Work Text:
Jihoon taps away aggressively at his keyboard, with the clock ticking painfully slow behind him. The occasional flickering of red and green from the Christmas lights outside distract him every few minutes, reminding him once the new year starts he needs to get a new job. As it turns out, Jihoon’s boss felt that because Jihoon was the only person without family nearby and living alone, then he’d be more than happy to spend his Christmas at the office typing up a last minute report, which by the way should have been completed by said boss a month in advance. Now Jihoon would admit he was a slight pushover, he did find it hard to say no, especially to the person that decides whether he can continue living alone in the expensive city of Seoul the next month or needing to pack up his bag and move back home to live with his parents miles away at his age of 23. Also, in someway it was true that he was alone this Christmas, unlike his other colleagues, but that did not mean Jihoon did not have plans to drown himself in his fluffy blankets he bought just for the colder winter months, sipping at a cup of hot chocolate and his favourite Christmas film playing on the TV.
Actually for the record, Jihoon was not alone, he actually has a roommate, who’s also his best friend, Woojin. Talking about Woojin, the annoying roommate is currently spamming him with sad reindeer pictures. Jihoon does not know where he found so many pictures of sad reindeers but this is also Woojin, Woojin who is a tad bit on the eccentric side and is definitely the type of person who would spend time creating a folder of sad reindeer pictures collected from Google in his spare time.
Woojin : hellooooooooooooooooo did u or did u not promise me a gingerbread house making competition, movies and hot chocolate
Woojin : my son said he hates u
Jihoon chuckles. Woojin did not have a son. He’s actually talking about Jihoon’s pet dog Max, which he annoyingly took him as his own dog, and Max (the traitor) goes along with it because the smart dog knows that Woojin’s the one who spoils him with treats and random toys he finds online.
Jihoon: i told u already my boss is making me finish off this report i’m sorry i’ll finish up as soon as i can
Woojin: :(((((((((((( my son and i will have the competition together instead
Jihoon: swear i’ll finish this quickly and come back home
Woojin: about to send grinch to your boss’s house
Jihoon: pls. do. help. me. now. dying. slowly
Woojin: JIHOON NO STAY WITH ME U CAN DO IT JUST TAKE DEEP BREATHS IN AND OUT IN AND OUT A 1 AND A 2 AND A 3 AND IN AND OUT
Jihoon: is max okay
Woojin: ok just ignore me then wtf
Jihoon: is
Jihoon: max
Jihoon: okay
Woojin sent an image
Jihoon: awwww look at my cutie little max he’s so cute with his little santa hat aww my little baby
Woojin: …
Woojin: …and what about the person next to him..
Jihoon: AWW MY BABY MAX MY CUTIE LITTLE SANTA
Woojin blocked you
Jihoon snorts at Woojin’s childish behaviour. They’ve been close since they were kids and Woojin is still the same. Jihoon glances at the clock and it’s nearing 9pm but he still has a bulk of the report yet to finish. He sighs, swivelling around on his office chair deciding to take a break for a few minutes. He actually was looking forward to spending the evening with Woojin but he doesn’t think it’d be possible.
He glances around the office room. It’s kind of eerie to see it empty when usually it’s bustling with people. It’s very dark too as Jihoon decided to just keep his desk lamp on instead of the fluorescent ceiling lights. Jihoon suddenly feels shivers remembering the story his colleague Jisung had told them the other day.
“You know there’s something in this place, right?” Jisung peeks his head around his desk divider, giving Jihoon a look as if Jihoon is meant to know what he’s talking about.
“I do not know what you are saying.” Jihoon retorts, going back to his work. Jisung was the type of person who liked to talk about nonsense and Jihoon knew best not to dawdle during work hours.
Jisung huffs and swivels his chair to face the desks behind him where two of his other colleagues, Jaehwan and Minhyun, are sitting.
“Jisung, face your desk.” Minhyun tuts, trying to shoo Jisung away.
“Tell me! I want to know.” Jaehwan asks eagerly, much more willing to pass the time by listening to what Jisung had to say.
“Twenty years ago, exactly on Christmas day, there was a worker forced to work overtime. He was sat desk 34 when suddenly the lights started turning on and off.”
Jihoon’s typing slowly comes to a stop as he becomes interested in the story. Maybe he did have time to dawdle today.
“The lights continue turning on and off until it stays off and it’s pitch black and there’s a scream.”
Jisung grabs Jihoon by the shoulders when he says that, and Jihoon almost screams himself.
“Seriously?”
Jisung laughs and turns Jihoon’s chair to face them, “If you’re going to listen then listen properly.”
Jihoon rolls his eyes. Jisung was a very observant person when you least expect him to be.
“Okay, so then he gets up and slowly walks towards the door but before he can reach it, the door creaks open. He could see a hooded figure in the shadows but before he could run away, something came running at him. Some creature with sharp fangs, a green face and yellow eyes. He stumbles back and falls onto his keyboard and..”
Jihoon, Jaehwan and now Minhyun lean forward now intrigued to know what happens next, “And then..”
“And then he accidentally deletes the whole report and did not auto-save. The end.”
Jihoon and the rest collectively throw the meanest glare they can channel at Jisung who’s now back at his desk, giggling away triumphantly.
“Jisung, do not speak to us ever again.”
Jihoon sighs in relief remembering the ending to Jisung’s nonsense story, “Okay, it was just a fake story. It’s not even real.” He repeats, trying to convince himself.
He glances back at the clock and gasps when he notices he’s already wasted 15 minutes. He rushes back to the report, trying to push all his attention to it and ignoring his brain trying to procrastinate with silly things.
Jihoon finds himself slowly nodding off to sleep. He knows he shouldn’t and he tries to pry his eyes open. He’s just about to fail in his plan to stay awake when the lights suddenly switch on and essentially blinds him out of sleep. “What the..?”
The switch off instantly and then flicks on again and this time Jihoon feels very afraid, “This is a joke right?” He mutters.
Jihoon calls out Jisung’s name, thinking the other might have come back to play a prank on him. Although Jihoon knows that is highly unlikely, because Jisung had travelled abroad for the holidays. But he’s trying to think of any other possibility, no matter how impossible it may be, because it seemed much more better to think Jisung had cancelled his family trip to come prank Jihoon.
He finds himself getting up from his chair and creeping towards the door, because he’s still trying to convince himself it’s nothing. The lights continue to flicker on and off and that’s when Jihoon feels all the blood drain from his face when he hears a scream. He hears something like nails scraping against the door and Jihoon knows this is the moment he should be climbing out the window and falling two floors down into the bushes below instead of standing there. But Jihoon cannot seem to move. The door suddenly does creak open, exactly like in Jisung’s story and Jihoon has to physically cover his mouth from screaming in terror when he a notices a silhouette.
“Hey!”
Jihoon this time does scream as he backs away from the door, “Get away!”He cries out. Jihoon squeezes his eyes shut as he stumbles on a wire and falls onto his back. So I’m the person who dies first in a horror movie.
He hears growling next to face and Jihoon slowly turns his head and peaks his eyes open and then screams for the third time that night when he comes face to face with a yellow eyes, green face. sharp teethed creature, “GREEN, UGLY, MONSTER!”
Jihoon is too busy screaming and scrambling away as the apparent monster follows after him to notice someone absolutely losing themselves in laughter.
“Jihoon, you are so stupid.”
Jihoon freezes and glances up letting the green thing able to successfully clamber onto his lap and cover him with wet kisses. Jihoon looks back down dumbfounded and notices that the mask had fallen off and this was no monster but his beloved pet. “Max?”
He looks back up and registers Woojin now, who’s wearing a hooded Christmas cape, and a bag “Woojin?”
Woojin purses his lips, trying to hold in his laughter as he lifts Jihoon up from the ground and pushes the latter onto a chair, “That’s not an ugly monster by the way! How dare you say that about my handmade Grinch mask? That took me 30 minutes.”
Jihoon takes a proper look at the mask on the floor that had now fallen off Max. “Yeah, I can tell. It’s ugly.”
Woojin scoffs, “Didn’t fail in scaring you though did it.”
Jihoon glares at him, “What was that about? The lights? The scream??”
Woojin pulls up one of the swivel chairs next to Jihoon and sits on them. He keeps quiet and looks away sheepishly, rummaging through his bag. Jihoon raises his brows at him, curiously.
“Okay, so, for the lights I was in the hall downstairs. Actually wait, first, blame your company for putting the lights for all the floors on the ground floor. But I was trying to figure out what lights were the ones for the stairways.”
Jihoon shakes his head. I guess that explains the lights. “Then the scream?”
“Well, you see, I forgot I put that mask on Max and when I got to the top of the stairs he was staring at me and I got scared okay.” Woojin splutters out, turning his swivel chair to face the other way.
Jihoon couldn’t help but let out a laugh. Woojin could be so stupidly cute sometimes. “You are the idiot.” He lightly smacks Woojin’s head and Woojin swivels his chair back around, getting the confirmation wasn’t that mad.
Jihoon throws Woojin an apologetic smile, “You didn’t have to come here, you know. I’m sorry I couldn’t spend today with you and Max.
“I felt bad that your boss was forcing you to stay late and do his work. I was really looking forward to spending today with you too and well, I thought why not just come to you if you can’t come to me.” Woojin goes back to his bag and pulls out some blankets and his laptop and some snacks too. “We can chill for a bit and I’ll help you out to finish the report in time.”
Jihoon grins and leans over, dragging Woojin into a tight hug, “You’re seriously the best. I’m still sorry we couldn’t properly celebrate.”
Woojin’s hugs back just as tightly, maybe even more so, “It’s okay. I know it’s not your fault.” Woojin pulls away“It’s not like we won’t be together next Christmas or the year after, or the year after that, right?”
Jihoon’s nods in agreement, a content smile on his face, “Right. We’ll always be.”