Yin Yue stood in front of his closet, arms crossed, wrapped in a towel, glaring at a traitorous heap of damp laundry like it had personally ruined his life.
"Thirty-five minutes in the dryer," he muttered. "That's all I asked. Thirty-five minutes and a little loyalty."
The dryer buzzed again. He opened it. Still wet. Still sad.
He reached for his emergency backup: a folded T-shirt deep in the abyss of the "I'll never actually wear this" drawer.
It was tight.
It was short.
It was aggressively off-white and clung in all the wrong places. Or, arguably, all the right ones.
He put it on.
And immediately wanted to commit a crime.
"Why did I ever own this?" he muttered, trying to tug it down over his hips.
> 💻 SYSTEM 520:
🎯 Skinship Opportunity Detected!
💘 Visual Fluster Trigger Incoming!
😏 You look great, by the way. That collarbone could cause a moral dilemma.
"I will plant you into a wall."
> 💻 SYSTEM 520:
Fashion stats:
• Confidence: -37
• Seduction Potential: +14
• Moral ambiguity: MAXIMUM
🧃Would you like to apply body glitter?
"NO!"
He stormed out of the apartment wearing the world's most humiliating shirt, cursing cotton blend percentages and every romance trope that ever involved wardrobe malfunctions.
Café Fated came into view like the gates of judgment.
He took a breath.
Slowly walked in.
Bell jingled.
And of course—of course—Liang Yu was already at the counter, restocking cold brew bottles like a calm, handsome executioner.
Liang Yu looked up.
Paused.
Yin Yue froze like a deer in deeply inappropriate headlights.
Liang Yu said nothing.
He didn't smirk. Didn't flinch. Just let his eyes travel down, up, once—cool and neutral and way too calm.
Then he turned away.
Said, "You're late."
Yin Yue blinked. "Is that's all you have to say?"
"I'm being polite."
"About.. this?" Yin Yue gestured to his torso, which he'd been trying to keep hidden behind the pastry case.
Liang Yu reached under the counter, handed him an apron.
It barely covered his stomach.
"Great," Yin Yue said flatly. "Now it's a fashion disaster and a modesty hazard."
> 💻 SYSTEM 520:
🧨 Fluster Reaction: ML's heart rate spiked briefly.
🫣 He looked away too fast. He noticed.
🎯 You are officially weaponized.
"I hate you," Yin Yue whispered to the system, wrapping the apron tighter around his hips like it might protect him from fate.
Liang Yu, very coolly, set a tray of espresso cups on the counter. "If someone ever trips over your outfit, it's coming out of your paycheck."
Yin Yue huffed. "If someone tips more because of my outfit, I'm claiming 40%."
Liang Yu didn't reply.
But as he turned back toward the espresso machine, Yin Yue swore that for just a second or just long enough to count, Liang Yu did glanced back at him.
And then looked away, just a little too late.
The café filled slowly with the warm hum of grinders, light chatter, and the scent of dark roast and rising coffee.
Yin Yue stood behind the register, posture rigid, arms folded tightly across his chest as if sheer willpower could stop people from noticing how tight his shirt had become.
The apron was decorative at best. Symbolic. A useless flag of modesty waving in the breeze of embarrassment.
A woman in yoga pants approached the counter. "Good morning!"
"Hi," Yin Yue replied, trying to hide behind a chalkboard sign about almond milk.
Her eyes traveled downward. "That's a bold uniform choice today."
He froze. "I—it's laundry day."
"Oh, I wasn't judging!" she said, smiling. "You've got great collarbones and nice arms."
Yin Yue opened his mouth.
Closed it.
"...Thank you?"
> 💻 SYSTEM 520:
✅ Flirt Received
📣 External Validation Boost: +2
🫠 Internal Panic: +9000
🎯 ML is watching.
He turned slightly and sure enough, caught Liang Yu mid-pour, eyes flicking upward.
A fraction of a second too long.
Yin Yue turned back to the customer, smile tight.
"Your name for the order?"
"Angela."
"And what do you do for a living, Angela?"
She blinked. "I—what?"
"Just curious who gets too confidently compliment strangers before caffeine."
She laughed. "Interior design."
Yin Yue nodded. "Of course. It's the angles. You appreciate structure."
Liang Yu's low voice interrupted: "Yin Yue. Focus."
"I am focused," he called over his shoulder. "Focused on surviving a shift dressed like a thirst trap!"
From the corner of his eye, he saw Jiang Mei at the dish station, pretending to clean something that did not require that much attention. She was grinning. Dangerously.
Angela left with her drink, winking as she dropped a twenty in the tip jar.
Jiang Mei sauntered over.
"So," she said sweetly, "was that shirt legally approved by management?"
"It was approved by existential dread."
"Mhm. Is boss Liang hasn't said anything?"
"No."
"Interesting."
Yin Yue squinted. "What do you mean, 'interesting?'"
She leaned in. "Because he definitely stared at your back just now when you bent to grab lids."
Yin Yue froze. "You're lying."
"I never lie about workplace tension. It's sacred."
> 💻 SYSTEM 520:
📊 Host Heart Rate: 114 bpm
📈 ML Eye Contact Duration: +2.7s above average
🍵 Sexual tension reading: steeping
Yin Yue groaned and pulled the apron strings tighter, which only seemed to emphasize the problem.
Across the café, Liang Yu looked up again.
And this time—definitely this time—he did not look away quickly enough.
Their eyes met.
Held.
Yin Yue turned back to the register and nearly dropped the card reader.
"I am going to die of exposure," he muttered.
> 💻 SYSTEM 520:
Or affection. Whichever comes first. 💕
It started innocently.
It always did.
"Yin Yue," Liang Yu said, halfway through an afternoon lull, "can you grab more takeaway bag from storage?"
"On it," Yin Yue called, grateful for the excuse to flee from the counter and from all the increasingly suspicious customer stares.
He slipped into the back hallway and pulled open the storage closet doo, a narrow, overstuffed rectangle of shelves and cardboard. There were paper cups, straws, six different syrup boxes stacked dangerously high, and about twelve square inches of floor space.
He stepped inside.
And two seconds later—
Liang Yu appeared in the doorway.
"I need the grinder cleaner," he said.
"Oh no."
They stared at each other.
Then both looked at the space.
Then back at each other.
"Nope," Yin Yue said, already turning, "I can move—"
But Liang Yu had already stepped in, brushing past him. Shoulder to shoulder. Warm. Close.
Too close.
The door swung shut behind them with a gentle, traitorous click.
Yin Yue froze. "That… didn't lock, did it?"
Liang Yu tried yo twist the knob.
Silence.
Then: "Yes it is."
Yin Yue laughed. Just once. High-pitched and deranged. "Great.. very great.. stuck in the closet jail."
He tried to sidestep around Liang Yu but hit a box of lids. "Okay its fine.. We can be calm about this. I've seen many hostage movies. They all start like this and then people make out. That's just a trope. It's not legally binding."
Liang Yu turned to reach for a high shelf.
Yin Yue instinctively stepped back into a box.
The box squashed under his foot with a dramatic squeak.
He lost his balance—
Liang Yu caught his elbow. Steady. Firm.
And then—
Liang Yu leaned forward to get a better grip on the box behind him.
Chest. Brush. Shoulder. Hip.
Every point of contact lit up like a live wire.
Yin Yue stared at the shelves like they held the secrets to surviving embarrassment.
Liang Yu didn't move.
Neither did he.
The space was suddenly full of breath and warmth and a little too much silence.
Yin Yue shifted, just slightly.
His shirt rode up.
Skin met skin.
They both froze.
> 💻 SYSTEM 520:
⚠️ PHYSICAL PROXIMITY CRITICAL
🫣 ALERT: CHEST-TO-CHEST INITIATED
💖 ML AFFECTION +6
🧠 HOST STATUS: Absolutely Not Okay
A knock came from the other side of the door.
Jiang Mei's voice: "Are you two—? Never mind. I'll come back."
Liang Yu moved first. Backing away one careful step. He cleared his throat, quietly. Reached for the grinder cleaner. Didn't look at Yin Yue.
Yin Yue stared straight ahead. "Cool. Totally fine. I didn't almost have a cardiac event."
Liang Yu opened the door.
"Come on."
Yin Yue followed him out.
And they said absolutely nothing about it.
Which, somehow, was even worse.
Yin Yue spent the next hour pretending to be busy.
He alphabetized tea tins. Then re-alphabetized them by flavor strength. Then rearranged stirrers by length. He avoided the area of espresso machine entirely because Liang Yu was there. And looking at Liang Yu currently felt like standing too close to a sun which he'd accidentally touched.
The closet incident was still echoing in his mind and body.
The warmth.
The stillness.
The way Liang Yu hadn't moved away immediately.
The way neither of them had.
> 💻 SYSTEM 520:
💥 FLUSTER EVENT REGISTERED
🎯 ML Internal Disruption Level: 78%
💬 Suggestion: Interrogate him. Or kiss him. Either works.
"Shut up," Yin Yue hissed, slamming a sugar jar a little too hard.
Meanwhile, Jiang Mei was watching everything from the pastry case like a drama-loving hawk. She waited exactly until Yin Yue was out of earshot—barely—before sliding up to Liang Yu near the grinder.
Yin Yue turned his back but didn't go far.
He heard it.
"Boss Liang," Jiang Mei said in her too casual, absolutely-scheming voice, "did something happen in the closet?"
Liang Yu said nothing.
"Because Yin Yue's been red in the face since he came out. And not his usual theatrical red. I mean real blush."
Liang Yu kept grinding beans.
"He looks like he saw God," she added.
Yin Yue froze with a sleeve of cups in hand.
Then quietly, calmly, like it meant nothing at all Liang Yu said:
"No."
Pause.
"Not yet."
Yin Yue dropped the entire stack of cups.
They scattered across the floor like emotional marbles.
Jiang Mei gasped and delighted.
"Oh my god, that was flirty."
Yin Yue ducked behind the counter to gather cups and pretend he wasn't dying.
> 💻 SYSTEM 520:
💘 UNAUTHORIZED VERBAL TEASING DETECTED
❤️ AFFECTION +8
🫠 HOST MENTAL STABILITY: Decreasing
💬 SYSTEM NOTE: "Not yet."??? Sir.
Yin Yue stood up, red to his ears, cups stacked awkwardly in his arms.
Liang Yu was already wiping the counter nearby, as if he hadn't just detonated a casual flirt bomb across the floor.
Their eyes met.
Yin Yue opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Then turned away so fast that he bumped into the tip jar.
And for the rest of the shift, he refused to speak to anyone but in drink names.