Work Text:
Minhyun hates fast food. Ironically, he works as a full-time employee at one of the well known fast food restaurant. There’s nothing he can do for now, he obviously needs this job to survive in the big city. The more he spends his time working at that garbage dump, the more he realizes he doesn't have to like his job since he desperately needs that paycheck. He’s a grown adult, of course, he can’t rely on his parents anymore. Or his relatives, close friends, or anyone for that matter.
For the last few weeks, Minhyun noticed there’s this guy in a baseball cap who always came by in a weird animation t-shirt. He’s not even sure why this guy in particular. Many customers come and go every single day. He had seen many people who dressed up in a more weird, bizarre way. That guy actually looks pretty casual. Nothing really too special about him at first glance. But every time Minhyun handed him his order, his eyes would follow the guy until he sits on his usual favorite spot; right at the corner of the restaurant. Every single time he would cringe at himself after he forced to peel his eyes away from the baseball cap guy. It would be a miracle if he doesn’t think I’m a creepy stalker by now.
Things are not getting better whatsoever. Minhyun had finally come to the term with himself that he has a very big crush towards that guy. One day, without even so much of a second thought, he even gave him some extra fries and shamelessly wink at him ‘it’s on me.’ The guy just went ‘oh’ and casually walk away to his table, leaving Minhyun died in embarrassment as he sunk himself over behind the counter.
Jisung who has witnessed his disaster 'flirting' attempt so many times before, and actually seeing him getting sort of rejected now, muttered from his spot. “You’re paying for that fries, you know that.”
“Shut up, hyung. I’m well aware of that.” Jisung can barely hear that and thought he just mumbling on how stupid that attempt was.
On his way home after work, he feels there’s this sudden confidence surging all over his body. I can make that guy utter something else other than his order! But that guy literally just said 'oh', can you really count that as a progress? He paused for a moment, then he nods slowly. Hell yeah.
So then he went home and googled everything he needs to know to start another conversation with him. First, starting with his shirt. Sometimes that baseball cap guy would walk in with a bunch of animation goods on both of his hands. The items he brings varies from books, merchandise and some kind of figurine-looking stuff. He knows it's an animation but when he looked it up that style of animation was specifically called anime. He's glad he decided to look this up first because he wasn't familiar with any this anime stuff. To be honest, he has always been a reading kind of guy. Minhyun can probably count with all of his fingers on how many times he watched television, especially after he graduated from high school. Most of the program these days was kind of trashy anyway so never even bother to care. He just hopes with him searching a bunch of anime stuff beforehand isn't going to backfire on him.
The baseball guy came around lunch time. Today he seems to bring a lot of books in his tote bag with him. This guy must be coming straight from the bookstore across this restaurant. The bookstore has been pretty crowded right before lunch, hardly surprising because Minhyun saw the discount party poster right before he starts to work. The guy orders the usual menu and then sits on his favorite spot.
Back at the kitchen, Minhyun tries to calm himself by relaxing himself through a breathing exercise. He recites some of the stuff he looked up before to make sure he didn't get anything wrong. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. You got this, Minhyun.
He confidently struts his way to the guy, who hasn't seem to touch his food yet. Minhyun can even say the eyes of that guy were literally glued to all of the books he just bought.
"Hello, good afternoon," Minhyun smile brightly at him. The guy seems to be taken aback a little but he quickly put his neutral expression back on his face. Minhyun takes a bowl from the tray he brought and present it in front of him. "Today we have some special chicken nuggets for you. It's very good and pretty popular these days."
"Oh, but I didn't order this," He says a bit flatly.
"I know, it's on me. Mind if I sit down with you?"
The guy shrugged. Minhyun didn't say anything for a while seeing the guy doesn't even care too much about his presence. Instead, he's really focused on peeling off the plastic from all of his books really carefully.
"I take the discounts must be a pretty sweet deal. I see you bought quite a lot of those today," Minhyun said as he points the stack of books on the table. "You really like Japanese comic book so much, huh?"
"Well, as long as the story is interesting I don't really care where these comic came from."
"Can you recommend some for me? Honestly, I don't read comic book a lot. But I kinda want to try something new and comic book looks pretty interesting to me. So now I'm really curious about it."
"Sure, I can give you a list," the guy says without looking at him. He really takes his time with the comic so he didn't accidentally damage it. He sighed with satisfaction as he put the comic on the top of the stack.
The guy about to take another comic and then he'll be a little bit hard to talk to. Minhyun eyes quickly scan his surrounding.
"Oh, yeah. Sure. Awesome. By the way, your shirt looks really cool. In a weird way you kind of look like it too? I swear I'm not insulting you," Minhyun put both of his palms up in defense.
"Oh, thanks," He looks down on his shirt. "Don't worry, you're not insulting me though. I get that a lot."
"I used to watch this as a kid. It's a pretty interesting anime. My favorite is the one that looks like a dog or a cat or something like that. You know, it has brown fur with a fluffy tail thing..."
The guy tilted his head, looking a bit puzzled. "Did you mean Eevee? Eevee is from Pokemon."
Minhyun stares him back with the same look of confusion. "...So?"
"The one on my shirt is an Agumon. It's from Digimon."
"So, they're not from the same franchise or...?" He says, hesitating.
The guy suddenly burst out laughing. Rather than embarrassed, the guy made Minhyun speechless as he nailed on his seat admiring the sound of his laugh and how he did it so freely. He almost smiles like a total creep before the guy tries to speak in between his laugh.
"Of course, they're not. Although, it's pretty common for many non-anime fans to confuse Pokemon and Digimon as the same show. Yeah, yeah, sometimes they kinda look the same and everything, but in reality, the show itself is quite different. I enjoy both, to be honest."
The heat of embarrassment finally caught up with Minhyun. Right now he wants nothing more but to jump off to the nearest cliff rather than continuing this conversation with the guy he's been crushing on for quite a while. Congrats, Minhyun. Now you look like a fool in front of him.
"Wonder what to do with this..."
Minhyun finally looking up. "What to do with what?"
"From the way you talk about this, it's pretty clear that you don't know anything about anime. But unfortunately, you just committed a really serious crime for not being able to distinguish the difference between Pokemon and Digimon. And you know what?" Minhyun's furrowed his eyebrows deeply. The guy pulled out a small notebook from his backpack and start scribbling something on it. "We need to change that. Here, it's my number. Maybe we can talk this over a lunch, dinner, or something like that. Also, if you still want that recommendation, just give me a text and I'll look some for you."
"Oh, uh... thanks?"
The guy flashes him a smile before he takes all of the books on the table and put it on the chair beside him. He crossed his arms as he leans forward a bit towards Minhyun.
"You know, you actually barely even try to hide the fact that you've been flirting with me for this past couple of weeks. I like how you're very observant about what I like and I admire your effort to try to talk about this to me, even though it's really obvious you're not familiar with any of this. Let's talk about that too later, okay?" Minhyun feel like he should've at least nod but all he can manage to do is just blink. The guy then looks away to the sound of someone calling Minhyun's name. "Anyway, aren't you working right now?"
"Oh, shit. Crap, crap!" He gets up from the chair abruptly, making the whole restaurant turn their head on him. The guy just put a hand over his mouth. He's about to run but then he turns his heels back again to that guy. "Thank you for this. I'll call you later?"
He chuckled. "Yeah, I'll be waiting."
Whoa. Did this guy just smile with his eyes too? Is that even possible? He tried his best to go back to the kitchen without looking like a total idiot. As soon as he closes the kitchen door, he ran both of his palms on his face. What the hell just happened?
"Where were you?" Jisung suddenly came to bring Minhyun back out of his trance. "We got so much stuff to do here and you out there chatting with a customer? You're lucky the manager is away today or he'll fire your ass off for sure."
"Hyung, it's the baseball cap guy," He whispers.
Jisung eyes lit up. "What? Really? What happen?"
Minhyun sighed. "I don't really know either. I thought I finally decided to approach him today with some treat, you know, looking cool and talk about some stuff that he likes. But then I made a mistake and assumed the creature on his shirt is from Pokemon while it's actually from Digimon and then he laughs at me-"
"Okay, okay. Stop. I have no idea what you're talking about. Really, what is going on exactly?"
"He gave me his number."
"He gave you his number?"
"He gave me his number and actually ask me to go out first. Here I am, thinking I was gonna be the one who said it first-"
Jisung cut him off when he suddenly snort and then laughing to the point he had to put a hand on his stomach. Minhyun crossed his arms with clear annoyance on his face.
"Oh, yeah, thanks a lot, hyung. Please laugh to your heart content because everyone seems to like to laugh at me today. I know, I'm an idiot."
"Come on don't be like that," Jisung said to him after he wipes his tears and then pats him on his shoulder. "He probably laughs at you too because you thought were the smooth one but then he easily just turn the game around on you and make you the stupid one. What a day, huh, Minhyun?"
Minhyun rolls his eyes and left Jisung to go back again behind the counter. When he gets there, he really wants to go back inside the kitchen because the guy is there, waving at him.
"Hi there."
"H-Hi. You like to order something again?"
The guy chuckled again a bit. "No, thank you. After you gave me the chicken nuggets now I feel really full. I just want to know if you're free tomorrow."
"Well, I have morning shift tomorrow..."
"Alright then, if you don't have any plan after that, let's have that Pokemon-Digimon lesson in a cafe. I know there's a really cool cafe not too far from here. They have a really tasty toast."
"Oh, g-great. Let's go there then."
"Cool. Just call me when you're done with your shift, okay. Oh, yeah, I'm Jonghyun. Nice to meet you," He offered his hand to Minhyun.
"Nice to meet you too. I'm-"
"Minhyun. Someone called out your name earlier. Also, your nametag. See you later, Minhyun."