Chapter Text
1. "i just want my milk" - min yoongi, tired of life
"Who took my milk?” Yoongi booms, awakening from his slumber; Jeongguk’s department head is usually either asleep or too done too care. (Though he’s been called up at four am before because Min Yoongi apparently likes to work at odd hours. He doesn’t question it.)
A hush falls over the office like a curtain. It’s a small place, only a handful of employees, and the cramped space only makes the silence all the more deafening. Everyone knows that messing with Yoongi leads to suffering.
“I had oreos,” Taehyung pipes up. His voice is unerringly enthusiastic and nonchalant. “You can’t eat oreos without milk.”
Some people like to rile up others, and the rest are too daft to even notice at all; and Kim Taehyung, Jeongguk’s learned over the past two weeks, belongs to the latter.
The Communications head is about to storm over, neck pillow still attached around his neck like a victory garland, but is hit in the face by a Mario plushie and lets out a war cry. Jeongguk thinks it sounds like a dying walrus.
“Run, V, run!” Jimin shouts, using the boy’s handle from his hacking days and conveniently ignoring Resident Eomma Seokijn’s indignant cries of “Hey, that’s mine!” in the background. “Before he gets you!”
Jeongguk surveys the scene and makes a face, though he’s pretty sure no one will see it. He was apprehensive at first; after all, a company willing to take on a fresh graduate and offer a good pay sounds too good to be true. It was only with Namjoon’s repeated prodding and bribes of free food that he’d given in. But right now, he really feels like hitting his old friend, who rests at a quiet corner in his comfortable chair and with a placard that says ‘Head Programmer’ whilst he’s caught in the middle of the crossfire, table smack in the middle of the office space.
“How’s it coming along, rookie?” Hoseok asks. He’s frighteningly unperturbed as he pulls out a chair next to Jeongguk, a bright smile on his face even as Yoongi is stalking toward Jimin and Taehyung with one hand wielding his neck pillow and the other in a fist. “Think you can get it done by the end of the week?”
Jeongguk looks at his text file. The cursor’s been blinking for the past half an hour and there’s only one sentence on the page: BTS offers the best online news aggregation service.
“Yeah, it’s fine,” Jeongguk reassures him, even as his own heart sinks. He graduated with a major in Linguistics and a shiny position on the Dean’s List, has a way with words and making sure they twist just the right way. But this is the best he can come up with? That’s pathetic. “End of the week should be fine.”
Hoseok leaves and proceeds to pry Yoongi away from Jimin, who’s attempting to protect himself with a Juicy Couture hoodie. (Jeongguk doesn’t really know what Hoseok does, except that he does everything, apparently. He’s receptionist, HR person, copywriter, printing machine troubleshooter and programmer all rolled into one.) The elder’s still snarling as he allows himself to be removed from Jimin, but apparently he has no shits left to give, since he proceeds to retreat to his desk and curls into a ball. The two troublemakers high-five each other and whoop loudly, and Jeongguk thinks it’s a wonder how they’ve still got their jobs and bodies intact.
He quickly turns back when he sees Taehyung’s gaze directed toward him. Ah, shit.
“Jeonggukie!” Taehyung shrills. He’s usually got a low voice that doesn’t fit with the young face, but when he goes high, he goes high. “Do you have anything you want to say to your hyungs?”
“You’re only older than me by one year,” Jeongguk points out.
These two are the only ones that he messes around with, really. He hasn’t been here long enough and he’s already known as the Golden Maknae, a label initially coined as a joke and then turned into a nickname that he quickly got sick of; this, combined with his lack of experience, means that people are usually standoffish and impersonal or condescending. Taehyung and Jimin are amongst the few that treat him no different from anyone else, and they’re only two years older than him.
Taehyung frowns and sidles up next to the younger, making the already uncomfortable chair much more uncomfortable.
“That was rude,” Taehyung says. He moves his butt and tries to shove Jeongguk off his own chair using said butt. Jeongguk shoves right back, sticking his tongue out.
“And Jiminnie-hyung’s so freaking short,” he sings.
At this, Jimin joins the party and lunges toward Jeongguk, throwing all three of them into a heap on the ground. A couple of seconds and many shoves later, Jeongguk resurfaces from the battle with short breaths and a pleasant feeling in his stomach, the kind you get when you have people that you can talk to and joke around with, the kind you get when you have friends.
A loud beep sounds, followed by the bitter smell of something burning. He hears something that sounds suspiciously like a smack, and Seokjin’s shout can be heard all the way from the pantry.
“Namjoon, you’re not supposed to microwave a salad!”
A/N: i’m sorry, i don’t know what happened. inspired by misaeng, office antics (exo fic!!!) and my stint as a copywriter for l’oreal. this is to celebrate END OF EXAMS HELL YES.