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Warm rays of sunlight slipped through the shader’s gaps and fell upon Baek Saheon’s face, gently caressing the contour of his jaw. The soft tweet of blue birds s-
BANG!
Saheon’s eyes snapped open as he shot up from his bed. However, just as he was about to barge out to curse at whoever was disturbing him, he remembered just who his roommate was…and kindly sat back down again.
There was no need to trigger that psycho over this, Saheon justified to himself, who knows what landmine he'll step on if he tries. Right, this was just called being generous and forgiving of others. He wasn’t scared, just being nice…
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Saheon’s eye twitched.
Why wasn’t the noise stopping?
He contemplated stepping forth to sneak a peek, then stopped, then again…ultimately, curiosity killed the cat, or, in this case, goat.
Opening the door, Saheon came face to face with the incarnation of chaos. Stained, burnt utensils were strewed everywhere, sludges of incomprehensible matter flung onto the walls like some sort of maddening deco; a pungent smell and suffocating layer of smoke that he was sure never to be able to forget ever again.
“Oh my Fuck.” The sheer atrocity of the scene led Saheon, who normally wouldn’t even spare a second glance at gruesome mutilated corpses, unconsciously take a step back. What kind of hell did he wake up in? No, is he even awake right now?
KRHHH-
Saheon’s head spun to the side at the sound, to the origin of everything, “Oh, you’re awake, come help clean up,” there, in the midst of bubbling piles of tar-ish material, was Kim Soleum, somehow still in the same pristine suit he was always in, roughly gripping a pan in his hands as he attempted to scrape out whatever unholy concoction was in the pot.
Definitely a nightmare.
Baek Saheon tried to turn back to his room.
Maybe if he goes to sleep again, he’ll wake up and everything will go back to normal. Yeah, definitely.
“Hey–” a hand suddenly reached out and grabbed his collar from behind– “are you deaf?”
Saheon could hear the audible snap of his sanity cracking.
‘This crazy bastard!’
Soleum woke up feeling the strange urge to eat cake.
He would’ve suspected the influence of some strange darkness, had he not immediately realized the reason why after.
Looking at the calendar, Soleum blankly stared at the hastily drawn giant red circle around today’s date.
Today…was his birthday.
And for the first time in his life, those words felt unbelievably foreign to him.
Soleum laughed bitterly, half out of despair, half out of the sheer absurdity of the situation. It was his birthday. His damned birthday.
Glancing down at the bedding that wasn’t his, the floor that wasn’t his, the room that wasn’t- he squeezed shut his eyes and exhaled.
‘Let’s bake a cake today,’ Soleum decided, searching for a recipe on his phone. It ought to do him good.
And so, at the crack of dawn, he slipped out of his room, hesitating briefly at Baek Saheon’s door before moving on to the kitchen.
Baking a cake can’t be that loud, right?
The first ingredient Soleum searched for was sugar, only…“there’s no sugar?”
Indeed, it would only make sense for a dorm holding two men more busy fighting for their lives on the daily than to worry about cooking to lack such basic ingredients.
Still, Soleum was determined to bake this cake today.
He debated whether running out for groceries was a good idea, most stores would probably still be closed at this time, but in the chance tha- suddenly, something caught on the corner of his eye.
Carelessly shoved in the corner was a bottle of liquid sweetener.
‘......’
Soleum hesitantly reached out for it.
‘This should be fine, right? It’s basically sugar anyways,’ he reasoned to no one in particular. However, finding no other options, he poured the syrup into the large bowl.
Next was the butter.
Soleum was beginning to think this wasn’t the best of ideas. If he couldn’t even find something as common as sugar, how was he supposed to find butter?
He dwelled on the essence of a cake’s existence in silence, contemplating the temporal nature of butter and its brethrens. If he recalled correctly, the butter was just there to make the cake look better and have a slightly different taste, right? So, suppose he just didn’t care about that and instead just used something else of the same consistency?
It didn’t sound too implausible of a plan now that he’s said it out loud, and this time, he even knew where to find the item needed.
Having ransacked the fridge once already searching for sugar, Soleum was able to easily locate what he was searching for the second time—a cup of yogurt.
Namely, Baek Saheon’s cup of yogurt.
It even had a post-it with his name written on it…
Soleum dumped the yogurt into the bowl with the sweetener without a second thought.
Being able to bake a cake and intimidate Saheon further into leaving him alone? That was practically hitting two birds with one stone.
Nodding to himself, Soleum followed the next step of the recipe and tried to whip the mixture he had just made…
‘It’s…still the same?’
Soleum held the bowl up to inspect it.
Aside from the yogurt becoming slightly more liquid-y, there’s really no other differences…but since the ingredients were slightly different, this should still be within the range of acceptance, right? Definitely.
Trying to distract himself, Soleum moved onto the next step. The egg.
Luckily, the fridge did actually have eggs…well, egg, to be exact.
There was only one egg.
Nothing wrong with a little less egg, he supposed, besides, the moisture the eggs would’ve added could be perfectly substituted by the sweetener syrup.
It’s not like he had much time to dally anyways.
Soleum glanced up at the clock, almost 8. Soon that psychotic bastard will come out of his room and his peaceful baking time will be over. A sense of urgency overtook him as he rushed to grab all the remaining ingredients.
Soy sauce for vanilla extract, protein powder for flour, baking soda for baking powder…none of them were exactly the same, but beggars can’t exactly be choosers, can they?
Until finally, only one ingredient remained, the milk…Soleum scooped out another spoonful of the yogurt.
With everything gathered, Soleum unceremoniously dumped it all into the bowl together and went about furiously stirring it.
It’s all going to get mixed anyways, who cares about the order.
Within 5 minutes, against the beautiful backdrop of a thoroughly ransacked kitchen, done more dedicatedly than even the best of thieves, was a bowl of goop ready for baking.
Scraping everything into the only pot they had, Soleum set about shoving it into the small oven, and when he finally managed to do so, he set the oven ablaze.
Now, to sit back and relax.
Soleum took a sip of Saheon’s yogurt.
Quite good quality. Yum.
‘......’
As time lulled, Soleum found his gaze attracted to the busy city outside. Seeing the mundane of everything, he found himself dazed. It was like nothing had changed, like he had always been in his world, like he had never travelled into this world…
Rrrring~
The timer set for the cake had broken Soleum out of his daze.
He turned to look—and froze.
Thick black fumes were pouring out of the oven.
Soleum hurried over, opening it to discover that, indeed, the cause had been the “cake” he had spent the morning making.
‘......’
BANG!
He tried to pry out the lump of unrecognizable mass left in the pot to no avail.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
He tried again.
“Oh my Fuck.”
Soleum looked up at the voice, making eye contact just as the lump in the pot finally gave up, screaming one last time in agony as it was pried out.
KRHHH-
“Oh, you’re awake, come help clean up,” was all he could say as he tried to change his expression back to composed frigidity.
However, when Saheon tried to turn away—Soleum reached out and pulled him back, “hey, are you deaf?”
Seeing the psycho desperately shake his head, Soleum felt relief.
It’s good that his intimidation hasn’t lost its effect yet. He had gotten scared when Saheon had tried to turn around and ignore him.
“Good, go clean this,” Soleum shoved the pot into Saheon’s hands. Better to reassert dominance just in case.
However, just as if it seemed like Saheon was opening his mouth to say something, the doorbell rang.
‘...?’
Soleum paused.
He didn’t remember anything important enough to warrant a visit today from anyone. Still, since it would be rude not to open it, and just in case it was an emergency, he stepped forth.
With a grip on the knob, he pulled—
“HAPPY BIRTHDAY!”
—Party streamers burst above his head.
Soleum stared blankly at the rest of his squad, all of whom had gathered outside his door, each smiling in their own rights. In their midst was a giant birthday cake.
The first to break formation was Eun Haje, “how does it feel to be one year older, eh? kid?” she asked as she wrapped her arm around his neck and tousled his hair.
“Our youngest has really grown so much.”
“Happy birthday.”
Soleum could feel his eyes heating up as the group hovered around him, encasing him within their warmth.
“How-” was all he could get out between choked half-sobs.
Eun Haje lightly flicked his forehead and chuckled, “stinky brat, did you really think you can hide it? Though you sure as hell made it an effort to find, kid. If I didn’t know any better, I would think you suddenly popped into this world one day with how empty your records are.” She rubbed his hair again for good measure.
“Alright alright, stop embarrassing our youngest, Haje, the candles will go out soon,” Park Minseong interrupted as he gently pushed Soleum towards the cake.
Looking down at it, it was clear no effort had been spared in preparing this. Ribbons of interchanging black and red buttered creams and chocolate sprinkles surrounded a giant chocolate plaque in the middle. On it were the words, “Happy birthday, Soleum, forever our beloved youngest.”
A drop of warm liquid splashed onto the cake as Soleum bowed his head and wailed.
Standing there in the hallway, Soleum cried till no more tears came out, till all the pent up frustration vanished, till the suffocating feeling dissipated.
Never once did the people beside him speak, their only presence made known by the warm, comforting pats that never stopped throughout it all.
“...Thank you.”
Soleum felt the hand on his back pause, then, “What’s there’s to thank amongst family, kid? Come on now, go blow out the candles, do it before your cake turns into a wax melt.”
Nodding slightly, he stepped forth, closed his eyes, and blew.
‘I wish…it could stay like this just a while longer.’