The Washing Machine Incident

It began, as most disasters in Jungkook’s new life began, with a small white box.

"What is this," he asked, standing in front of the washing machine like a general assessing an unfamiliar siege weapon.

"Washing machine. It cleans clothes."

"By itself?"

"By itself."

He crouched down and peered through the round glass door with deep suspicion. "There is nothing inside it."

"That's because you haven't put anything in yet." Y/N opened the door, tossed in a pile of towels and Jungkook borrowed shirts, added a capful of blue liquid, and shut it. She pressed a button. The machine gave a low hum and began to fill with water.

Jungkook took a step back.

"It is drinking."

"It's filling."

"Why does it need to drink to clean?"

"I don't know, Jungkook , I didn't invent it, I just press the button."

He crouched again, fascinated despite himself, as the drum began to turn, slow at first, then faster, the towels tumbling over each other in the churning water like small pale animals.

"They are being punished," he said solemnly.

"They're being washed."

"It looks like punishment."

"Well, they've been very bad towels."

He did not laugh at this. He almost never laughed outright — a king's dignity, he insisted, did not permit it — but the corner of his mouth twitched, and Y/N counted that as a win.

He stayed crouched in front of the washing machine for the next forty minutes, utterly transfixed, occasionally narrating events like a war correspondent.

"The blue shirt has taken the lead."

"Jungkook, it's not a race."

"The towel has been flung against the wall. A brutal maneuver."

"You're describing laundry like it's a gladiator match."

"It is a gladiator match," he said, without looking away. "I am simply the only one who understands this."

When the machine beeped and stopped, he stood so fast he nearly hit his head on the shelf above it.

"It is finished! Open it! I must see the survivors!"

Y/N opened the door. Steam curled out. The towels sat there, damp and twisted and completely unharmed.

Jungkook reached in, lifted one out, and examined it as though checking for battle wounds. Finding none, he nodded with grave approval.

"They have endured," he said. "Good."

---

That evening, the bakery experienced what Min-ji would later describe, to anyone who asked, as "the Great Piping Bag War."

It started innocently. Y/N was decorating a batch of cupcakes for a birthday order, squeezing white frosting into careful little swirls, and Jungkook , seated on his usual stool, watched with the narrow-eyed focus of a general studying enemy formations.

"That is a weapon," he said.

"It's a piping bag."

"It expels a substance under pressure. That is a weapon."

"It's frosting, Jungkook ."

"May I hold it?"

Every instinct in Y/N's body told her to say no. She said no.

He asked again fourteen minutes later, when her back was turned to fetch more sugar flowers. By the time she turned around, Jungkook had the piping bag in both hands, and had squeezed it experimentally.

A thick white rope of frosting shot directly across the counter and landed on Min-ji's forehead.

The bakery went silent.

Min-ji, blinking, wiped a dollop of frosting from her eyebrow and stared at it on her finger.

"...Your Majesty," she said very calmly, "did you just attack me with dessert?"

"It was reconnaissance," said Jungkook . "I was testing its range."

"Its range?"

"For future defense of the bakery."

"We don't need to defend the bakery from customers with a piping bag full of buttercream!"

"You would be surprised," said Jungkook , "how effective buttercream can be as a deterrent."

Min-ji, without a word, picked up a second piping bag from the tray, aimed, and returned fire.

It hit jungkook squarely in the chest.

The King of the Jeon dynasty, conqueror of three kingdoms, terror of neighboring armies, looked down at the white smear on his gray shirt with an expression of pure, wounded betrayal.

"You," he said, "have declared war upon your king."

"Bring it, Your Majesty."

Y/N, watching from behind the register with a fresh tray of cupcakes balanced on one arm, said, very quietly, "Please, for the love of God, not near the display case," and was, of course, immediately ignored.

By the time it was over, there was frosting on the ceiling. There was frosting on the framed photo of Y/N's mother, which jungkook gently wiped clean himself, with unexpected tenderness, the moment he noticed it. There was frosting in Min-ji's hair, on Jungkook’s collar, and, somehow, on the outside of the front window, which nobody could explain.

A customer walked in, took one look at the battlefield, and slowly backed back out.

"We're closed," Y/N called after her, not even looking up. "Royal decree."

"I did not decree that," said Jungkook , wiping frosting off his cheek.

"You decree everything else. Might as well decree this."

He considered that for a moment, then straightened, lifted his chin, and announced to the wrecked kitchen at large, "By order of the King, this bakery is closed for the remainder of the afternoon, due to enemy activity."

"There is no enemy," said Min-ji, still holding her piping bag like a loaded weapon.

"There is always an enemy," said Jungkook . "Today, it was you."

---

They cleaned the bakery together, all three of them, scrubbing frosting off the walls until the light outside turned gold and low. Jungkook, made to actually help this time under threat of losing tart privileges, wiped down the counters with the deep, personal offense of a man performing manual labor for the first time in his adult life.

"In my time," he muttered, dragging a cloth across the counter, "servants did this."

"In this time," said Y/N, "you do."

"It is beneath a king."

"So is throwing frosting at your employee, and yet."

He had no answer for that.

Back at the apartment that night, exhausted, smelling faintly of sugar and dish soap, they collapsed onto the couch together, an easy, comfortable distance between them that had grown smaller by the day without either of them quite noticing.

"Today," jungkook announced, staring at the ceiling, "was chaos."

"Today was your fault."

"Today," he continued, undeterred, "was the second-best day of my entire life."

Y/N turned her head. "What was the first?"

He didn't answer right away. He was looking at her with an expression she hadn't seen on him before, something quiet and unguarded, stripped of all the royal posturing.

"I have not decided yet," he said softly. "I believe it has not happened."

Y/N's heart did something complicated and dangerous, and she looked away first, back up at the ceiling, before he could see her face go warm.

Neither of them moved to close the gap between them. But neither of them moved away, either.