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minhyuk is in the middle of saving lives — as in saving his own life from the hot oil popping out of the frying pan — when there are three short knocks on his door. he glances over his shoulder at the door leading out of the kitchen and back to the chicken sizzling in front of him. setting the glass lid of one of his saucepans that he was using as a shield on the counter beside the stove, minhyuk lowers the heat of the front burner. but not before a huge drop of oil, or three, flies out of the pan and straight for his arm like a heat-seeking missile.
“fucking shit!” he glares at his frying chicken, wiping the oil off his arm. if he didn’t need to eat to live, he’d never cook again.
backing away from his stove, he exits the kitchen and runs the short distance to the front door. he doesn’t bother looking through the peephole and twists the lock.
at the door is a tall, gangly boy in a loose tan sweater and a pair of ripped black skinny jeans. his hair is tucked beneath a black beanie but a few chocolate curls peek out and fall into his face. objectively, he has a pretty face — and an even prettier mouth — but the dead look in his eyes and the dark bags beneath them are a real turn-off.
“uh, can i help you?” minhyuk asks. he can hear his chicken still frying, oil snapping, crackling, and popping. he hopes it doesn’t burn.
zombie boy looks him up and down. when his eyes return to minhyuk’s face, he nervously wets his lips. “do you know what time you started your washing machine last night?” his voice is soft with a slight nasal quality to it.
minhyuk wrinkles his brow. “i don’t know. around ten or something?” he hears a particularly loud pop and grimaces. “look, my kitchen is going to combust any —”
“it was one,” zombie boy interrupts.
“what?”
“you started your washing machine at one in the morning,” zombie boy elaborates. “do you know how loud your washing machine is?”
sighing, minhyuk leans against the doorframe. this must be his neighbor. for the five months that minhyuk has lived in this apartment building, he’s never seen the person who lives to the right of him in 305. he would’ve thought no one lived there if he didn’t hear them moving around sometimes. “are you actually serious right now? sorry, i’ll—”
“i’m not trying to be rude. just…the sound of it is kind of hard to ignore and i think it’s ruining my sleep patterns.”
“you don’t even look like you sleep,” minhyuk blurts out.
zombie boy wasn’t showing much emotion in the first place, but he deadpans and says in a gritty, monotone voice, “i’m an insomniac.”
oh. well fuck.
“so. please try to do your laundry at normal human hours.” zombie boy quickly raises his eyes to a point over minhyuk’s shoulder. “you should have turned off the stove before you answered the door,” he says and turns to go back to his place next door without any kind of goodbye.
dumbfounded, minhyuk watches the living zombie push his door open and disappear. “okay,” he mumbles to himself, shutting his door and locking it. ruffling his hair, he turns around. he blinks at the line of smoke curling through the air in his kitchen doorway and screams.
thankfully, his chicken isn’t on fire when he rushes into the kitchen and slides the pan across the electric stove to the cool side, clicking off the burner he was using. he grabs his tongs and fishes out the meat, wiggling away when the still popping oil comes too close.
“fuck everything,” he sings in a broken falsetto, complete with mariah carey-style ad-libs.
the entire bottom of his fried chicken breast is a glittering black.
he sighs and drops the chicken on a paper towel-covered plate to catch the grease. “so much for that.”
moving down the counter, he pulls out the drawer holding the silverware and grabs a knife.
as minhyuk cuts off the burnt side, there’s another set of knocks at his door. setting the knife down, he goes to open it. he’s expecting to see zombie boy on the other side, complaining out his shriek of horror a minute ago, but instead there’s a six-pack of ramyeon sitting at his feet with a lime green post-it stuck to the top with sorry about your dinner written in neat cursive with a gold, metallic marker.
minhyuk can’t tell if his neighbor is cute or an asshole who, at the very least, still has some manners.
he peeks at the closed door to the right and shakes his head.
“well, you got free ramyeon out of it,” minhyuk says to himself, tucking the package under his arm and kicking the door closed.
considering he’s never seen him before, minhyuk is surprised to see the zombie boy in the drugstore three days later. his neighbor is wearing the same beanie as before and is warmly tucked in a cream knit sweater, grey jeans, and a sturdy pair of combat boots. minhyuk is in the middle of deciding between pororo band-aids and the ones with cartoon dinosaurs on them — he’s allowed to use the cute ones, he’s only twenty two, he’s not a real adult yet okay — when the zombie wanders into the aisle, his eyes glued on his phone. he doesn’t notice minhyuk as he walks down the aisle, stopping in front of the supplements.
minhyuk watches zombie boy fit his phone in his back pocket and scan his eyes over the shelves in front of him. he glances at the boxes of band-aids in his hands before stacking them on top of one another. he isn’t sure what it is, but something compels him to walk over to his neighbor.
he clears his throat. “hey.”
zombie boy looks up at him slowly. he looks a bit more alive today; the bags under his eyes are well hidden beneath an even layer of cover-up and there is a light in his eyes that wasn’t there last time. “hi?”
“i never told you thanks. for the ramyeon,” minhyuk says.
his neighbor shrugs and turns to the assortment of bottles in front of him. “i felt bad. and i wasn’t going to eat it anyway.”
minhyuk starts to scowl but quickly stops himself. a simple 'you’re welcome' would have sufficed just fine but at least he acknowledged that he was partly responsible for minhyuk’s chicken tasting like the bottom of a grill.
zombie boy picks up a dark bottle with a blue cap.
minhyuk finally looks at the shelves, easily spying the same bottle as the one in his neighbor’s hand. it and the bottles around it all have the same word on the label. “melatonin?”
“the hormone that's linked to your internal clock.” the man looks at the bottle in his hands. “helps your body recognize when it’s time to sleep and stuff.”
“so you really have insomnia?” he also wants to know why you can buy something like that over-the-counter, but decides not to ask.
zombie boy gives him a side-long glance like he’s asked the dumbest question of his life. and minhyuk supposes it was a dumb question because nobody who was exaggerating about having insomnia would go to the trouble of complaining about his washing machine.
“you don’t have to look at me like that,” minhyuk says, affronted. “i was just asking.”
zombie boy has a lot of attitude for someone who doesn’t say much.
“sorry, i kind of hate that question.” he blinks at minhyuk who can see the slight shift to apology in his eyes. “yes, i really have insomnia. and like i said the other day, my sleep patterns have been off so my doctor thought i should start using them again to see if they’ll put me back in order.”
minhyuk doesn’t know how to respond to that, so he rocks back on his heels and mumbles, “oh.” silence barely has a minute to settle before he opens his mouth again. “did you just move in? i’ve never seen you around before.”
zombie boy purses his lips, humming as he thinks. “i moved in maybe two and a half months ago. i can’t tell you why we’ve never met, though.”
“i guess we just kept missing each other.” minhyuk balances the band-aids in one hand and stretches out the other between him and his neighbor. “i’m lee minhyuk.”
the taller man peeks up at minhyuk through his curls when he grabs his hand. “chae hyungwon.” he smiles lightly. moving around minhyuk, he lifts the bottle of melatonin in his hand. “i’m gonna go pay for this.”
“ah, yeah.” minhyuk drops his eyes to the two boxes in his hand. he still hasn’t decided which to buy yet. maybe he’ll get both. “maybe i’ll see you around?”
hyungwon flicks his gaze down for a short second and raises an eyebrow. “not if you buy those pororo band-aids,” he says, shaking his head minutely.
he leaves while minhyuk struggles to defend himself with an explanation that isn’t ‘i’m an adult. i can do what i want’. he once again doesn’t say goodbye. he doesn’t wave or even turn around to smile one last time before he disappears from minhyuk’s line of vision.
“what’s wrong with them?” minhyuk mumbles to himself as he shuffles back to the corner of the aisle with the rest of the bandages.
he can confirm that his neighbor is about twenty percent cute — he might be off by eighty percent, check his math — but he’s still up in the air on the asshole with minimal manners part.
he slips the pororo band-aids back onto the shelf. “they’re cute.”