The little client was cheerfully lisping his way through the part about the money, and once again Seojin spoke over him.
“Juni offered to help us, but I said no! It’s dangerous for a kid to be wandering around outside that long. Right, Juni?”
“Y-yes...”
Oblivious to the slip he’d nearly made, Juni fidgeted with the hand holding the key ring. He was doing it because he liked the way Seojin was rubbing his shoulder, though Seojin himself was too busy gauging Shin Seyoung and Yoon Haegang to notice.
“Then please contact me here when you find her.”
And with that, Shin Seyoung rattled off his own number without a second thought.
Seojin snuck a glance at Yoon Haegang before he could stop himself. The man still hadn’t managed to pull his eyes off Shin Seyoung. There was so much naked want in that stare that Seojin was the one who ended up embarrassed.
After saying goodbye to Juni, Seojin and Yoon Haegang somehow found themselves walking back out of the alley alongside Shin Seyoung.
“Kkokko is probably hiding in the playground. Try looking there.”
Shin Seyoung said it out of nowhere, just as they cleared the alley and reached the spot where it opened onto the playground.
“The playground?”
Seojin’s gaze went to the place where they’d met their small client earlier. A slide, a swing set, a seesaw, a horizontal bar, and nowhere in that little patch of ground could he see a single spot a chicken might hide.
And more than that, if she really were there, he couldn’t understand why the kid hadn’t found her already.
“Over there. She’s probably somewhere around there.”
Shin Seyoung pointed at one spot again. Seojin turned to look, and a red roof stood out on the slide, the one built to look like a set of blocks.
“She’s taken a liking to flapping her wings lately, I guess, because she keeps getting out of the house and going in up there.”
“Juni doesn’t know?”
“No.”
“Why...”
“Juni’s scared of climbing up high.”
“Ahh...”
The slide was up pretty high, at that. So that was why he hadn’t known.
“Thank you for the help.”
“Don’t mention it. I’ll leave her to you, then.”
Apparently he really did have somewhere to be, because Shin Seyoung said his goodbyes and hurried off. Seojin’s eyes moved between his retreating back and Yoon Haegang, who couldn’t look away from it.
Isn’t this usually where the main top pitches in to help and the mood softens up between them?
Being the sub top, apparently, meant a chance meeting like this and nothing more. Having settled it in his own head, Seojin went straight over to the slide. Sure enough, something was moving faintly inside the structure built like a birdcage.
“Kkokko.”
At the sound of her name came a burst of flapping wings. A few white feathers came drifting down with it.
“Kkokko, let’s go home.”
A moment later a head popped out through a small gap. Sure enough, a chicken that looked a lot like the one their small client had drawn was craning her neck this way and that.
The problem is how to get her down from there...
And he had to factor in that the roof was higher than it looked. No matter how far Seojin stretched up onto his toes, his arm didn’t reach.
“How did Shin Seyoung ever get her down?”
There was nothing to brace against, and he had no idea how to lure her out either. He was staring blankly up at the ceiling of the thing when he felt someone at his back, and a long arm shot up past him.
Startled, Seojin turned his head. Yoon Haegang was putting that towering height to use, seizing Kkokko and hauling her out.
“Whoa...”
Subdued in one move. A yandere top really is built different. Seojin clapped, the somewhat random admiration running through his head all the while.
