Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

“Will you marry me?”

Your heart skips a beat and your eyes widen. You blink at the man sinking down on one knee in the middle of the street, holding a small, black box. As he slowly opens it to reveal a diamond ring glittering in the blindingly bright summer sun, more and more people stop to look at the scene, smiling despite the hot weather.

A gasp, a disbelieving laugh. You smile. “Oh my god, of course I will!”

You keep walking, though you’re unable to take your eyes off the scene as the man jumps up just in time to catch his partner, who leaps into his arms. A soft sigh escapes you and tension melts off of you, despite the fact that you’re sweating like a pig and your top is starting to cling to your back, and it feels disgusting. God, if only you–

A shoulder crashes into yours, ice cold coffee spills onto your shirt.

“Sorry,” sounds the low mutter as the culprit brushes past you, quickly continuing on their way without even stopping to look, nevermind help you.

You open your mouth and turn to look over your shoulder, hoping to get a curse word or two in there before they can escape, but they’ve already disappeared into the thick crowd. A loud car honk echoes through the streets and bites at your eardrums as you turn around again, looking down at your blouse. The fabric is stained light brown, the cup in your hand now half-empty. The coffee that’s spilled over your skin is already growing sticky as it dries, and the front of your shirt is completely soaked and clinging to your stomach.

Letting out a heavy sigh, you bite your tongue to keep yourself from cursing. Awesome. Really great. Thank you, kind stranger.

Heaving yet another sigh, you pick up your pace to get back to your building as fast as possible. You glance at the tall skyscraper across the street as you move, letting out a soft sigh. The enormous letters sitting above the entrance glare back at you, a bold font reading King & Wang Enterprises– you quickly tear your eyes away from the building before someone else can bump into you, walking up to your own office. Throwing a last, longing glance across the street, you push open the glass doors and step inside.

Cold air wraps around you and you let out a satisfied breath, taking a sip of the remaining coffee as you peel your wet blouse off your belly. Soft, muted chatter fills the large lobby, your footsteps echo off the tiled floors, and the hot summer sun beams through the tall floor-to-ceiling windows in an attempt to fight the airconditioning. Some people are waiting on the elevators across the room, fanning cold air into their faces using the stacks of papers in their hands.

“Afternoon, Y/N,” greets the doorman, and you send him a smile. “Make sure to wash out that stain before it sets, eh?”

You laugh bitterly, raising your cup to him in a mocking toast. “Afternoon to you too, Jim,” you return as you brush past his desk, heading straight for the elevators. You stop just a few steps away from a group of men clad in full suits, absently drinking your coffee as you hit the button to summon an elevator. Taking a step back to wait for it to arrive, you glance down at the large coffee stain in your blouse once more, pulling at the wet fabric in the hopes that it won’t leak through to the camisole you’re wearing underneath and, god forbid, your bra. You might actually have to wash that thing before it has run its monthly cycle.

“Hey, Y/N, weren’t you going out for lunch?”

You turn to see Nara walk towards you, her heels clicking against the smooth floor. She looks as sweaty as you, her cheeks flushed dark red. Yet, her soft yellow blouse still flows gently around her torso, and the fabric of her charcoal trousers looks just as airy. She’s got her lunch box in hand, a cup of hot coffee in the other – you’ve got no clue how she drinks that stuff in the sweltering summer heat, but you certainly commend her for it. “I did, but I had some more work to do so I thought I’d just eat at my desk,” you say with a shrug, turning back to the elevators as the one on the far left jumps open. “Though, turns out, I might just spend the rest of my lunch break in the bathroom instead,” you add with a grimace, pointing to your stained top as you step into the elevator, the businessmen filing in right after you.

Nara takes in a hissing breath, shaking her head as she hits the button to the sixth floor. “Ah, bathroom lunch breaks,” she says with a dreamy sigh, leaning against the wall. “So many high school memories.”

You snort, shaking your head as the elevator doors slide closed. “Don’t kid yourself, Nara,” you shoot back, raising an eyebrow at her. You don’t care to keep your voice low, ignoring the looks being thrown your way. “We all know you got to sit at the cool kids’ table.”

She shrugs. “Well, what can I say. Some bubblegum gets you a long way,” she returns, sending you a wide grin.

“Oh, and you’re only now telling me this secret shortcut to the top? Where were you when I was fifteen?” you huff jokingly as the elevator doors jump open to your floor, and you shuffle past the businessmen on your way out. They take one look at your stained top and quickly press into each other to avoid coming into contact with you, because understandably they wouldn’t want to get their suits dirty.

Nara narrows her eyes at you, a smile curling at her lips as you walk down the long corridor ahead. You cast a glance through the windows on your right, your eyes gliding over the sea of glass shimmering in the summer sun, the matte concrete soaking up the heat. “We all know you gladly spent your time daydreaming somewhere in the corner, Y/N,” she returns, raising an eyebrow when you scowl and shake your head.

“I wasn’t that bad,” you return as you open the door to your firm’s small, rented office space, passing the small reception desk and pushing open the glass doors leading into the office. It’s small, though it’s not too cramped; there’s no more than twenty desks shoved together in groups of three and four, colourful post-it notes decorating the laptops and desktops resting on the desks, and there’s a tiny conference room to your right. A small kitchenette is stashed away in the far left corner, a coffee pot half-full with what can only be described as lukewarm, watery bean shit rests on the chipped countertop. Long sunrays break through the dirty windows, painting broad strokes of light over the stained carpet.

It might look like shit, but at least it’s air-conditioned.

“By the way, did you hear about the opening at King and Wang?” Nara whispers – with almost everyone having left for their lunch break, only a few people are still working at their desks, and they’re all so quiet you almost feel compelled to lower your voice.

Your eyebrows shoot up as you walk straight to the small bathroom next to the conference room. “The what?” you ask lowly. Pushing the bathroom door open with your shoulder, you keep your hands steady to avoid spilling even more of your coffee on yourself. “I thought they were only doing unpaid internships right now,” you mutter as you step inside, and the heavy door falls closed behind you.

Nara hums, leaning against the counter as she quickly looks underneath the two stalls, checking to see if there’s anyone listening in. Not that they’d care, but still. “They still are,” she replies, glancing in the dirty mirror as you open the tap, splashing water onto your shirt in the hope that the coffee will simply wash out. It doesn’t. “But they added another one,” she adds with a small smile, taking a sip of her coffee as she leans over to pull a few paper towels from the dispenser.

“So?” you question, smiling thankfully as you take the paper towels from her.

“So…” she repeats, putting her coffee on the counter, just far away enough so that you won’t get any water on her cup. “That means that there’ll be two internships in the department that we wanna work at.”

You let out a sigh, shaking your head as you try to dab the stain out of your blouse. The water only seems to have made it worse, though, and you internally curse out the stranger that decided to ruin the rest of your day and get away with the shittiest apology you’ve ever heard. “Dude, I can barely afford rent and groceries right now.”

Nara crosses her arms, chewing on her bottom lip. “I know, I know, I just…” She shakes her head and looks at the door. “Jesus, the fact that it’s right across the street from us just feels so unfair, you know? It’s like it’s taunting me all day.”

You dab a little more aggressively. “We’ll just work hard, get the experience we need, and try for a legitimate job there, okay? That way, we can afford to actually go have a celebratory dinner when they finally hire us, hm?” you try, poking her arm.

She smiles softly, looking down at her feet. “Yeah, yeah. Capitalism and stuff, I know.”

“We’ll get there, Nara,” you add, huffing when the paper towel starts to pill on your blouse. “I’m destroying my clothes for the experience they want so badly, alright? If they don’t hire us, I’ll sue them for damages.”

“I don’t think any judge would side with you on that one, babe,” Nara returns, though she’s already smiling again, helping you wipe off the thin and now wet paper sticking to your top.

“Well, then I’ll just have to sue them twice,” you insist, tossing the paper towels in the bin and trying to dab your shirt dry with your sleeve instead.

Nara snorts. “As if that’ll get you hired.”

You look at her as you push yourself off the counter and grab your coffee, sending her a grin. “It’ll show them I’ve got some real grit,” you shoot back, and she snorts again. “Standing up in the face of adversity and everything? Isn’t that what they want in their lawyers?”

“Oh my god, stop and get to work before you actually ruin your chances, you moron,” she says through a laugh, elbowing you in the side as she pushes open the door.

You snort. “It’s not like we have to do very important work anyway,” you joke, following her back into the office.

“Watch out, Y/N,” Nara says jokingly, looking over her shoulder and narrowing her eyes at you as you make your way to your desks. “One more word of truth and they might actually fire you.”

You grin as you walk past the large glass doors leading back to the tiny reception area, and you throw a quick, almost thoughtless glance in its direction. “Now, now, would that really be so– oh, motherfucker.”

Before Nara can ask you what’s going on, you’re storming past her, practically slamming the doors open, and you bite down on your tongue hard in an attempt not to explode. Because no matter how much white-hot anger is bubbling in the pit of your stomach, the fucker is with a client.

“Kim.” You manage to keep your voice steady, your lips curled up into a tight smile. Deep breaths. “I think you got the wrong building again. Across the street, remember?”

He averts his eyes from the client to frown at you, his gaze flickering down to the stain in your blouse you can’t even cover up by crossing your arms. “Y/N, I see you’re having a wonderful day,” he remarks with a small smile. He lifts his eyes back to yours, his eyes twinkling with amusement. His pitch black hair is styled perfectly, his bangs just long enough to fall elegantly over his forehead without spilling into his vision and blocking anyone’s view of his large eyes. His plump lips are pulled into a tight smile, and he straightens his broad shoulders, adjusting the dark grey tie around his neck. Under different circumstances, if you didn’t know him, if you’d never spoken a word to him, you might’ve thought he was a little attractive.

Maybe, in a different universe where he’s not an asshole all the fucking time.

Anger bubbles up inside of you until you fear it might spill out in front of the poor old lady that’s looking up at you with such a confused expression. You grit your teeth, taking another breath as you put on your most polite smile, turning to her. “Ma’am, I am so sorry to keep you waiting,” you start, folding your hands right in front of the stain – fortunately for you, she doesn’t seem to have noticed it in the first place.

“Ah, it’s quite alright, miss,” she replies sweetly, waving your words away with a wrinkled hand. “I was just talking to this nice young man.”

God dammit. There goes another one. You fight the urge to stab him. “Ah, yes, I’m afraid he’s been coming in uninvited quite frequently lately,” you reply calmly, leaning towards the lady to murmur something to her ‘in secret’, even though Seokjin can definitely still hear you.

You don’t care.

“He was fired from our offices last month, but I’m afraid he hasn’t quite realised that himself,” you whisper lowly, and the old lady’s eyes widen as she glances at Seokjin.

He laughs softly, shaking his head. “Ah, not to worry, I actually work for the law firm under King and Wang Enterprises; I’ll give you my business card and you can –”

You take in a hissing breath through your teeth, gently putting a hand on the lady’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry for him, I swear he wasn’t having these illusions yesterday,” you tell her solemnly, turning her away from Seokjin. “Nara, will you please escort our valued client to someone who can help her?”

Nara purses her lips, barely able to suppress her laughter as she nods. “Of course. Follow me, ma’am, I’ll make sure we’ll…”

Her voice trails off as she and the lady disappear into the office, the door falling closed behind them. A victorious grin pulls at your lips, and you cross your arms as you turn back to face Seokjin, who looks nothing short of defeated. You keep your chin held high, returning his glare with a smug smirk.

“I never thought you’d stoop this low,” Seokjin hisses, swiftly wiping the disappointment off his face. “To even suggest I’d ever work here a single day in my life, nevermind be fired from this place –”

Your smirk dissipates in an instant. “Oh, cut the crap, Kim,” you huff, rolling your eyes. From the corner of your eye, you can see Moonsik lowering his eyes behind the reception desk, fervently writing on a piece of paper when you don’t know why he’d have to write this much when he’s not even on the phone. “Stop stealing our goddamn clients, alright? We barely have enough funds as it is, we can’t afford to –”

“I’m just trying to help poor old Gretel get some proper legal counsel, Y/N,” Seokjin interrupts calmly, as if he’s actually trying to be helpful. As if he’s not actually trying to run your entire firm into the ground. Yes, it might look like shit, but you work here for a reason, dammit, and you sure as hell aren’t going to be the one to stand by and watch someone push it off a cliff. “The lady just needs some help, for god’s sake; this is not about our differences, we’re all trying to –”

“Oh my god, will you shut your fucking face?!” you exclaim. “Just because you work for a big fucking conglomerate with endless money doesn’t mean you do better work, you elitist fucking asshole! You can’t keep sneaking into our firm and trying to steal our –”

Abruptly, you stop yourself when you realise how this looks to others. A calm, collected, professional Seokjin trying to placate the bitch screaming at him.

Biting down on your tongue once more, you try to suppress the anger burning in your chest, the hot frustration rising to your cheeks. “Get the fuck out, Kim,” you hiss, leaning closer and harshly poking his chest. “And you better not show your fucking face here again, or I’m throwing you out the goddamn window.”

He grins, calmly rubbing the spot. “I’ll be sure to stay in the hallway.”

Another surge of anger threatens to overwhelm you, but you manage to suppress it– well, maybe only slightly. “Go fuck yourself.”

“No can do.” His voice is so fucking smug that you have to fight the urge to strangle him, but he’s already turning around, and there are too many witnesses here anyway. “I think I’m gonna be too busy handling the clients you couldn’t keep.”

You can’t believe he’s bragging about working too much– and you can’t believe it pisses you the fuck off. “You– you –” you sputter, trying to come up with some kind of insult to throw at his head.

He just smiles in amusement as he glances over his shoulder, pulling the door open. “I’ll see you, Y/N.”

You scoff, turning to walk back into the office. “Better fucking not.”

The door falls closed.

-:-:-:-

When you finally make your way back to your apartment building, the air is hot and humid. The sun is starting to set, though, and so your trip home is a little more bearable than your afternoon coffee run. The sky is painted in blotches of pinks and purples, but you make sure not to dwell on it too much, lest more strangers bump into you today – you don’t have any coffee left, but you can never be too sure that someone else isn’t still carrying a double espresso ready to re-stain your top.

A plastic grocery bag rustles against your work bag as you fish your keys out of your pocket, humming along to the song that’s been stuck in your head since you left the office. Rolling your shoulders, you try to get rid of the last remnants of frustration and anger that pulls your muscles tight, trying to push any thought of Seokj– ah, the devil, of course, from your mind.

You turn the key in its lock and the door to your building swings open, creaking loudly. Ignoring the heavy, musty smell that hits you as soon as you step inside, you make your way up the several flights of stairs leading to your apartment. Your shoes drag over the worn carpet floors, and you pointedly ignore the suspicious stains in the fabric. A thin layer of sweat clings to your skin but you don’t care to wipe it off, knowing it’ll be back a mere second later anyway. It’s hot, really fucking hot– you have an inkling that your apartment might be exactly the same.

You stop at the fifth apartment on your left, fiddling with your key once more as you turn it in the lock, letting the door swing open as you step inside.

Oh, fucking hell.

Much like you expected, the inside of your place is as hot, if not hotter than the streets outside, and you huff out a breath. At least it’s not worse than the staircase. “Hey,” you shout into the apartment as you let the door fall closed behind you. You slip out of your shoes, dropping your keys into your work bag.

“Oh, hey,” replies your roommate dryly, popping her head out of her open bedroom door. She’s adjusting the collar of her flowy blouse, her hair up in a high ponytail, and she looks horrendously put together. Her eyes flicker down to the stain in your own top, but she doesn’t comment, and you don’t care to even try to cover it up anymore. “I couldn’t get the AC to work, couldn’t get hold of the landlord either,” she tells you, popping back inside her room.

You groan, rubbing your face without caring all too much about smudging your mascara. It’s not like you’re gonna go back outside at this point.

“Can you maybe try again later?”

“Sure,” you reply in a monotone voice, your shoulders slumping as you cross the living room and head into the small hallway. You open the door to your bedroom and toss your work bag onto the floor. “Going out tonight?”

A muffled laugh. “Yeah, some guy keeps telling me to ignore the heat and go on a date with him.”

You can’t help but smile in amusement. “Oh wow, he’s really that thirsty, huh?” you remark as you walk back out of your room, heading to the kitchen to put the frozen pizza you bought into your shitty oven.

Another laugh. Sooyeon steps out of her room, blindly making some last adjustments to her ponytail. “Well, I mean, as soon as he said the words ‘working’ and ‘AC’, he had me convinced. Couldn’t care less about the thirst.”

With a snort, you turn to the messy round dinner table, pushing a few magazines and a stack of papers out of the way to make room for your grocery bag. “Playing hard to get, I see,” you joke, turning around again to set your oven to the right temperature. You ignore the growing stacks of dirty dishes in the sink and on the old, slightly grimy countertop, simply whirling around once more to pull your pizza out of the plastic bag.

“Playing strategically, is what I am,” Sooyeon shoots back as you rip open the box. “If this works out, I’ll have a boyfriend with a working AC for the summer.”

With an amused smile curling at your lips, you raise an eyebrow at her. “Ah, and they say romance is dead,” you say through a wistful sigh while she grabs her purse from the couch, filing through its contents.

She looks up and narrows her eyes at you, though she can’t help but laugh. “Well, you know, you’ve gotta go after the things you want these days, don’t you?”

You chuckle, humming in agreement as you put the pizza in the oven despite the fact that it hasn’t heated up yet, and you set the timer for twenty-one minutes and thirty seconds exactly. If there’s one thing you’ve learned from your years and years in law school, it’s how to make the perfect frozen pizza in the shortest amount of time. “Well, have fun with the AC guy, then. Cool off for the both of us, yeah?”

She snorts. “Will do,” she replies, checking her reflection in her phone screen and tucking a few nonexistent strands of hair behind her ear. “I’ll see you tonight or tomorrow, depending on how it goes,” she adds with a grin, slipping her phone into her purse and grabbing a jacket off the back of the couch.

With a laugh, you wave at her as you head to your room. “Have fun, hopefully!”

“Thank you, enjoy your pizza!” you hear just before the door opens and falls closed with a loud thud. As your apartment falls silent, the loud hum of traffic outside your window takes over, and you step inside your bedroom to finally exchange your stained top for a comfortable, non-sweaty, oversized pyjama shirt.

Letting out a deep sigh, you toss your blouse onto a chair in the corner – you’ll try to treat the stain later, you decide – and you hop onto your bed to set up your laptop. You honestly have no idea how Sooyeon can still go out; after a day like this, you barely have enough energy to lay on your bed and watch a movie without falling asleep, never mind trying to woo a guy with working airconditioning. The pressure.

With an empty gaze, you stare at your laptop for god knows how long, absently picking at your chipped nail polish until you finally jolt back to your senses, and you press the button to boot up your computer. As the screen lights up, your phone chimes, and you snatch it off the covers.

Sooyeon
Btw [18:59]
I’ll send u his address [18:59]
Pls call the police if you don’t hear from me before dinner tomorrow [18:59]

Only a second later, the location pops up on your screen, and you lazily scan over the street name and apartment number for a moment before you reply.

Will do!! [19:00]
Remember the knee in crotch thing [19:00]
Lmao definitely [19:00]
I’ll scream fire and everything [19:00]
Safety first [19:00]
Alrighty have fun then!! Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!! [19:01]
Useless. [19:01]
You wouldn’t even go on this date yn [19:01]
Listen here you little bully,,,,, [19:01]
I am t i r e d. [19:01]
I don’t hear you denying anything!! ;))) [19:01]
Well anyhowdy I’ve gotta head out bye bye!! [19:01]
Lmaooo bye, have fun! [19:02]

With a laugh, you toss your phone back onto the covers, shaking your head as you climb over to the window just next to your bed. As the smell of pizza slowly drifts through the apartment and into your room, you grab onto the handle and try to wriggle your window open. It creaks and groans loudly in protest, and it barely budges a single millimeter. The oven timer beeps loudly in the kitchen but you refuse to give up – heaving a sigh, you grit your teeth, pushing and pulling at it until the window finally starts to lift in its rusty frame. You open it just wide enough for a gentle breeze to make its way inside. It’s not much cooler, but it’s fresh air nonetheless.

A strand of hair sticks to your forehead and tickles the tip of your nose, and you try to huff it away – to no avail. With another sigh, you quickly log onto your laptop and jump off your bed, tucking the rogue strand behind your ear as you rush back to the kitchen to take the pizza out of the oven. Leaving the box on the table for you to clean up later, you plop the hot pizza on a plate and hastily cut it in slices, walking back to your bedroom as you start to munch on the first one.

You leave your bedroom door open in an attempt to get the air to circulate. Carefully holding the plate in your hands, you lay back onto your bed and press the spacebar of your laptop with your toe to continue the romcom you started watching this morning.

You take another bite of pizza as the music swells, and you shift on your bed to make yourself more comfortable. Tension melts off of you as you focus on the movie, and you push the worries from your mind as the main character turns around to find her love interest standing in front of her. You sigh, a smile pulling at your lips as the camera zooms in on his face. So pretty.

“Julien, what are you doing here?”

“I’ve been looking all around town for you, Elizabeth. You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met, and I– I –”

You all but whine as you chew on your pizza. Man, if only there was a real-life Julien.

“But Julien, my fiancé –”

“You don’t even love him, Elizabeth, and– and he doesn’t love you like I do. We can make our own happily ever after. Run away with me.”

You suppress a long groan, letting the pizza fall back on your plate. It’s so cliché, so unrealistic, but– oh my god, give me that. Give me that right now.

On screen, the wind picks up and gently blows Elizabeth’s hair out of her face. She frowns up at Julien, her big eyes brimming with tears.

“But Julien, my job– we won’t be able to live without my salary.”

“None of that will matter, Elizabeth; because at least we’ll be together.”

You groan, tilting your head. You’ve seen this so many times before, and yet the way your heart aches at this scene doesn’t get any less. You know it’s over the top and corny as hell – but that just makes it so much better.

“Oh, Julien…”

Elizabeth rushes towards Julien. Her heel breaks off mid-step, but of course Julien is there to catch her, to wrap his big arms around her and help her back to her feet. You sigh dreamily as the two look at each other for a prolonged moment, and their lips crash together in a fiery, passionate kiss.

You let out a longing sigh once more, sinking further into your bed. Big apartment, dream job, love interests that literally sweep you off your feet and make your head spin…

“Oh, Julien, I love you. I’ve always loved you.”

“And I you, Elizabeth. Ever since…”

A warm breeze drifts into your room and you blink slowly, your eyelids growing heavy. You try to keep them open, but they’re starting to cross, and you can barely see Julien’s face as he continues his declaration of love for Elizabeth. You sigh, resting your plate on your stomach as you let your eyes fall closed for just a minute, and the voices fade to the background.

If only my life was that simple.

-:-:-:-

A bird is chirping by your window.

You frown in annoyance, scrunching your nose as the bird continues to tweet at the morning sun. A cool breeze brushes over your face, the scent of fresh summer air swirls through your room. You groan, rolling over to shield your eyes from the bright sunlight that beams through your window, the gentle hum of traffic becoming clearer and clearer as you slowly wake up. As you breathe in, you catch a whiff of laundry detergent you swear you couldn’t smell last night.

The bird’s song grows shriller and you groan again, rolling onto your back once more. “Alright, alright,” you mutter through a sigh. “I’m up.”

The bird only seems to be encouraged by your response, and it enthusiastically continues to sing as you blindly roll out of bed. “Come on, man,” you huff at it as you rub your eyes, shuffling towards the bathroom without looking where you’re going. You reach out to grab the doorknob –

And your hand just grabs onto air.

With a frown, you try again, only to have your fingertips brush a flat wall.

You rub your eyes again and open them, blinking at the long stretch of pristinely white wall in front of you. You look to your right, your left, and your frown deepens– what the fuck?

Not only does the hallway look clean and tidy, suspiciously so, but the doors… they’re not right.

You spin around to look at your own doorway, then over your shoulder where the bathroom door is supposed to be but isn’t. You look to your right, where, at the end of the hallway, Sooyeon’s bedroom is supposed to be. Instead, you find a small open closet filled with coats too warm for the season. Your heart starts to beat faster and faster, your breaths growing short and wheezy, and you break out in a cold sweat– are you in the wrong apartment? Did someone lift you out of bed and transport you here? Where are the owners of the original apartment, and do they even –

A soft giggle sounds in the distance and your head whips around to look to your left. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Where you’d normally be able to see the living room, the hallway bends to the right and leads somewhere you don’t know. Before you can stop yourself, your legs are carrying you down the hallway and around the corner– and then you step into the enormous living room.

You’re frozen for a moment, your heart rate only speeding up as you look around the room. That’s not your couch, not your TV, not your kitchen… it doesn’t just have an island– it’s got a goddamn dishwasher. Something rumbles in the corner and you glance into the direction of the sound, your eyes widening when you notice there’s a modern, working airconditioning unit hanging on the wall.

Where the hell have you ended up?

“Oh, hey, good morning!” chirps Sooyeon as she looks up from her phone. There’s plates with fruit and pancakes and waffles littered around the large wooden dinner table, and Sooyeon’s hand is wrapped around a large dotted mug, steam wafting up into the air.

You frown. “Hey,” you manage to breathe out. Her presence is reassuring, somehow – at least you’re not the only one who’s ended up in a different apartment overnight – but it’s still… “I– I take it your date didn’t go well?”

Sooyeon blinks at you, her eyebrows furrowing. “Date?” she repeats, laughing into her mug. “Me, on a date?” she adds with a snort, shaking her head. “You must’ve been dreaming up a storm in there.”

Your frown deepens and your eyes widen slightly. “I’m– what?”

“God, Y/N, are you okay?” Sooyeon asks through a laugh, pulling back one of the chairs next to her. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

You blink, trying to remember how to breathe.

“Come on, sit down,” she says, patting the fancy wooden chair next to her. It’s the same light brown colour as the dinner table, a colourful cushion resting on the seat. “You’ve got a big day today, so you better eat up.”

Speechless, you gape at her, trying to figure out whether or not you’re still asleep, whether or not you’re dreaming or something even weirder has happened. It all feels so strangely real – the way she gently smiles at you, her eyebrows raised, a single dark eyelash clinging to her cheek, the sunlight streaming in from the large windows catching some of the morning frizz in her hair. There’s details your own mind couldn’t possibly make up – your dreams have never even been close to this. You can only assume that you’re actually awake, which makes it all the more confusing.

Maybe you got spontaneous amnesia, or maybe you travelled into the future somehow… you have to check what year it is. And then maybe also see if –

“Y/N?”

You snap out of your thoughts, taking a breath and trying to plaster on a normal expression. “I… I was just trying to remember what exactly I was doing today,” you tell her cautiously, forcing a laugh in the hopes she’ll just tell you without asking any questions. If you really somehow ended up in the future or got spontaneous amnesia or something else happened, you need to stay calm and just live life as usual. You can’t fuck this up for yourself.

Sooyeon simply laughs, and you let out a short, relieved breath. “Your interview, remember?” she says, and you feel your muscles tighten. Do you… not have a job? “Man, you’ve been nervous about this all week. I get it though– the way you’re always talking about wanting to work at King and Wang, I can’t blame you for being nervous,” Sooyeon replies, loudly slurping her tea.

You have an interview at King and Wang?

You let out a sharp breath, trying to keep yourself from showing too much joy, too much anxiety – you’re assuming you’ve had a freakout about it already. Maybe even several.

“Besides, we both know how much the whole freelancing thing has been tiring you out,” she adds casually, looking back at her phone as she puts down her mug, picking up a fork instead. “Not to stress you out any more, of course,” she says with a sheepish smile. “But think about how much we’ll be able to brighten the place up with all the extra money you’re gonna earn!”

You blink again. Freelance work, job interview. Brightening the place up. You quickly look around. This place has, like, 15 lamps. How much brighter does she wanna go? “Right, right,” you mutter, clearing your throat as you turn back to her. “I better uh… get ready, then, I guess.”

“Sure, sure,” replies Sooyeon. You stand up slowly, your chair scraping over the hardwood floor. “Hope the outfit we picked out last night didn’t walk out, eh?” she jokes, snickering to herself as you awkwardly laugh along, slowly slinking back towards the hallway.

“Right, thanks again for that, by the way,” you tell her, forcing a smile as you stop just before the bend in the hallway, your mind still racing at a million miles an hour. “I’ll uhm… talk to you later?”

“Yeah, sure! My shift starts around twelve, you can just drop by if you’ve got the time,” she replies, sending you a smile.

You simply nod, too scared that asking her where exactly you’re supposed to drop by might cause too much suspicion. “Of course, of course, and otherwise I’ll just see you back here.” You clear your throat, shifting uncomfortably. “At home. Our apartment. The place we rent. With our money.”

Sooyeon’s smile widens and she nods cheerfully. You turn around to walk back to your bedroom, still slightly disoriented. “Good luck!”

“Thank you,” you return. You’re gonna need it.

-:-:-:-

You’re not in the future.

You keep staring at Google’s answer to ‘what date is it today’, blinking at your phone as you push your way through the morning crowd, unbothered by the sheer number of shoulders bumping into yours. Today is really the day after yesterday, and yet that just seems more confusing to you than the time-travel alternative. Fucking hell, what are you even supposed to –

You stumble over your own feet and curse underneath your breath, glaring down at your heels as you regain your balance. For some stupid reason, all the comfortable shoes have up and disappeared from your closet and have been replaced with the most unsupportive heels known to mankind. Not that they don’t look absolutely amazing on you, but you’d prefer not to risk falling on your face before you even get to King and Wang.

With a huff, you keep walking, only sparing the streets in front of you a glance to check whether you’re going in the right direction before you turn back to your phone. Okay, so maybe you’re not dreaming, and you’re not in the future– maybe you’re in a coma, somehow, and your brain is just keeping you busy? With a frown, you stare down at your screen with your fingers hovering over the keyboard. You’ve got to Google something you could never know yourself. Biting your lip, you slowly type something random; how many times do you breathe in a day?

16 breaths per minute, 960 breaths an hour, 23040 breaths a day. There’s article upon article answering the same question, website upon website that you’ve never heard of but seems real. You chew on your lip. Your brain could still be fooling you, but this illusion seems a little too extensive…

Your heel suddenly sinks into a subway grate and you stumble yet again, wobbling in place as you try to regain your balance before you –

“Jesus!”

Oh, fuck.

You squeeze your eyes closed, too afraid to look up at the person you are now pressed up against. Wincing at yourself, you scramble upright and unhook your heel from the grate, shakily standing back on two feet. “I’m so sor–” As soon as you look up, the need to apologise fades away in an instant. “Oh, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” you mutter, quickly stepping out of his embrace.

Dark black hair, a disgustingly handsome face, large lips pulled into a scowl, flawless skin glowing in the morning sun. He’s wearing a white dress shirt that wraps around his large shoulders almost perfectly, a dark tie around his neck, slightly loosened. With, of course, a large – and still growing – coffee stain on his shirt.

You grin, crossing your arms. “Kim, I see you’re having a wonderful day.” You manage not to snarl at him, way too proud of the stain you’ve made.

He huffs out a breath, rolling his eyes. “I don’t need this right now, alright?” he returns, uselessly patting the stain with his fingers. “You better be glad I brought a fucking jacket.”

“Aw, that’s a pity,” you pout at him, neglecting to tell him you have a small packet of baby wipes that might help him salvage the shirt; the scowl on his face is just too good. “I’ve heard coffee stains are all the rage this summer.”

He grits his teeth. You notice his jaw tick as he looks down at his shirt and heaves a sigh, shaking his head. “Don’t you have clients to tend to?” he huffs, lifting his eyes back to yours. “They might leave for a better firm if you don’t get to work fast.”

You frown, anger faltering for just a moment. He thinks you’re still working at your old firm. He literally goes there every day, for fuck’s sake – he’d know whether or not you worked for them. Is this… this has got to be proof, right? You’re not crazy.

“What, no snarky comeback?” he says with a scoff, throwing back the last of whatever is in his coffee cup before tossing it in a nearby garbage can. “You’re really losing your mojo, Y/N.”

You take a breath and straighten your shoulders, glaring at him as he raises an eyebrow in challenge. “I’m just trying to start my morning without wanting to strangle you,” you return, crossing your arms.

He snorts. “God, everything’s changing around here,” he mutters to himself, and he shakes his head, letting out a bitter laugh. “It’s like I woke up in a different world.”

Your heart pounds. You don’t quite know whether or not he means it as a joke, if there’s a core of truth to his words. You blink at him nevertheless, unable to keep your composure. Are you not actually going crazy?

“Jesus Christ, do you need a minute?” Seokjin snaps, and you jolt out of your thoughts with an annoyed sigh. “I’m leaving anyway, have fun with whatever old Gretels you’re supposedly helping today.”

You huff, rolling your eyes. “Holy shit, dude, literally go fuck yourself.”

A laugh. He turns to walk away. “Bye, Y/N.”

He leaves you standing in the middle of the street as he disappears into the crowd of morning commuters, and you wait for a minute before you head into the same direction. Please, please tell me this interview is for a position that’s as far away from him as possible.

For some reason, you don’t think you’re that lucky.

-:-:-:-

You let out a shaky breath, reading over your cover letter for the fifth time in a row to somehow gauge why they invited you here for an interview, or why you tried for a position in the first place. You shift in your seat, quickly glancing around the small and still empty office you’ve been told to wait in. It’s probably one of the fanciest offices you’ve seen that are not on TV – floor-to-ceiling windows and a sleek, black-and-white colour scheme, framed diplomas and certificates sitting in a large black bookcase that covers the entire wall to your left. The assistant’s desk is visible through the glass office door – she looks overworked to say the least, the dark bags under her eyes a stark contrast with the colourful post-it notes strewn about her desk.

Fucking hell. This guy you’re interviewing with is probably somewhere high up the ladder, and it only makes you more confused as to how you even got here.

Letting out a sharp breath, you look down at your cover letter once more, trying to read the second paragraph again, but you can’t get yourself to focus. Your heart is beating a million miles an hour and you can only wonder what –

“Hi, hello, sorry for the wait!”

You jolt upright, fighting a gasp as you whip your head around to look at the man entering the office, his long legs carrying him to his desk in only a few steps. He’s clad in a dark grey suit, pressed pants and all, a matching grey tie around his neck, a bright white dress shirt underneath. “That’s– that’s alright, you’re a busy man,” you reply hastily, standing up to shake his hand. “I’m Y/N. Nice to meet you, sir.”

He smiles in response. “Pleasure to finally meet you too, Y/N.” He takes your hand and grips it firmly, shakes once before he lets go. “And please, call me Junho,” he replies, his thin lips stretching out into a polite smile as he sits down. He pats down his gelled hair before he straightens up, pulling a folder to the center of his desk.

You blink at him in silence as he quickly scans the resume and cover letter inside. There’s small notes scribbled in the margins of both pages. You don’t stand a chance at reading them– not that you’d try if you could, because the only thing that’s going through your mind right now is what the fuck is happening right now?

“I do apologise, I don’t have much time, so I’ll just get straight to the point,” he starts, lifting his head to look at you and folding his hands over the folder. You sit up a little straighter in an attempt to match his creepily correct posture. “As we both know, you definitely have the educational background we want in our hires, and your cover letter looks great.” Oh, shit, it does? “Really, the only thing that makes me a little hesitant is that you just don’t have enough experience for the job,” he says, his eyebrows furrowing in pity. “Two years of the five… it’s just not…” He trails off and falls silent.

You scootch forward in your chair, taking a breath – if anything, you want to try to get this job even if you have to talk to this guy for hours; there must be a reason why you’re here, and you’re not going to waste this opportunity. “I definitely see where you’re coming from, sir, but I’m also a very hard worker and –”

The guy abruptly stands up and your mouth snaps closed. You watch with a confused frown as he turns to stare out the window, burying his hands into his pockets, his back completely straight. “You know,” he starts through a sigh, staring into the distance. The office looks out over the city skyline, though it’s not as astonishing as you imagine it might look once the sun starts to set. Right now, it’s pretty much all glass and concrete, blindingly bright and undoubtedly suffocatingly hot in the morning sun. At least there’s one thing that looks the same. “It’s a tough world out there, Y/N,” he says, turning around to lean his back against the window.

He pauses, and you almost feel like he’s expecting a reply – but you don’t even know where he’s headed, and so you just nod, trying to mask your confusion with a smile.

“But, I must say, it gets tougher in here,” he adds. He crosses his arms over his chest, his jacket straining against his arms. “We’re handling big, public cases year-round, and we have a reputation to uphold, so it’s gonna be long hours. It’s why we ask for the experience– but since you seem very promising, I’m willing to make an exception for you. I just need to know if you can handle that sort of thing.”

“Uhm, yeah– yes, definitely,” you reply without giving it much thought, sitting up straighter and putting on a smile. You’ll see how you deal with it later. “I sure can.”

His smile widens and he wags his finger at you, pushing himself off the window. “Alright, I like your enthusiasm.” Enthusiasm?

He leans over his desk to close up the folder with your resume and cover letter, and he shoves it towards a corner of his desk. “Can you start today?”

He’s already walking back towards the door, and you’re pretty sure it’s too late to tell him not really, I was thinking of trying to find out where I am or what I’m doing in a blind panic for the rest of the day, sorry.

And so, you just nod, rising to your feet. “I’d be happy to.”

He claps his hands.  “Wonderful,” he says with a bright smile, gripping the doorknob to pull open the door and lead you back into the main office area. Soft chatter fills your ears, most workers seem to almost be falling asleep at their computers.

“Do I need to sign a contract first, or?”

Junho laughs warmly. “Ah, of course, of course, I’ll have our HR department send it to you by the end of the day, but first– hey, Seokjin!”

Oh god.

“Junho!”

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Someone stands up from his desk across the office and walks towards you, weaving through the groups of desks that are littered around the large, open office space. A flash of recognition crosses his face before it turns into pure annoyance, then quickly morphs into a polite smile as he comes to a stop next to Junho.

“Could you give our newest colleague here a little tour around the office?” Junho asks, waving his hand towards you. Seokjin spares you the briefest of glances, lets out a sharp sigh. His jaw ticks with anger despite the fact that he’s smiling at his boss. “I have a meeting with the Choi team to prepare for the big hearings, so I really have to get going.”

Seokjin smiles and nods. “Of course, Junho, no problem,” he replies calmly. Ass-kisser.

“Great, thank you!” Junho replies brightly, and you jump when he claps his hands once more. “He’s a phenomenal guy, Y/N,” he adds, turning to you. You can barely hold back a snort, plastering on a polite smile instead. “He’s been with us for five years, so if you have any questions, he’s the one to ask.” You glance at Seokjin, only to see a forced smile tugging at his lips as he nods slowly. “Well, anyway, I better get going, but I’ll see you two later, alright?”

Junho leaves without another word, abandoning you in the quiet office corner with him. The fucking devil.

He turns to look at you, you turn to him, and you can only manage to smile sarcastically. “Wonderful to see you again this morning,” you say, eyes flickering down to the coffee stain you made earlier– but he’s wearing his suit jacket now, and you can barely see a thing. God fucking dammit.

Seokjin narrows his eyes at you as he crosses his arms. “Likewise,” he replies curtly, quietly. “I’m wondering– did you finally get sick of working the same tired job appealing parking tickets, or were you finally fired?”

You grit your teeth. “Neither,” you reply as casually as possible, straightening your back to make yourself stand just a little bit taller. “I just saw an opening and I thought, hey, maybe they need a lawyer that actually does their job– you know, instead of walking around all day trying to snatch other firms’ clients.”

That is obviously not why you’re here, but he doesn’t have to know.

He rolls his eyes. “I don’t have time for your bullshit, Y/N, I’m busy,” he snaps, turning to look at the office you’re standing in. Before you can return the sentiment, he continues, “You wanted a tour?” He sticks out his arm, gesturing wildly. “Office. Desks. Computers. People work here.”

You take a deep breath. Don’t snap at him, don’t snap at him, don’t snap at him. Wait for the second day, at least. Or maybe just until after he leaves the office. “Wow, really?” you manage through gritted teeth, a forced smile. “I had no idea, thank you– Seokjin, is it?”

He narrows his eyes, huffing out a sharp breath through his nose but putting on a sickly sweet smile anyway. “You’re very welcome, Y/N,” he says slowly, his voice sounding almost strained – you can’t help the feeling of victory. “Let me just show you the break room so we can get back to work, yeah?”

He doesn’t wait for an answer, his shoulder knocking into yours as he walks past you. You take a deep breath, slowly letting it back out before you whirl around to follow Seokjin to the right of the office –

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he mutters underneath his breath, turning around and walking to the left instead, leading you all the way to the end until you arrive at a large room walled off from the rest of the office with floor-to-ceiling glass. “Right, so, break room’s over here, whatever, you’re probably not gonna be here a lot, so I’m not even sure you need to see this.”

The scent of fresh coffee and vanilla syrup drifts through the air, and you breathe in with surprise as you look around. A modern kitchenette lines the only wall that’s not breakable and two round tables are stashed away in the corner, though most of the room is taken up by a large foosball table. As with the rest of the office, the windows gaze out onto the city skyline, looking over the other skyscrapers that surround the building.

“We’ve got a fridge and stuff, I don’t fucking know –” He paces over to the cupboards above the countertop, quickly pulling one open to reveal colourful bags of snacks, granola, instant ramen, dried fruit… You hear him let out a sharp breath before he relaxes his shoulders and slams the cupboard closed; the loud bang makes you jolt as it pierces through the room, your heart stuttering.

He turns to face you once more. He seems composed– mostly. You can’t help but think you see surprise in his face before the usual look of annoyance returns. “Food and stuff.”

You raise an eyebrow. “We can eat all of that?”

He snorts, crossing his arms as he leans against the counter. “I don’t fucking know,” he replies with a shrug. “Most of it’s unhealthy anyway– speaking of sports, foosball table,” he quickly adds, waving towards the foosball table to your right before he crosses his arms again. “Can I get back to work now?”

You snort, glancing at it. No fucking way you can. “Does anyone ever use it?”

“I– listen, don’t ask me, I’m just here to get work done,” he replies through a sigh.

You narrow your eyes at him, tilting your head. There’s something jittery about him – he’s tapping his foot against the floor rapidly, drumming his fingers on his arm, looking around with such wide eyes that you’d almost think everything is new to him.

You already figured he’d be spending most of his workday out of the office, but… “Are you sure you’ve worked here for five years?” you tease, crossing your arms.

To be quite frank, you expected him to huff and call you an idiot like usual; you didn’t really mean to do anything other than annoy him. But when he purses his lips and his jaw ticks, his brows draw together and his gaze lowers to his feet, you can’t help but feel a pang of guilt in your chest, and immediately you try to swallow that same feeling.

He breathes out sharply, shakes his head. “I don’t have time for this,” he mutters, pushing himself off the counter. “I have work to do.”

Your eyebrows furrow and you watch for a moment as he paces towards the exit, back towards the office. You don’t exactly know why, you don’t exactly know if it’s just your curiosity or if there’s more to find out, but you feel the burning urge to stop him from walking out. “Hey,” you call out, rushing towards him to grab his wrist just before he can walk out, and you pull him back in.

He turns around, looks down at your hand, back up at you. He tries to pull himself free, but you tighten your grip, and his frown deepens. “What?” he snaps.

Yeah, what? What the hell are you gonna say now? “I– you– you should answer people when they ask questions,” you stammer, straightening your shoulders and crossing your arms. Seokjin’s hand drops back to his side but he doesn’t walk away, which is progress, at least. “It’s impolite not to,” you add, keeping your chin held high.

He scoffs, an amused smile curls at his lips as he looks you up and down. “Since when are we polite to each other?”

You grit your teeth and roll your eyes. “That’s not the point, I –” You cut yourself off, heaving a sigh. “Never mind.” Turning around, you rub your eyes and walk towards the foosball table, idly tapping one of the figures with your finger to make it spin. You hear him sigh and open the door, and you poke the inside of your cheek with your tongue. “At least you’re acting like usual,” you add through a mutter.

The door slams closed, silence falls. Your heart drops but you try to swallow the feeling of unease rising up and curling up in your throat. Now that you’re alone, you can’t help but –

“What did you say?”

You jump and spin around again, your back bumping against one of the handles on the foosball table, and you wince as a dull pain stabs at your muscles. Rubbing the spot over your blouse, you look at the doorway.

Seokjin is still here. His eyes are slightly too wide, his breaths slightly too fast.

You can’t help but frown, regarding him warily for a moment. “I said never mind,” you reply with a scoff. He didn’t mean the other thing, right? He couldn’t have.

“No, what you said after that,” he says almost frantically, staring at you as he takes a step forward.

You instinctively take a step back, the handles of the foosball table brushing your back once more. “I –” Great. He’s gonna think you’re crazy. “I said that at least you were acting like usual.”

Seokjin breathes out sharply, and he gapes at you.

Blinking up at him, you frown. “Why?” you inquire, wanting to know why he’s looking at you like that, yet being too scared for the answer to ask him directly.

He takes another step forward, looks around shiftily. “Everything’s changed for you, too?” he whispers.

Your heart stutters, your eyes go wide. For a moment, you’re speechless, your mouth opens and closes as you try to look for the words– hell, just a sound to respond. But despite the adrenaline that surges through your veins, you’re completely rigid. You’re not alone. You’re not actually crazy.

Seokjin takes your silence as a negative. His expression hardens, he takes a step back, his hands dig into his pockets. “I –” He clears his throat, and his reaction finally seems to wake something in you, motion rushes back into your body. “Never mind, forget I said that. It’s all bullshit anyw–”

“No, no, wait, it’s– it’s not bullshit,” you blurt out hastily, taking a step forward. Seokjin stills. “Why the hell do you think I’m even here, Kim? You think I just up and quit my job on my own accord?”

His eyebrows furrow, his jaw ticks. But there’s a tension that seems to melt off of him with your words; you see it in the way his shoulders relax, the way his breathing changes just slightly. “I wouldn’t put it past you,” he mutters, and you narrow your eyes at him – his smile quickly falters. “Alright, okay, not the point.”

You raise an eyebrow at him and scoff. “Yeah.” Crossing your arms, you take a step back to lean against the foosball table – only to jump back up when the handles poke your back again.

Of course, Seokjin just has to notice it. And he just has to laugh.

“Just– out of curiosity…” you start slowly. And to change the subject. “What changed for you?”

He looks around again, growing jittery. While almost every desk in sight is occupied, no one so much as spares you a glance, and you assume you’re safe from eavesdroppers. “I don’t know, just… everything,” he mumbles in reply, and your heart starts to race again. You never thought you’d ever be this excited to hear Seokjin speak – but, evidently, crazier things have been happening today. “It’s like someone just airlifted me out of my bed and dropped me in a different universe. Like, different apartment, different office, different everything.”

He looks at you with a wary frown, waiting for you to respond. Perhaps waiting for you to call him crazy and storm out– but you can only let out a sharp breath, relief streaking through your veins. “Man, I really thought I was going insane, but…”

“But what?” he says through a bitter laugh, throwing his arms up. “We’re not actually crazy?” He snorts. “Oh, wait, yeah, there’s a totally logical explanation for this. Maybe the aliens finally descended down upon us and put us all in the Matrix.”

You grit your teeth, ignoring the voice in the back of your head telling you that he’s right. That this doesn’t mean you’re not spiralling here. “Hey, I’m just trying to figure out what the hell is going on, alright?” you shoot back nevertheless. “Don’t –”

A gentle knock on the glass door. You fall silent, and both you and Seokjin snap up to look at the entrance. A woman you’re assuming works here, too, opens the door and peeks her head inside, smiling sweetly at the two of you. You commend her for it, really – you both must look bewildered.

“Hi,” she greets, focusing her gaze on Seokjin, her cheeks flushed a gracefully subtle colour of red.

Seokjin responds with a smile. “Hyerin,” he returns, so politely it takes you by surprise. He straightens his back, adjusts his tie, and you blink at him.

“I uh… the transcripts we subpoenaed for the Anderson case are here? Junho said you guys would be sorting through them, so I thought I’d… you know…” She trails off, delicately tucking a strand of dark, glossy hair behind her ear.

You guys?

Seokjin blinks at her, his brows furrow. “The– the Anderson –” He pauses, Hyerin simply smiles and nods until Seokjin clears his throat and smooths out his expression once more. “Right, yeah, of course,” he breathes out, plastering on a smile. “Where were they uploaded?”

“Oh, they’re downstairs,” she replies, and Seokjin’s frown deepens. “They’re holding them for you at the front desk.”

He clears his throat once more, nodding quickly. “Right, of course, uh… thank you.”

She smiles and nods in return, turning to slip back outside before she pauses and takes a breath. “Oh, just a fair warning, I heard the elevators are shut down for maintenance,” she adds with an empathetic smile, letting the door fall closed before you even get the chance to reply.

Seokjin sighs. “Well, that should be interesting.”

-:-:-:-

“Okay, but what if it really is just some shared illusion?”

You’re both panting as you climb the umpteenth flight of stairs, each carrying a box of transcripts in your arms. You don’t know how Seokjin managed to pull you along on this – it’s not like you have anything better to do, but still.

Letting out a deep sigh, you reluctantly lift your burning leg to take another step, trying to keep up with Seokjin and his stupidly long legs. Like, how do they even make pants that long? How does he not look idiotic in a suit and just pulls it off so –

Not the point.

“This can’t just be an illusion,” you insist with a shake of your head, surprised you’re even managing to talk through the panting breaths you’re taking. “There’s way too many details to our environment– it can’t just be an illusion or a coma or a dream or whatever else.”

Seokjin hums, taking the last step and pushing open the door to your office. He waits for you to catch up, and you’re glad he doesn’t comment on your shitty stamina. “I don’t know, I mean, we could be imagining details where there aren’t any, right?” he shoots back, walking to one of the conference rooms you’ve claimed for the growing collection of transcripts. “It’s not that far-fetched.”

With a sigh, you follow him inside the conference room and plop your box on the large oval table filling up almost the entire space. “Okay, I’m just gonna go ahead and say you’re wrong.”

He raises an eyebrow as he puts down his box, and he crosses his arms instead. “And why would I be wrong, huh?”

With a roll of your eyes, you reach out and pinch his forearm through his sleeve– he yelps an ow! and jumps back, rubbing the spot. “What the hell was that for?”

“See? Real pain, not a dream.” You turn around to walk back out of the conference room because there’s more boxes and you think you might not be able to move again if you take a rest for longer than a second.

Seokjin sighs and follows you back out into the staircase, your footsteps echoing off the pale concrete as you make your way back down. Where you expect it to smell like dust and paint, a light lavender scent hangs in the air, as if someone accidentally left a box of air fresheners behind.

“Fine, okay, we’re not in a dream or whatever,” he huffs, catching up with you. You can’t help but smile. A small victory – but a victory nonetheless. “What do we do with that, though?” he adds. His tone sounds normal. Not overly, sarcastically polite, not snappy, not snarky, just… his voice. He sounds nice when he’s not arguing with you on everything.

You clear your throat and shake your head, trying to banish the thought from your mind. Gross. “We just need to go through our mornings, see if we can find any similarities,” you propose, keeping your eyes on your feet as they thunder down the steps. The concrete feels cold against your feet – you took off your heels after you almost snapped your ankle in half when you were simply walking towards the stairwell. “Maybe we can get something from that.”

Seokjin is silent for a few steps, simply following you down the stairs before he clears his throat. “Okay, so what changed for you?”

You chuckle quietly as you skip the last two steps and pull open the door to the lobby. “Where to start…” you mutter, walking straight towards the front desk and sending a smile to the security guard, who simply nods as you take one of the last two boxes from behind his desk. “Well, firstly, I woke up in the fanciest apartment I think I’ve ever set foot in – airconditioning, dishwasher, the whole nine yards.”

Seokjin snorts, picking up another box and following you back towards the stairwell. You glance at the elevators from the corner of your eye, huffing when you see there’s still bright yellow tape plastered on all five double doors. “Similarity number one.”

You bite your lip, but a smile pulls at your lips nevertheless. You’re growing more relieved every step you take – because whatever the hell is happening here, at least you’ve got someone else that’s just as confused as you are. And, since that person is Seokjin, you’re more than happy to have the small side effect that he can’t be the smug asshole he always is.

“Okay, and then my roommate was all quirky and weird and she had this bigass breakfast that she didn’t even touch half of when, like, we barely have enough food in our fridge,” you add, your legs protesting as you keep ascending the stairs, your bare feet aching for some goddamn rest.

Seokjin hums, the soles of his shoes shuffling against the concrete stairs, the sound of his heavy breaths echoing off the walls and mixing with yours. “I don’t have a roommate or anything, but my fridge was pretty full this morning,” he says through a laugh. “Plus, my cat was a lot nicer than usual, so there’s that, I guess.”

Pursing your lips, you glance at him over your shoulder. “You have a cat?” you ask, raising an eyebrow.

He narrows his eyes at you, and your amused smile only grows. “What, you’re gonna laugh at me for having a pet?” he retorts, scoffing. “Now?”

With a shrug, you shake your head and bite on your lip in another failed attempt at keeping your smile at bay. “No, I just –” You can’t fight the laughter bubbling in your throat, and you giggle into the box. “I just didn’t take you for a cat owner, but I guess it makes sense.”

He pauses in the middle of a step up, watches you as you keep walking. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he returns, and you can hear the pout in his voice.

Shrugging once again, you send him the most innocent grin you can muster – and he just scowls. “Nothing,” you reply just as innocently. Seokjin opens his mouth and takes a breath to respond – “So anyways, I woke up unemployed and I had the job interview with Junho today, so that was pretty much it.”

His footsteps quicken as he rushes to catch up to you. “You didn’t see your office at all?”

With a hum, you shake your head, focusing on keeping the heavy box in your arms. “No, I just went here,” you reply as your feet shuffle against the cold concrete. A painful stitch stabs at your side and you wince, biting your tongue as you take another step – but it only gets worse. “Did anything change here, then?” you add through gritted teeth, glancing over your shoulder.

He scoffs, running his tongue along the inside of his cheek. “You could say that,” he mutters with a snort, glancing up at you as you lean against the wall, attempting to breathe the stitch away. “Everything got– nicer, I guess.” His nose scrunches and he looks around the stairwell, almost as if it were part of the office itself. “Like, the foosball table, the free food, the comfortable desk chairs…” With a sigh, he shakes his head, laughs quietly to himself. “And then Junho actually acknowledged people which never happens because –” You raise an eyebrow, keeping your eyes on him as he passes you on his way up. He’s smiling to himself, staring down at the box in his hands. “Well, he’s usually kind of an asshole.”

You snort, looking back down at your own box as you follow him up the stairs. “Well, maybe that’s just because you’re always out of the office trying to steal other people’s clients, and if you just –”

“Yeah, well, if you actually did some work yourself, they might not be stolen away so easily,” he snaps, picking up his pace so that you have to work just a little harder to keep up with him.

You resist the urge to leave him to handle the transcripts on his own.

“Let’s just –” He sighs. “Get back to the whole figuring out where we are part, yeah? We can fight again when we’re done, don’t worry.”

You roll your eyes, following him towards the door to the office. “Right,” you huff, adjusting the box in your tired arms. “So, everything got better.” Seokjin opens the door, and you trail right behind him as he walks into the conference room. You’re breathing hard and your legs are still burning, the stitch is still stabbing in your side. You feel disgusting – but when you glance at your reflection in the glass wall of the conference room, you notice look as good as you did the moment you walked out of your apartment.

“We got better apartments, your cat… was nicer to you, I got my dream job somehow…” you trail off, plopping the box on the table in the conference room. Seokjin’s brows furrow in thought and he leans against the table, crossing his arms as you fumble with the lid of the box. You don’t pay him much attention, your mind racing at a million miles an hour while you try to organise your thoughts. Big apartment, dream job, perfect lives…

Your jaw drops and you whirl around to face him. “Oh my god!” you gasp, and without thinking, you slap his arm.

“Ow, Jesus!” Seokjin hisses, rubbing his arm as he cowers back slightly. “Would you stop hurting me?”

“Dude, we’re in a romcom!”

You look up at him with a victorious grin – but he just frowns, his hand still covering the spot where you hit him.

“A romcom!” you repeat just as enthusiastically, just to make sure he’s heard you because holy shit, you’re finally having a brilliant moment.

But he keeps blinking at you with that same, deeply confused expression.

You wave your hand in front of his face and he quickly shakes his head as he drops back down to earth.

“I –” He takes a breath but hesitates, letting it back out sharply. “What?”

“Listen, it makes so much sense,” you breathe out. You’re practically jumping up and down, your heart racing with excitement. “We woke up in a completely different world, we’re not dreaming, this isn’t some illusion, and we have perfect lives –” Seokjin’s frown deepens, he blinks, and you fight the urge to grab him by his ridiculously broad shoulders and shake him awake. “Come on, we have super nice apartments, our jobs got better, the world got better – life is just so… so romcom-like, right?”

He blinks at you again, and for a second you think you might actually have to shake him out of his daze– when he breathes out sharply, looking at the office through the glass wall. “Why the fuck does that make sense?” he mutters. His shoulders sag as he heaves a sigh, rubbing the spot between his brows.

A bright smile spreads over your features and you sigh in relief. “Right?” you return, crossing your arms.

His hand drops back down to his side and he looks up at you. “So how do we get out?”

You take a breath to respond. “I…” You pause, blink into the distance, then breathe out sharply when your mind blanks. “I’m thinking.”

He purses his lips and hums, running a hand through his dark hair. His jacket lifts just enough to reveal the dried coffee stain underneath, but you’re too occupied to comment. “We can’t Google this stuff to speed up your thinking, can we?”

You shake your head slowly and he hums once more, staring down at his feet. Silence falls for a moment and you try to rack your brain for something, anything that could get you out of here as soon as you can– because even though you don’t feel the urge to strangle him right now, you’re sure that won’t last long. Dream job or not.

“Plus, it’s not like typical romcoms involve universe hopping or something,” you add through a sigh, scratching the back of your head. You stare out of the conference room to look into the office, watching the way the sunlight falls onto the dark grey carpet, illuminates every dust particle that floats through the air. “So we probably can’t just do that.”

He nods quickly, chewing on his bottom lip in thought. “So we just have to come up with a somehow logical way to get out of an alternate univer– ah, no, a fucking movie.”

You can’t help but snort. “Yeah, sounds easy enough,” you say, raising an eyebrow at him. “We should be out in, what, ten minutes?”

“Shut up and focus,” Seokjin says through a snort, rolling his eyes. With a smile, you purse your lips and nod firmly, gesturing for him to continue – he narrows his eyes at you, but sighs sharply. “Assuming that we’re characters in this… whatever,” he continues slowly, “We woke up here when the romcom started.”

You nod, your eyebrows furrowing. “Yeah, so?”

“Then… to go back home, the romcom just has to end, right?”

Your heart skips a beat and your eyes widen, you start to nod frantically because – “Holy shit, that’s it!” you exclaim, clapping your hands. Seokjin winces almost out of reflex, covers his bicep with his hand and you quickly compose yourself, crossing your arms tightly. “I mean, uh –” You clear your throat and shift your weight on your feet. “Yeah. Good thinking, I guess,” you add hastily, rubbing your nose.

A small grin curls at his lips and he raises an eyebrow because yes, you really did just kind of compliment him a little bit. “Well, you know, someone has to be the smart one around here.”

You let out a slow breath, rolling your eyes and gritting your teeth in an attempt to keep down the annoyance that’s already bubbling in the pit of your stomach. You turn to the nearest box of files and take off the top, huffing out when you see it’s filled to the brim with thick manila folders.

“How long do romcoms usually take, anyway?”

Ah. Shit. You suddenly forget the annoyance and frustration, and discomfort settles heavily in your chest. “I mean…” You pause, your eyes flutter closed as you put down the top of the box. Staring at the dark cardboard, you let out a sharp breath, shaking your head. “Some can take weeks, some can take months, some can take –”

“Months?” he interrupts. You look up at him, noticing his eyes are wide. “We’re gonna be stuck here for months?”

Your face contorts as you nod slowly. “Maybe years,” you add as gently as you can manage, and Seokjin’s lips part in disbelief. “It all depends on the plot, you know.”

He lets out a long groan, burying his face in his hands as he shakes his head frantically. “Listen, we can’t stay here for years, okay?” he breathes out, lifting his head to look at you. “Hell, we can barely afford to stay here longer than a day– I might be losing my real job as we speak.”

You sigh. “Hey, I’m right there with you,” you return, rubbing your forehead – though a deep frown remains etched into the spot between your brows, and your entire body feels tense. “But I mean… what can we do?” you huff, trying to ignore the voice in the back of your head taunting you, saying over and over again that who knows, maybe you’re stuck here forever.

He sighs in exasperation, running a hand through his hair. “Can’t we try to speed it up somehow?” he asks as his arm drops back down to his side. His words are dripping with annoyance, frustration, anger, and for a second you think he’s angry with you. “Like, just figure out who needs to get with who and get on with it?”

He looks at you, expectant. And no matter how badly you want to prove some kind of point by offering the golden strategy that’ll get you out by the end of the day– you don’t have anything.

Biting your lip, you turn back to the box of folders, absently fumbling with the top file. “I –” You let out a sigh, trying to dig something up that’ll at least get you a step further. “We should figure out what our roles are first,” you say finally, chewing on your bottom lip in thought. You look up at him, only to see him lean against the table with a frown. “There’s only a limited number of characters in a romcom – it shouldn’t be hard to figure out who we are.”

His frown fades subtly, and he nods slowly. “Right,” he mutters, letting out a sigh. “Okay. That sounds doable.” He averts his eyes for a moment as he thinks on it, tracing his finger along the cardboard box closest to him. “So you’ve got two main characters, and then…” he trails off, tentatively looking at you from the corner of his eye.

You hum and nod. “There’s at least one best friend for each main character,” you start, leaning your hip against the table. “Maybe a sassy colleague that throws you a few lines from across the break room, and then the rest just… kinda depends on the plot, I guess.”

He lets out a sigh and nods. “Right, so we’ve got very clear options.”

You try to tell yourself he’s not trying to piss you off this time, but you can’t help but roll your eyes, you can’t help the annoyance rising yet again. “Listen, Kim, I wanna get us out of here as much as you do,” you snap, turning back to the box and starting to empty it out, plopping the heavy piles of folders onto the dark wooden table. “So will you tone down the asshole, for fuck’s sake?”

He breathes out sharply, turning to a box and doing the same. His movements are curt, almost aggressive. “Well, guess that makes us even for the coffee,” he shoots back lowly, tugging at the hem of his jacket.

With a heavy thud, you drop a stack of files on the table. “Jesus Christ, seriously? You’re comparing that to –” You interrupt yourself, leaning your hands on the table and trying to breathe in and out slowly. He’s not getting a rise out of you. Especially not now. “Not the point,” you huff, opening your eyes again to see him staring at you, an eyebrow raised. “If we’re going with romcom logic, you’re obviously the hot male lead. I just don’t know who I –”

“Obviously, huh?”

You glare at him, but he simply leans against the table with a smug smile stretched across his face. Although the tips of his ears seem to be growing a light red – something you’re sure you’re imagining – his eyes are twinkling with mischief, and you scowl. “Gloat about it to your cat, you narcissist.”

He just shrugs, his grin unfaltering and it’s just so frustrating.

“Anyways,” you add with gritted teeth. “So we’re obviously not –” You wave your hand back and forth between your chest and his. “The pairing,” you finish, your face contorting in disgust.

He snorts, shaking his head. “Yeah, no shit.”

Finally, something we can agree on. “You’ve probably already seen or talked to your love interest somehow,” you continue, turning back to the box to take out the rest of the files. “So tell me about everyone you met this morning– baristas, colleagues… other cat owners.”

He narrows his eyes at you, though he ignores the small jab and keeps emptying out the box instead. “I didn’t get the chance to text anyone this morning since… you know, I was kinda coping with parallel universe shock,” he says through a snort, tossing one empty box onto the ground and pulling another one towards him. “The baristas were pretty busy when I got my coffee, and I did say hi to the security guard in the lobby but he’s not really my type,” he adds with a small smile curling at his lips, shoving the piles of transcripts to the other side of the table so he can take out more from the second box.

You nod slowly, carefully taking out the last pile of folders from your box before putting it with his discarded one.

“And I think that’s –” He stops in his tracks, taking in a sharp breath as he drops a new pile of transcripts on the table. “Wait, wait, wait, there was this girl!” he exclaims, whirling around to face you.

You perk up and raise your eyebrows at him, leaning closer as you feel your heart skipping with excitement. “What’s with this girl?”

“Hyerin– she’s uh… she’s the girl from the break room.” Seokjin’s eyebrows furrow and he bites his lip, scratching the back of his head. “I only really knew her face before today, but we made some small talk in the elevator and she’s been smiling at me from across the office all morning.”

Your eyes widen. “Dude, that could be it,” you breathe out. Seokjin’s expression clears up, and a small, hopeful smile breaks through his scowl. “Okay, then we’ve got the main couple,” you decide, nodding to yourself as you cross your arms. “So if we wanna speed things up, we just need to run you guys through the three acts as fast as possible.”

“Three– three wh–” He blinks at you, his brows knit together. “What the hell kind of acts are you talking about?”

An amused grin pulls at your lips. “Well, romcoms are movies, so there’s acts to get through,” you reply, crossing your arms. Seokjin’s frown only deepens, and your amusement only grows. “Act one, the couple meets and gets together; act two, they’re torn apart for some reason; act three, they kiss and make up, or vice versa – and bam!” You clap your hands – Seokjin jumps but stays quiet, and you suppress the laughter bubbling in your throat. “The romcom ends.”

“Ah, right, that’s all so simple,” Seokjin returns with a sigh, turning back to the boxes. “We should be out in, what, a few days?”

You snort, waving his words away. “Don’t worry about that, everything’s simplified in romcoms,” you reply, and Seokjin looks up at you with a frown – you ignore his confusion. “For now, we just need to create a good opportunity for you guys to flirt and set a date,” you add, pausing for a moment as you realise the full implications of those words, and you pull a face in disgust. “Oh god, I’m gonna have to watch you flirt,” you mutter, mock gagging.

He simply snorts. “I’ll have you know I’m an amazing flirt, thank you very much,” he shoots back, keeping his chin held high.

You just pull another face at that, shaking your head. “Well, I guess it’s good to know you’re putting effort into something for once in your life.”

His smile dissipates in an instant and he sighs, shaking his head as he turns back to the transcripts in front of him. “So what are you supposed to be, huh?” he asks, his voice sharp as he plops stacks upon stacks of folders onto the table. “Some character that keeps annoying people to death?”

You scoff. “I don’t fucking know,” you snap, keeping your eyes focused on the papers you’re trying to keep in neat stacks, just hoping he doesn’t see the way your cheeks heat, the way your muscles tighten. Because what if you’re not part of whatever romcom Seokjin has ended up in? What if your romcom has barely even started and Seokjin gets to leave, and you’re forced to stay for weeks, months, years longer? Even worse, what if you’re just some designated side character appearing in story after story, never getting to leave?

You bite your tongue, trying to push the thoughts from your mind. They’re just worst-case scenarios. You don’t know if they’re true, you can’t know that– and so you just have to hold onto the hope that you’re somehow tied to Seokjin here. You got here with him, didn’t you? If he gets to leave, you should get to leave with him, too.

“I’m either part of your plotline or I’m not,” you tell him firmly, avoiding eye contact. “I’ll figure out which of the two it is.”

He hums, nods slowly as silence falls, and even that silence makes you so uncomfortable that you want to break it right away.

“Who the fuck knows,” you add with a sigh. “Maybe I’ll trip over a love interest in no time.”

Seokjin snorts. “Just make sure not to spill any liquids on him, yeah?”

You can’t help but sigh and roll your eyes. “Let’s just get started on this shit before I actually throw you out the window, hm?” you mutter, tossing another box to the floor and pulling back a chair. There are still three boxes left to unpack, but you really feel like pretending to be hyperfocused on reading whatever transcript is in front of you so you don’t have to say another word to Seokjin.

He just keeps unpacking. “Do you even know what you’re looking for?” he adds. He sounds like he’s teasing you, and you grit your teeth as you let out a sigh.

But unfortunately for you, you can’t reply with anything but, “Does it matter?”

You can see his smug grin from the corner of your eye as he leans over to the corner of the table and snatches a see-through folder, plopping it in front of you. “I know it’s a fake job, but you might wanna use the practice.”

You bite down on your tongue hard but you ignore the sharp pain it causes, harshly flipping open the folder. “Go fuck yourself, Kim.”

And of course, his grin remains unfaltering. “You’re very welcome, Y/N.”

-:-:-:-

“Are you double sure we’re supposed to do this with just two people?”

You rub your tense forehead as you finally close the first transcript and push it aside. With a sigh, you stare at the piles and piles of folders you’re yet to read through, and you’re tempted to just give up. It’s all fake anyway.

Seokjin snorts, glancing up from his own folder, his pen hovering just above the paper. “What, did you think we just sit at our desks and look pretty all day?” he returns, diverting his gaze back to the transcript he’s reading. “We do have actual work to do, you know.”

With a huff, you roll your eyes at him, grabbing a folder from the stack in front of you and flipping it open. “Wow, I never would’ve guessed,” you mutter.

Seokjin sighs heavily and slams his pen to the table. “Do you ever…” He gestures into your direction, and you try to keep your proud smile at bay as you look up to face him. “You know, turn down the asshole?” he huffs. “Or is that part of your character or something?”

You raise an eyebrow at him, unfazed. “Naw, did I hit a nerve?” you taunt, snickering when he sighs in exasperation and picks up his pen once more, shaking his head. “I was just trying to make conversation, Kim.”

He scoffs, fumbling with the corner of the paper. “Well, hate to tell ya, but I think you might just be the worst conversationalist I’ve ever met.”

You carefully underline a sentence in the transcript and scribble something onto the notepad to your right. “Well, flirt your way out of this universe and I’ll see if I can turn up the nice, hm?”

A sharp breath out. His pen hits the table again before he abruptly rises to his feet. “Fine,” he replies curtly. With an amused smile, you raise an eyebrow at him, your eyes flickering down to his hand as he pulls at the hem of his suit jacket once more, then adjusts the tie that hangs neatly around his neck. “But I’ll have you know that I don’t give a fuck whether you turn up the nice or not, I just wanna get out of here,” he insists, rearranging a few strands of hair while barely changing the overall look of it.

You snort. “Uh-huh, of course,” you return, watching with an amused smile as he pulls at his collar to straighten it, takes a deep breath in, lets it back out, and slips out of the room without saying another word.

Heaving a sigh, you lean back in your chair, tapping the back of your pen against the paper. A sudden and unexpected wave of nerves washes over you, settling in a tight ball in the pit of your stomach. You frown down at your pen, absently chewing on your bottom lip and shifting in your seat, trying to shake the tension from your muscles. They just won’t relax, though, and you look around the room almost nervously.

As much as you want to feel happy to be here, to have ended up in some magical, perfect romcom universe, to finally have landed your dream job somehow, you feel uneasy. Like you don’t belong here.

You don’t, really.

Your gaze drifts towards the office. Almost automatically, your eyes fall on Seokjin, who is leaning against a desk by the window, chatting with the girl sitting in the desk chair in front of him. His body blocks out her face, but you can see her shoulders shake with laughter – and when she finally leans back in her seat, there’s a bright smile curling at her lips. The sun breaks through the tinted office windows and falls on Seokjin’s white shirt, making him almost blindingly bright to look at. You scowl.

This universe is too fucking obvious.

Tearing your eyes away from the scene before the image is permanently burned into your vision, you focus on reading the transcript, trying to rid yourself of the growing ball of nerves in your stomach. It’s a slow process – you can barely get yourself to focus for longer than a sentence.

You’re finally turning the page when the smell of coffee drifts into the room. You lift your head to see Seokjin waltz through the doorway, wearing the smug grin you’ve grown to despise so much, and the nerves are quickly replaced with that familiar sense of annoyance.

“I’m back,” he announces as if you haven’t been able to deduct that yourself, and he flutters down into the chair next to you. He sets two colourful mugs on the dark brown conference table, and steam wafts up from the mugs into the air.

You frown at the coffee but you don’t comment, nor do you thank him. Instead, you raise your eyebrows in question, watching as he silently leans back. “So are you gonna tell me how it went, or…?” you all but snap, impatiently drumming your fingers on the table.

He looks up at you, his face completely blank, and the ball of nerves returns, tightens involuntarily. “Oh, you mean the whole ‘flirting my way into another universe’ thing?” he asks. A smile breaks through his poker face before he quickly averts his eyes, grabbing his pen and leaning over the folder on the table.

Nevertheless, you can see him trying to hide his smile, and the nerves start to dissipate yet again.

“No, I was asking if you survived the journey to the break room– of course I’m talking about the flirting thing, you idiot,” you huff.

He looks up at you with an ever-growing grin. “Well, I don’t usually kiss and tell, but…” he trails off, letting a short silence fall.

You raise your eyebrows at him, leaning back in your seat and crossing your arms. The way he’s grinning at you reminds you of each and every time he walked out of your firm’s lobby with yet another client, and you feel like strangling the guy – again. Until –

“She asked me out.”

-:-:-:-

“... and we should do some research about where you guys are going while we’re at it, because honestly you can make or break a date just by picking the right location– I’ll look up a few romcoms to check how they went about their first dates, just to increase our chances, you know? And then we can…”

You know you’re rambling. You know you’re practically hopping up and down in your chair, barely eating anything of the food that’s stalled out on the adjacent desks you’re sitting at – but you don’t exactly care, either.

The both of you came to the appalling conclusion that you should stay after work, to brainstorm without colleagues walking around to hear you, because he’s supposed to go out with this girl tomorrow, and only because the idiot had half the mind not to offer to take her out tonight. To do yourselves a favour, though, you’ve decided to leave the stuffy conference room for the day and settle down at your desks, which just so happen to be next to each other.

And now, you can’t stop talking.

“Oh, oh!” You take a sip of your umpteenth cup of coffee of the day, poking your food with your chopsticks. “You have to remember to bring a jacket you can give her or something, I’m pretty sure that really helps in speeding things along. Romcom characters have this thing for smelling clothes and stuff,” you add, stuffing some food into your mouth. “I think it’s a bonding thing.”

He hums, focusing on eating his food as you take a breath to continue –

“What if I just… went on the date?”

You pause in the middle of your breath. Your lips part, you avert your eyes to think his words over. “Well, I mean –” You pause again, brows furrowing.

“It worked with the flirting,” he says with a shrug, sitting up in his chair to take your mug from you. “And I really think you’ve had enough coffee for the day,” he adds, laughing softly and you’d almost smile back– almost.

You reach out to take back your coffee, taking a loud, defiant sip from the lukewarm drink. “Why, are my ideas too good?”

He snorts. “Well, there is that, of course,” he starts, taking your coffee from you again and you roll your eyes. Fine. You don’t like caffeine that much anyway. “But you haven’t cursed me out in at least five minutes and I’m getting seriously worried about your mental state.”

You’re sure there’s an insult hidden in there somewhere, but you don’t care to dwell on it. “Whatever,” you return with a huff, rolling your eyes. “The thing is, if you just go on the date without any sort of preparation, it might take a lot longer to get any success.”

“The fact that you have that little trust in my capacity to date women concerns me,” Seokjin replies, taking a sip from your coffee. His face contorts and he coughs as he puts the mug back on the table – “Jesus, this is disgusting. Don’t you put any sugar in this?”

You narrow your eyes at him, deciding not to comment on his blatant theft. “Whether or not I think you can date a real life woman is a whole different question, Kim,” you huff, stealing your coffee back and throwing it back in its entirety before he can take it from you again. “Romcom dates are never just dates, you moron.”

“Ah, there we go, at least we’re back to normal,” he says with a grin, leaning back in his seat as he sips from his water. You roll your eyes, putting your empty mug back onto the desk. “I’m curious, though, what are your credentials?” he adds, tilting his head at you. “Like, what makes you think you know this universe so well?”

You can’t help but grin as you lean back yourself. “Why, I do fancy myself a bit of a… romcom expert, if you will,” you reply with a casual shrug, picking up your own glass of water and taking a sip.

He looks at you with an amused smile, one eyebrow raised. “Meaning, you spend way too much of your free time watching romcoms?”

Your face falls. Pointedly, you put your glass back on the desk. “You better be glad I’m not splashing this in your face, Kim,” you return, nodding to the water as you pick up a container of sweet and sour chicken. “Just because you have no free time doesn’t mean you need to bully me for how I spend mine,” you add, stuffing some of the food into your mouth.

Seokjin scoffs and pokes at some fried rice. “Yeah, well,” he mutters, putting it down to take another sip of his water. “Let’s just get a move-on on this date thing, I don’t wanna stay longer than I have to.”

You frown at him, tilting your head. “What, no snarky comeback?” you tease, picking up the empty coffee mug to look into it. “Did I accidentally put some of that peace juice in there?”

His face contorts in disgust. “Is that why it tasted so bad?” he returns and you can’t help but laugh– you quickly compose yourself and cover it up with a cough. The damage has already been done, though; Seokjin smiles to himself as he focuses on his food, moving around his rice with a spoon.

With a sigh, you lean back, staring up at the ceiling. Your eyes are aching, your fingers feel stiff as you rub your face, and you let your tired eyes flutter closed for just a moment. The transcript pages seem almost burnt into your vision, and the letters float in front of you.

“Fuck,” you mutter, dropping your hands back into your lap. “I’m exhausted and this was just the movie version,” you huff as you sit up, rubbing your eyes before remembering you put on makeup this morning and quickly pulling away, wiping underneath your eyes to check if any black pigment sticks to your fingertips. Of course, there’s nothing there – and when you look at your reflection in your dark desktop monitor, you see your makeup still looks the same as it has all day. There’s one of the many perks of a romcom universe – magical setting spray.

“That’s King and Wang for ya,” Seokjin replies with a laugh. When you turn to look at him, you notice his smile doesn’t quite reach the rest of his face like his stupid little grins usually do. Your eyebrows furrow and you tilt your head, taking a breath to ask him what– “Now just tell me about this romcom date shit, will you?”

You pause, narrowing your eyes at his swift change of topic, but you decide to ignore it. “Why, I thought you just wanted to go on the date, but– you actually want my help?” you tease. A smug grin spreads across your face, and you cross your arms over your chest as you lean back in your chair. “Mister ‘I know how to get with women’? Asking for advice?”

He rolls his eyes and snorts. “You done?”

“Never really,” you reply with a smile, sitting up in your seat and clearing your throat. “But anyways, the date– I think the easiest thing we can do is change your look.”

Seokjin blinks and gasps dramatically, putting a hand to his chest. “Excuse me, my looks aren’t good enough for you now?” he breathes out, and you can’t help but laugh in amusement.

“Well, I mean…” You can’t lie – Seokjin has always looked really fucking good. It’s something that bothers you to no avail; the injustice that such an annoying person could have such good genes that you just want to stare at him all day instead of arguing. “They could be… enhanced.”

He narrows his eyes at you. “How?”

You snicker. “Oh, now you’re interested?” After another glare, you hold up your hands in surrender, picking up your chicken and your chopsticks again. “Biggest things– pull up your sleeves, undo the first button of your collar and loosen your tie a little bit.” He frowns, putting his food down and slowly moving to unbutton his wrist cuffs to push up his sleeves. He doesn’t look away from you, a wary look in his eye. “Oh, and try to make your hair look a little messier than usual, but not, like… unkempt,” you add, waving your chopsticks at him.

“That’s– really specific,” he says slowly, his eyebrows furrowed as he moves on to his collar, briefly fumbling with his tie before he undoes the top button.

You simply shrug, watching as he tugs at his collar to keep it straight, and you smile in amusement. “And true.”

He scowls at you, looking at his desktop monitor as he pops his collar. He snickers at his reflection. “How about this? Is this extra hot?” he jokes, turning to you.

You snort, barely managing not to choke on your food. “You’re an idiot.”

He grins, his eyes glittering with unabashed joy in the low office lighting and for a split second, for just the briefest of moments, you can almost feel your heart stutter, you can almost –

You quickly adjust, tearing your eyes away from him.

“Listen, some people think it looks cool,” Seokjin tries in defense, turning back to the monitor to fix his collar.

You look down at your food, laughing. “Yeah, I think that’s just you,” you return, taking another bite as you see him dishevelling his hair from the corner of your eye. “Or maybe just morons in general.”

He scoffs and ignores your insult, sitting back as he keeps messing with his hair. “How’s this?”

You look up and let out a surprised laugh, your eyes widening as you notice the way his hair is sticking up at all angles; whatever product he’s put in there is clearly not helping him right now. “Oh my god, no, that’s way too much,” you reply through more laughter, and he huffs theatrically. “You’re just gonna make her laugh at you.”

With a grin, he turns back to his monitor and squints at it as he rearranges some of the strands– but he only makes it worse. “Well, that is kind of the goal here,” he replies, turning back to you. One of the strands of his hair is standing completely upright, and a stupidly proud smile pulls at his lips. “Better?”

“Jesus, are you planning to make contact with the ISS on this date?” you say through a laugh, putting away your food and rolling your chair forward until your knees bump into his. “Can I?”

He nods, slumping forward slightly so his hair is more accessible, and you reach out to flatten the antenna on the top of his head. “You do realise you’re getting rid of my emergency line here, right? What if we end up in the middle of nowhere and our phones die?”

You scoff, narrowing your eyes as you smooth out the other stray strands that are pointing at the ceiling. “Where exactly are you planning on taking this poor girl?” you ask as you gently run your fingers through his soft– his normal-feeling hair to dishevel it more subtly.

He laughs. “I don’t know, maybe we’ll feel spontaneous,” he replies, amusement dripping off his every word.

“Well, if you do somehow end up there, you can just fold it out again and contact Houston, hm?” you conclude, leaning back to admire your work. “There we go, that’s a lot better.”

He turns to look at his reflection, turning his face to the left, the right, pulling at his collar again. “So this is what a romcom lead looks like, huh?” he remarks, staring at the monitor as he runs his fingers over his hair in small, unobtrusive taps. “Overworked and unprofessional?”

“It suits you,” you return with a teasing grin, crossing your arms over your chest – Seokjin just glares at you. “What? You gonna tell me I’m wrong?”

“I’m gonna tell you you’re an asshole,” he says, pointedly picking his food back up and putting his feet up on your seat right next to your legs.

Scowling down at them, you shove them off, wiping down your chair even though it really doesn’t look dirty. “Do make sure to tell your girl that, she’ll really appreciate it,” you shoot back, sinking into your seat.

He just laughs. “Oh, don’t worry, I already know how I’m gonna date my way out of this universe, Y/N,” he returns, chewing on his fried rice. With a scoff, you look down at your own food, poking at a piece of chicken. “Now as to how you’re gonna get out…”

He says it so teasingly, so smugly that you roll your eyes out of reflex. But to be quite frank, you’ve been wondering the exact same thing all day; Seokjin is already well on his way to the exit, and you feel like you might just be left behind looking for your door back home. Without him, the situation might be more bearable, you think to yourself. You might enjoy yourself here.

Begrudgingly, though, you have to admit that you doubt it.

“I don’t know, it’ll come,” you mumble, shrugging quietly.

“So what does the typical female romcom lead look like, then? Do you just –” He leans forward, his hand reaching for your hair before you slap it away, and he laughs. “What? I’m just trying to help here.”

“Yeah, sure, antenna boy,” you reply with a snort, though you can’t help the smile that curls at your lips. You’re almost flattered at the fact that he’s assuming you’re the lead of your own romcom – you would be, really, if you weren’t so unsure about it, if the mere thought of that uncertainty didn’t make you even more uncomfortable. Nevertheless, it’s sweet of him, to just –

Of course, he’s probably only doing it to bully you. You shouldn’t read into it so much.

You roll your shoulders and sit up straighter, shaking your head to push the thoughts from your mind. “Office romcoms like this? If I’m really part of the main couple, I’m probably gonna have to put my hair into one of those really tight low ponytails and wear a pantsuit or something.”

Seokjin huffs and slumps in his seat. “Why do you get to dress professionally and I don’t?” he almost whines, and you laugh in amusement.

“Because female romcom leads have to be uptight at the start so they can be loosened up by whatever guy they fall in love with,” you reply, tapping your temple with your index. “It’s Hollywood science, Kim.”

He makes a gagging sound, stuffing more food into his mouth. His cheeks bulge like a hamster as he chews, and you’d almost find it cute– if he didn’t start talking with his mouth still full. “Sound logic,” he manages to say, nodding slowly. “Very scientific.”

“Ah, of course, I’m also gonna need to be unnaturally clumsy and trip over something at least once a day,” you add, stuffing some chicken into your mouth. “I’m bound to bump into some kind of love interest that way.” If I even have one.

Seokjin snorts. “Just make sure you don’t trip on me again, eh?” he teases, studying whatever is left of his food. “I don’t have an unlimited supply of white dress shirts.”

You scoff. “In this universe? Yes, you fucking do.”

With a laugh, he leans back in his chair, one eyebrow raised in amusement. “Alrighty, then,” he says, stirring his food in the container – you can’t help but notice the grin pulling at his lips. “Spill away, I guess.”

-:-:-:-

When you walk into a café near your office building the next day, you immediately notice the overly cheerful smiles on the faces around you. It’s the middle of yet another hot afternoon, and even though it’s supposed to be lunch rush hour right about now, there aren’t very many customers inside. The space is small, the tables are pressed so close together that you can barely see a path towards the counter. Large booths line each side, pressed up against the enormous windows that look out onto the street, and soft chatter drifts through the small café. You’re more than grateful for the airconditioning, but you’re sweating your ass off nevertheless – even five minutes in the hot summer sun has overheated you to the point where you’re craving something ice cold, and you push your way towards the counter.

“Oh my gosh, Y/N!”

You blink for a moment at Sooyeon’s cheerful greeting, your cooked brain trying to catch up to reality before you manage to plaster on a smile. “Hey, I –” Your mouth slams closed just before you can comment that you didn’t know she worked here – since you’re probably supposed to know that already. “It’s nice to see you!” you reply instead.

“You too!” she replies with a smile, pulling a to-go cup from the stack next to the cash register. “The usual, I’m guessing?”

Should you ask?

You nod and smile. “Of course,” you reply, hoping to god that your fictional past self has made some good choices when it comes to coffee orders. “How’ve you been?”

“Ah, you know, same old,” Sooyeon replies with a smile, scribbling something onto your cup with a thick black marker before she hands it to the barista next to her. “Jessica dropped by today, by the way,” she adds as she rings up your order, and you swear you can see her cheeks grow a shade redder.

You raise an eyebrow, an amused smile pulling at your lips. “Did she?” you return, handing her some cash before she can even tell you how much it is. Sooyeon nods, smiles shyly as she stuffs the money into the drawer and hands you back your change. You can’t help but wonder if she’s got her own romcom story going, too. “Did you talk to her?”

Sooyeon sputters and laughs, shaking her head as you slowly walk to the other end of the counter to wait for your drink. “Dear god, no, I’ve already embarrassed myself enough in front of her,” she replies, smoothing out her apron. “I think the cheesecake incident taught us all more than enough.”

A smile curls at your lips as you walk backwards towards the end of the counter. You’re aching to hear more about the cheesecake incident, but you’ll fish for the story when you’re both home later. “Well, let me know if she comes ba–” You breathe out sharply when you stumble into someone’s side, and you quickly whirl around, opening your mouth to blurt out an apology when –

“Nara?”

Your friend looks up at you from her phone and she blinks at you, her eyebrows furrowed deeply. “What?” she returns, snappy and snarly and you frown. Her clothes are uncharacteristically dark – a black and white blouse, a tight, dark pencil skirt, black heels, her wavy hair tied back into a tight ponytail. It’s unmistakably Nara – but she doesn’t look like herself.

“I– I’ve been trying to reach you,” you breathe out. Her frown just deepens, and the brief sense of relief you felt turns into nervousness. “Where have you been? Did you change your number or something?”

She blinks again for a moment, and she scoffs indignantly. “Why are you even trying to reach me?” she returns, taking a step back. “Did you finally start second-guessing your whole ‘I need to focus on work’ thing?”

Your heart drops. You wonder– scratch that, you hope to all hell that she’s joking, but you can’t get yourself to ask. Because you know what answer you’ll get, and you’re not sure you want to hear it.

Nara snorts, looks up as someone calls her name and puts out her coffee. “Thought so,” she mutters, brushing past you to pick up her coffee from the counter. “Bye.”

You bite down on your tongue so hard that tears jump into your eyes, and you blink fast to try to get them away. “Bye,” you whisper after her as she walks out. Distantly, you hear someone call out your name and your coffee order, but you barely register it, you barely register anything but the deep discomfort tightening in your chest, the invisible weight pressing on your shoulders.

God, you wish you were home.

-:-:-:-

You take a slow sip from your water, flipping the page of some three-year-old deposition transcript that reads like someone spilled a thesaurus onto a page and didn’t even try to make sense of anything. Seokjin is silently reading next to you, drumming his fingers on the table as his eyes scan the page. He frowns, squints at the paper, pulls at his tie to loosen it for just a moment before he puts it back into place, taking a sip of his coffee. It’s late, and the conference room is quiet, much like the rest of the office; not everyone has left just yet, though, and there’s the occasional ringing of a phone, a muted sneeze breaking through the glass walls that separate you from everyone else.

Despite the peace and quiet, though, your head is aching and your shoulders feel as heavy as they did when Nara left you behind in the coffee shop mere hours ago. With a deep sigh, you rub your forehead and glance at your phone, pressing the home button to make the screen flash on – 6:36 PM. You should be at home eating dinner, gorging on ice cream to bury the tight feeling in your chest, almost falling asleep on your giant couch.

But here you are, still filing through piles and piles of transcripts in search of some golden piece of evidence that will secure a win.

Chewing on your lip, you heave another sigh and turn back to the deposition, trying to keep your tired eyes from falling closed. It barely works– but you can’t even get them to focus in the first place, so it’s wasted energy either way.

Seokjin clears his throat, shifts in his seat. You can see him looking at you from the corner of your eye and you try to ignore him, rubbing your forehead once more – but his stare keeps burning into you, and you huff.

“Something in my hair?”

Seokjin taps his pen against the table, shrugs. “Just wondering why you’ve been so quiet.”

You roll your eyes, sitting back in your seat and looking up at him, your eyebrows raised. “Been able to read my mind yet?”

He laughs softly, covers it up with a cough. “No, I was just thinking I might ask.”

“Well, I’m fine, don’t worry,” you reply quickly, way too quickly to sound even remotely believable.

He leans forward, his elbows resting on the table as he twirls his pen between his fingers. “Did something happen at lunch?”

Your heart skips a beat. Does this guy actually read minds or something? “What makes you think something happened at lunch?” you retort defensively, straightening your back. Why does he even want to talk about this? It’s not like he cares.

He shrugs. His eyes are focused on his pen, and you’ll admit that the lack of eye contact makes it easier. Less direct, less… intense. “Well, you came back here with this scowl that even the airconditioning couldn’t fix– that, and you haven’t called me a moron in a while, so… I kinda put two and two together.”

With a sigh, you look down at the deposition, the letters practically dancing around on the page. “Well, congrats on the math.”

He snorts, shifts in his seat. The chair creaks as he moves. “So what happened?”

You hum and shrug, tracing random figures onto the paper with your index finger. “I bumped into Nara. She’s from back –”

“I know who she is.”

You bite your lip, your breath turns shaky even though you’re trying hard to control it.

“She’s got a good glare,” Seokjin remarks, and you can hear his smile through his words. You’re not quite sure if that was supposed to be comforting, but you can’t help but smile at the thought of Nara glaring him out of the office.

“Yeah, I got one of those today,” you say through a sigh, still avoiding Seokjin’s eyes as you scratch behind your ear.

He’s quiet for a moment. “What do you mean?”

You sigh once more, chewing on your bottom lip. “Apparently, we hate each other in this universe because I cut off contact with her.” You’re blinking fast, frantically tapping your fingers to the paper. “So, yeah, that doesn’t really feel great.”

Silence. Your fingers keep tapping the paper, you keep chewing on your lip as you try to push the memory from your mind, as you try to remind yourself – “She’s not the real Nara, though, so I guess I shouldn’t be feeling so bad,” you add hastily, letting out a sigh. “I’ll get over it.”

Seokjin’s warm hand covers yours, and your fingers still. You breathe in sharply, startled at the sudden and unexpected touch, and you stare at his hand. Is he… trying to reassure you? “We’re gonna get out of here,” he says, his voice steady, and you bite your lip as you keep your eyes averted. He’s trying to reassure you. He’s actually trying to reassure you. “You’re not alone, okay? We’re in this togeth–”

“Hey, Seokjinnie, you ready?”

You jolt upright, the warmth of Seokjin’s palm lifts off your hand, and you both blink at the girl peeking her head into the room. It takes you several seconds to recognise her – and when realisation finally dawns on you, you still feel too tired to do much more than smile.

Seokjin clears his throat and sits up, smoothing out his shirt. “Yeah, of course, I’ll be right out,” he replies, clearing his throat once more and flashing her a smile.

She nods happily. “Alright, I’ll be at the elevators,” she chirps right before she slips out again.

As soon as she’s out of earshot, silence falls once more – but you can’t help but snort, forgetting about your own mess of a life as you turn to face him. “Seokjinnie?” you repeat, pursing your lips to fight your laughter. “You told her to call you Seokjinnie?”

He adjusts quickly to the topic change, narrowing his eyes at you as he puts a bright pink post-it on the page he’s reading. “I don’t fucking know, she’s been calling me that this entire time and I’m not gonna tell her to not,” he replies, flipping the folder closed and rising to his feet.  He grabs his suit jacket from the back of his chair, slinging it over his shoulder. “I’ll uh… I’ll see you tomorrow, I guess.”

“Good luck, Seokjinnie,” you tell him through a laugh, fumbling with the corner of the page. You completely ignore the glare he sends your way, grinning brightly. “Remember the emergency antenna!”

He snorts and narrows his eyes. “Thank you for that amazing tip,” he says with a sarcastic smile, reaching behind him to open the door and walk backwards out of the conference room. “I really appreciate your help.”

You beam at him and throw up an ‘ok’ sign. “Oh, hey, don’t forget!”

He turns to look at you as he walks past the glass wall, his eyebrows raised. You point at your forearm, pushing up an imaginary sleeve and he scoffs, shoving the sleeves of his shirt up to his elbows, ruffling his fingers through his hair and throwing up his arms in a proverbial happy now?

You give him a thumbs up and he laughs, replies with a playful salute as he steps out of your sight.

With a small smile, you shake your head and look back down at the transcripts in front of you, sighing deeply. The ball of nerves you felt just yesterday returns, it only grows worse as Nara’s scowl flashes in front of your eyes again.

Seokjin had a point last night, asking you how you’d get out of here, trying to get you to get moving like he is. It’s not like waiting is gonna do you any good.

Tapping the butt of your pen against the paper, you look at your phone again, picking it up to check your reflection. You run your fingers through your hair, still smooth and glossy despite the humidity outside. Maybe you need to start playing up the uptightness before you can actually start the story, follow Nara’s example and gel down your hair for starters. Or maybe, you don’t have a story at all, and you’re doomed to be stuck in here as some background character forever and –

You shake your head, pointedly closing the folder in front of you. You need to stay positive here – and you need to start actively trying to get out of here instead of watching Seokjin flirt his way home. That’s why you haven’t found anyone yet.

With a sharp breath in, a sharp breath out, you straighten up in your chair. You just haven’t been trying hard enough– and that ends now.