Chapter Text
“This is terrible service.” Jeno announces, “I’ve been waiting here for 10 minutes, and all I ordered was a coffee and banana bread.”
“Would you quiet down?” Hyuck hisses looking around to make sure nobody heard, “Jeno, you insisted on it being fresh. If you wanted it in a minute, they would have just warmed up the one on the display.”
“Yeah, well-”
“Sorry about that!” a new voice cuts into their bickering, and they turn around to see an extremely tall boy who looked far too young for his height, “The hyung who usually does our banana bread is late today, so the other hyung who usually does pastries and stuff had to-”
“Spare us the story, kid.” Jeno waves his hand, and Hyuck winces at the boy’s taken-aback blinking, “I don’t care what your excuses are-as a food service agency, you should always be ready to give your clients the best.”
“Customers.” the boy corrects quietly, quickly shrinking under Jeno’s look of disdain.
“Sorry, sorry.” Hyuck interjects, “It’s...been a long day, please excuse my friend.”
The boy’s name is Jisung, as Jeno gathers from his name tag. He bows in apology one more time before scurrying to the back, nearly knocking over a jar of toffees places tastefully near the cash register.
“The quality of the places you bring me to is insanely bad.” Jeno sniffs.
Donghyuck rolls his eyes, “Jeno, you are dressed insanely badly for a bakery. Who wears designer clothes to the local bakery?”
“I worked hard for my money, and I’ll do what I want with it.”
“That wasn’t even what I asked.” his friend pushes the banana bread towards him, “For all your complaints, I promise you their stuff is really fucking good. Although the kid said the baker isn’t in today so the pastry chef did it...”
Jeno has to admit, the banana bread is good. He chews slowly and nods. The food itself gives nothing to complain about.
“It’s good.” Jeno agrees, “It’s just the ambience and customer service that’s utter shit.”
“Jeno.” Hyuck sighs, “Ten minutes is nothing. Their service is fine. And it’s a cute place, what’s wrong with the ambience?”
“Just not to my taste.”
“Yeah, because your taste is like...marble worth a million for chairs and gold tables and silver window panes.”
“Don’t be dramatic.” Jeno rolls his eyes, “How did you even find this place?”
“So...you know Mark, right?” Donghyuck blushes a bit.
“Mark, like...the guy from Canada?” Jeno doesn’t look too impressed, “The struggling writer?”
“The aspiring writer.” Hyuck corrects, looking put-off, “And he’s published loads of articles and stuff! He’s in the process of writing a novel.”
“So you’re saying he’s failed a bunch of jobs, tried journalism, failed that, too, and is now using the excuse of doing ‘freelance writing and years of research’ for his novel instead of just saying he’s unemployed.”
“Fuck you too.” Hyuck snaps, “For your information, he fucking moved to Korea for inspiration to write, and he said it’s going pretty well.”
“Whatever.” Jeno says, “So he brought you to this place, of course, because it’s cheaper and therefore I assume meets his financial criteria, and you followed him and then dragged me here too.”
Donghyuck gazes at him for a long moment, “You know.” he finally says, “If we weren’t cousins, I would totally despise you with every inch of my being.”
“I get that a lot.” Jeno shrugs, finishing the last of the banana bread, “I’m just saying.”
“I think we should order a cake as well, to take home.” Hyuck ignores him, “Their pastries and cakes are crazy good, and the guy who bakes those is here today, apparently. Go order a butterscotch cake.”
“Why do I have to do stuff like that?”
“Because I said so.” Donghyuck fixes him with a stink eye, and after years and years, his cousin is still the only person Jeno listens to. Just because his cousin is also the only one who doesn’t listen to him.
The Jisung boy is hovering awkwardly around the cash register. Jeno ignores him completely, leaning against it and yelling, “Pastry boy!”
He can see Hyuck practically cringing into himself from where he’s sitting (though he’s not quite sure why) and Jisung jumps and nearly knocks over the jar of toffee again.
“That’s a bit rude.” he says with a frown, “You can just ask me. I’m right here.”
“Don’t talk back to customers, golden rule of business.” Jeno says boredly, “Please call the pastry boy.”
“It’s okay, I can take the order-”
“I want to be very clear about my order, and I would prefer to give it directly to the one who will be handling the actual baking.”
Two minutes later, Jisung has summoned the pastry boy. For some reason, Jeno expected him to be a lot, lot older. But this man looks younger than Jeno, with soft blonde hair and bright doe eyes and a sweet smile. His name-pin says Jaemin on it.
“How old are you?” Jeno frowns, looking him up and down, “Are you a university student?”
“No, I work here full-time.” he responds cheerfully, “Did you want to order something?”
“I want a butterscotch cake, packed for home.” Jeno waves carelessly at the menu, “But I have some instructions.”
Jaemin looks surprised, “Oh. I see.”
“First of all, I need you to make sure the icing doesn’t stick onto the top of the box. I want it to be completely clean when I reach home. Second, I want it to still be decently moist, even after a couple of hours. There’s no guarantee I’ll eat this right now, and I don’t want some dry sandpaper cake for dessert. Third, don’t make it overly sweet.”
Jaemin blinks at him, “I’m sorry?”
“You heard me, didn’t you?” Jeno sighs. People like this are so tiring, how many times is he supposed to repeat himself? “Do you want me to say everything again?”
“No, I’m-” the boy huffs out a disbelieving laugh, “Sir, listen, I can assure you the cake will be baked well with the usual recipe we use. Whether it’s too sweet for you is entirely subjective, we can’t alter a recipe for an individual’s palette. If you prefer less sweet cakes, maybe try our coffee cake or our dark chocolate pastry.”
“I want the butterscotch one.”
“Then we will give you our butterscotch one, the same as we make for all customers.” Jaemin says, smiling. It’s a business smile- Jeno knows it very well, he wears one a good 7 hours a day, and it is unbelievably difficult.
He feels a bit annoyed to be on the receiving end of a strictly-business smile, though- that is, one outside of business life.
“Well, then, make sure the icing doesn’t stick on the box.” he snaps, “And if it does, I’ll demand a refund.”
Jaemin continues smiling pleasantly, “We can close the box safely in front of you. But once it’s in your hands, and you have paid for it, you are responsible for it. If the icing does stick, I’d assume it’s because of your careless handling.”
“I- why-” Jeno splutters, “That is absolutely despicable! In all my life, I’ve never seen such poor customer service! This is ridiculous- I’m sorry, but you will receive a very poor review from me.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Jaemin doesn’t look sorry at all, “Are you paying by cash or card?”
Jeno pays by card, snatches up the box when it’s ready (safely, of course- heaven forbid the icing smeared) and looks around for Jisung.
“You-” he calls, “Where’s the customer review notebook?”
“The what?” the (presumably) younger man echoes weakly, “Huh?”
“The customer review notebook.” Jeno repeats, “So that I can provide feedback about my experience here.”
"Jeno, for God’s sake.” Hyuck groans under his breath, “Shut up, let’s go.”
“We...don’t have that, Sir.” Jisung looks apologetic, “But I’m sure you can find us online on-”
“No, no, it’s fine!” Hyuck interrupts, “The food was lovely, thank you.” he lowers his voice and glares at Jeno, “Do you ask for a feedback book when we go to your fucking high-end restaurants? What is with your double standards?”
“Five star restaurants don’t need feedback.” Jeno doesn’t bother to lower his voice, “It’s only lower-rated places that need suggestions so they can improve.”
“Jeno.” Hyuck snaps, “Let’s go.”
Hyuck doesn’t speak to Jeno for a majority of the drive home. When Jeno finally caves and asks him why, he turns around with such a ferocious glare that Jeno cowers. He’s glad he’s got a chauffeur, because if he was the one driving, he most certainly would have swerved off lane.
“What do you mean ‘why are you upset’?” his cousin snaps furiously, “You are so rude! This always happens, every time we go somewhere that’s not fucking...5-star, thousand-dollar-per-meal, rich people everywhere- why are you such a fucking dickhead?”
“I’m not!” Jeno gapes at the injustice, “It was poor customer service! I was just being honest! A feedback book never hurt anybody!”
“You are so spoiled.”
“I worked for what I have right now.” Jeno retorts, “Yeah, I have a mansion, yeah I have 5 cars, yeah, I have a lot of money and only shop in A-list places and only eat at the best restaurants- I earned it. Do you think my company earned millions overnight? That’s my blood, sweat and tears for- for nearly 10 years!”
“Shame you can’t be humble and successful.” Hyuck snarks, “Maybe then you’d not just have lots of money, you’d have friends, too.”
“I do have friends.”
“Name one friend you made after your company hit it big and you became rich.” Hyuck challenges, “One friend who didn’t know you from school or college.”
Jeno...can’t.
“That’s because i don’t trust people anymore.” he says unconvincingly, “People might want me for money, y’know.”
“I mean, with an attitude like that, I can’t imagine any other actual reason why they’d want to hang out.” Hyuck mutters, “So you might be onto something there.”
“Oh, I’m the rude one.”
“You were so disrespectful.” Hyuck looks genuinely upset, and even though Jeno doesn’t know what he even did wrong, he does feel kind of bad that he made his cousin look that way, “Calling that place low-rated, saying they had terrible customer service- they were really fine, Jeno. And like...calling out for the baker so rudely, he’s not your servant-”
“Customers always come first.” Jeno reminds him, “How do you think I got so far? I always kept in mind what my clients would like.”
“So do they.” Hyuck jabs the box between them, “Their stuff is good.”
Jeno rolls his eyes, “The banana bread was good but not like….mind-blowing. I could get that anywhere.”
“That’s because you hate bananas and only eat it in bread. It’s not even something you like.” Donghyuck shakes his head, “I get the whole feedback thing, Jen, but there are a million nicer ways to say things, okay?”
Jeno thinks he was pretty nice- he could’ve called for the manager, he could’ve said a lot more, he could’ve pointed out all the problems...he was very tame and polite.
But if his cousin insists, he will sigh and relent, “Fine. I got it.”
“Good. Next time will be a fresh start. You can apologize.”
“I’m not stepping into that place again.” Jeno snorts, “I can order any baked good from a higher-end place, I don’t need this bakery at all. I don’t feel comfortable in 3-star places.”
Hyuck stares at him for a long, long time, and then shakes his head, “You’re so different sometimes.”
“From what? From when we were kids?” Jeno scoffs, “We turned 28 this year, Hyuck. Of course I’m different.”
“We both know what I mean, and it’s not that. Being spoiled is one thing...being so insensitive and rude is another, and you know what I mean when I’m-”
“Whatever you’re talking about doesn’t mean anything to me.”
Donghyuck doesn’t say another word the whole way home.