Work Text:
Kim Seoyeon is starting to think the universe has it out for her.
Okay. In truth, she’s known that for a while. She’s known it since she was, like, three years old. She had definitely been aware of it during that whole fiasco when she had to pretend to like gaming for weeks, maybe a month, and had constantly felt like years were being sliced off her lifespan with each new lie she had to spin.
But ever since that misunderstanding had been cleared, things had started looking up! Kim Seoyeon had dusted off the Nintendo Switch she’d won from a company Christmas raffle last year and bought a few games (possibly illegally, if the too-cheap prices were any indication, but she hasn’t been arrested yet). Yoo Sangah had seemed genuinely impressed by how quickly she’d filled up her Pokédex in Pokémon Legends and by her landscape designing in Animal Crossing. Sometimes the two of them just sit there in comfortable quiet for half an hour after work, playing their respective games, or sometimes they’ll visit each other’s islands. It’s nice. It’s fun. Kim Seoyeon might be in love.
So of course, just when things are going so well, they have to fall apart again.
Kim Seoyeon doesn’t usually use the office’s break room for its coffee, since she makes her own at home then fills her tumbler up with it. But today she’d overslept and hadn’t had time to prepare, so she’d reluctantly trudged here this morning after setting her things down at her desk, right in time to see Yoo Sangah and some guy she’s never seen before chatting it up right in front of the coffee machine. Kim Seoyeon stops dead, which means she stands there stupidly by the break room’s doorway, but there’s no one else behind her and neither of them notice her.
“I love plain black coffee best, really,” Yoo Sangah’s saying. Kim Seoyeon’s not even surprised. “But my friend likes trying new flavors, and hazelnut’s not so bad.”
The man laughs and says, “I like hazelnut too! But my favorite’s gotta be caramel. It’s the best balance between bitter and sweet for coffee.”
“Mm, that does sound good. I’ll have to try it sometime.”
Kim Seoyeon would normally just leave and buy overpriced coffee in the café down the street by now, but maybe because it’s Yoo Sangah there rather than a stranger—she clears her throat and says, her voice coming out in a dry, exhausted croak, “Excuse me. Can I use the coffee machine, please.”
“Oh—my bad,” the man apologizes, while Yoo Sangah brightens and greets, “Seoyeon-ssi!”
It’s possibly the happiest Kim Seoyeon has ever seen her, especially this early in the morning. This is the worst day of her life. “Yeah, morning.”
“I don’t usually see you here,” Yoo Sangah says. “Don’t you drink coffee out of your tumbler?”
Why does she know that? “I woke up late this morning…”
“Hmm, it’s because you stayed up last night, didn’t you?”
Kim Seoyeon winces. Why does she know that, too? “Well, the Pokémon weren’t going to wait forever…”
Yoo Sangah shakes her head, but she looks amused. “Do you want to come along?” she suddenly asks, to Kim Seoyeon’s confusion and the evident surprise of the man standing beside her, who Kim Seoyeon had very nearly forgotten about. “Song Jihoon-ssi and I were just going to get coffee from the café down the street. Have you two met? He’s a new hire.”
Wow, so Kim Seoyeon would’ve walked right into a trap either way. “Uhhh,” she says, glancing at this Song Jihoon; he looks back and forth between the two of them, and for a moment, Kim Seoyeon almost feels bad for him. He’d clearly been trying to ask Yoo Sangah out on a little coffee date before work, and Yoo Sangah had now very clearly blown that off.
Envy tugs at Kim Seoyeon’s chest—she likes being friends with Yoo Sangah now, but she definitely still has one hell of a crush on the other woman. But Yoo Sangah clearly likes this guy, if she’d agreed to go with him rather than ignore him like she does with Han Myungoh and half the other guys in the office. “No, I’m good,” Kim Seoyeon finally says, gesturing vaguely at the coffee machine. “I, uh, need to cut down on my spending and all, y’know? Go have fun on your…”
She can’t even say date. This is the worst day of her life.
“Oh…” Yoo Sangah looks genuinely disappointed. “That’s a shame. Maybe next time, then.”
Song Jihoon lets out a near-imperceptible sigh of relief and gives Kim Seoyeon a grateful look. He seems nice, Kim Seoyeon supposes. Not sleazy or vile or clearly just trying to hit, which Kim Seoyeon can’t say the same for nearly everyone else in the office who’s tried to talk Yoo Sangah up once. He wouldn’t be awful to her, at least, and one date wouldn’t hurt any of them. “Yeah, next time,” he agrees. “Let’s go, then, Sangah-ssi?”
Kim Seoyeon waits for them to leave her alone in the break room before ripping open a cold packet of taiyaki and chewing on it with unnecessary vehemence.
To Kim Seoyeon’s despair, it does not stop there. A few days later, Yoo Sangah gently nudges Kim Seoyeon awake from her usual pre-work nap on her office desk and presents her with a tall cup of iced caramel latte. “Here—you can have it,” she says, cheerily. “You like sweet things, right?”
Kim Seoyeon, vision still bleary with sleep, blinks stupidly up at her. Waking up to a smiling Yoo Sangah leaning over her is a whole lot like waking up to an angel, so for a few delirious seconds Kim Seoyeon well and truly believes she died in her nap. “Wha…?”
“Try it. Ah, it’s almost time to work, I should go—” Yoo Sangah gives her one last bright smile before hurrying out of the finance section, leaving a trail of turning heads behind her.
Kim Seoyeon stares down at the latte now on her desk. Slowly, she unwraps the plastic straw, sticks it in, then takes a sip. It’s… pretty good.
In the usually empty cubicle beside her, Kim Dokja raises an eyebrow. “You look happy.”
“Not a word,” she warns.
“Has Sangah-ssi ever given anyone coffee before?”
“Sangah-ssi doesn’t like things that are too sweet. I’m just her… her… garbage disposal.”
“Right. I believe you.”
“Why are you even here? Go back to QA!” Kim Seoyeon sputters. “Isn’t it almost time for work?”
Kim Dokja looks down at his phone, then raises both eyebrows. “Still half an hour.”
The latte is actually, seriously good. Kim Seoyeon takes it out of the paper bag it had been in and finally puts her cat-shaped knit coaster to use; she can’t bring herself to throw the cup away even after she’s finished the coffee, so she lets it sit there for the rest of the day. That afternoon Song Jihoon passes by, suddenly stopping just beside her desk and staring down at the coffee cup, but he only gives her a thin smile and hurries away when Kim Seoyeon looks up at him.
Kim Seoyeon picks up the cup and blinks, dumbfounded, at Song Jihoon written in marker.
She has no idea if Yoo Sangah is doing this on purpose or if she’s genuinely this dense, but Yoo Sangah keeps dismissing poor Song Jihoon’s attempts at wooing her while simultaneously dragging Kim Seoyeon into it. On lunch breaks, when Kim Seoyeon is munching on some energy bars at her desk, Yoo Sangah will come from the gaming department and eat in the unused cubicle beside her, Song Jihoon trailing miserably at her heels; after work, when Kim Seoyeon turns around as soon as she spots Song Jihoon sitting beside Yoo Sangah in the office, Yoo Sangah will spot her as if she’d been watching the doors and call for Seoyeon-ssi to come stay. It’s not even a matter of petty jealousy anymore; at this point, Kim Seoyeon feels genuinely sorry for this guy.
“You should give Song Jihoon a chance,” Kim Seoyeon feels compelled to say, one night, when it’s just the two of them in the office again, after Song Jihoon dejectedly bid them goodbye and left as soon as Kim Seoyeon took her usual seat. “He seems… nice.”
“Hm?” Yoo Sangah’s absorbed in whatever battle she’s fighting on-screen. “What do you mean?”
“I mean—he’s clearly interested, right?”
That gets her attention; Yoo Sangah frowns and lands a killing blow, then pauses the game and turns to face Kim Seoyeon. “Is he? I think he’s just being friendly. He’s like this with the others in his department too.”
“That so,” Kim Seoyeon mutters, now feeling a little embarrassed. “But don’t you like him?”
“Like him,” Yoo Sangah repeats.
“Um… you talk to him, and hang out with him…?”
“Don’t I also talk to you, and hang out with you, Seoyeon-ssi?”
“Well, that’s… different…”
“Different how?”
Kim Seoyeon doesn’t like where this conversation is going. “Uh, never mind. I should go,” she mumbles, standing up even though she’d just taken her seat less than five minutes go. “Sorry, I actually have something to do today. Um… see you tomorrow, Sangah-ssi?”
For a moment Yoo Sangah looks almost disappointed, but maybe that’s just the dim lighting in the office. “Right. See you, Seoyeon-ssi.”
For the first time in a while, it’s awkward between them—the next few days is like Kim Seoyeon’s own personal cringe compilation video, with how much effort she puts in avoiding the gaming department at all costs. She even hides in the QA department for a few minutes when Song Jihoon, in a clearly good mood, passes by again. Kim Dokja looks like he’s silently judging her the whole time, but it’s not like he can say anything when he does the same in the unused cubicle beside her in finance all the time. At one point Kim Seoyeon also makes use of a broom closet, but she doesn’t want to talk about that.
What if next time Kim Seoyeon slips up and says something too revealing? With how much she tends to stare, even when she’s grown more or less used to Yoo Sangah’s beauty, it’s a miracle Yoo Sangah hasn’t found out about her badly-concealed crush yet. Or maybe she has, and she just isn’t saying anything out of pity. That thought has Kim Seoyeon wanting to curl in on herself like a dying slug. It’s better they spend some time apart, she convinces herself; it’s not good for Yoo Sangah to only have, like, two friends in this office anyway.
Damn, why do both of her friends have the Kim surname, have February birthdays, and are both the most pathetic in their respective departments? This is just embarrassing.
Nearly a week after that horrible conversation, Kim Seoyeon passes by the gaming department on her way home; the first few days she’d used the emergency stairs, because there was simply no other way to not pass by that office aside from those, but that route is exhausting and she’s in no mood for exercise today. Then her soul nearly soars out of her body when the glass doors fly open and Yoo Sangah, eyes wide and expression panicked, hisses, “Seoyeon-ssi!”
“What? What?” Kim Seoyeon yelps, looking around for any serial killers hiding in the shadows of the dim office hallway.
“Come in, please. Can we talk?”
Whatever this is about is clearly more important than the awkwardness of last week, so Kim Seoyeon tells herself she is not a pussy five times before following Yoo Sangah into the office, devoid of Han Myungoh (and everybody else, for that matter) for once. Yoo Sangah sits down by her desk, so Kim Seoyeon does the same on her usual spot, but then Yoo Sangah springs back up to her feet and starts pacing back and forth, arms crossed over her chest. “I have a problem.”
“Um. Okay?”
“I… accidentally involved you.”
“Um,” Kim Seoyeon repeats, getting a bad feeling about this, “okay…?”
Yoo Sangah groans and runs a hand through her hair, messing up her usual impeccable style. It takes truly insurmountable effort for Kim Seoyeon to look away from her now uneven fringe. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t think he would… no, let me start from the top.” She takes a deep breath, then returns to sit by her desk again. “The thing is—earlier, I went out for lunch with Jihoon-ssi…”
“Uh-huh?”
“And…” Yoo Sangah winces. “Um, he asked me out.”
Kim Seoyeon, wisely, does not say, I told you so.
“You were right,” she sighs. “He really was—is interested. I wanted to believe he was just being nice, but… Anyway, I panicked. I didn’t know what to say, but I didn’t want to outright say I didn’t like him. So I… er, well…”
Kim Seoyeon waits patiently, despite how the dread in her gut has built up enough that she feels ready to throw it all up. Eventually, Yoo Sangah says, “I said I was taken.”
“You said,” Kim Seoyeon echoes, hollowly, “you’re what.”
“Taken. Seeing someone else.” Yoo Sangah winces. “And, um. You were the first name that came to mind.”
Kim Seoyeon wants to explode.
“He didn’t believe me because I was stupid enough to say I wasn’t seeing anyone last week, when he asked.” Yoo Sangah winces again until it looks like she’s the one who wants to curl in on herself this time, only she’s somehow still far too pretty to be compared to a dying slug. “So I said it was fairly recent, just the other day, and… I’m so sorry, Seoyeon-ssi. This is so silly, I don’t even know why I didn’t just…”
“No, I get it,” Kim Seoyeon says. “I mean, I did the same thing.”
“You pretended you were…” Yoo Sangah stares blankly at her for a moment, then hides a laugh behind her hand. Kim Seoyeon hadn’t realized how much she’s missed spending time with Yoo Sangah these past few days until right now, when just seeing and hearing her laugh is enough to send Kim Seoyeon into palpitations. “I almost forgot about that. I guess we’re more alike than I thought.”
That probably hadn’t been much of a compliment, but Kim Seoyeon feels herself smiling back anyway. “Oh,” Yoo Sangah says, before Kim Seoyeon can speak, “you’re smiling.”
“Huh?”
“I mean, you don’t smile often.” Yoo Sangah says it so bluntly that Kim Seoyeon can only blink, stunned. “You look much warmer when you do.”
“Warmer…” So Kim Seoyeon regularly looks cold. This suits her just fine, since she’ll do anything to keep other people from talking to her unless absolutely necessary, but if Yoo Sangah likes her when she smiles… well… Kim Seoyeon can feel her cheeks heating up. This is bad. She clears her throat and says, “About the, uh, Song Jihoon situation. Do you need me to do anything about it?”
“Oh, right!” Yoo Sangah claps her hands together. “I don’t think my lie convinced him, especially since, well… we haven’t exactly been talking recently.” She coughs and barrels on before it can get too awkward. “I know this is a bit of a favor to ask, but… could you come visit like usual again? Just until he believes us? It shouldn’t take too long, and you can always just… make an escape for the bathroom, or something, if you’re uncomfortable.” By the end of it her face looks a little pink too, and this time Kim Seoyeon’s certain it’s not just the light coming from her computer screen.
Kim Seoyeon sighs, trying not to squirm in her seat. “Sangah-ssi, it’s fine. It’s just some acting, right?”
“Well, yes, but…”
“It’s fine. Of course I’ll help.” She feels slightly queasy now, but this surely means nothing. Surely it will be of no great importance to pretend-date Yoo Sangah for a few days. Surely this will not do irreparable damage to Kim Seoyeon’s psyche. “Uh, but I’ve never really… I mean, I don’t know how…”
Yoo Sangah stares at her, then says, carefully, “Have you never been in a relationship before, Seoyeon-ssi?”
“…You didn’t have to say it aloud.”
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of!” Yoo Sangah insists, which just makes Kim Seoyeon feel worse. “Don’t worry, I’ll let you know what to do. Really, all you have to do is stand there and let me hold your hand or something.”
“Wow,” Kim Seoyeon says, trying not to let the mental image of Yoo Sangah holding her hand destroy her from the inside-out. “Sounds great.”
Yoo Sangah nods. “You can trust me!”
It goes about as well as Kim Seoyeon had expected.
She meets up with Yoo Sangah at the break room, as they’d agreed together over text last night, where they have shitty office coffee, Kim Seoyeon opens up her Switch to check today’s turnip prices, and Yoo Sangah talks about how she absolutely loathes the PVP feature of some newly-released mobile game she can’t even relax with after a long day at work, because she gets enraged every time the RNG screws her over. As usual, Kim Seoyeon mostly nods along and pretends to know what RNG stands for.
“Ah, that’s right. Seoyeon-ssi, have you had breakfast yet?” Yoo Sangah starts digging around in her bag. “I have some muffins…”
Kim Seoyeon tries to keep her expression apologetic. “Uh, I ate a little, so I’m a bit…” Just thinking of pastries reminds her of earlier this year, when she and Kim Dokja had had their shitty joint office birthday cake and Yoo Sangah had later baked them separate ones. Yoo Sangah is good at a lot of things, but baking is not one of them.
“Are you sure? They’re from the café.” Yoo Sangah retrieves a paper bag with a familiar logo on it.
“Oh. Well, I’d like one, then.”
“Hm. You just don’t like it when I make them, do you?”
Kim Seoyeon tries to sputter out a protest, but Yoo Sangah just laughs and makes to hand over one of the muffins. “Oh, you’re playing,” Yoo Sangah notes, drawing back and looking down at the Switch in Kim Seoyeon’s hands. “Let me, then.”
“Wha,” is as far as Kim Seoyeon gets before Yoo Sangah gingerly unwraps the muffin and holds it up to her mouth.
Kim Seoyeon blanks out.
“Go on.” Yoo Sangah is looking up at her, gaze imploring, and Kim Seoyeon’s tongue feels too twisted to even point out how there’s no one else in the break room for them to be putting on a show for. “It’s good,” she adds, as if the taste is the problem here.
Maybe… they’re… rehearsing…? Maybe they’re practicing for the real thing. Right. Kim Seoyeon just has to believe that so she doesn’t go insane. “Well—thanks,” she mumbles, leaning forward and taking an extremely careful bite of the muffin.
The door swings open. Song Jihoon steps in, takes one look at them, then turns on his heel and walks back out.
Kim Seoyeon, with a mouthful of muffin, feels like a criminal.
Yoo Sangah makes a very small noise that might have been a giggle. “Sorry,” she whispers, possibly in case Song Jihoon is still standing outside near the door. “I heard footsteps from outside. I didn’t think it’d be him, but…”
“But it was.” Kim Seoyeon chews her muffin. “Hey, it’s pretty good.”
“Isn’t it? Here, have some more.”
“I can eat it by myself, really…”
Work hours themselves are relatively uneventful, aside from when Kim Seoyeon tells Kim Dokja everything over lunch break while he scrolls through his phone, only once remarking about how Kim Seoyeon’s life is like a shitty romance novel that would have bombed on Textpia. Which doesn’t really make her feel better, but at least she got it out of her system. It’s when work is done and Kim Seoyeon takes the familiar path to the gaming department that she’s reminded of their situation.
“—didn’t know you were taken,” she hears a familiar voice say, muffled but audible through the office doors. “I mean, you told me the exact opposite when I asked…”
“Y-Yes, and that was true at the time! Um, like I said, Seoyeon-ssi and I were pretty recent…”
Shit, Kim Seoyeon already can’t remember the ‘backstory’ she and Yoo Sangah had come up with last night. Who confessed first, again? Or was it a simultaneous thing? Damn it, whatever, at least she doesn’t have to remember fake anniversary dates. “’Scuse me… oh, Sangah-ssi, Jihoon-ssi,” she greets, trying and probably failing at looking casual and nonchalant and not at all like she’s reading from a script. “Uh, is now a bad time?”
“Not at all!” both Yoo Sangah and Song Jihoon exclaim. Yoo Sangah looks visibly uncomfortable and waves Kim Seoyeon over to the chair beside her, which Song Jihoon has finally left vacant. Looks like he’s learned his place. “We were just talking about you, actually,” Yoo Sangah says, sweetly. “Um, and about how we got to… you know.”
If Kim Seoyeon is bad at acting, at least she knows Yoo Sangah’s just as awful. “Oh, like when we started…” She waves her hand in the air. Much like a few weeks ago, she can’t bring herself to say dating.
“It wasn’t planned or anything.” Yoo Sangah’s smile looks genuine, and Kim Seoyeon feels her heart twist and clench. If this were only real—if that smile were truly meant for her… “We were just talking here, and somehow it came up, and we told each other how we felt… and then… well, we’ve already been friends for a while, so it’s not like anything changed much,” she says, laughing lightly. “I really am sorry I might have led you on by accident, Jihoon-ssi. I didn’t know…”
“No, it’s okay. It’s my bad.” Song Jihoon looks sincerely apologetic too. “I shouldn’t have assumed… well, I’m happy for you two. I guess I should have known when I saw you gave the coffee I bought you to Seoyeon-ssi.”
That hadn’t been some weird prank on Yoo Sangah’s part, then. “Oh, uh… I…” Yoo Sangah stammers, face a delicate pink all the way to the tips of her ears. Kim Seoyeon can’t tell if she’s just acting, but… this kind of Yoo Sangah is cute too.
“It’s really no problem,” Song Jihoon reassures, even tacking on a laugh at the end. It sounds painfully forced, but Kim Seoyeon applauds him for trying. “Well, uh, it’s late. I should get going. See you tomorrow, both of you.”
“Goodnight!”
“Yeah, see you.”
They wait for Song Jihoon’s footsteps to fade into the distance before simultaneously sighing and slumping against their seats. “That went better than I thought it would,” Yoo Sangah says, clearly as relieved as Kim Seoyeon. “We didn’t have to use everything we came up with.”
“Do you remember even half of the things you came up with?”
“I put them in my notes app,” Yoo Sangah says, like Kim Seoyeon’s the weird one here for not doing that. “Just in case, you know? Besides, they may come in useful later on, if anyone else starts asking about us.”
On one hand, Kim Seoyeon doesn’t think anyone would care about her enough to ask about her love life, but on the other hand… yeah, everyone cares enough about Yoo Sangah to ask about her love life. Which now allegedly involves Kim Seoyeon. Great.
Yoo Sangah sighs. “It really is a shame. He’s a nice guy. I thought he just wanted to be friends…”
“You can still be friends now?”
“Sure, but it’ll be awkward,” Yoo Sangah says, and Kim Seoyeon can’t argue with that. The last thing she needs is Yoo Sangah somehow getting wind of Kim Seoyeon’s terrible, horrible, no-good crush on her and their entire friendship falling apart just like that. “Well, hopefully we just forget about it in a few weeks,” she says. Kim Seoyeon wonders if Yoo Sangah’s ever had her heart broken before. “Anyway, he was dead-set on stealing all my time with you, so at least there’s that.”
Kim Seoyeon startles so bad she bangs her knee on the underside of the desk. “Huh?”
“You don’t like other people. So you’d leave if you saw him with me.” Yoo Sangah gives her a puzzled look, as if wondering why Kim Seoyeon is surprised she knows this. Hell, maybe she’s in the right. Yoo Sangah knows so much that Kim Seoyeon should stop being shocked by her near-omniscience by this point. “Don’t worry, I think he knows better than to show up here every night now. It was getting tiring, really. He’s nice, but he tends to explain game mechanics I’m already well aware of like he’s talking to a beginner…”
“Oh, ew,” Kim Seoyeon says. This, at least, is a much easier topic. “I hate it when men do that. It’s like they think I’ve made it this far in life without using Excel once…”
They wait a little longer, then leave the building when they’re certain Song Jihoon is long gone. “Things went well, didn’t they?” Yoo Sangah comments, sounding happier than she has in days… well, to Kim Seoyeon’s knowledge. They hadn’t exactly seen each other much the past week, and thinking about doing that again makes her shiver. No way does she want to go into Yoo Sangah withdrawal again. “I’m so glad. Thank you again for going along with it, Seoyeon-ssi.”
“No, of course… Take it as my apology for last time,” Kim Seoyeon mumbles, scratching her cheek. We’re more alike than I thought crosses her head again, and she smiles like an idiot at the memory. They couldn’t be more different if they tried, but at least they have stupid plans in common.
Yoo Sangah’s smile in return is small and soft, like the faint glow of the moon above them, peeking out from behind the clouds. “Stay just like that,” she says, quietly, then takes a few steps closer, and—
Kim Seoyeon’s brain short-circuits.
It’s short, chaste, barely more than the briefest of kisses on her cheek. But it’s still Yoo Sangah’s lips on her skin, and Kim Seoyeon feels a shudder run through her entire body, like the warning sign before she spontaneously combusts. “S-S-Sa-Sangah-ssi—”
“Just in case anyone’s watching,” Yoo Sangah whispers, but the way she brushes her thumb over Kim Seoyeon’s bottom lip doesn’t feel like an act. Then she smiles, almost mischievously, and pulls back before Kim Seoyeon can get any worse ideas. “I’ll get going now. See you tomorrow!”
“Yeah, I… yeah,” Kim Seoyeon says, weakly. She waits for Yoo Sangah to cycle off on her bike down the street before reaching up and touching the spot on her mouth, right where Yoo Sangah’s finger had been.
…Maybe this plan isn’t so stupid. Maybe Song Jihoon could use a little more convincing?