Chapter Text
It was Monday morning, Han Sooyoung was late to her meeting with her editor, and the stairs in her apartment building had apparently welcomed a new resident overnight. This was only a very short list of everything that was going wrong at the moment.
The giant, neon blue, extremely acidic slug that had apparently moved into the staircase sometime before four and eight in the morning slurped enthusiastically. Sooyoung shut the door and had a moment of genuine what the fuck happened to my life before deciding this was all rather too much to deal with before her first coffee.
That was another tick on the list of current wrongs: a severe lack of caffeination. So she could be excused, maybe, for conveniently forgetting that the elevator in her building happened to be fifty different ways of fucked up at any given moment and calling it up anyway.
The first sign that things were going to go wrong was probably that nothing extraordinary happened. The elevator came up normally. Sooyoung stepped inside it. She even managed to make it to the buttons and press the one for the ground floor without something exploding. That alone was probably a record for most time spent in the vicinity of that hell device.
As the doors began to close, she heard a loud bang—suspiciously like a door slamming. Sooyoung had a brief moment to muse wow, they’re in more of a hurry than I am, before realizing with great alarm, OH SHIT! THAT’S YOO SANGAH!
Indeed, Yoo Sangah was hurtling towards the rapidly closing elevator doors with a slightly frenetic air about her, holding a brown messenger bag to her side with one hand and a cup of coffee with the other. She made a complicated motion with her wrist as she sprinted—casting a spell, Sooyoung realized, too late—and the elevator shuddered. The doors, obligingly, clunked and froze.
“Shit,” Sooyoung swore. She rubbed her palms together—tried to think of her own spell to cast, but came up short so she settled frantically pressing the button to close the goddamned door as fast as she physically could.
No fucking way she could survive Yoo Sangah’s presence before her first coffee. She’d die first, probably. The elevator rattled again and the doors grudgingly began to close again. She worked in a quick CLOSE FUCKING FASTER spell—something fast and messy she came up with on the spot—and it absolutely did not work at all which was both delightfully awful and made her seriously consider jumping out of her window again instead.
Fortunately for the integrity of Sooyoung’s bone structure and less than fortunately for her ongoing sanity, Sangah slipped into the elevator safely and without a hair out of place before Sooyoung could do anything. The doors shut with a horrible finality behind her.
“Good morning, Sooyoung-ssi,” Sangah said blandly. She looked unfairly good as usual despite her incredibly vanilla office clothes, which seemed like a worrisome observation for Sooyoung’s continuing mental health.
“It was going better before we met,” Sooyoung said with strained cheer. Fucking bastard. Sangah didn’t even have the manners to look out of breath after that sprinting session. “This is the first time I’ve seen you this hurried since I moved in, Sangah-ssi. Are you dying?”
“Sometimes you make me wish I was,” Sangah said as nicely as one could manage with those words in one’s mouth. “But no. I just overslept. Thank you for your concern.”
“Sometimes you make me wish you were too,” Sooyoung muttered, which Sangah politely pretended she didn’t hear. Louder, she said, “If you’re on time every morning, then you must be very dedicated to your work.” Class traitor, she thought privately. What the fuck was a person like Yoo Sangah even doing, living in this apartment building of all places?
Before Sangah got the chance to answer, though, the elevator shuddered and did not stop shuddering. It shivered and jolted and shook and then—
—The LED strip lights exploded, showering sparks and utter darkness over the both of them.
Sooyoung whirled on her heel to where she’d last seen Sangah. “ What did you do?”
“What did you do?” came Sangah’s biting reply. “Really, Sooyoung-ssi, I’m hardly responsible for every evil that happens to you.”
“This fucking elevator,” Sooyoung hissed. She snapped experimentally a few times, tried to cast a light spell or something, but nothing happened. Of all times for magic to get lazy… “Are you serious? This is—” and the thought there is no way this could get any fucking worse had barely crossed her mind before the elevator dropped, hurtling down at speeds that were definitely against building regulation codes.
“Oh dear,” Sangah said mildly, though her voice was slightly strangled by the endless drop. “I think we’ve passed the ground floor.”
Sooyoung, equally as intelligently: “AHHhhhHHHHHH.”
In her defense, she felt like she was going to fucking die at the time. She could hardly be coherent about it like some people.
Then, without any preamble, the elevator crashed to an abrupt and unconcerned stop, which disrupted both their balance and sent them colliding into each other in a heap of limbs.
Sooyoung screamed. Sangah screamed. Her cup of coffee began to fall and then caught itself mid air, gently levitating above them as the spilled coffee poured itself back in.
The lights flickered cheerfully back on, disregarding the fact that the bulbs had exploded just minutes prior, and the doors opened with a pleasant ding onto the ground floor lobby of their apartment building .
“This is the worst,” Sangah snarled, which was maybe also incredibly attractive—not that Sooyoung was attracted to it or her in any capacity!—and made to stand. Sooyoung followed suit not because she thought Sangah was right, but because she thought of the idea first and just happened to accidentally do it after Sangah.
Sangah reached over and plucked her coffee from the air, clearly attempting to be collected about the whole situation. Without saying another word, she turned sharply on her heel, glared at Sooyoung, and began to walk out of the elevator.
Except she couldn’t. Because despite Sooyoung’s repeated idea that things couldn’t get any worse—a sentiment she was beginning to regret believing in so frequently in such a short timespan because she’d already known the universe liked to fuck her over at any opportunity—it had, against all odds, gotten worse again.
Around Sooyoung’s right wrist, a red thread waved cheerfully in the nonexistent wind in a few secure loops around her arm. The end of it extended out a few inches before it ended in another loop tied around Sangah’s left wrist.
Sooyoung was going to hunt karma down and strangle that asshole. Right after she was done strangling herself. She should have let Yoo Sangah murder her with her killer looks when she first saw her in the elevator that morning. She should have just jumped out of the fucking window. It would be worth losing the last laugh if it meant she was dead and not here.
Sangah pulled at it. Sooyoung also pulled at it. It didn’t break.
“Well,” Sangah said, and that slightly strangled tone was back even though they weren’t hurtling towards certain death at two hundred miles per hour this time. It was almost romantic, Sooyoung thought hysterically. “Do you mind getting up so we can leave the elevator?”
Sooyoung got up. They left the elevator practically hand in hand. Sooyoung considered dying again.
“Okay,” Sangah said once they were in the safety of the lobby, taking in a deep breath. She looked like she wanted to explode on the spot. “I’m calling in sick to work. I don’t think we’re going anywhere today. You should cancel your plans too.”
“I’m not stupid,” Sooyoung said, irritated. At least it would be a good excuse to skip meeting her editor. “I’ll go first. Keep quiet.”
They made their respective calls. It went surprisingly smoothly, all things considered.
“Okay,” Sangah said, once she’d gotten off the phone with her boss. “Let’s get this off.”
“That is the plan,” Sooyoung said. She looked at Sangah expectantly, waiting for her to use her famous wit to solve the problem.
Sangah looked back at her blandly and took a long sip from her coffee. If she was coming up with a groundbreaking method of un-elevatoring their morning, she didn’t seem like it.
Sooyoung sighed. “I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this,” she said grudgingly and god if just the thought of it didn’t make her want to leave this plane of existence, but hospital notwithstanding it was probably their best shot. She took her phone out again and scrolled through her contacts with a deep sense of foreboding. “I’ll call a friend. He knows a lot about this.”
Sangah regarded her curiously. “A specialist?”
“A fucking nerd, that’s all,” Sooyoung muttered. She located Kim Dokja’s number in her contacts and dialed it. This can’t get any worse, her ass. She’d hit rock bottom and now she was starting to dig.
—
When Dokja opened his front door, the first thing he did, against Sooyoung’s express wishes, was greet Sangah very cordially and politely. The second thing he did was laugh at Sooyoung for ten minutes straight.
“You are a freak and an incel,” Sooyoung snapped, which only set him off again. “If you ever find love, it will be a marvel of the universe.”
“What a pleasant thing to say to your best friend in the whole world,” Dokja said, stepping aside to allow them into his apartment.
“You’ve said worse,” Sooyoung grumbled in reply, stalking to his couch with a reluctant Sangah in tow. It felt even lumpier and more uncomfortable than the last time she’d sat on it a week ago, which was an achievement. “Every time I come here your furniture gets less and less useable.”
“Your apartment stopped being useable three years ago,” Dokja said, which was rude and mostly not true. Sooyoung’s apartment was perfectly liveable. Better than perfect, even. He just had no taste. “Anyway, you’re good at magic aren’t you? Just fix it.”
Sooyoung scoffed. “I’m not your personal handyman, Kim Dokja. Pay me if you want a luxury couch.”
“We are here for his help,” Sangah said. She was perched at the edge of the couch and didn’t seem any happier about the state of it than Sooyoung, who knew from personal experience that that was exactly where a spring poked through the ratty fabric to gnaw at her pants.
Still, despite the discomfort, she seemed to be very carefully and attentively observing the situation: Dokja, in his crumpled white dress shirt and creased slacks by the doorway, his tiny two-room apartment; Sooyoung, on his stupid uncomfortable couch, calling him a bitch. If she found anything strange about the picture, she said nothing about it.
“We can call it a trade,” she concluded. “Dokja-ssi’s expertise for a new couch.”
“That’s very rationale,” Dokja said, nodding just a little too smugly for comfort. Sooyoung briefly considered blowing up his water pipes, but decided not to. Honestly, she was kind of saint for her self control. “How about it, Han Sooyoung?”
“You’re good at magic too,” Sooyoung said, lying through her teeth. “Between us, who studied Magic Theory in university?”
“Technically, we both did,” Dokja smiled.
“Who graduated with a degree in Theory?”
Dokja rolled his eyes and crossed the room to the kitchenette in the corner. “I did. You could have too, easily, if you hadn’t changed fields. Tea?”
“No,” Sooyoung said flatly. “I hate your stupid goddamned tea. And Theory is so bullshit, I wouldn’t have survived another three and a half years of it sane.”
“Joonghyuk does say it explains a lot about me,” Dokja said cheerfully. Despite Sooyoung’s firm refusal, he filled three cups with water and turned them to tea with a snap of his fingers. He handed a cup to Sangah and the other to Sooyoung, who refused to accept it.
“Don’t drink that,” she hurriedly told Sangah, temporarily forgetting their rivalry while warding off Dokja’s persistent attempts to pour the tea into her lap with a cleverly timed spell combination. Then, remembering: “Never mind, I’m so tired I don’t know what I’m saying, haha! Drink it! It’s delicious. Best tea I’ve ever had.”
She was pretty sure Dokja put a dash of rat poison in there for flavor along with a whole host of nasty ingredients, much to Yoo Joonghyuk’s endless chagrin. But that was neither here nor there.
For some reason, Sangah didn’t look entirely convinced. She set the tea cup into the air and floated it off back to Dokja’s sink warily. Such a shame, really. With a final flick of her wrist, Sooyoung vanished the three cups entirely.
“I better not find those in my sock drawer again,” Dokja said, looking utterly bemused by the whole situation.
“You won’t,” Sooyoung said, resisting the urge to stick out her tongue because she was mature, goddamnit. They’d be crammed in his pants pockets as soon as he left his apartment, which was arguably a worse place to find them. “But going back to the point of this visit—”
Dokja looked pointedly over at his couch. Self control, Sooyoung thought, grinding her teeth with some vigor. You are a saint. And: If I have to continue sitting next to Yoo Sangah for the rest of my life I might explode.
“I probably can’t,” she said, determined to at least drag her feet about it. “You know how companies are these day—I bet there’s a charm woven into the upholstery that would prevent me from transforming it.”
“It’s very old,” Dokja offered. He seemed similarly determined to get a new couch out of the deal. “They didn’t start doing that until a few years ago, you know.”
Ugh. Whatever. Sooyoung, not willing to argue it any further, turned his couch into a nice leather one that reclined. Dokja sat down next to her and stretched out in an undeniably incel way. Sooyoung informed him of such accordingly.
“I’m the Theory graduate,” Dokja said loftily in response, as if he had ever enjoyed a single day at university or found any pleasure in being a third-rate academic. Asshole.
“Just tell me what the problem is already,” Sooyoung snapped. A horrible inkling of an idea had just trickled into her brain and was wreaking unimaginable havoc on her psyche. If she and Sangah…
She looked again at the thread connecting them. Her wrist itched, which was probably the most comfortable part of this whole realization. Because nothing about it was comfortable, not because she enjoyed the physical reminder of being connected to Yoo Sangah, who was not attractive.
Dokja, apparently unaware of her internal struggle—not that she was struggling with anything!—motioned her to speak. “Since you’re too good for Theory, why don’t you explain what the problem is?”
“No,” Sooyoung said loathingly. She kicked him hard in the shins. At her side, Sangah transformed a stifled laugh into a cough.
“Dokja-ssi,” she began, clearly torn between enjoying the scene and feeling impatient for answers.
“Look what you’ve done to this poor woman,” Dokja lamented. “Making her wait for the answers. Go on, Han Sooyoung. Didn’t you tell me you were a genius two weeks ago?”
“Your mom told me I was a genius in bed last night,” Han Sooyoung muttered, but resolved to speak anyway. Theory wasn’t that hard anyway, she decided. She’d changed majors because it was so easy it was getting boring and anyway, she wasn’t obsessed with it like some freaks. Louder, to Yoo Sangah, she said, “We’re connected.”
“Thank you for the tip,” Sangah said dryly and only with most of the loathing that had been present earlier in the morning. Sooyoung counted it as a win. “I hadn’t noticed.”
“Shut up.” Sooyoung glared at her, reaching a hand back to silence Dokja before he could say anything. She took a breath, exhaling with some force. Christ, if she was right she might actually need to blow something up. Like Kim Dokja’s apartment.
Wow. These things really did work out.
“My theory is that bond is a metaphor,” she said, pretending she wasn’t having those thoughts so as not to alert Kim Dokja, who was probably a mind reader.
Sangah, because she was too fucking smart for her own goddamned good— why were all the people around Sooyoung some sort of tortured genius —understood immediately. “It doesn’t actually exist then,” she said. “Is that right? It’s a physical manifestation of something…magical?”
“Close,” Dokja said, having struggled for a few minutes to remove Sooyoung’s silencing spell and somehow succeeded. “It’s a lot more hamfisted than that.”
“Ah, so a lot like Sooyoung-ssi’s novels,” Sangah nodded. Sooyoung made a noise of protest in her throat.
“You just don’t understand the hidden complexity of it,” Sooyoung retorted sharply. She crossed her legs and tried to cross her arms, dragging a smugly satisfied Yoo Sangah’s limp hand—it was surprisingly warm and soft (not that Sooyoung noticed or cared)—halfway under her folded arms before remembering their…situation. “They’re all works of art. Shut up Kim Dokja.”
Kim Dokja, wisely, shut up before he could say anything in response to that. Instead, he continued, “In any case, it’ll probably disappear in…two weeks?” He considered this for a moment before nodding, “Yeah. Two weeks or so.”
“Hold on,” Sangah said. “What is it a metaphor for?”
Sooyoung made a face, unwilling to admit that she didn’t have the foggiest fucking clue. “Well—”
“Nothing in particular,” Dokja said, cutting her off. “Technically—”
“Don’t interrupt me,” Sooyoung said, interrupting him. “Hey, do you hate women or something? Are you a misogynist?”
Dokja ignored her, which was another point to the Kim Dokja Is A Secret Misogynist team. “The best way to visualize this is actually kind of an outdated model—I wrote my thesis on this, actually, it’s very interesting—”
At this, realization dawned on Sooyoung. It broke over her head like God was cracking an egg on her skull, drenching her brain completely and absolutely in cold goop. It was also, as one might imagine, not an incredibly pleasant sensation in any way.
“You can’t be serious,” she said.
He smiled at her. She briefly considered swinging a fist at his suddenly extraordinarily punchable face.
No. There was no way.
“Yoo Sangah,” Dokja said kindly, “do you believe in the concept of souls?”
Sangah glanced nervously at Sooyoung, which was a first. Sooyoung realized with a start that Sangah was capable of not scowling, kind of like a normal human being. Her face was, as ever, unfairly beautiful though, which diminished the awestruck effect a bit.
Good God, though. Sooyoung didn’t think she could survive another horrifying revelation in the next twenty-four hours. It might kill her from shock.
“I like to think they exist,” Sangah answered, shaking Sooyoung out of her stupor. “But I think I read a news article the other day—there was a theory a few years ago, wasn’t there? That they don’t?”
“I guess whether they do or not doesn’t really matter,” Dokja said thoughtfully. “ I don’t believe they’re an accurate model but in any case, I think it’s the most effective concept to explain this. You and Sooyoung—” he gestured broadly here at the two of them, “are—”
“We’re soulmates,” Sooyoung interrupted flatly, feeling a lot like she wanted the earth to swallow her alive. Of all people, of course she had to have a soulmate stint with fucking Yoo Sangah.
“For the time being,” Dokja agreed, evidently pleased with both himself and Sooyoung for remembering his favorite topic of discussion. “Two weeks. Ish.”
Sangah closed her eyes. Her fingers flexed. Sooyoung figured that she was probably speedrunning the seven stages of grief.
“Right,” she said, opening her eyes. She got up slowly and methodically and looking a little bit like she was considering a murder, though of which of them Sooyoung couldn’t tell. It would actually be kind of hot, if Sooyoung found her attractive. Which she didn’t. “So we’re soulmates.”
Sangah’s abject misery lifted Sooyoung’s mood considerably. She waved with her free hand. “Hello!”
Somehow, this didn’t help Sangah’s murderous look.
—
Because Sangah was tired of being awake and Sooyoung was tired of being alive, their next stop was the coffee shop around the corner from Dokja’s apartment.
“You can’t seriously want to drink that,” Sooyoung said, disgusted. Sangah looked her right in the eyes as she took a long, deep drink of her venti cup filled to the brim with espresso shots.
Oh my god, Sooyoung thought. I’m going to be tied to a corpse for the next two weeks. And Sangah had already finished a full cup of coffee earlier too.
Seriously, Sooyoung had caffeine problems but nowhere near this kind of—Jesus fucking Christ, just thinking about it sent every bone in her body twitching in alarm. She sipped at her own iced coffee to quell the feeling.
“I,” Sangah said, setting her coffee down, “plan to solve this problem by doing my best to ascend to the next plane.”
Sooyoung privately thought it actually might be a pretty good plan, but refrained from saying so. Yoo Sangah hardly needed a bigger head than she already had.
Instead, she tapped the table and, like the cool, logical, and rational person she was, said, “Let’s be cool, logical, and rational about this.”
Sangah said, dryly, “As opposed to…?”
“Shut up,” Sooyoung said, already feeling less logical and more irritated by the whole situation. She pointed the end of a coffee stirrer she’d picked up for the express purpose of being dramatic at Yoo Sangah. “You have work tomorrow,” she said.
“Unfortunately,” Sangah said, with deep loathing.
“I,” Sooyoung said magnanimously, “have bullied my editor into hopefully never speaking to me again. Don’t give me that look—I know you think my novels could use more editing, but I make more than you, so—”
“How would you know—”
“I’ve stolen your tax returns, obviously. What I was going to say is that—”
“Hold on,” Sangah objected, “you—first of all, that’s probably a crime—”
“Well,” Sooyoung cut her off, waggling her wrist in obvious triumph, “how fortunate that we’re physically attached to each other and my going to prison means you’re coming along with me!”
Sangah closes her eyes and breathes deeply in through her nose.
“Instead of putting myself in a coma,” she said finally, “I’m going to kill you instead.”
“You and everyone else on this planet,” Sooyoung said, and raised her cup in a one-sided toast. The ice clinked against itself and she took a long drink, suddenly cheered by the events of the morning. “How’s your apartment, Sangah-ssi? If we’re staying together for two weeks, we should pick the most comfortable one.”
“Better than yours,” Sangah said immediately.
“You haven’t even seen the inside of mine.”
“I can infer,” said Sangah. “Your place is probably just as messy as your personality. I bet you survive off instant ramen.”
“It’s a perfectly good meal,” Sooyoung protested immediately. “It’s fast, it’s easy, it’s nutritious—”
“How is it at all nutritious,” Sangah asked incredulously and seemed really, truly amazed by the words that were coming out of Sooyoung’s mouth.
“I add an egg sometimes,” Sooyoung muttered. Really, it seemed like a bit of an overreaction on Sangah’s part. Sometimes, when she was feeling particularly healthy, she even halved the powder she put in. MSG was bad or something, right?
“When was the last time you had a vegetable?”
Sooyoung pointedly refused to say anything. She leaned back into the chair and purposefully redirected the direction of the conversation. “Are you saying you can cook?”
“Well enough,” Sangah said, like the pompous asshole she was. God, she couldn’t even be untalented at cooking? “We’ll have to go grocery shopping soon though. I don’t have enough to cook a week’s worth of meals for two.”
“No one asked,” Sooyoung said snidely, which was maybe a little unwarranted considering Sangah was offering to cook her real food, but she figured the morning was going badly enough that it was understandable.
Sangah lifted a perfect eyebrow. “You can go back to eating ramen if you want, then.”
“Maybe I will,” Sooyoung harrumphed, if only to be contrary. “I bet your apartment doesn’t have any personality, does it? I think I would shrivel up and die in there.”
“Good,” Sangah said, and took another sip of her awful drink. God, Sooyoung hated her. “And for the record, it does have personality,” she added. “But unlike Sooyoung-ssi, I don’t have any intention of making my living space a toxic wasteland.”
“It’s not toxic if I’m alive,” Sooyoung objected. Sangha gave her a look which—okay, fine, that was fair. Possibly Sooyoung was the most toxic installation in her own wasteland.
She sighed and tapped absent-mindedly at the table. She could still be an adult about this. “Look, if you’re not willing to compromise—”
“I’m not.”
“And I’m not willing to compromise, then there can only be one way to settle this,” Sooyoung said. She opened her wallet and produced a ₩10 coin, setting it on the table between them. “Heads or tails, Sangah-ssi?”
Sangah picked up the coin, examining it suspiciously. “There’s no trick?”
“I am many things,” Sooyoung said, affronted, “but I am not a cheater.”
Of course, she was lying. But Sangah didn’t need to know that. Anyway, this particular coin wasn’t weighted simply because Sooyoung had forgotten her weighted coins at home.
“Anyway,” she continued when Sangah continued to scrutinize her, “I’m letting you pick first, aren’t I? If I were cheating, then I’d choose before you had the chance to.” Don’t be stupid, she didn’t say. Sooyoung is being an adult about this, after all.
“Fine,” Sangah said in clipped tones. “If it lands heads, we’ll stay in my apartment. If it lands tails, I’ll die in yours.”
“You have so much faith in my will to live either way,” Sooyoung said sweetly and rested her chin in her hand. “Go on.”
Sangah flipped the coin with her free hand. It spun about on the table for thirty-ish seconds, rattling about in a loud, extremely peace-disturbing manner that no doubt left their neighbors displeased, before settling.
“Tails,” Sooyoung said, peering over at it. “The toxic wasteland, then.”
“Lovely,” Sangah replied, and only half a grimace graced her gorgeous features which meant she was only ten times more displeased than usual.
“Hardly as lovely as that expression, dear,” Sooyoung mocked. “Ready to go home?”
“I don’t believe I will ever be,” Sangah said pleasantly, “but I think I am ready to die now. If you will—” and she gestured for Sooyoung to lead through the narrow aisle of tables to the exit of the cafe.
“Anything for you,” Sooyoung said. She popped off the plastic lid of her coffee cup and drained the last dregs of the drink before standing. As they passed by the trash cans, she dropped her own cup in the bin before plucking Sangah’s drink out of her hand and chucking that in the trash as well.
“That was expensive,” Sangah said without any inflection.
“You’re expensive to my continuing mental health,” Sooyoung informed her. Sangah, to her credit, continued gamely on without saying anything else. The bell above the door jingled as they exited the cafe.
—
Han Sooyoung’s apartment wasn’t that much of a wasteland—which wasn’t to say that it wasn’t hazardous in several different, probably life threatening ways, but rather that it was a pleasant kind of hazardous, probably life-threatening place to be.
“Watch the wires,” she said as they entered, stepping delicately over a tangle of cords (she’d long forgotten what each was for—her lamp, maybe? And her laptop charger?) that served as her entrance mat, and toeing off her shoes cheerfully. Ah, home sweet home.
Sangah was having significantly more trouble with her balance, likely because of the overnight bag she’d stopped by her apartment to pack before they’d arrived. Sooyoung had been right in the cafe—Sangah’s place had been neat and clean and utterly devoid of personality. How terrifically boring. She’d spent twenty minutes staring at the off-white walls while Sangah folded clothing into her bag.
Now Sooyoung’s apartment, on the other hand, kept her on her toes. It was a three-part Olympic obstacle course, a work of living art, and occasionally dangerous enough to make her see God. An adventure in every—
“Don’t go over there,” she hurried to say, pulling Sangah back from the shoe cabinet with a jerk of her wrist. “Seriously, I think—well I spilled some juice there once and I think it’s starting to develop sentience—”
“What.”
“It’s interesting,” Sooyoung said defensively. “Look, they’ve started to form factions and I think the High Church of Orange Juice Pulp—you know what, I don’t have to explain myself to you.”
“I don’t think I would understand even if you did,” Sangah said. She gave up on trying to make it through the narrow, lopsided path of cardboard boxes with her bag and instead levitated it over their heads with a flick of her wrist, careful to steer clear of the unidentified stain on the ceiling. “Are you sure—”
“Don’t be dramatic,” Sooyoung said. “It won’t kill you. Anyway, I won the coin flip didn’t I?” She turned and arched an eyebrow, daring Sangah to challenge the sanctity of the coin’s judgment.
Sangah, wisely, gave up that particular venture. In return, Sooyoung decided to be generous and ignore the way she vanished a few clumps of boxes in order to walk more easily. Despite all evidence to the contrary, she was capable of being a good host. Sometimes.
“You can put your bag here,” Sooyoung said, gesturing to the depths of her bedroom. “I think—”
Halfway through the motion, the realization that she would be sharing a bed with Yoo Sangah for the next two weeks smashed her over her head like an ill-placed grand piano.
“—ah,” she said. Compartmentalize, compartmentalize. This was not something she wanted to be thinking about right now.
“Ah?” echoed Sangah.
“Nothing,” Sooyoung said, with as much grace as she could muster while desperately avoiding Yoo Sangah’s eyes. “Just remembered something. Put your bag down here. Should we get dinner?”
“It’s only eleven in the morning,” Sangah said. Of fucking course she knew what time it was. Jesus Christ on a broomstick, she was so— ugh, Sooyoung wasn’t going to entertain those thoughts. Not worth the effort.
“Lunch, then.” Sooyoung said. “I’m starving, personally. Mm. So hungry. Takeout?”
“I’m afraid for the state of your apartment if you accumulate any more trash,” Sangah said.
“We can order lunch and make dinner,” Sooyoung said with a wave of her hand, accidentally turning her sofa into a giant stuffed whale with the motion. Shit. Whatever, same thing. “And clean between meals.”
Sangah squinted at her. “Didn’t you say that the mess gave your apartment character?”
“Ha ha,” said Sooyoung. “Did I? Well, you know, I’m a writer. I have enough characters.” When Sangah didn’t say anything, she added, weakly: “Ha. Am I right?”
Thankfully, Sangah didn’t press her on her obvious mental afflictions. “Your characters are all garbage anyway,” she said. “I guess it makes sense.”
Sooyoung tried to come up with an adequate comeback and failed spectacularly. She tried, miserably, to change the whale back into a sofa and only succeeded in changing its color to the truly awful shade of brownish-green her couch used to be.
They had takeout for lunch—hibachi fried rice from the place Sooyoung liked across the street, with heaps of grease—which went surprisingly well, all things considered. Afterwards, Sangah half-heartedly tried spelling the trash can in the kitchen into becoming a convenient, self-contained black hole to throw trash in with little success while Sooyoung sat next to her and tried to touch as little of her as possible while her hand was being puppeted around.
“It’s no use,” Sangah said after a time, which Sooyoung knew was really code for this isn’t my specialty and to be honest I have no idea what I’m doing. She pushed the trash can towards Sooyoung with the side of her foot, offering her a try.
Well, Sooyoung had studied this kind of stuff in college before she’d switched tracks to focus on writing. That was how she and Dokja had met—their nerd magic theory classes. Neither of them had enjoyed the physics of it, but it was some interesting stuff. As far as she knew, Sangah had only taken the more practical, mandatory courses.
Sooyoung rubbed her hands together and prepared a spell. She was a genius! She was a prodigy! Her professors had begged her to stay in the track and she’d had to tearfully pry them out of her life to follow her dreams of writing. Something as simple as a localized black hole was practically child’s play for her.
She gathered magic at her fingertips, making the initial motions—a twist of her wrist to warm it up so shaping was easier, a quick check for—
Sangah’s hand brushed her thigh. Sooyoung promptly forgot everything she had ever learned for no apparent reason.
When she looked back up, the trash can had crumbled into a pile of sparkling rainbow glitter. For no reason. Sangah stared at the mess on the floor, then looked back at Sooyoung.
“Um,” Sooyoung said. Briefly, she wondered what the everloving fuck was wrong with her, then decided it was probably nothing. Just magic, acting up as usual, and nothing to do with her. “Whoops. Guess it’s just not my day!”
If Sangah noticed her voice climb a few dozen octaves, she at least had the grace not to mention it. Sooyoung briefly pondered that Sangah had, apparently been doing that a lot in the past few hours: either being utterly oblivious to the person she was soulbonded to for two weeks, or wisely ignoring it.
Please. Please God let it be the former. Just the thought of the second option made Sooyoung want to sink into the core of the Earth and get compressed by the pressure of the dirt like one of those goddamned hydraulic press YouTube channels.
“Right,” Sangah said, not acknowledging Sooyoung’s brain accelerating on the highway of mental breakdowns and, apparently, doing her level best to ignore the whole mess of glitter on the floor, “I guess we’ll have to do this the boring way.”
“You can’t seriously— ow, stop that—” Sooyoung pulled her wrist back irritatedly as Sangah made a valiant attempt to roll up her right shirt sleeve. “Ugh. This is impossible!”
“You’re impossible,” Sangah snarked back, which wasn’t her best effort, but Sooyoung figured she could let it slide. There were only so many original and exciting insults they could cycle through before the two weeks were up.
Cleaning, as it turned out, was just as much of a nightmare as Sooyoung had anticipated. The less said about that, the better.
But by the time dinner time rolled around, the house was looking—not clean, but almost nearly halfway to habitable again. It helped that the cramped pathways had been opened enough that they could walk side by side, instead of dragging each other along through.
A loss of character, to be sure, but it was very nearly… pleasant, not to keep breathing the toxic fumes of last month’s snack haul. Anyway, it was more serviceable for the two of them, which Sooyoung grudgingly considered a win.
Much to both their surprise, Sooyoung actually had food in her fridge including, but certainly not limited to: a single red onion stolen from Yoo Joonghyuk’s pocket a week ago; not one, but two and a half bowls of instant rice; and a mostly-empty bottle of orange soda she’d received from Kim Dokja as part of their Secret Santa gift exchange two months ago.
On the whole, Sangah seemed a lot more bothered by this than Sooyoung. She closed the fridge door and turned.
“Look,” she said, “if this is going to work—don’t make that face, you know we have to make it work—I’m not going to be your mom.”
“Obviously?” Sooyoung said, confused as to where this line of conversation was going. Then, realizing that since arriving at her apartment, Sangah had done nothing but clean up after her, hastened to say: “Oh, never mind, I get it. You don’t have to explain.”
She twisted the thread around her wrist, wondering how much she should say, before continuing, “I didn’t mean to give off the impression that I expected that kind of thing from you. This is just how I normally live, you know? I didn’t consider that you—” and she gestured to the living room and the kitchen, and the whole mess of her apartment that came in sharp contrast with Sangah’s prim orderliness. “I really am sorry if you thought that I wanted you to—be my personal maid, or something. That wasn’t my intention at all.”
Sangah’s shoulders relaxed a fraction. “Good,” she said. “Good. Thank you.”
“There’s nothing to thank about it,” Sooyoung said, already feeling a little embarrassed by the whole conversation. And then, before her brain could catch up to her, she plowed on, “I just thought that because we’re, you know—literally connected to each other—I should let you do whatever would make you a little more comfortable. There’s no reason to be completely miserable for the next two weeks, you know?”
“I thought miserable was your default emotion,” Sangah said, lifting an eyebrow. The corner of her mouth quirked slightly and Sooyoung had the vast and unfortunate realization that this might be the first genuine smile—beginning of a smile, anyway—that she’d seen on Sangah up close , and it made Sooyoung’s stomach swoop pleasantly like her organs had chosen that exact moment to suspend gravity.
Realizing that Sangah had said something, she scrambled to respond with something appropriately biting. “And I thought—” she began, and realized that she actually had no thoughts in her brain whatsoever.
To her credit, it wasn’t the first time she’d realized she was in trouble. But it was definitely the most emphatic.
—
In the end, they ended up crossing the hall again to cook in Sangah’s apartment. Contrary to popular belief, Sooyoung did know how to cook a few dishes and some of those dishes were even edible on occasion, and so set about preparing them with all the grace of someone that could only use one hand and the tact of someone who was beginning to realize that they were in far too deep over their head.
They prepped the food in relative silence, having compromised on a lofi jazz playlist as background music. Sooyoung directed a few kitchen knives the way someone who has never heard music in their life would conduct an orchestra and Sangah surprisingly elected to remain quiet on the entire matter, only objecting when a blade flew too close to any part of her.
“It’s not that I don’t trust your control,” she said, waving a green onion around emphatically, “it’s that I don’t trust you.”
“That’s the sweetest thing you’ve said to me in my entire life,” Sooyoung said, and was horrified to discover she was actually smiling. Possibly she was dying. Possibly she’d crossed into an alternate reality where Han Sooyoung smiled at Yoo Sangah because she didn’t hate her. Probably both.
Seriously. It had been what—ten hours since they’d been joined together? If this was how the first day went, Sooyoung wasn’t sure she could survive two weeks.
“I do try,” Sangah replied, oblivious to the beginning of Sooyoung’s internal meltdown. She cracked two eggs with one hand into a bowl and tried halfheartedly to beat them with a pair of chopsticks before giving up and assigning the job to magical means instead. “You get so much more pleasant once you’ve given up, you know.”
“Well, I—” Sooyoung spluttered indignantly. “I haven’t given up. I just—I’m—you—shut up. You’re so stupid.”
“That’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me,” Sangah said with a saccharine smile, clearly only humoring her. Christ, Sooyoung hated her stupid smile.
“I haven’t given up,” Sooyoung muttered. Tugging Sangah down the counter, she filled a pot with water and set it on the stove to boil. “I’m just taking a break to make tomorrow feel extra horrible for you. That’s all.”
Sangah hummed indulgently and tugged her the other way to finish slicing up her green onions, sending Sooyoung stumbling for a few steps before she caught up. In the background, the jazz faded out into an ad for toothpaste, followed by an ad for an ad–free service, followed by more soft jazz.
“Seriously though,” Sangah said, picking up a conversation they’d begun a few hours ago while cleaning Sooyoung’s apartment, “You can’t actually enjoy—”
“It’s a good series,” Sooyoung interrupted, already anticipating the argument. “Just because—stop making that face, you uncultured fool—just because it’s called—”
“Right, I Became the SSS-Ranked Demon Dragon King of Hell and Took My Bloody Revenge By Killing All My Enemies Brutally,” Sangah recited dutifully, smirking (since when could Yoo Sangah smirk and why was even that lethal???????). “About—remind me again what it’s about?”
“You know what it’s about,” Sooyoung grumbled. “It’s all in the title anyway. I’ll have you know the characterization is fantastic despite some…regrettable authorial choices.”
“The characterization of the SSS-Ranked Dragon Demon King of Hell,” Sangah said dryly which, okay, fair, but she didn’t have to be so rude about it.
“The Demon Dragon, actually,” Sooyoung said snottily just because she could. “The Dragon Demon doesn’t show up until chapter 447, and even then it’s only because he’s kidnapped the Dragon Demon’s love interest—”
“And remind me what kind of creature the Dragon Demon’s love interest is,” Sangah said, with the sly smile that meant she knew she had won this battle.
“...” said Sooyoung, knowing that it was a bunny-hybrid mermaid princess fairy that was probably born from a Mr. and Mrs. Misogyny. She did specify there were several bad authorial choices. It was part of what made the novel so compelling, actually, much like the story of her life.
She settled for saying, “It’s not like you’ve read it anyway, so how do you know it’s bad?”
Sangah raised an eyebrow and Sooyoung abruptly remembered the horribly edgy cover, with all its hamfisted symbolism and like, a lot of blood. Seriously. So much blood.
“Okay, well,” Sooyoung said, irritated that she had to concede the point, “don’t judge a book by its cover and all that. Didn’t they teach you that in grade school?”
With a last downturn of her wrist, she finished chopping up an onion and began to send the knife flying into the dishwasher. Three things happened then in very quick succession.
First: Sooyoung began to move to set a new pan on the stove, expecting Sangah to feel the tug of the string and follow accordingly.
Second: Sangah lifted her hand to flick the knife away from whizzing past her face. Her left hand. The one tied to Sooyoung.
Third: Due to the extraneous movement, Sangah miscast. For whatever reason—and Sooyoung could only imagine that the reason was the magic in the building hating the two of them with a passion— the floor then proceeded to freeze completely over with ice.
The result: Sooyoung crashed into the floor, pulling Sangah down on top of her. The knife crashed into the sink basin. On the stove, the pot began to cheerfully boil over.
“Ow,” Sooyoung said, to avoid the dawning realization that Yoo Sangah was on top of her.
“Ow?” Sangah repeated incredulously. She tried in vain to get up but only succeeded in rolling the two of them a few feet to the right as the string snagged on a decorative button on Sooyoung’s sweater, twisting herself awkwardly over her stomach. “If anything— ow, don’t do that, your knees are so—”
“My knees are fine,” Sooyoung said, affronted, but stopped trying to get up herself in favor of awkwardly untangling the string from the button with one hand. “Stop the pot from boiling or so help me God—”
“God wouldn’t help you,” Sangah said, patting her cheek briefly with her free hand before turning the stove off with a quick spell.
Sooyoung felt heat rise to her face at the touch. Christ, Sangah was warm. It was nice except it wasn’t because—and she struggled fruitlessly for a minute to try and come up with a reason she shouldn’t enjoy it.
Anyway. There was definitely a reason. It was somewhere and she knew it. Sooyoung was just choosing not to think too hard about it. She added this to the ever-expanding list of reasons Sangah was unforgivably annoying.
“Crawl over here,” Sooyoung said as soon as she finished fumbling with the thread, marveling at her own ability to string together coherent sentences. “It’ll be easier if we—yeah, NO, OW, those are my boobs, for God’s sake, don’t do that —”
Never mind. No one could be nearly as profoundly unsexy as Yoo Sangah. The whole ordeal should not have been as difficult as it ended up being, but they eventually managed to stand each other up and resume cooking without speaking of the incident any further.
Probably a kindness, in hindsight. Dinner was good—better than Sooyoung had had for a while, though she refused to say so—and they retired for the night shortly after, unwilling to deal with the implications of being conscious for much longer.
—-
Except:
Well, except first they had to deal with the fact that they were still strung together. And, quite possibly, sleeping together.
Sooyoung’s bed wan’t big enough for both of them, but it was nothing a quick spell couldn’t expand now that the junk in her room had been cleared out.
Not that it mattered, in the long run, because they were still practically attached at the hip. Magic and a good deal of cleverness had solved most of their other problems, but the unavoidable fact was that Sooyoung’s bedroom was not big enough to accommodate a bed large enough for them to only touch hands while sleeping.
It wasn’t as if Sooyoung had never slept in the same bed platonically with a friend of hers, but rather that Sangah wasn’t a friend—instead, she was something middling between an exasperated compatriot and her worst enemy on God’s green earth.
“This is what we’ll do,” Sangah said, lifting a finger in postulation. “You have a lot of excess cardboard boxes.”
“I do,” Sooyoung said warily, trying to figure out what she was suggesting.
“We can spell them into something softer—some thin pillows, maybe—and erect a barrier between us.” Sangah swept her hands out, levitating a box across the room to spin contemplatively between them.
Sooyoung had her doubts—the last time Dokja had slept over, he had quite firmly told her that she kicked violently in her sleep, and boy was Sangah in for a surprise in that case—but she decided she didn’t actually want to deal with them at the moment.
“It’ll do,” she said. At the very least, it would be funny.