Chapter Text
If there was one thing Kyler Park was good at, it was going with the flow. Adapting.
Back when he was in high school, he was really good at that. He liked being on the wrestling team, but when the karate craze started sweeping West Valley High, Kyler wasn’t about to be left out. He didn’t hesitate to accept when the old Cobra Kai sensei, who he later thought of as “First Sensei,” offered to teach him karate.
He tended to make friends wherever he went – or, at least, got people to a point where they tolerated him. Kyler usually didn’t mind what they thought of him, so long as they were up for having a good time and partying with him. And Kyler always knew how to turn a gathering into a good time, which is how he spent most of his time at college.
It was sort of how he got his first job out of college. He’d somehow gotten to talking to the right people at a party towards the end of his senior year, and eventually, he found himself interviewing with a top executive, pretending he knew far more than he actually did from the most basic of entry-level coding classes he had taken. He’d concluded that meeting by giving the executive a deferential bow (very Korean) at the end of the little speech he’d made up on the spot. Apparently, it had worked.
If there was one thing Kyler Park was not good at, it was tech stuff.
Unfortunately, that’s what he found himself doing at that job after graduating from College of the Valley.
When it became increasingly clear that Kyler was not going to do his parents proud by becoming a doctor or a lawyer, as was previously expected of him, his father finally accepted that he was going to have to change his tune. At some point during Kyler’s time at COTV, his father had reluctantly gone from “You have three choices: a doctor, a lawyer, or a failure,” to “You need to keep up with this world.” And by that, his father meant tech. That was where the money was these days, so, according to his father, if Kyler could get a comfortable job in tech, then at least he could support himself and be some form of “successful.”
Well, Kyler had somehow done that. Even he wasn’t sure how he’d managed it. He thought perhaps he’d made a good impression on that executive by being so jovial during the interview. Maybe it made him look like he was really actually excited to be working at Market Hackr.
It was big, but in most respects, it was your usual, run-of-the-mill tech company. Kyler’s main day-to-day task was inputting some lines of code into some software that was supposed to send information like instructions, fixes, or updates to other pieces of software being used by a bunch of external companies. Apparently, it was something to do with Market Hackr making some kind of program that helped other companies run their software more efficiently. Or something like that. Kyler didn’t fully understand it, but once a senior employee named Akiko trained him, at least he was able to go through the motions of doing what was expected of him.
“You just copy this line here, and then you customize it to the company that you’re doing this for, using these strings of numbers that correspond to the company, and then you input that into here,” Akiko had instructed.
“Okay,” Kyler had said, who then followed the instructions carefully by trying to copy exactly what she had done. The program hadn’t crashed, the computer hadn’t burst into flames, and the building hadn’t exploded, so he seemed to be doing okay. He felt satisfied as he entered in the final lines. “Okay, I think I got it.”
“Great!” Akiko had said.
“Okay. And then what?”
“And then you do it again.”
“Oh.”
“Until lunch, and then you come back and do it again, until quittin’ time at five.”
“...Oh.”
Kyler had sighed, while dejectedly eyeing the huge column of numbers representing the hundreds of companies that Market Hackr serviced.
Days, weeks, and months went by exactly as Akiko had described. Kyler would arrive at work, figure out what numbers needed to go where, and then input the necessary lines of code. And then do it again. And again. And again. Great. He was making Market Hackr so much money, he supposed. Money, money, money, his dad’s only measure of success. Numbers, numbers, numbers, all day long.
Numbers sucked. Math was far and away his most hated subject back when he was in school. It didn’t help that his dad got on his case way more about math than any other subject because “you don’t even have the excuse of it not being in your native language.” Which Kyler thought was a dumb reason to get so mad at him. Just because the first few words he learned at home as a toddler were in Korean didn’t mean he was more comfortable with Korean now. He used English for almost everything, and had done so for pretty much his whole life.
But none of that meant stuff in English came any easier to him, because long, complicated words gave him as much of a headache as strings of numbers did. So he didn’t bother saying any of that to his dad whenever he gave him a hard time about failing yet another math class.
And speaking of long, complicated words, two of his friends had recently gotten married and, against the caution of practically everyone around them, had hyphenated their already individually long last names into one jumbled, horrifying mess. It had an X and a Z in it, which looked peculiar and wrong to Kyler. It resembled a keysmash. What the hell kind of last name was Alexopoulos-Moskowitz?
It gave Kyler a headache just looking at it on his phone.
But seeing some of his friends after a long, stupid, boring day at work might be just what he needed.
Since both Alexopoulos-Moskowitzes were at the top of the alphabetical contact list, he sent them both messages first. Then he contacted a couple others, and soon, a bunch of his friends had responded to his dinner invitation, and were crowding around him in his apartment.
“What up, boi!”
“My boyyyyy!”
Kyler and Brucks bumped fists, and then bumped chests.
As Demetri walked through the front door, Kyler grabbed him and put him into his usual headlock. “Yo, D!”
Demetri wriggled free, and greeted Miguel, and then Brucks. Eli did the same.
It wasn’t the first time they’d all seen each other since college graduation, but it hadn’t been very long since all five of them were back in LA, and they were happy to be in each others’ company.
Over on the east coast, Demetri had gone on to attend MIT as he had planned his whole life. Eli, on the other hand, was torn between forging his own path, and keeping his promise to his best friend to go to college with him. The solution presented itself to Eli when, upon his acceptance into Harvard, he learned that Harvard and MIT were sister institutions, and students at one could generally take classes at the other.
He ended up taking a lot of classes at MIT. The two schools were so physically close to each other that he and Demetri ended up living together anyway after their second year, and this, to them, seemed to work out just fine. The details were mostly lost on Kyler, though, who basically summarized it in his head as “Demetri and Eli are both at MIT over there” – even when he took them up on their offer to visit during a couple of spring breaks. Demetri suspected that Kyler thought that MIT was really, really spread out.
Partying with Kyler at COTV back in their senior year of high school had set off a sort of butterfly effect chain of events for Miguel, Eli, and Demetri. So, in a show of thanks and as a toast to new friendship, the boys all made a pact to help Kyler experience as many cool college parties as possible – hence, the spring break visits. Brucks was along for the ride, and happily joined in whenever he could. Once, all five of them even made it to a Stanford party. That one was a weird one. Apparently, Stanford had a vibrant and very active lindy hop scene. They’d spent that night dancing to the sounds of swing era musicians like Cab Calloway, Chick Webb, and Ella Fitzgerald.
Then, Demetri and Eli had gotten married straight out of college, right after moving back to LA for grad school. Kyler had been one of the strongest opponents of the hyphenation. His side eventually lost.
Miguel had recently moved back to LA for grad school as well, from the Bay Area. He’d transferred to Stanford after a couple of years at COTV. It was for this reason that Miguel found that he was probably the closest of Kyler’s friends, after Brucks.
Brucks, of course, was the first of the group to graduate from his shorter, trade school program at Midwest Industrial Training. And even though Eli was technically a Harvard student, they all had a little difficulty explaining the arrangement to Kyler, who felt it was simpler to proudly tell people that “three of my four best friends go to MIT, and the fourth one goes to Stanford, so they’re all Ivy Leaguers!”
Most people didn’t bother to correct Kyler that Stanford was not an Ivy League. But most people were not Demetri, who corrected him every time. (The Harvard-MIT thing was a lost cause, though. Demetri gave up on trying to explain the “sister institutions” thing to Kyler. Additionally, Demetri was 99% sure that Kyler understood that Midwest Industrial Training was not the same thing as Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but there was still that 1% of uncertainty. Over the years, Demetri had come to understand Kyler’s humor a lot better than he had in high school, but there were still instances when Kyler threw him for a loop. This remained one of those instances.)
Partying at all their various schools had been fun. But Kyler was pretty happy to have all of these guys back in LA now. It was kind of funny how close they’d all become over the years after he’d been such a bully to three of them in high school. Life was interesting that way sometimes.
Once everyone was settled at his place, the group wandered into Kyler’s kitchen.
“I guess it’s my turn for the step stool,” said Eli, reaching into a closet and pulling out the little ladder.
“Oh, yeah. Sorry, man,” Kyler said with an embarrassed shrug. He kept forgetting to buy another chair.
Kyler lived alone, and when he moved into his apartment after getting that job at Market Hackr, he'd gotten a cheap dining table set that came with four chairs. Whenever all five of their group was at Kyler’s for dinner, they had to take turns sitting on the step stool.
“Actually, know what? Skip that shit. Let’s go out. My treat,” Kyler suggested. He was tired of constantly feeling guilty after his friends came over and one of them having to take the “bad” seat. “I’ll drive,” he added.
The boys all filed out and headed to the parking garage. Kyler suddenly stopped, and stood rigidly still. His parking spot was empty.
For a moment, Kyler was too dumbfounded to speak. Then he wailed, “My car! What the hell happened to my car?!”
“Uh… Ky?” ventured Brucks. “Was it towed?”
“This is my space. I have a permit for it,” insisted Kyler. Then he noticed something.
A note was left under a rock in the otherwise empty parking space.
“You got what you deserve,” it said.
“The hell does that mean?!” cried Kyler. “I haven’t even done anything lately! Someone took it?! Why?!”
He looked around helplessly at the others. Nobody had any answers.
Kyler took a moment to let out a frustrated yell and kick the rock that had held the note.
“Ow!!!” Kyler screamed. His thin red Converse shoes weren’t quite enough to protect his foot from the rock.
“Man, this sucks,” Kyler then said dejectedly after the situation sunk in.
“Don’t worry, Kyler. We’ll get it back,” said Eli fiercely, sounding a lot like he did as Hawk in the old karate war days.
“Someone did this on purpose. It was targeted. What the shit does that note mean?” said Demetri.
Miguel shrugged, and said gently, “Kyler is right – he hasn’t really, you know, done anything lately. You’ve chilled out a lot since high school, man.”
Kyler acknowledged this with a stiff nod, grateful for the thought. He didn’t quite know how to say thank you, though, so instead he groaned and said, “What am I supposed to do, take Uber to work every day? That shit’s expensive.”
“Sorry, Ky,” sympathized Brucks. “I wish I could take you. But I have washing machines all the way on the other side of the city all this week.”
“Hey, I can drive you to work til we get your car back,” offered Miguel.
Kyler looked at Miguel with some amount of astonishment. “Really?”
“Yeah, it’s no big. It won’t take long to swing by and then get to my school.”
“Oh… well, okay. Thanks, Rhea,” Kyler finally said awkwardly.
After five years, Miguel still didn’t have the heart to tell Kyler his name wasn’t actually “Rhea.”
There was an awkward pause, until Demetri pointed out, “Well, we still gotta eat.”
There were murmurs of general agreement.
“We’ll take my car. I heard there’s this awesome new Indian restaurant in town,” Brucks offered. “Sorry I can’t take you to work, Ky,” he added.
“Nah, it’s good,” said Kyler. “You the best.”
They piled into Brucks’s car, and headed off to Dal Me (Dal Me) On the Line.
Once seated inside, amidst several posters of Blondie, the group began digging into their plates of food, and discussing what could possibly have happened to Kyler’s car.
“I noticed,” said Demetri, “that your building’s garage uses security cameras by Planet Business. Doesn’t your company partner with them on those?”
“Well, we don’t make the security cameras, but we make some kind of software that makes them better or more efficient, or something,” Kyler said.
“Yeah, I figured. That’s enough for me. If you get me into your work, I could probably get into the security camera feed and see what happened to the car,” said Demetri.
Miguel frowned at Demetri. “They don’t make the cameras. They’re not even –”
“Trust, El Serpiente. How long have you known Demetri?” interrupted Eli with a smug scoff.
Miguel raised his spoon in defeat, and said, “All right, if you guys say so…”
Kyler then said, “I should probably just call –”
“Don’t say the cops,” warned Demetri. “Never call the cops. Besides, that note you got? Unless you did something egregiously terrible in college we somehow never found out about, we all know this is about –”
“Karate,” finished Miguel.
“And if this is about karate…” Demetri began.
“Then it’s up to you guys,” Brucks finished with some awe in his voice, as though he were talking about a band of superheroes instead of a bunch of twenty-somethings who had once given karate entirely too much serious weight back in high school.
Miguel, Demetri, and Eli did look deadly serious now. But Kyler just shrugged, and said, “It’s not your problem. I’ll be okay…”
“No, come on. We’re helping you,” resolved Miguel.
“Yeah, we’re in it,” agreed Eli.
Kyler couldn’t help but feel bolstered. He smiled at the others, and, since he still didn’t really know how to say thank you, he changed the subject. “Did you see the dessert menu? This looks pretty good. Heart of (Mango) Lassi,” he said, pronouncing it much like the name of the fictional collie.
“It’s supposed to be pronounced a little bit more like lessi –”
“Give it a rest, Demetri,” hissed Eli sternly. “You know it’s another Blondie joke.”
“Right,” Demetri conceded, sitting back in his chair. Long accustomed to ordering for Eli (much to the disdain of his ex-girlfriend, for whom he used to order Eli’s favorite blue cheese burgers out of sheer habit), he signaled a server. He pointed to the Heart of (Mango) Lassi on the menu, and said, “Hey, can we get five of these?”
The next morning, Miguel appeared at Kyler’s place, as promised. Also accompanying him were Demetri and Eli, who were making a visit to Kyler’s workplace.
“Aren’t you guys still in school or whatever?” Kyler asked.
“Well, sort of?” Eli said.
Kyler said, “How does somebody sort of go to school?”
“We’re – don’t worry about it. I’ll go to the lab later. We’ll be fine. Grad school’s not like college,” Eli tried to explain. Kyler seemed to accept this.
When they arrived at his work, Kyler swiped his keycard to open the building door, and announced, “Well, welcome to Market Hackr.”
He led them to his floor, and gave them a halfhearted tour. Kyler expected the three of them to be bored, but he noticed that Demetri was looking around the office with a certain fascination in his eyes. This was a warning sign. Whenever Demetri looked like this, the likelihood was high that the gears in his head were turning about making improvements, and solving problems. (After all, the step stool rotation system had been Demetri’s idea.)
This did not get past Eli, either. As the group walked into the break room, where Kyler began pouring out cups of coffee, Eli made his stance clear. “Look, Demetri, whatever you’re planning, don’t. Don’t do that thing you always do. Your job might not be on the line, but if you mess around here, you could get Kyler in trouble and get him fired.”
“What?” Kyler said, with alarm rising in his voice.
“Don’t worry,” Demetri assured him calmly. “I haven’t done a goddamn thing.”
Kyler still looked a little worried, so Demetri added, “I’m not going to risk your job! Promise!”
They then reached Kyler’s cubicle, which had enough privacy for Demetri to get right to poking around in Planet Business’s security camera feeds.
As Demetri sat down and began typing rapidly, Kyler’s coworker Akiko poked her head into Kyler’s cubicle. “Hi, Kyler,” she said.
“Oh, hey, Keeks. These are my boys,” Kyler said, waving towards them. “They’re just visiting me today.”
Polite greetings were exchanged all around, and then Akiko said to Kyler, “Hey, you don’t happen to know anything about Projectia, do you?”
“Uh… should I?” said Kyler. He cursed his Swiss cheese brain. Why couldn’t he just remember things more easily? Was this important to his job? Was he supposed to know about Projectia? He wondered why so many things seemed to just slip away from him all the time.
Relief washed over him almost as quickly as the panic had set in, though, when Akiko replied, “No, I just thought I’d ask even though your stuff doesn’t use it. It’s bugging out on me and I can’t figure it out. Thanks anyway, though. I’ll keep asking around.” She turned to leave, and added, “Nice to meet you guys.”
“Well, I got it,” said Demetri, as soon as Akiko was gone. “Take a look.”
The others crowded around Demetri seated at the computer, and watched the screen. Kyler looked on in a state of equal parts admiration and horror at the ease with which Demetri made a mockery of Market Hackr’s security measures. Demetri played a video feed of the parking garage at Kyler’s building. Eli clapped a hand on Demetri’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze, as he shot a satisfied grin at Miguel. “What’d I tell you about this guy?”
“Trust,” Miguel repeated, with an expression of “okay, you got me,” on his face.
Demetri was unfazed. He scrolled through the video, and said, “There’s the car. And… scrubbing forward a little more… and here it is! Look, there’s a guy!”
The video showed a man breaking right through the driver’s side window with a hammer, and reaching in to unlock the door. He then used a key – how had he even gotten that? – to start the car and drive it away.
"Wait, so then, why did he smash...?" Miguel said, letting his voice trail off.
Kyler patted the pockets of the dress pants he wore for work, and said, “I still have my car key.”
“Maybe it’s some kind of master,” shrugged Eli.
“Do you recognize this guy?” said Demetri, going back in the video to find a good angle of the car thief.
Kyler peered at the screen.
Suddenly, it came to him. “Mr. Zenker?!”
The face was a little bit familiar to Eli, and now with the name, Eli was able to put two and two together. “Isn’t that the frat guy that you beat up back when we first visited you at COTV?” he said to Kyler.
“That we beat up back when we first visited him at COTV,” Miguel corrected proudly. “It was a group effort.”
Kyler, rather angrily, could hardly believe he still remembered that guy’s name, after all these years. It had, unfortunately, been drilled into him when he was trying to rush one of the frats at COTV, and that man in the video had demanded that Kyler address him formally and respectfully as “Mr. Zenker.” It was such bullshit, and it was not one of the many things that Kyler wished his overworked brain could retain.
“Could he really still have a grudge against you for a stupid thing like that?” Miguel asked.
Kyler had no idea. “I didn’t think he cared anymore. I saw him sometimes at college – you did too, didn’t you? – and he never really bothered us again.”
“Yeah, a resounding karate defeat can do that to a person,” said Eli with a chuckle.
“Hmm,” mused Demetri. “I have a feeling there’s more to this. But, well, we got what we came for, so, maybe we should let you get to work.”
“Yeah, guess so. Better get back to my stupid numbers,” sighed Kyler.
“Okay. Well, you take care, man. We’ll figure this out,” Miguel said.
“Hey, you should get some snacks from the cafeteria downstairs before you go,” Kyler told them. “The food’s pretty good here.”
Miguel, Eli, and Demetri thanked him for the tip, and then left Kyler’s cubicle.
“I’m going to take him up on that and load up on snacks,” Miguel said.
“Me too,” Eli said eagerly.
“Catch you guys there,” said Demetri. “Going to head to the bathroom first.”
Miguel and Eli were thrilled to experience one of the perks of working for a tech company as big as Market Hackr. Kyler was right – the food there was amazing, and all of it subsidized, even for visitors. They grinned at each other as they loaded up their plates, and were so preoccupied with trying everything that it took awhile before Eli finally came to a realization. “Hey… what’s taking Demetri so long?”
Miguel and Eli went back up to Kyler’s floor, where they spotted Demetri seated at a computer, pointing something out on the screen and explaining it to Akiko and her boss, who also happened to be Kyler’s boss. They were both listening to whatever Demetri was saying with rapt attention.
“What is he doing?!” Eli said, clenching his fists around a to-go box of food. “He said he wasn’t going to interfere with Kyler’s job!”
Just then, Demetri noticed the two of them staring daggers at him, and concluded his discussion with the two engineers. As he stood to leave, Akiko and her boss thanked Demetri profusely.
Demetri calmly walked over to Miguel and Eli, who were demanding an explanation. “I didn’t do anything,” he insisted. “Akiko’s boss was freaking out because nobody can figure out the latest version of the Projectia software, so I told them I’m familiar. All I did was help them out a little. I just worked out a few bugs.”
“Come on, Demetri, you know it’s never just that with you. You can’t mess around with Kyler’s job. And after I got you this, too!” Eli said, shoving the now-crumpled box of food into Demetri’s hands. “Ugh. Let’s go.”
Demetri was unbothered, and accepted his box. He said, “Whatever you say, Eli,” as he calmly followed the other two out of the building.