Chapter Text
“Where do you put all of that?”
Minho looked up from his sundae at the sound of the disgusted voice above him. He gave a questioning glance at Kibum as his classmate dropped down into the seat across from him, beside their senior Jonghyun.
“That...thing.” Kibum gestured at the tall glass filled with several flavours of ice cream. “How can you eat that stuff?”
Minho grinned. “It’s ice cream,” he said. “How can I not?”
“It’ll make you fat, you know,” Kibum told him, tone dripping with disdain as he eyed the dessert.
Minho raised an eyebrow and then stuck his tongue out at him, immediately sending their mutual friend into a fit of snickering at the scandalised look Kibum wore. Minho held out his spoon, purposely piled high with ice cream, to Jonghyun.
“Want some, hyung?”
“Don’t mind if I do.” Jonghyun smirked and Minho was sure the acceptance was more to annoy Kibum than anything else.
It wasn’t often they could get one over the diva after all.
.x.
The end of school found Minho standing at a junction, glancing down two different streets. Both would lead to his home, he knew, but the one on his right was the route he usually took. He’d never gone down the other street yet and he wondered what it was like. He couldn’t deny he was curious, though why today of all days eluded him.
Minho shrugged. ‘Let’s just try it out,’ he thought to himself.
As he walked down the sidewalk, he began to see that this street had little difference with the one he usually took to go home. There were more shops than houses here, however, as well as a tiny playground halfway through as opposed to the park in the other street. In terms of community it was identical, with people just barely crowding the sidewalks and cars going back and forth noisily on the road.
Minho looked around curiously as he passed by a row of mini shop houses. He paused at the display window of a sports store for quite a while before deciding to move on. He didn’t stop again until he was about a block away from home when a particular shop caught his eye.
‘Icia’ read the cone-shaped sign on the roof of the tiny store which sat second from the end of yet another row of shops and outlets, nestled comfortably between a boutique and a grocery mart. Minho’s large eyes lit up in curiosity and he stepped forward to peer at the shop window, pasted with pictures of delicious-looking ice cream and milkshakes. The building was painted a soft pink which looked fairly unmarred, showing that it was probably new. The shop must have just opened, which explained why Minho had never seen it before.
After a short debate, he decided he had time to go in and look around. The thought of a shop selling mainly ice cream was wonderful; he loved ice cream. He had thought that there weren’t such stores anywhere in his neighbourhood and he was definitely happy to have found one so close to home.
A little tinkle was heard as Minho pushed open the door and stepped in. He glanced up to see a small bell attached to the wall, with a little string connecting it to the door; the cause of the chime. Minho turned to survey the place.
The shop was small but decidedly cosy. The walls were painted a creamy colour and stamped with blown-up posters of some of the menu choices. A long counter where the ice cream tubs were displayed stretched across an entire side of the room, aside from a small section sealed off with a waist-high door that was the divider between customer and server area. On the other side of the room were arranged chairs and tables with menus set on them, small but more than enough for the few who would choose to eat their ice cream there.
At present, the store was empty. Minho was the only person there. Just as he took another step forward, however, the door behind the counter opened and someone bustled out, clad in an apron and what Minho assumed is the staff uniform. The man was shorter than Minho with slightly messy dyed brown hair and small honey-coloured eyes; his face was round, still containing some cheek fat. He was far from fat but he wasn’t exactly thin either, at least not when compared to Minho.
“Hi!” the attendant greeted brightly, his smile friendly and welcoming. “Welcome to Icia. What would you like?”
Minho blinked. For some obscure reason, he found himself tongue-tied. The other man’s brilliant smile directed at him had chased out his original reason for coming in here. Where was he again? Ice cream shop, right.
With considerable effort, he pulled himself together and came forward to look at the choices. There was a variety of flavours, much to his delight, including some he had never heard of. He wondered if he should try those or just go for the ones he actually recognised.
“Would you like to hear our specialties?” the server asked politely, smile still on full-force. When Minho looked at him, he couldn’t help but notice how white the man’s teeth were.
For a good second Minho scrambled for words before gulping, all the intelligent things he could’ve said flying out the window. Was there something in the air? There had to be a good reason why he was acting with as much intelligence as an overly grown troll. Maybe he should get out of there. Fast.
“Err...no, thanks,” he blurted. “Just a vanilla cone, please.”
Well, that was as good as any. Vanilla was an all-time favourite, after all.
“Just a second, sir.”
Before Minho knew it, the attendant was happily handing him his order. The tall soccer player absently noticed how pleasant the man’s eyes were when they crinkled into little half-moons like that. He quickly paid and left to the call of “Please come again!”. He stood outside, staring at his cone. Strangely, the man had seemed slightly familiar. Where had Minho seen him before? Or was he just imagining it? Minho licked at his ice cream. To his surprise, it was pretty good. Smiling, he began to walk down the street, heading for his house up the block.
Maybe he would come again tomorrow.
.x.
The next day after school, Minho didn’t even realise he was walking down the left street instead of the usual right until he spotted the ice cream shop ahead of him. He stopped for a moment, disconcerted, before shrugging and moving on. He figured that since he was already on his way, he might as well visit the store again.
When he arrived, two teenagers were exiting the door as they shared a tall cup of thick blue concoction he was sure was packed with sugar. He entered cautiously, remembering yesterday all too clearly. The same man from the day before was already behind the counter and beamed a familiar grin when he saw Minho.
“Hello!” he said as Minho came forward. The student offered a brief smile, thankful that he was able to act normally today. Subtly he tried to spy the man’s name and was inappropriately disappointed to discover that he didn’t wear a nametag.
Nevertheless, he moved on to browse the double row of flavours, trying to decide what flavour he’d choose today. There were so many that he was hard-pressed to make a decision. Perhaps he should just go with the simple ones for now.
“Would you like vanilla again?” the attendant asked.
Minho thought about it then shook his head. “No, thank you,” he declined. “I’ll look for something else.”
“Alright, then.” The bell twinkled, signalling the entrance of another customer. “Excuse me, I’ll be right back.”
The man waited until Minho nodded his assent. The tall teenager watched as the server headed for the elderly man and greeted him with all the familiarity of old friends.
“Good afternoon, Grandpa,” said the employee gently, his voice just slightly louder than a regular tone. “How have you been? I haven’t seen you in nearly a week.”
The aged customer smiled with noticeable gaps in his teeth. “Fine, today,” he answered. “I’ve had a cold recently but I recovered.”
“Are you allowed to be eating ice cream after a cold?” There was a touch of humour in his voice although he seemed to be serious.
“I’ll be okay.” The old man waved his hand dismissively. “Ice cream doesn’t affect me at all, I’ve told you. It does more good than harm.”
“If you say so,” said the server in amusement then reached for a scoop. “So, Grandpa, watermelon for you and butter pecan for Grandma again?”
“You know our tastes as always,” said the other with a dry chuckle.
Minho didn’t miss how the attendant added more ice cream than strictly necessary for both cups. He looked away, focusing on the various flavours before him. He heard the ‘ting’ of the cash register and then the sound of the bell as the elderly customer left. The server returned, smile wide as ever when he looked up at Minho.
“Have you made your choice, sir?” he asked.
Minho gazed at him for a moment, feeling his heart skip a beat. “Chocolate,” he said. “No toppings, please.”
.x.
Three days of resistance proved to be for nothing when Minho found that he couldn’t stand avoiding the ice cream shop anymore. After two consequent visits to Icia, he had refrained from going down the left street, determined to prove that he could control himself. It didn’t work, however, when he found that he kept thinking about the little store; its diverse selection of really good ice cream often lingered in his memory while the image of the smiling shopkeeper occasionally flitted across his thoughts.
He mostly tried to ignore the latter. ‘Tried’ being the key word.
Finally Minho gave in to his greedy urges and headed down the left street that Friday. When he entered the shop, the noisy chatter of excited children met his ears and he saw a bunch of middle-school students crowding the long counter, pressing their noses against the glass as they peered down at the tubs of ice cream within.
He was only a little surprised to see the same server from last time behind the counter again, scooping out cones of ice cream and handing them out to the excited kids. Minho could see the way the man automatically reached out to each flavour requested by memory, a testament to how well-versed he was in the arrangement of the tubs. His small eyes calculatingly flitted to each face, matching it to the ice cream and when they paid, he recited the prices from heart.
Was he the only one who worked there? Minho had never seen anyone else besides the customers and all the jobs – cashier, maker, cleaner – seemed to be handled by the one man alone.
Minho waited at the side until each child had left before coming forward. The server, who looked slightly out of breath but still quite happy, wiped a sheen of sweat from his forehead with his arm. He beamed at Minho, which caused the student to temporarily forget how to speak.
“Hello, sir,” he greeted welcomingly. “What would you like to have?”
Minho looked down at the choices yet again. Despite the amount of times he’d surveyed them, he had yet to actually try any of the different flavours, sticking to the classics so far. He didn’t really have a favourite; there were a few he held a particular fondness for and others he’d prefer not to taste again. But there wasn’t any single flavour he looked out for since he had yet to find something that matched his tastes perfectly.
“Sir?” The server smiled mischievously when Minho looked up at him. “Since you chose vanilla and chocolate last time, maybe you’d like strawberry today.”
Suitably startled, Minho opened and closed his mouth several times but not a sound escaped. “You remember?” he eventually managed to say incredulously.
The employee’s smile became just a little shy. “It’s sort of hard to forget someone like you,” he said, and his cheeks turned the barest shade of pink.
When Minho left the shop, his head was whirling and he had a strawberry cone clasped in one hand.
.x.
The next day was Saturday. After lunch, Minho headed over to Icia clad in regular clothes. The ice cream store was little more than a block from his house, a fact that served to elate him although he wasn’t really sure why. He told himself it was because he now had easy access to his favourite dessert.
The shop was empty despite it being the weekend but Minho attributed that to the fact the place was still new and was relatively unknown. Yet again he was greeted cheerfully by the same attendant and he wondered if he imagined the tinge of warmth in that smile. He took a seat at one of the tables closest to the counter and farthest from the door, picking up the menu and browsing through it.
“Will you be eating here?” the attendant asked as he came up beside him.
“Yeah,” said Minho with a nod, casting a cursory glance at the menu. “I’ll have a double scoop of chocolate chip ice cream, please. No toppings.”
“Coming right up!”
By the time he returned with the order, Minho had amassed enough courage to ask a question of his own. “Could I ask your name?”
The server paused for a moment then set the glass bowl down. “Lee Jinki,” he introduced himself cheerfully, with a big grin.
Lee Jinki. That didn’t ring any sort of bell as he had hoped but he hadn’t really expected it to.
“Jinki-shii.” Minho nodded with his own friendly smile. “I’m Choi Minho. I’m a student at Konkuk High School.”
Jinki seemed delighted for some reason. “Konkuk High School?” he said excitedly. “I used to go there!”
Minho blinked in shock. Lee Jinki used to be a student at his high school? Why hadn’t he ever seen him before? Or maybe he had, which would explain why he seemed somewhat familiar. Maybe he’d seen him somewhere at school.
“What year are you in?” Jinki was asking him.
“Um...fourth,” Minho answered uncertainly.
“Ah.” Jinki nodded to himself. “Last year was my final one, so you would’ve been a third year.”
Minho quickly calculated the boy to be 18 years old. He had guessed they were around the same age, and was glad that he wasn’t off the mark. He did wonder why they had never encountered each other at school before.
“It’s not too much of a surprise that we’ve never met before,” Jinki told him, still grinning. “We were in different years and I was usually too busy with my studies and debate to go to most school events.”
Minho felt his ears perk up. Debate? That sounded interesting. Maybe he could use that information somehow.
“It’s nice to meet you, Minho-shii,” Jinki said brightly. He sounded sincere and Minho couldn’t keep the smile from spreading a little wider on his face.
“Yeah,” he murmured. “Nice to meet you, too, Jinki-shii.”
.x.
From then on, Minho found himself visiting Icia every day after school. Each day he came he tried a new flavour of ice cream, having decided to embark on a quest to find his personal favourite. There was such a wide assortment at the tiny shop that he thought he might succeed one day. If he kept at it, of course, which he fully intended to do.
So far he’d tried a lot, ranging from coffee to French vanilla, ‘very berry strawberry’ – which was really just strawberry ice cream with strawberry jam swirled in – to mint chocolate chip and even caramel praline cheesecake which was surprisingly good. As of yet, he hadn’t found any flavour he would confidently call his number one but he wasn’t going to give up. He wanted to keep looking.
At the same time, he began to get closer to the attendant Lee Jinki. Spending all his afternoons at the ice cream shop with the same person, he should’ve expected it. He was getting to know Jinki better as time went by and he found that he was a very pleasant person, easily likeable and forever cheerful. Minho had never met anyone he could like so quickly but Jinki proved to be an exception. They had gotten close in a blink of an eye.
After Jinki had let slip the little fact of him being on the debating team, Minho had done some digging at the school library and discovered a gold mine of information. Lee Jinki had definitely been on the school debate team; he had been the captain, winning nationals as well as the Best Speaker title for four years in a running. Minho had found a picture of Jinki and his teammates, hugging and raising a gold trophy to show their earnings.
Not only was he an exceptional debater, he was also quite brainy. Academical records Minho had found showed that Jinki had been in the top five for scholastic achievements since he had entered high school. In his final year, he had been awarded Salutatorian status in his entire grade. He had shared a champion title with Jung Jessica at the Korean Science Fair as well as winning third place for an international Olympiad competition.
With all his notable accomplishments, it was a wonder Minho had never heard of him before. In fact, Minho had never even been aware that they had a debating team or that Konkuk High School had participated in an Olympiad competition after Kyuhyun-hyung had left. When he thought about it, however, he realised it wasn’t as surprising as it sounded.
Konkuk had always been more of a sports-based school, with its students far more interested in the goings on of their soccer team or the cheerleading squad. It was one of the main reasons Minho was so popular there, seeing as he was the captain of said soccer team, vice-captain of the basketball and hockey teams and also one of the best players for each sport. His good looks attributed to his popularity amongst his peers even more.
Therefore, it wasn’t strange that nothing about Lee Jinki or the activities he had participated in had been brought to the attention of the school community. They would have been completely drowned out by the news of what was happening in the sports tournaments and competitions that took place at the same time. Even now such information was non-existent. Minho didn’t know if they still had a debating team or not.
Jinki never mentioned about any of his school activities when he talked about himself. Minho wasn’t too surprised; Jinki didn’t seem to be the type of person to boast. However, the shopkeeper did tell him normal stuff about himself, simple things that could be shared between friends.
Jinki told him about how he was an only child of two doting parents. He himself adored his folks and strived to make them happy in any way he could. He was a student at Seoul University and had the ambition of being a technical engineer. He loved chicken (his favourite food, apparently) and ice cream, which was the reason he had taken a job at the four-month old Icia. In his free time he was usually found either at home or at the library.
Which meant he didn’t get out much. Minho didn’t know how he felt about that.
In return, Minho told Jinki about how he spent most of his time either practicing his game, hanging out with friends and, at the rarest of times, studying. His grades weren’t all too bad despite this and he had a clean record. He enjoyed school most of the time but had his fair share of problems with girls and friends. He loved eating pretty much anything, especially ice cream. Everything typical of a teenager, really. Minho was struck with the differences he could draw between their lives.
With the revealing of every tidbit, Minho found himself liking Jinki more and more. He was a genuinely nice person and the high school student found himself enjoying his time spent with the odd shopkeeper. Of course, the price that came with it was the fact that Minho was noticing Jinki more and more every day, something which he didn’t think was healthy.
A sneaky voice in his head told him he had a crush. Minho resolutely denied it. He didn’t have a crush or any sort of attraction, to anyone. It was just absurd to even consider it. He and Jinki were getting closer so it was normal to have feelings which he knew were perfectly friendly. And if those feelings were slightly (very, very slightly) different from the ones he held for his other friends, he was sure it wasn’t anything in particular. Jinki was one of a kind; that was the reason why Minho noticed him more than anyone else he had ever met.
It wasn’t a crush. He’d know it if it was.
TBC