Work Text:
Haewon was buried in a site plan, the fluorescent lights of the open-plan office humming a flat, tired tune well past eight PM. Her neck ached. The scent of cold coffee and printer toner was a permanent fixture in her sinuses. A shadow fell across her drafting table, and she looked up, expecting to see a junior architect with a question, or maybe the cleaner with his trolley.
Instead, it was Jinsol from the structural engineering department, holding a tall paper cup. The girl was beaming.
“You looked like you could use this,” Jinsol said, her voice cheerful but not loud. She placed the cup carefully on a clear corner of Haewon’s desk. “Americano, no sugar, just a little room. That’s right, isn’t it?”
Haewon stared at the cup, then at Jinsol.
“I… didn’t order anything.”
“I know,” Jinsol replied. “I was grabbing one for myself and thought, Project Lead Oh is still here. She probably needs fuel.” She gave a little shrug. “Anyway. Don’t stay too late.”
And before Haewon could formulate a proper rejection—a polite “thank you but no thank you,” or a more direct “please don’t”—Jinsol had turned with a small wave and walked back towards the engineering bay.
Haewon looked at the offending cup for a full minute. Finally, with a sigh that was more exhaustion than anything, she took a sip. It was perfectly brewed, hot, bitter with just the right edge, the way she actually liked it. She hadn’t told anyone that. It was a coincidence. It had to be.
The second time was three days later, mid-afternoon. Haewon was in a cross-departmental meeting, leading a discussion on load-bearing adjustments. Jinsol was there, representing her team. After the meeting, as people filtered out, Jinsol sidled up to her as she packed her laptop.
“Left it on your desk,” Jinsol murmured, leaning in slightly. “Same as before.”
Haewon frowned. “Jinsol-ssi, this isn’t necessary.”
“It’s just coffee,” Jinsol said, her smile turning a touch softer. “See you around, Haewon-ssi.”
Haewon’s frown deepened, but Jinsol was already gone.
Not every day, but most days. Sometimes in the morning, the cup appearing on her desk before she even arrived. Sometimes in the afternoon, delivered personally with that smile. Never with a request attached. Never with an expectation of conversation. Just the coffee, and the smile, and then she’d leave.
“You really don’t have to,” Haewon’d say.
“It’s my pleasure,” Jinsol would counter.
“I can get my own coffee.”
“But then you wouldn’t get this one.”
Her colleagues noticed. Jiwoo nudged Haewon one day at the coffee machine. “She’s got a serious crush. It’s adorable.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Haewon said, measuring out a precise amount of coffee grounds for herself, even though she’d already had Jinsol’s offering. “She’s just being friendly.”
The real problem, Haewon admitted to herself in her most private moments, wasn’t the coffee. It was that she’d come to expect it. The coffee was always perfect. And Jinsol’s presence, brief and sweet as it was, had become a punctuation mark in her day.
She tried to pay for it once, thrusting a wad of cash at Jinsol. Jinsol looked genuinely hurt for a split second before the smile returned. “It’s not a transaction, Haewon-ssi. Please.”
The formality of ‘ssi’ felt like a rebuke. Haewon withdrew the money, feeling foolish.
She tried to be there first, bringing two cups to a meeting they were both in. Jinsol accepted hers with a surprised laugh that made Haewon’s ears burn. “You remembered mine is a vanilla latte?”
Haewon shrugged. “Lucky guess.”
“Thank you,” Jinsol said, and the sincerity in her voice wrapped around Haewon gently.
The precarious routine held for almost two months. Haewon’s refusals grew weaker. She stopped saying “you don’t have to” and started just saying “thank you”. She even, once or twice, caught Jinsol’s eye and gave a small smile of her own before looking away.
Then, on a Tuesday, it stopped.
Haewon didn’t realize it at first. The morning was hectic, a client call that went long and poorly. She stormed back to her desk, brain buzzing with frustrated energy, ready for the calming bitterness of the usual Americano to ground her.
Her desk was clean. Only her own clutter greeted her.
She blinked. Maybe Jinsol was running late. Maybe she’d placed it somewhere else by mistake. Haewon subtly checked around her monitor, under some papers. Nothing.
An odd feeling settled in her stomach. She dismissed it. She had real problems to deal with. She marched to the communal kitchen and made a pot of the office sludge, which tasted like burnt tires and regret. She drank it anyway.
By 3 PM, the hollow feeling had grown. The afternoon drag was worse without its expected interruption.
She’s busy. Haewon told herself.
But the thought didn’t bring relief. It brought a cold trickle of anxiety. Had her constant rejections been too harsh? The idea shouldn’t have bothered her. It was what she’d wanted.
At 5:30 PM, Jiwoo popped her head over the cubicle wall. “No coffee fairy today?”
“Apparently not.”
“Huh. Maybe she’s sick.”
The word ‘sick’ landed like a stone in Haewon’s gut. Jinsol was always so… healthy. The image of her subdued, ill, alone in some apartment… Haewon pushed it away. “Not my concern,” she muttered, but the words tasted false.
She lasted until 7 PM. The worry had crystallized into a nervous knot. She realized that she knew almost nothing about Jinsol outside of work. She didn’t know where she lived, if she lived alone, who her emergency contact was.
Her fingers hovered over the company directory on her screen. She found ‘Bae Jinsol’ and pulled up her internal profile. There was a work phone number and an email. No personal details.
Haewon chewed her lip. Calling the work line would be insane. Emailing to ask ‘where is my coffee?’ was so unprofessional.
Then she remembered the inter-departmental project roster. It had personal cell numbers for key team members in case of urgent issues. Jinsol was on it. Haewon pulled up the document. There it was. A phone number.
She stared at the number for five minutes, the office silent around her. Finally, she picked up her personal phone.
`Bae-ssi, this is Oh Haewon. You weren’t in today’s logistics meeting. Is everything alright with the Spencer project files?`
It was a weak pretext. The files weren’t urgent. She hit send before she could lose her nerve.
The minutes stretched. No reply. The knot in her stomach tightened. After twenty agonizing minutes, she couldn’t take it. She gathered her things.
She drove home on autopilot. Her quiet apartment felt oppressive. She ordered food but didn’t eat it. She turned on the TV but didn’t watch it. Her phone lay silent on the coffee table.
At 9:47 PM, it buzzed.
Haewon snatched it up. It wasn’t a text. It was an incoming call. From Jinsol’s number.
Her throat went dry. She swiped to answer. “Hello?”
There was a pause, then Jinsol’s voice, but it was thin, weak, scratchy. “Haewon-ssi? You… you texted?”
“You didn’t answer,” Haewon said.
“Sorry. Phone was… across the room.” Jinsol coughed. “The files… they’re on the server. I uploaded them last week.”
“That’s not—” Haewon stopped, took a breath. “Are you sick?”
A weak chuckle, followed by another cough. “Yeah. Pretty obvious? Some kind of flu. Hit me last night. Sorry I missed the meeting.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Are you alone? Do you have medicine? Food?”
“I’m… yeah, I’m alone. I have some pills. Not really hungry.”
That was unacceptable. Haewon was already standing, grabbing her keys and her wallet. “What’s your address?”
Silence on the line. “Haewon-ssi, you don’t have to—”
“Bae Jinsol, what is your address?”
Jinsol gave it, her voice small. It was an apartment building not too far from Haewon’s.
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
Jinsol’s apartment was on the fourth floor. The door was slightly ajar. Haewon pushed it open gently. “Jinsol?”
The apartment was chaotic. Not dirty, but lived-in. Sketchbooks and technical manuals were piled on a low table. A worn sofa was draped with a soft-looking blanket. And there, emerging from a hallway, was Jinsol.
She looked terrible. Her face was pale, her eyes fever-bright. Her hair even messier than usual. She leaned against the doorframe for support.
“You really came,” she whispered.
“Of course I came,” Haewon said, stepping inside and closing the door. She set her bag down on the cluttered table. “Go back to bed. Now.”
Jinsol nodded weakly and shuffled back down the hallway. Haewon followed. She guided Jinsol back into it, pulling the covers up over her.
“I brought tea and porridge. You need to drink and eat something.”
“Not hungry,” Jinsol mumbled, already closing her eyes.
“I don’t care.” Haewon went back to the main room, found a small kitchenette, and heated the porridge and tea. She brought them in on a tray, along with the medicine. She sat on the edge of the bed. “Sit up. Slowly.”
With Haewon’s help, Jinsol propped herself up. She was docile, letting Haewon hand her the thermos cup of tea. She took a small sip, then a bigger one. “This is good,” she rasped.
“It’s just ginger. Why didn’t you tell anyone you were this sick?”
“Didn’t want to be a bother.”
“Bringing me coffee for two months wasn’t a bother?” The question escaped before Haewon could filter it.
“That was different. That was because I wanted to.”
The directness of it stole Haewon’s breath. She busied herself with the porridge, stirring it to cool. “Well. Now it’s my turn. Open up.”
She fed Jinsol spoonfuls of the bland porridge. Jinsol ate obediently, her eyes never leaving Haewon’s face. When she’d finished about half, she shook her head. “Enough. Thank you.”
Haewon gave her the medicine and another drink of water. She took the tray away, cleaned up in the small kitchen, then returned to the bedroom. Jinsol was lying back down, watching her.
“You should go home,” Jinsol said quietly. “I don’t want you to get sick.”
“I have a good immune system,” Haewon said, which was a lie. “I’ll stay on the couch for a little while. Make sure your fever breaks.”
“Haewon…”
“Hush.” Haewon smoothed the covers around Jinsol’s shoulders. “Sleep.”
Jinsol’s eyes fluttered closed. Within minutes, her breathing evened out into the deeper rhythm of sleep. Haewon turned off the light, leaving a small lamp on in the corner.
She went to the living room, sat on the sofa, and pulled the soft blanket around her. It smelled faintly of Jinsol. She didn’t sleep much. She listened, she dozed, she checked on Jinsol a few times, placing a cool hand on her forehead. The fever seemed to be receding slightly by the early hours.
When dawn light started to creep around the edges of the blinds, Haewon made more tea. She heard movement in the bedroom and brought a fresh cup in.
Jinsol was sitting up, looking better. She accepted the tea with a grateful look. “You stayed all night.”
“I said I would.” Haewon sat on the edge of the bed again.
“I’m sorry,” Jinsol said, looking into her cup. “For worrying you. And for… the coffee thing. It was probably annoying.”
“It was,” Haewon agreed, and Jinsol’s head snapped up, hurt flashing in her eyes. Haewon continued. “At first. Then it became… the part of the day I didn’t realize I was waiting for.”
Jinsol stared at her.
“Why?” Haewon asked. “Why me?”
A smile touched Jinsol’s lips. “You’re the most focused, capable person I’ve ever seen. You see right through nonsense. And when you get passionate about a design…” She shook her head slightly. “You burn so brightly, Haewon-ssi. I just wanted to be near that warmth. Even if all I could do was bring you coffee.”
The words were simple, but they unraveled Haewon completely. All her defenses melted away in the face of such earnest affection.
She reached out, hesitantly, and brushed a stray strand of hair from Jinsol’s forehead. “You’re an idiot,” Haewon whispered. “A very persistent, very kind idiot.”
Jinsol caught her hand, holding it gently against her cheek. Her eyes were shining. “Is that… okay?”
Haewon leaned forward. She didn’t kiss her cause Jinsol was still sick, and this was too new. Instead, she rested her forehead against Jinsol’s, closing her eyes. She could feel the warmth of her, the steady pulse of her life. “Yes,” she breathed. “It’s okay.”