Chapter Text
Soonyoung hated Wednesdays. He’d hate it less if it was just a half-day, but the bonus that came along for the ride was a tightly packed schedule of back to back meetings for the next four hours after what would have been a lunch break. To be fair, not everyone had these meetings (which may actually circle back to being unfair…); Soonyoung just wore many hats here. Chalk it up to his early teen years watching the behind-the-scenes of how company and asset management went, Soonyoung was genuinely talented at what he did. Maybe that’s why the company was not so eager to replace him, as he kept watching every friend he’d made over the eight years get dismissed one by one. He gave up at one point; the stress of trying to keep a connection alive wasn’t worth it.
”Manager Soonyoung, what do you think?” He snapped out of his mini daydream back to careful eyes watching him from around the meeting table. He sat up a little straighter and wet his lips to speak, glancing at the whiteboard to gauge which part of this meeting was he involved in. “Uh, right. Yeah, I think overall the returns have been great but we… we should focus on something else that’s actually giving us the results we want,” He cleared his throat. “Anyway, the point is that we want to keep what’s working for us already, right? We shouldn’t waste resources on something that needs more effort for minimal gain.” He watched one of his senior managers nod her head in agreement and quietly sighed in relief as their department head continued their agenda.
By the time Soonyoung left his office, it was as if he never had a half-day at all. Maybe he should talk to HR about it one day… He plugged in his earphones on the train home, waiting for time to pass by with every beat of the wild 808s. His mind wandered again to all those years ago— it was probably coming up ten years now. Maybe if he’d tried a little harder, pushed himself a little bit more, then he wouldn’t be stuck in this endless cycle of corporate life. Sure, it was quiet and mindless, and a good way to earn money, but Soonyoung’s brain was just restless. It was a miracle that he was never caught slacking at his table because he was more interested in watching dance clips and battles on his phone during work hours. The train doors’ ping shook him awake at the right moment, recognising he was one stop away. He changed the playlist to something more toned down to get him ready for the night.
Making a quick stop at the convenience store under his apartment, he grabbed some instant food to heat up and wolfed it all down before heading up to his unit. He didn’t feel as tired after his shower and decided to scroll… something. Normally, the little red notification dots never bothered him, but the one above his LinkedIn suddenly drew his eye. “58 notifications?” He mumbled to himself in disbelief. He was pretty sure the last time he opened this app was when he was terribly depressed after an emergency meeting had been called during lunch hour and he’d been reprimanded to hell and back. The department head had been different then, not the weirdly-good-at-empathy guy they have now, but a much fiercer middle-aged woman who genuinely seemed like she hated everyone there. Soonyoung thought that was the day he was going to get fired after everything that crazy woman laid on him, which got him desperately scrolling LinkedIn so he could send in his two weeks as soon as possible. Thankfully, everyone else knew how important he was to their company and emailed varying degrees of complaints to HR. ”It wasn't hard to name examples of her insanity,” One of his colleagues had said.
That was almost a year ago. Maybe ten months? For better or worse, he launched the app. His notifications were mostly ads and bumps from the app itself asking him to update his profile or prompting him with jobs that were open in the areas he’d indicated upon sign-up. One of them caught his eye. “Music Production Intern?” He scoffed. In what world would that have ever been relevant? Also, he was way more capable than an intern, thank you very much. He shook his head, clicking “Read All” to get rid of them faster. For some reason, the bump on that intern position wouldn’t go away. He opened it up in mild frustration, scrolling up and down on the page in an effort to get the app to register that he looked at it already. The company that posted it caught his eye. Well- It was the fact that it wasn't a company, but a name.
”Lee… Jihoon?” It rang a bell, but a very distant one. Perhaps there were just too many Jihoon’s in Korea, who knew. But a Lee? Soonyoung mumbled the name over and over to himself as he flipped to the other side in bed. “Lee Jihoon…” He bit his lip as he brain worked overtime. Why was this so important?
There.
”Lee Jihoon!” He sat up in bed with a gasp, the pieces falling into place. Was it really? He looked at his phone. The account had no profile picture and barely any posts (he forgot posting on LinkedIn was a thing, to be honest). Really, the only available information was that this Lee Jihoon worked at- “HYBE?!” Okay, now Soonyoung felt wide awake. HYBE was willing to accept interns? With their big status? Was that not kind of a liability, knowing the rabid fans that exist in the world? Whatever- Soonyoung shook his head- that wasn’t his problem. No, but was this really that Lee Jihoon? He held his turned off phone and brought it close to his chest as he worried his lip contemplating what to do. Maybe he still… Aha! He did a mental celebration in his head (after re-downloading, forgetting his password, resetting his password, and then launching Facebook) as he found the contact he was looking for.
“Wow…” He muttered quietly as he scrolled the very nicely laid out page. He even checked out the Instagram linked somewhere on it and was greeted with nothing but album covers and captions listing their song contents and his rights right alongside them. “Way to show off,” He groaned. Now he really reconsidered sending that goofy message he’d drafted in his notes app (because what if he accidentally sent it!). The way this Lee Jihoon presented himself looked so professional and cleaned up, Soonyoung felt more than inadequate at this guy’s social media being his literal resumé. And he had no clue whether this was really the Lee Jihoon he used to know, or if he had changed after all these years. Would this Lee Jihoon care to answer a stranger? Would he even check his Facebook messages? Would he even be open to talking to someone like Soonyoung, who— objectively, and purely from a business standpoint— doesn't offer him any positives whatsoever?
Argh! Work hazards. Thinking about gains and returns again. Soonyoung tried his best to ignore the anxiety eating at his core. He let himself edit that drafted message to be a little more professional and cordial (he was twenty-eight for tiger’s sake!) and hit send. He shut his phone off very quickly after setting his alarm clock and tried to force himself into sleep so he’d stop thinking about the fact that he’d just Facebook messaged someone he used to know ten odd years ago out of the blue. He failed to stop thinking about it, his heartbeat quickening in his ears, but the stress made his body shut down soon enough.