thirty-two

The next morning, Jisung was sprawled on the sofa, having fallen asleep while watching tv with Minho last night.

It was turned off now and the room was dark. What had woken him up was the muffled ringing of his phone.

He groaned, rubbing his eyes and pulling it out of his pocket.

Seeing that it was his publishing company, he picked up immediately, wondering why they would call him at such an early time in the morning.

"Hello," he rasped, clearing his throat. He sounded very sleepy, and a sigh could be heard from the other line of the phone.

"Good morning, I'm here to tell you a bad news,"  the woman from the other line replied.

He sat up straight from the sofa, preparing himself for whatever bad news he was gonna be receiving.

"You're fired. You haven't submitted any of your works to us and we figured that we'd find someone else to replace you."

"Oh, you don't need to fire me. I quit," he deadpanned, ending the call afterwards. He was honestly not shocked to hear such news, considering how poor his work performance had been.

He yawned and trudged to the kitchen to make himself a sandwich. He was still so drowsy that he didn't notice the little demon sneaking up in front of him.

He tripped over it and promptly fell, hitting his shins against the floor.

"Jisung!" He heard Minho scream from down the basement, his voice sounding angry and distorted in pain. "What the fuck did you do this time?!"

He appeared in the kitchen and saw Jisung lying down flat on the floor. He glared at him with a murderous look. "How can a living creature be this clumsy and fragile?"

"S-sorry. I'm not made of stone," he retorted sarcastically, clutching his bleeding shin.

"Yeah, I can see that," Minho sighed, rolling his eyes at him. He crouched down and lifted Jisung up, prompting him to hold on to his shoulder for support.

"Put me down. I have legs and can walk all by myself!" He complained, glaring up at Minho's face.

"You obviously can't, and you proved it just now when I saw you lying down on the floor like a dead fish," he countered smugly. "So you better shut up."

Jisung stared at him, his fingers holding on to his collar. Just to annoy the demon, he abruptly tugged on it and he received an annoyed look in response.

"Stop that," Minho said as he walked through the door to Jisung's bedroom. He dropped the human on the bed like he was a sack of potatoes and scoffed at him.

Not two seconds later, he left the room, making Jisung wonder what the hell he was doing until he came back with a pack of band-aids in his hand. "Here, use that," he said, throwing it at him.

Jisung caught it, looking down at it and back up at Minho with wide eyes. "Huh?!"

"What is it now?" Minho grumbled, crossing his arms.

"Why are you doing this?" He asked, his eyes locked on to Minho's.

"Because I don't want you to die an early death."

"I won't die from a scratch," he said awkwardly, opening the package and putting a band-aid on his small wound.

To be continued...