Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Mina Myoung, not like most mornings, was greeted by a thick stack of papers being slammed onto her desk. Upon looking up to see who the culprit was, she was met with the sunshiney face of her boss.

“Morning, unnie” Bada greeted, her smile almost illuminating the gloomy space around them. The older woman simply blinked up at her, confused as to why she had just been given a random entourage of paperwork. Unlike most employees of an office, Mina’s job consisted of little paperwork – one of the perks of being a journalist for Korea’s biggest women’s magazine.

Finally, Bada explained: “I’ve been swamped with preparations for tomorrow’s meeting and I’m gonna ask you the favour of filling these out for me, sorry.”

“What are they?” Mina asked, not wanting to give a concrete answer yet.

If they were truly horrible, she could shift them onto her coworker Haeun (mostly known in the office by her nickname which her articles were published under, Redlic) who was always happy to help with the less pleasing tasks besotted upon their writing team.

“Just paperwork for next week’s press conference, people are asking about the interview we’re going to be doing with Yuna Kim.” Ah, Yuna Kim, the woman Mina would quite gladly leave her boyfriend for in a heartbeat. Their magazine was planning on doing an interview with the figure skater on how sports in Korea was usually a male-dominated space.

The older woman finally pulled the stack of papers towards her, noting the relieved expression on her boss’ face. “Fine, but when we next go out, you’re buying me a drink”.

“No problemo”.

Bada sent her one more thankful glance before scurrying off into her office, no doubt swamped with stuff she had to be getting on with. Mina thought the taller woman was lucky she was so charming and easy-going; it made her employees much more likely to do shit they didn’t wanna do (as Redlic so eloquently put it). Looking down at the boxes and signatures she had to fill out on the first page was already giving the journalist a headache, which increased tenfold when a voice arose from behind her.

They coughed, causing Mina to swivel around in her chair to get a good look at them. She didn’t even have to look up to see who it was, she could recognise those enviably toned legs from anywhere. The bane of her existence for an entire year now, fellow journalist Kim Hyerang. Otherwise known by her publishing name, Lia Kim. Lia fucking Kim, of course after a moment of weakness abiding to something painstakingly boring Bada had assigned her, her colleague had come to mock her.

“Boss got you pushing papers again?”. It was annoying her most annoying co-worker had the nicest voice she had ever heard. The fact made listening to her sly digs both easier and more troublesome. “I suppose it’s a step up from whatever blab you were concocting for the Yuna Kim article.”

Mina immediately bristled, despite being considered by most already as ‘a little on the confrontational side,’ whenever Lia baited her with a rude remark, she always took it. Lia’s expression was relaxed and almost bored, like provoking her younger coworker was just another cog in the routine that made up her day. She never stopped though, no matter how bored the older woman always looked during their interactions, she very clearly got some sort of kick out of their feud.

“If I recall, that ‘blab’ I was ‘conjuring’ for the Yuna Kim article got chosen over the draft of whatever you sent Ms Lee.”

Not her worst comeback, it was most certainly true. Although most of their colleagues could pertain that Hyerang was the more experienced writer, and definitely a more thorough researcher, Mina had an attractive style of writing. She could make the most boring of topics interesting to read about, CEO Choi had expressed their team needed to make the article and its included interview interesting.

Mainly due to the fact it was discussing a controversial topic (their entire office would scoff at the idea though that women deserving equal opportunities and rewards in the workplace was controversial).

“I used the word ‘concocting,’ not ‘conjuring.’ I’m surprised they’re allowed to employ people who have the memory of a goldfish”.

“Fuck off, Hyerang. I’ve got work to do, maybe you don’t because they didn’t choose you for the article but don’t ruin it for the rest of us, okay?”.

Lia hated it when the other called her Hyerang, that was why she never called her Lia.

Mina didn’t really see the point of publishing names, shouldn’t a person have pride in the name they were given? In Haeun’s case she could understand, the blonde had told her she had been writing under the name ‘Redlic’ for years now. However, Lia’s change in publishing name had only been made a year or two prior to her joining CEO Choi’s writing team and no one knew why.

“Jesus Christ, you really are an arrogant little girl, aren’t you? Chosen over me once and you think you shit gold - don’t forget past decisions, Mina. This is only your first win… that makes it 5-1 still to me, right?”.

They had been keeping score, it seemed, for almost a year now. And unfortunately for Mina, it was her first time getting chosen for something over her older co-worker, but it wouldn’t be the last. Not if she had something to say about it.

“I’ve faced worse odds, now go back to your desk before I file a harassment report and give it to Ms Lee.”

Lia scoffed. “Whatever.” Mina watched her retreating form with a strangely intent expression as the other returned to her desk. It was luckily not that close to the younger journalist’s one, giving Mina some privacy as she subtly caught her breath.

“Daesung!” Mina called out upon returning home, to be met with the sound of a crash and a lot of cursing coming from the front living room. Instantly a hot bolt of panic coursed through her, her boyfriend had just probably gotten hurt. But even worse, their brand-new TV. “Are you okay?!.”

“Shit!” the young man sounded like he was struggling to hold back tears. His girlfriend finally entered the living room to see a very distraught Daesung and a broken stepladder. Their TV was fine thankfully, Mina let out a little sigh at the sight of it unharmed. She approached Daesung and tried to console him as he swore without restraint – clearly, he had fallen off it.

“What the hell were you doing?” Mina was trying not to laugh.

“I was trying to get to one of the wires at the back of the TV.”

“…Why?.”

He looked very put out by all the questions. “I wanted to see if it had somewhere to plug in my Xbox.” Although Daesung was nearly as old as her, Mina begrudged the fact he sometime acted extremely immaturely. Not in ways it mattered though, he was still overall an extremely great guy and boyfriend, but Mina wished he would just lose all the gadgets.

“It does, remember, you made us call up the manufacturers and ask.”

He looked unsure. “Really?.” Mina nodded. “Could you grab my phone for me? It’s in the kitchen, I wanna call and double check before I risk my life by trying to do that again”. The young woman couldn’t help but laugh, placing a kiss on his cheek before making her way into the kitchen to get his phone. Despite everything, Daesung was the funniest man she knew, and the stupid situations he got himself into were good stories to tell at any sort of gathering. Pros and cons of a long-term relationship, Mina supposed.

“Where is it?!” She called out to him as she looked for it slightly dispassionately, she could care less whether his Xbox would connect to the TV but went along with it to avoid any further conflict. “Nevermind, got it!” Mina found his phone on the kitchen counter near the sink and grabbed it to give it to him. But as she was about to make her way back into the living room, the phone’s screen illuminated. There were a few notifications; YouTube, Instagram, the usual, but those weren’t the ones that caught Mina’s attention.

Two missed calls and five unread messages from someone called ‘Seoyeon.’ Seoyeon was a woman’s name and certainly not the name of any woman Daesung knew or knew as far as Mina was aware.

The couple had a shared group of friends but found it important to have their own friends as well (Redlic and JJ, who Mina considered some of her closest friends, hadn’t even met Daesung). They also shared the same sentiment though that they were aware of their so-called ‘other friends.’ Just because her boyfriend hadn’t met friends like JJ and Haeun, didn’t mean he didn’t know about them – Mina spoke about them regularly. So, the fact he hadn’t told her about a ‘friend’ who was a woman, and who took upon herself to leave him missed calls and messages, made Mina frown.

She couldn’t see the preview of what the messages were, only the notification that he had gotten them.

“Daesung?” Mina had made her way into the living room again and observed as her boyfriend was lazily stretched out onto the couch, clearly his attempt at reaching the cables behind the wall-mounted TV had tired him out.

“Yeah?” he sounded distracted. This would probably get his attention.

“Who’s Seoyeon? She’s left you a bunch of missed calls and texts”.

She couldn’t see Daesung’s expression as he had seemingly dramatically thrown a pillow over his face before she had entered the room, but his body language said it all. He seemed nervous.

His voice was eerily calm as he replied: “Oh, just some girl from work. She’s new”.

Mina’s frown didn’t go away. “You normally tell me about new co-workers.”

Instantly he was on the defence. “Okay well I didn’t tell you this time because I forgot, I don’t have to tell you every little thing that happens in my life, do I? I mean what are you even implying?” The young woman let out a sigh and debated throwing his phone at the wall behind him. But for some weird reason, the only thing that stopped her was an image of Lia. Lia calling her hot-headed and insolent. Mina would prove her wrong, even if Hyerang had no idea that she was even currently being proved wrong in the first place.

Mina calmly placed Daesung’s phone on the coffee table beside him, before lifting his legs and sitting under them. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound accusatory – I was just confused because I don’t know who this girl is.” He didn’t respond for a moment as he took the pillow of his face, before teasingly throwing it at his girlfriend, causing her to glare at him.

“No, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that. Just stressed out about earlier, anyways, as I said she’s just one of my new colleagues. She was probably calling to ask for some help with our new system or something”. The reason sounded plausible; the tech company Mina’s partner worked for was known for its slightly shitty staff training. A lot of the time most of them had to rely on each other to be helped get anything done, so obviously they had to be fairly close.

The young woman said she believed him and apologised, but there still was a weird feeling she couldn’t shake off. Her and Daesung had been together for two years, but only recently he had been a little closed off. Mina could have asked him further, could have pried for more information, but the fear of being seen as the typical ‘bitchy girlfriend’ stopped her from saying anything else. She watched as he picked up his phone from the table, eyes scanning over the (now fully visible for him) notifications before calling, Mina assumed, the people who had helped them set up the TV.

That Friday, after all the preparations, Mina finally got to interview star athlete figure-skater Kim Yuna. Most of her article was pieced together by then, but she wanted to wait until after the interview to finish it. Talking with someone she had been a fan of for a while felt like a particularly good dream she never wanted to wake up from. Journalism had always been fun for her and doing the interview with Yuna felt surprisingly easy. The two had built a good repertoire and Mina had gotten some interesting answers.

The magazine issue once published had proven to be a big hit, especially Mina’s article which was the headliner. It turned out Korea was a bigger fan of women’s sports than their team originally thought, as the issue was selling big numbers.

Every time someone on their office floor congratulated the successful journalist, Hyerang looked pissed. It made the whole situation even sweeter. The only time Lia had mentioned anything to do with her win was during everyone’s lunch the day after Mina’s piece was published:

Lia approached her with slight scepticism, noting that Mina, like all of them, was on her lunch break. “Your food is stinking up the whole office.” The younger looked down at her reasonable sized container of bulgogi and sticky rice with consideration, before turning to Hyerang with abject distaste.

“I think your nose is broken or something.”

The shorter woman bristled. “If you’re going to be like that fine, just don’t act surprised when no one wants to have lunch with you anymore.” Her co-worker just stared up at her, she had been perfectly content with eating alone today until Lia had mentioned it. Now she wanted to go find Redlic or someone else.

Mina didn’t bother finishing to chew as she replied: “You’re very childish”.

“Whatever,” Lia crossed her arms and began to look very fidgety, her ADHD made it hard for her to stay still. It didn’t help she was standing in front of Mina’s judgemental gaze.  “Congrats on the article by the way.” Mina nearly choked on her food and was about to give a response before Hyerang scurried off, blanking her for the rest of the day.

She supposed Lia could only tolerate her presence for small increments at a time.

CEO Choi’s eyes flittered between them, her hands folded as she leaned back in her desk chair. For a woman not easily made anxious, she looked like she was going to start fidgeting at any moment. It probably had to do with the fact she had two sworn enemies sitting next to each other in front of her. Mina and Hyerang had no idea why they had been called to the office of the head of their magazine but hoped Hyojin brung good news.

“How are both of you today? Are you healthy?”.

Mina only nodded, whilst Lia took it upon herself to verbally reply for the both of them; “We’re healthy, thank you Ms Choi, working well”.

The younger woman beside her coughed to try and hide her laugh, ever since the Yuna Kim article and interview Mina had been suffering from major writer’s block. And Lia knew that. Even being halfway across the office floor, she could probably see Mina hunched over her desk every day, rubbing her temples and attempting to type to no avail. Mina was starting to grow worried that her piece with Yuna was simply a fluke, and that the rest of her articles would be comparable to the contents of a trashcan.

“I’m glad.” Their CEO didn’t have favourites, but if she had, they would include the two journalists in front of her. “Both of you don’t need to look so frightened, I know this is rather out of nowhere, but it is not bad news.” Mina looked frightened (although she was trying to hide it), but Lia had the same calm, calculated expression she always bore.

Hyojin didn’t bother waiting for a reply. “I have selected you two to write the New Year’s special edition issue of ‘WM.’ Together. Obviously, both of your involvements are optional, however, this is a great opportunity for your careers”.

“…What? Like… the entire issue?”. Mina looked astounded.

Their CEO laughed. “Yes, the entire issue.”

Lia looked like she had already made her mind up about things. “How long will we have to complete it?”. The question was the most pressing one, to Mina too, but the younger was too astounded to say anything let alone think of important questions.

“A month, we will be working on our usual weeklys. However, with December around the corner we want to start planning our New Years issue.” The idea of writing an entire issue of a magazine gave Mina a tingly feeling in the pit of her stomach. She wondered if the woman next to her was feeling the same thing.

“But…the entire thing?”.

Hyojin tried not to laugh that time. “Well of course you’ll be working with our team. They’ll deal with all the technicalities, advertisements, photoshoots. You two will just handle writing the articles, and the interviews”.

The room was filled with complete silence until Hyerang spoke up again. “What will we write about?”.

The woman at the head of the meeting table shrugged. “Anything you want, you’ll obviously have to run some ideas past us. And maybe give me or Bada a draft or two, but apart from that you have free reign”.

Mina couldn’t believe it. The entire thing in the palm of her hands. An opportunity could help their career more than they anticipated, could make them household names in the industry even, if the issue got enough attention. “But why us? You could’ve let our entire team do it”. Her and Lia were sworn enemies, and everyone knew it – Hyojin was taking a risk by letting them work together, especially since it was such a big opportunity.

“Frankly, everyone knows you two bicker 24/7. If it goes on it’ll start affecting the rest us too, if it already hasn’t. Friendly competition amongst colleagues is natural, but you two? You two are a whole different thing.” Hyerang turned to her whilst their superior still talked, looking at Mina with an expression as if almost blaming her for their feud.

Sure, the younger woman gave as good as she got, but if Mina recalled correctly, Lia had been the one to start it.

“I’m sort of killing two birds with one stone, for the issue you two are perfect – the perfect balance, your style, your flair when it comes to writing mixed with Lia’s passion and research? Sounds like it’ll shape up into something great. And of course, you’ll both be forced to work together, hopefully you can stop being at each other’s throats”.

Good luck with believing that’d happen. If the two co-workers were on a sinking boat and Kim Hyerang had two life vests, she’d put them both on for double measure.

Mina obviously looked sceptical enough at the idea for Hyojin to notice and comment on it; “It does sound like an impossible task, I myself have had to convince my colleagues otherwise. I believe in you two though more than anyone, so… please, will you consider?”.

Lia Kim had written some pretty big articles and pieces of writing in her life, some of which had won her awards. But having the entire issue of Korea’s biggest women’s magazine to shape into whatever she wanted was monumental. The only downside of it was that she had to share it with her worst enemy. But she had always been able to one up Mina, and with a little push and pull, Lia was sure she’d be able to have control over most of the, if not the entire, issue.

“I want to do it.” She turned to the younger woman. “Mina? Are you willing to do this with me?”.

The other journalist looked like a deer in headlights for a moment, being observed by two very powerful and intelligent women. She knew she’d have to share this project, this opportunity, with Hyerang, but Mina had one upped her before. With some luck and a lot of determination, she could probably take control of the whole thing.

“We’ll do it.”

CEO Choi looked satisfied with their answer, basking in awkward silence for a moment as she sipped some coffee. Watching her employees squirm was entertaining. It was only when she saw Mina physically start to sweat did she let them leave.

“Hmm, well that’s decided. I look forward to what you ladies come up with. Me and your boss want some ideas and maybe a draft from each of you on her desk by Wednesday morning”. Today was Monday, so they had…one day. Even the thought of it all was already giving Hyojin’s taller employee a headache.

“I’ll leave you two to get back to your work, email me or get Ms Lee to call me if you have any questions.” They were halfway out the door when Hyojin stopped them for a moment. “Great work on the Yuna Kim article by the way, Mina!”.

The compliment and acknowledgement from the founder of their magazine felt like winning the lottery, but that wasn’t what made Mina’s entire morning. It was after she thanked Bada’s employer and turned to Lia to see the older woman’s face looked thunderous. Clearly Mina getting praise irked her in a way she didn’t want to admit.

In the elevator on the way down to the floor where their office was, since CEO Choi’s resided on the very top floor, the two were silent. Hyerang was biting her lip so hard it was bleeding. Mina tried very pointedly not to look at the beads of crimson and imagine sucking the blood off Lia’s bottom lip. Suddenly some imaginary item she had lost seemed very appealing right then, she searched through her empty blazer pockets and tried to not make eye contact with the other.

“Don’t screw this up for me, Myoung. Or I promise it’ll be the last thing you ever do”.

Lia’s deep voice made something curl in her rival’s stomach. The click-clacking of the short-haired woman’s high heels echoed once the elevator doors opened, leaving Mina completely alone.

“Arrogant bitch” Mina cursed to herself as she exited onto the seventh floor, of course once Lia had gotten a good enough distance away, that was. Approaching her desk, she felt a strange sensation looming over her, like that meeting might have been the start of something; something in her career, something involving Lia and her’s feud, she didn’t know. All she knew was that when she sat down again, she found herself typing again with rather alarming speed.