“it tastes perfect,” kyungsoo says, giving sehun a thumbs up.

sehun had attempted to make soybean paste stew but to his dismay, he lacked some of the ingredients and had to make do with substitutes. one of said missing ingredient was the soybean paste, but he thought he could make up for it using premium dark soy sauce. judging by kyungsoo’s reaction after tasting a small spoonful (it was barely even a ), sehun knew he’d been wrong.

he notices that kyungsoo has yet to take another bite and has instead, pushed the bowl away from him. he catches kyungsoo’s fingers slowly creeping to the glass of water sitting on the table and sehun snatches it out of the other’s grasp. “you know i can tell when you’re lying, right?”

“s-stop looking at my number!” kyungsoo splutters, frantically waving his hands above his head as though it could dissipate the figure that only sehun can see.

“hide all you want, it just went up by one.” sehun tuts disapprovingly and hands kyungsoo the glass. kyungsoo gratefully accepts and begins to down it in one shot. “you know you’re going to have to make it up to me later. ually.”

kyungsoo chokes on the water. setting the glass down, he thumps his chest with his fist, coughing and spluttering all over the apparently inedible stew. “look at what you made me do,” he croaks, trying to catch his breath.

“serves you right,” sehun mutters to himself, taking his leave and plodding out of the kitchen.

sehun has always been able to discern when people are lying or telling the truth. he was born with the ability to see a counter above a person’s head, a number that increased with every lie the person tells. when sehun was younger, he never quite understood why people would tell lies when their counter would just give them away. it wasn’t until he was ten, after his parents had said ‘i love you’ to one another, that sehun had learned that he was the only one who harnessed such a gift.

“why did you both lie to each other?” he’d asked, only to be met with confused looks, followed by knitted brows and folding of the arms.

“how dare you make such accusations? go to your room, now!”

his parents, once having praised him for his vivid imagination, labelled him a troublemaker and a liar. things were never quite the same after that, an unspoken cloud of resentment filled the oh family’s residence, slowly suffocating them all.

sehun learned to keep his secret to himself.

until he met kyungsoo.

at eighteen, sehun had observed that the average number of lies a person’s told by the time they reached university was about twenty thousand. he couldn’t quite believe his eyes after his first encounter with kyungsoo and his total lie count of a mere ninety-four. sehun had never met anyone their age who had a figure lower than ten thousand, let alone a hundred. he was certain there had to be some kind of glitch. it took all of five minutes for sehun to realise that there was no mistake, kyungsoo just always spoke his mind.

“you should eat more, you look ill,” kyungsoo had said, straight off the bat, void of any tact or sugar coating.

sehun had been intrigued by kyungsoo’s blunt manner, always candid without any exceptions. and it was, quick frankly, refreshing. it didn’t take long for him to fall in love with kyungsoo. for as long as sehun could remember, he was surrounded by nothing but lies and deception. kyungsoo was his beacon of hope in his otherwise cynical life.

sehun recalls the first time he saw kyungsoo’s counter increase. sehun had asked him for a hug and was instantly shot down. “no, i don’t want to,” he’d rejected outright, only his number told an entirely different story.

“you just lied, i can tell.”

surprisingly, sehun didn’t even need to play a game of ‘truth or lie’ to prove his ability, like he’d been expecting to—kyungsoo had just readily accepted it. it took sehun three weeks after his revelation to finally muster enough courage to officially ask kyungsoo out, and was more than overjoyed to hear the words “i would love to” accompanied by the static digit above kyungsoo’s head. as a sign of his dedication to his boyfriend, sehun had made a vow to himself, to never lie to kyungsoo, no matter the circumstance. a feat he’s proud to say he’s successfully upheld and will strive to continue.

they’ve been dating for just over half a year now, though it hasn’t been all smooth sailing. much like any other relationship, there’s been slight hiccups every now and then. however, unlike most spats, theirs tend to be a little more unique to say the least.

“you only like me for my number,” kyungsoo had accused after catching sehun’s eyes darting back and forth, from above his head to his eyes.

“but you are what makes your number,” sehun had reassured him, which was very much true. sehun loved everything about kyungsoo, not just his honesty, and that included how mindblowingly attractive he was. though, despite being more than just a number, sehun really did dislike it whenever kyungsoo told a lie.

“hey? are you still mad about earlier?” kyungsoo asks, taking a seat beside sehun on the couch, resting his head on his shoulder. “i’m sorry, i guess i just didn’t want to hurt your feelings is all.”

“i’m not mad. i just don’t like it when you lie to me.”

“i know, it makes my number less pretty.” kyungsoo slides an arm around sehun’s waist, squeezing him tightly.

sehun brings his arm around the other’s smaller frame and returns the hug. “that’s not why, soo hyung. you spent most of your life hardly ever telling fibs, even before meeting me, and i just don’t want that to change. i don’t want to be the reason for your change.”

“okay,” is all kyungsoo says and the room falls silent, save for the tick-tock of the clock perched on the mantlepiece. a minute or so passes when sehun feels kyungsoo pulling away from his hold. sehun’s about to protest, wanting to capture his boyfriend back into his arms, when kyungsoo cups his face in both his hands and gazes earnestly into his eyes. “i love you, sehunnie.”

it’s the first time kyungsoo’s spoken the three words but sehun doesn’t need to look at his counter to know he’s telling the truth.

a/n:
shiritori is a writing challenge wherein i take the last word/phrase/sentence of the previous writer's fic and use it as the start of my own.
p.s. sesoo is too cute, oh my word.