Chapter Text
It was 8:45 a.m., which meant Kim Seungmin had exactly fifteen minutes left to ruin his life.
He stood outside the National Institute for Tropical Diseases - because of course that was the name, subtlety clearly wasn’t a priority - rocking back and forth like a malfunctioning metronome. His stomach churned ominously, as if it, too, had opinions about his decision to join one of the most prestigious research programs in the country despite being, in his professional opinion, wildly underqualified and possibly a fraud.
By 8:47, he considered fleeing.
By 8:48, he was halfway up the granite steps.
By 8:49, he was inside, trying very hard not to pass away on the polished floor.
The building smelled like disinfectant and ambition. Mostly ambition.
He approached the reception desk with the air of a man approaching his own execution.
“Kim Seungmin,” he said.
The receptionist blinked.
He tried again, slightly louder. “Kim Seungmin. I’m here to join Professor Park’s lab. I’m the new PhD student?”
It came out like a question, which felt appropriate, because honestly, he’d also like confirmation.
“Oh yes,” she said kindly. “Let me give him a call. Just wait here a moment.”
Seungmin nodded and immediately retreated until his back hit the wooden panelling behind him. If he stood very still, perhaps he could become part of the architecture. A decorative feature. A cautionary tale.
He was busy contemplating this when the front doors slammed open and -
Boom. Actual, human-shaped energy burst into the room.
“Yang Jeongin!” the newcomer announced, bright and unstoppable. “I’m the new technician in the Park lab. Where do I go?”
Seungmin blinked. The receptionist smiled. “We’re just waiting for Professor Park. If you wouldn’t mind waiting with - sorry, your name again?”
“Kim Seungmin,” he muttered, because clearly saying it once was not enough to make him real.
Jeongin turned to him with the kind of grin that suggested he woke up cheerful. On purpose.
“Hi! I’m Jeongin. You’re new too? What project are you on? I’m here for the drug development study - I’m really excited, I finally get to use my degree!”
Seungmin, who had not felt excitement since approximately 2014, swallowed.
“I’m - uh - I’m on that too. The cofactor one. And the PhD program.” He hesitated. “So… we might be working together?”
Before Jeongin could respond, a voice cut in from behind them.
“Mr. Kim? Mr. Yang?”
Seungmin turned - and immediately forgot how to exist. Because the man standing there looked like someone had taken a very expensive sculpture and given it a lab coat. Sharp features. Composed expression. Eyes that suggested both intelligence and the ability to destroy your academic career with a single raised eyebrow. Seungmin decided, instantly and irrationally, that he would never recover.
“I’m Dr. Lee,” the man said. “Follow me.”
The corridors were seemingly endless, but Dr. Lee had the stride of someone born to conquer them. “So, how much do you know about our group? Mr. Yang, I remember you from your interview. Mr. Kim, you didn’t have an interview here, right?”
Seungmin swallowed. “I met Professor Park in England during my undergrad studies. He mentioned a position.”
“Ah, yes! Right, English fluency! That will be invaluable for papers and grants. Quick rundown: Professor Park you both know, then there’s the other postdoc Dr. Seo, our PhD student Mr. Hwang, partner lab led by Dr. Bang, and his technician Mr. Lee… you’ll be in good company. Pretty sure he has a doctoral student starting soon too actually.”
By the time they reached the second floor, Seungmin’s brain was a static cloud of excitement and terror. Entering the office, they saw a short and very muscular man mid-yell into a phone, a wild mix of menace and chaos:
“The -20 freezer is dead! All my cultures, all my work will be gone! I need someone out to fix it NOW!”
Seungmin’s eyes darted across the office: piles of paper, leaking ceilings, a bucket strategically placed, sagging bookshelves, and chairs varying from “ancient” to “prehistoric.”
Dr Lee muttered “This is Dr Seo, the other postdoc” as the said Dr. Seo turned to them, still breathing fire. “Newbies? Which is which?”
Seungmin flinched. Jeongin went full-speed handshake, boundless enthusiasm radiating from him. “I’m Jeongin, the new tech! Will I be under you? Can I help with anything?”
Dr. Seo raised an eyebrow. “Under me? That' a bit forward. But yes. Can you fix freezers?”
“I… well, I used to help my uncle with machines,” Jeongin said cheerfully.
And with that, Dr. Seo hugged him like a small, very enthusiastic tornado and whisked him off, bellowing “Cheers Minho! This one’s mine!” as they left.
Seungmin was left standing, frozen, wondering if he had accidentally joined a circus instead of a lab.
Dr. Lee - Minho, apparently - gestured to one of the desks. Calm, patient, mercifully normal. “This is yours. We’ll set up your bench, lab coat, all that. Professor Park is tied up in meetings, but at tea later, you’ll meet everyone else.” He opened the large desk drawer to check the state of it, and apparently it was fine, as he suggested that Seungmin dump his bag in there before they headed off to the main lab.
The lab was ancient, wooden everything, like stepping back in time. It had a strong yeasty smell, hinting at large volumes of bacterial culture medium being made here. Yet there was a strange comfort in the organized chaos: fridges humming, centrifuges whirring, two blondes - one young and cheerful, one muttering into a lab book - deep in their own worlds.
Minho announced: “This is Kim Seungmin, Park’s new doctoral student! Say hi!”
“Hi! I’m Felix” chirped the young blond. The older groaning blond didn’t look up, just wearily raised a hand in greeting - Dr. Bang, presumably.
Seungmin began clearing out old detritus from his newly assigned bench space, collecting chemical company branded pens like tiny golden talismans. It took the best part of an hour to uncover a clear space for himself, and as he was throwing the last handful of discarded pipette tips and Eppendorf tubes in the bin, a voice bellowed “Tea time!” and everyone jolted upright, like meercats. Tea break was sacred, apparently, and Minho led the lab to the canteen.
“The coffee here is surprisingly good” Felix told him and Jeongin as they walked down the corridor.
Dr Bang was walking behind them and broke in with
“There is no such thing as good coffee, be honest with yourselves! Disgusting stuff!” whereupon a clearly well-rehearsed line in ridicule started as the rest of the team mocked him for having childish tastebuds.
“I thought all older people drank coffee?” Seungmin murmured innocently.
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN ‘OLD’?!” Dr. Bang spluttered, outraged.
The lab collectively lost it, and Seungmin nearly cringed himself inside out as he realised what he had said.
“Oh no, I’m so sorry! Everyone in my old lab lived on the stuff! I didn’t mean you were…” he trailed off, as he saw the smile in Dr. Bang’s eyes, and realised he was being teased. This looked like it could be a long day.
The canteen was loud in the way only academic spaces could be - half caffeine, half existential dread, and one hundred percent chatter. Drinks acquired, the group collapsed around a table already half-claimed by another lab that looked just as chaotic but marginally more confident about it.
Seungmin decided, with the clarity of someone who had already made one catastrophic social comment that day, that silence was his safest option. If he didn’t speak, he couldn’t accidentally imply someone was elderly again. A solid plan. Flawless. Foolproof. It lasted approximately thirty seconds. Because then he appeared.
Seungmin noticed him the way one notices a sudden shift in gravity. Tall – quite absurdly tall - with long black hair and the kind of face that suggested the universe occasionally played favourites. He moved like he had nowhere urgent to be and yet everyone should still pay attention, which, annoyingly, everyone did. Including Seungmin, who immediately looked down at his coffee like it might provide some sort of guidance.
The man grabbed a chair, spun it around, and sat on it backwards in a move so effortlessly cool it should have been illegal.
Seungmin’s brain, ever helpful, supplied two conclusions:
a) this was definitely the lab heartthrob,
and
b) Seungmin was not just not in his league, he wasn’t even playing the same sport.
He took a careful sip of coffee and tried not to choke on it.
“You must be the newbies - Jeongin and Seungmin, right?” the man said, smiling gently. “Professor Park mentioned you. Just your student left, Chris.”
Seungmin blinked. Chris?
“Oh,” Dr. Bang - apparently Chris -replied, looking mildly offended by the concept of nicknames. “He’ll be here tomorrow, Hyunjin. Family thing. Han Jisung. He studied abroad too, Japan, I think. Didn’t you say you were in England?”
England.
Right. That.
Seungmin felt Minho’s attention shift toward him, gentle but unavoidable. “How did you end up studying there?”
And great -now he had to speak.
“It’s… kind of embarrassing,” Seungmin admitted, already regretting every life choice that had led him to this precise moment. “We had an exchange student from the UK at my school, and I sort of… followed him back when he returned. It wasn’t really planned.”
Understatement of the century.
“Oh?” someone prompted. “Did he come back here with you?”
Seungmin let out a small breath, staring into his cup like it contained a more interesting narrative. “No. That… didn’t work out.”
Didn’t work out.
A neat, polished phrase for something that had, in reality, detonated on impact.
He didn’t mention the first day in Cambridge. Didn’t mention the way excitement had curdled into confusion, then humiliation, then something sharper and harder to name. Didn’t repeat the words that had lodged themselves somewhere uncomfortably permanent in his memory: 'you’re just another Asian twink… you're nothing to me.'
Instead, he shrugged, aiming for casual and landing somewhere closer to pathetic.
“I had a scholarship" he added. “So I stayed.”
What he didn’t say.
That staying had felt like dragging himself through treacle some days. That his English, once exam-perfect, had dissolved into something clumsy and uncertain the moment real people spoke it too quickly. That homesickness had hit like a physical force, heavy and relentless.
What he also didn’t say: that he hadn’t left.
Because Kim Seungmin, for all his many talents—catastrophic overthinking, selective muteness, and an unfortunate tendency to notice extremely attractive coworkers—was stubborn in a way that bordered on impressive.
So he stayed.
He stayed, and studied, and buried himself in biochemistry, cell biology, and microbiology until it became a language more fluent than any spoken one. He stayed until the unfamiliar became routine, until the loneliness dulled into something manageable, until he could stand in a lab with a pipette in his hand and feel capable.
“And it wasn’t all bad,” he finished, which was both true and also the kind of understatement that could carry an entire thesis worth of footnotes.
There was a small pause at the table - not awkward, exactly, but thoughtful.
Then Jeongin, apparently incapable of letting the emotional atmosphere dip below “aggressively upbeat,” leaned in. “Well, you’re here now! And we’re on the same project, so you’re stuck with me.”
Seungmin glanced at him, then - briefly, traitorously - at the very tall, very distracting man across the table, who was still watching him with an expression Seungmin couldn’t quite decipher. Something like curiosity. Maybe approval. Maybe nothing at all.
Seungmin looked back down at his coffee. Okay. Maybe this place was chaotic. Maybe it was falling apart at the seams. Maybe half the people in it were intimidating, loud, or unfairly attractive. But he’d survived worse.
As the autumn term trudged on, Seungmin fell into a rhythm, the kind of rhythm that made life feel almost manageable. Early mornings in the lab, checking yesterday’s results, feeding his cells like a devoted, slightly obsessive parent. Lunch was sometimes with Jisung - whose energy made friendship feel effortless - or with Jeongin and Felix, depending on the day. Occasionally Hyunjin or one of the postdocs would join them. Afternoons passed in a blur of reading and setting up overnight bacterial plates or PCRs. Gradually, slowly, Seungmin began to feel like he belonged.
Housing had been a concern at first. Living with his aunt and uncle meant a commute long enough to test the limits of patience. Felix, ever casually helpful, mentioned that his flatmate was moving out. Would Seungmin like the room? Not glamorous, but Felix was decent company, provided he wasn’t glued to a screen. And he baked - brownies, banana bread - a constant threat to Seungmin’s self-control. Meanwhile, Seungmin’s cooking rarely ventured beyond kimchi jjigae and instant ramyeon. It was a slight improvement on his diet of toast and marmite back in Cambridge, but only just. Somehow, they achieved a balance, more by luck than judgement.
The research itself was intoxicating. Days in the lab blurred into evenings of reading papers on drug discovery and metabolic pathways, eyes straining but mind buzzing. Unsurprisingly, this ended poorly one Wednesday when he almost passed out at his desk after a string of late nights running frustratingly hopeless enzyme assays. Enter Felix: self-appointed enforcer of work-life balance, dragging him to the institute bar like it or not.
The bar was on the top floor, with a roof terrace that would have been magical in spring. Tonight, however, it poured cats and dogs. They grabbed beers and joined the others around a high table. Hyunjin looked like he’d walked off a magazine cover, Minho like he knew some secret no one else did, and Seungmin, inwardly grateful for his genetically blessed colleagues, tried not to stare too obviously.
Changbin was narrating a story at full power, which is to say, at seismic volume. Seungmin flinched reflexively when Changbin nudged him for emphasis, the motion more akin to being hit by a horse than a friendly reminder. Did this man even realize the force of his own body? His previous discussions with Minho had been intense but nurturing. Changbin, in contrast, radiated the kind of energy that made him simultaneously fascinating and terrifying.
Seungmin tried to shrink into his chair. His cautious, quiet nature bristled under Changbin’s unrestrained presence. He already felt friction forming, a low hum of conflict he could not ignore.
“So, Mr. Kim Seungmin, Mr. Yang Jeongin, Mr. Han Jisung,” Hyunjin asked, sliding into conversation while Changbin fetched more drinks, “how’s the lab treating you so far?”
“Ah, I love it,” Jisung said, practically glowing. “Though I miss bits of my old lab, it was state-of-the-art. No duct tape holding the freezer shut!”
Seungmin arched an eyebrow. “I know, right? I was at one of the oldest universities in the world, and their lab was more modern than this one. Isn’t Korea meant to be… I don’t know, cutting-edge?!”
Hyunjin laughed. “It grows on you. Doors not closing. Benches splintering under your fingers. But it has historic charm, I guess. Oh, and Chris said a new building is coming… just not in time for our projects. Otherwise, all good?”
Jeongin piped up, grin wide. “Yeah, fine, fine, but seriously—where’s the best nightlife? I NEED a proper night out.”
Minho chuckled. “Depends on taste. Changbin, Hyunjin, and I were thinking of a welcome night on Friday – I know it’s been months already, but never let it be said we rush into things here. Could do drinks, bit of dancing, bit of music?”
“Yes!” Jeongin and Jisung practically shouted.
Seungmin, thinking of the stack of papers waiting at his apartment, tried weakly, “I… I’m not sure. I have so much reading…”
“Oh no you don’t” Felix interjected, tone sharp enough to rival Changbin. “You will be there. Both of us will be there. And you will enjoy yourself.”
Seungmin conceded, muttering a reluctant agreement. “But if we’re out then, I’m going to head to the library for a bit now. Those papers won’t read themselves!”
He rose to leave, bag in hand. But not fast enough to avoid Changbin’s low, dry mutter, “That one takes himself way too seriously. Friday’s going to be… interesting.”
Seungmin froze. Interesting? Was that a warning? Or a promise? Either way, his shoulders sagged as he left the bar, mind already plotting ways to navigate the inevitable collision course between cautious Seungmin and human foghorn Changbin. Somehow, making friends was starting to feel as risky as growing E. coli cultures without gloves.