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Chanyeol rushes onto the train at the last second before the doors close, gasping for air as his legs burn from the exhaustion. He slumps onto an empty seat, desperate to finally catch his breath and hoping he hasn’t made too much of a fool of himself.
Which, of course, he has. Half the passengers are giving him weird looks, glancing up from their smartphones to silently judge his lack of fitness.
Feeling the tips of his ears heat up in embarrassment, Chanyeol tries to ignore the stares by plopping his backpack in front of his feet. He reaches inside to search for his headphones, and only notices once he’s pulled out the tangled mess of wires that there’s an identical bag - plain black with an adidas logo - right next to his.
Huh. Curious, Chanyeol decides to look up at it’s owner, a man sitting with his legs crossed, and immediately chokes on his spit, because this guy is stunning.
With strong brows, sharp eyes and yet a soft mouth, he looks like he was carved from stone by gods in heaven. Short, dark hair rests across his forehead, which matches his all black clothing, from his thin turtleneck sweater to his tight jeans.
He looks about a hundred times cooler than Chanyeol will ever be, but his head is buried in a battered notebook, deep concentration written all over his features, and it seems like maybe he’s one of the only people on the train to not notice Chanyeol’s rushed fumbling earlier.
Which means that if Chanyeol wanted to lay on a move or two, he might still have a shot…
Not that the public subway is a particularly good place to hit on people, and this dude probably isn’t even gay, but Chanyeol can’t just let this god of a man walk away without at least trying to get to know him, right?
Well, there’s only one way to start.
“Nice bag,” Chanyeol quips, stealing his neighbour’s attention from the notes in his hands and making him startle with a jump, a little more than Chanyeol would expect - what the hell is so engrossing in that notebook, anyway?
“What--” The man starts to ask, brows furrowed, before following Chanyeol’s gaze at his feet and noticing their strange little coincidence. The man’s face softens, lightly chuckling, and Chanyeol feels a small wave of pride.
As their gazes meet, there’s something else behind his eyes, too, an almost mischievous flash that Chanyeol catches just before it fades.
Suddenly, Chanyeol’s got a pretty good feeling about this.
“I’ve gotta say…” Chanyeol leans back further into his seat, trying to appear casual as he spreads his legs out, letting his knee lightly tap the man’s thigh. “You don’t look like the sporty, adidas, type.”
“Oh yeah?” The man raises one of his perfect eyebrows, and Chanyeol’s heart even skips a beat. “What type do I look like, then? Nike? Puma?”
“Hmmm…” Chanyeol thinks to himself, scouring his brain for that perfect, witty response, which is much easier said than done when he’s put on the spot like this.
“The turtleneck says pretentious artist, the jeans say it’s not a phase, mom, but your face says male model. So which is it?”
Not his best flirting by any stretch, but the effect is good enough. The man looks flattered by his male model comment, running a hand through his hair as he chuckles again in response before replying.
“I’m none of those…” The man leans forward, invading Chanyeol’s personal space and is now so close that Chanyeol can see his face’s little imperfections, a slight pout on his bottom lip, a small scar near his eyebrow, but they only make him more attractive.
“I’d tell you to keep guessing…” the man breathes out, sharing the same hot air as Chanyeol, who’s frozen in place by the sudden escalation of events, his heart beating fast and hard.
“But…”
He reaches forward even further, and for a brief second Chanyeol thinks he must have done a really good job, because it almost seems like he might kiss him.
Suddenly, Chanyeol feels a jostle as the train screeches to a halt, and the man pulls back, slinging his backpack over his shoulder.
“This is my stop.”
And without another word, the man stands up and strides off, and before Chanyeol can even process what happened, he’s slipped into the crowds and is completely out of sight.
Slowly coming down from the high as his heart rate slows, Chanyeol starts to feel bummed out, the thrill of the chase now over, and without a kakao ID, a phone number, or even a name, he knows he’s never going to see that man again.
There’s other fish in the sea, I guess, Chanyeol tries to convince himself as he settles in for the rest of his ride, choosing to ignore his disappointment.
He doesn’t end up having enough battery on his phone to listen to music, so Chanyeol vaguely tunes into the news announcements over the train’s intercom, something about an election coming up, a bank robbery downtown, a new shopping complex opening, and he’s got to be careful not to be lulled to sleep before he arrives at his destination.
Once the train stops again, Chanyeol heads up and pushes through the wave of people, eventually making his way to the mall as he mentally prepares himself to meet up with his - somewhat overbearing - best friend.
They’re meant to meet at Starbucks, and sure enough, as Chanyeol approaches, he spots Baekhyun waiting, green cup in hand as he taps on his phone.
When Chanyeol comes up to stand next to him, Baekhyun gives him a cold look.
“You’re late,” Baekhyun chides, slipping his phone into his back pocket before putting out his palm flat. “Hand over the USB, genius. My assignment isn’t going to write itself.”
Chanyeol wished that they could be meeting on more casual terms - although he knows Baekhyun’s probably going to insist they knock out a 4 hour karaoke session after this - but unfortunately, the main purpose for their get together is for this dirty transaction.
“Yeah, your assignment didn’t write itself. I wrote it,” Chanyeol groans, swinging his backpack off his shoulder. “You’re going to be the shittiest doctor one day, you know.”
“91% of content learnt in school is forgotten by graduation, so by not doing my own work I’m only really losing 9%,” Baekhyun argues, and Chanyeol rolls his eyes.
“You definitely made those numbers up.”
“Shut up.”
Chanyeol drops the bag onto the mall’s marble floor, kneeling in front of it so he can get faster access as Baekhyun taps his foot impatiently. Undoing the zip, Chanyeol reaches in a hand to search for the tiny USB stick.
But the contents of his bag feel different to usual, there’s no leather wallet or foil protein bar wrapper, no loose ball point pens or tangles of headphones.
Instead, he feels nothing but a whole lot of paper.
Peeling the bag open further, Chanyeol looks inside to find none of his own belongings, only wads and wads of… cash.
A buttload of cash. More cash than he’s ever seen in his life. Chanyeol’s mouth drops just at the sight. Every corner of the bag is crammed with wads, and from what he can tell, each is filled up with 50,000 won notes…
He can only stare in wonder, the feeling of excitement about having so much wealth at his fingertips filling his body--
Until he realises that this is clearly not his bag.
Chanyeol freezes in his tracks as the panic, and the confusion as to why he’s kneeling in front of a bag filled with millions of won , rapidly starts to seep into his mind.
“What… What the fuck?” Baekhyun joins Chanyeol on the ground, just as baffled by all the money as Chanyeol. “How-- What--”
As Chanyeol racks his brain for any sort of answer, it finally hits him.
“It was that guy on the train… He must have switched our bags, and--” The cogs are churning as Chanyeol starts connecting the dots.
The all-black clothing, the strange and distant attitude, and looking back on it now, Chanyeol even swears he spotted meticulously drawn out plans in that battered notebook--
And then Chanyeol’s heart stops, because the news announcements on the subway intercom definitely said something about a bank robbery.
“What guy?” Baekhyun interrupts Chanyeol’s train of thought. “What are you talking about?”
But Chanyeol doesn’t know how answer, doesn’t even know where to start.
He zips up the bag rapidly, praying that no one else saw what’s inside, and already his head is starting to hurt.
Because something tells him that, even if Chanyeol has no idea where to find this robber, he’s probably going to come find him first.