Chapter Text
The morning coffee at BeLift Global Holdings did not taste like roasted Arabica beans; it tasted like impending administrative… violence.
Iroha stood by the sleek, minimalist breakroom counter, her knuckles turning white around the ceramic handle of her mug that was designed to look like a cat's tail. She didn’t look at the liquid swirling inside. Instead, her eyes were locked on the thick floor-to-ceiling glass partition that separated the Marketing suites from the Strategy and Operations wing.
On the other side of that glass, the atmosphere was already burning.
“If your department spent half as much time looking at quarterly overhead as you do looking at your own reflection, Director Park, we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” Yunah’s voice carried perfectly through the cracked-open double doors of the central conference room. It was a cold, sharp blade of a voice, wrapped in a perfectly tailored charcoal blazer.
“And if your department understood that you actually have to spend money to acquire human interest, Director Noh, we wouldn’t be stagnating like a puddle of ditch water,” Minju shot back. She was standing on the opposite side of the mahogany table, leaning forward on her palms, her crimson silk blouse practically vibrating with fury. “Your projections are an insult to the word ‘strategy.’ They’re just a list of things you’re too afraid to try.”
Iroha sighed, a heavy, dragging sound, and closed her eyes.
“They’re at it early today,” a voice chirped from behind her.
Iroha opened her eyes to see Moka standing there, holding a stack of manila folders that looked entirely too heavy for her slender frame. Right on cue, as Moka tried to shift her weight to lean against the counter, her elbow came into contact with a box of sugar packets, knocking over an opened sachet. The contents exploded across the marble tiles like a mini snowstorm.
“Damn it,” Moka muttered, not looking particularly surprised. She didn’t immediately bend down to clean it up; instead, she used the toe of her designer heel to sweep the stray packet under the refrigerator. “Anyway, as I was saying. Minju looks like she’s about to throw that smart-display remote at Yunah’s head. And honestly? I’d pay hella money to see it.”
“Keep your voice down,” Iroha muttered, her gaze shifting past Moka to the opposite side of the breakroom entrance. Where a figure whose presence she's been trying to ignore had moved for the first time in awhile.
Yes, there she was. Wonhee.
Wonhee was standing near the water cooler, holding a leather-bound tablet to her chest like a shield. She wore a pristine, navy-blue tailored trouser suit, her hair pinned back into a knot so tight it looked like it was holding her brain cells together. Wonhee was Yunah’s right-hand asset in Strategy, which meant, by default, she was Iroha’s primary corporate antagonist.
As if feeling Iroha’s stare, Wonhee turned her head. Her eyes narrowed behind her thin-framed glasses. She didn’t say a word, but her chin tilted up just a fraction of an inch—a silent, arrogant declaration of departmental superiority.
“Look at her,” Moka whispered, following Iroha’s gaze and giving a sharp, dry laugh. “She looks like she memorized the employee handbook just to use it as a weapon. Why does she always stand like she’s waiting for a military inspection?”
“Because she thinks she’s running the company by proxy,” Iroha said under her breath, her jaw tightening. “Just because Yunah handles the major spreadsheets doesn’t mean Wonhee owns the floor.”
Across the room, Wonhee finally broke her silence, her voice clear and dripping with a passive-aggressive sweetness that made Iroha’s teeth ache. “Iroha, if your team is quite finished with your morning recreation, some of us actually have data models that require processing before the ten o’clock review. Assuming, of course, that Director Park hasn’t completely deleted our shared server access out of spite again.”
There was a slight venom in her voice as she slowly spelled out Minju’s title which didn't sit right with the pink-haired Japanese girl. How dare she try to attack Minju like that.
Iroha took a slow, deliberate sip of her coffee, set the mug down with a sharp clack, and crossed her arms. “The server was down for routine maintenance, Wonhee. Which you would know if you bothered to read the system-wide IT memos instead of spending all your time highlighting Director Noh’s calendar in three different shades of pastel.”
A snort echoed through the silence, the two immediately shifted their gaze to the third person in the room. Moka let out a quiet ‘Oof’ and tried to walk out only to accidentally dropped two of her manila folders onto the floor. “Oops. My bad. Just ignore me.”
Wonhee stepped forward, her heels clicking like a metronome against the polished concrete. “We read the memos, Iroha. We also read between the lines. Every time Marketing falls behind on their deliverables, suddenly there’s a ‘server migration’ or a ‘creative brainstorm day’ that delays the joint pipeline. It’s evident your department is just incompetent.”
“What’s evident is your department’s utter terror of anything that can’t be quantified in an Excel cell,” Iroha retorted, taking a step toward her. She was more daring than Wonhee, and she used it, leaning slightly into the space between them. “Minju is trying to save this brand from looking like a funeral home brochure. If Director Noh had her way, our next ad campaign would just be a black-and-white pie chart.”
“A pie chart shows growth,” Wonhee snapped, her eyes flashing. “Your campaigns show a severe lack of fiscal discipline. No wonder Director Park has to scream to get her point across.”
“She isn’t screaming, she’s passionate,” Iroha said, her voice rising despite herself. “Which is a concept I know is foreign to anyone who reports to a literal ice sculpture like Director Noh.”
Before Wonhee could fire back, a loud, resounding bang echoed from the conference room.
Both of them jumped, their mutual hostility momentarily paused as they turned toward the source of the noise. Through the glass, they saw Minju’s hand hovering over the table, having just slammed her tablet flat against the wood.
“I don’t care about your historical margins, Yunah!” Minju roared, her voice now cutting through the heavy acoustic glass. “The market has shifted! If we don’t authorize the Q3 launch budget by noon, we are dead in the water!”
Yunah didn’t flinch, not at Minju’s change of tone nor at her use of her first name. She slowly stood up from her leather chair, smoothing down the front of her jacket with agonizing deliberation. She looked down at Minju with an expression of supreme, icy disdain. “Then we die in the water, Minju. Because I am not signing off on a three-million-won gamble based on your ‘gut feeling’ and a series of colorful mood boards. My department answers to the board of directors. Yours answers to Pinterest.”
“Oh, that is it,” Minju hissed. She snatched her designer tote bag off the chair, her heels clicking a furious rhythm as she marched toward the door. She yanked it open so hard the glass pane rattled in its frame. “This meeting is adjourned. Do not look at me. Do not email me. Do not even think about my department until you’ve found a personality.”
She stormed out into the hallway, her silk blouse billowing behind her like a battle cape.
Yunah stepped out a second later, her face a mask of absolute, unyielding stone. She didn’t look after the direction Minju bolted off to. Instead, her sharp gaze swept over the breakroom, landing squarely on Wonhee.
“Wonhee,” Yunah commanded, her voice dropping to a dangerous, quiet register. “In my office. Now. Bring the budget reconciliation files for Marketing. We are cutting their discretionary funding by fifteen percent.”
Wonhee’s face instantly smoothed into an obedient, professional mask. “Right away, Director.” She cast one final, triumphant glare at Iroha before turning on her heel to follow her boss down the corridor.
Iroha stood frozen for a second, her blood boiling. Then, the heavy door to Minju’s private office slammed shut at the far end of the hall, the sound echoing like a gunshot. A moment later, Iroha’s phone buzzed violently in her pocket.
Minju: Iroha. My office. Bring the Q3 creative pitch. The one with the heavy digital spend. We are going to war.
Iroha closed her eyes, letting out a long, exhausted breath.
“Well,” Moka said from the floor, where she was still currently trying to gather her scattered papers while sitting cross-legged in her pencil skirt. “On the bright side, the fifteen percent cut means we don’t have to do that boring corporate retreat in September. On the downside, I think you’re going to get ulcer before lunch.”
“Shut up, Moka,” Iroha said affectionately, turning to grab her notebook. “Help yourself to my coffee. I have a feeling I won’t be alive to drink it.”
The midday sun beat down through the massive atrium windows of BeLift Global, but inside the executive suites, the climate was sub-zero.
The feud between Minju and Yunah wasn’t new, but over the last three weeks, it had degenerated from standard executive friction into a scorched-earth campaign that was systematically destroying the sanity of everyone beneath them. And unfortunately for Iroha and Wonhee, they were the frontline infantry.
By 2:00 PM, Iroha was sitting at her desk, staring blankly at a slide deck that had been revised six times in the last four hours. Every time she submitted a version to Minju, Minju would look at it, swear under her breath, and say, “It needs to look more aggressive. I want Yunah to choke on her own spit when she sees this.”
Iroha’s phone rang. It was the internal line.
“Marketing, Iroha speaking.”
“Iroha,” Wonhee’s voice came through the receiver, sounding clipped, professional, and utterly exhausted. “Director Noh has rejected your revised project timeline. She notes that your team has allocated four weeks for ‘creative asset development’ during a period where Operations requires finalized assets for the regional distribution test.”
Iroha pinched the bridge of nose. “Wonhee, we told you three times last week, those assets cannot be rushed. If we give you half-baked designs, the conversion rates will drop, and then Yunah will just blame us for a bad launch.”
“That’s ‘Director Noh’ for you, watch your words. And no, she doesn’t blame, Iroha. She analyzes,” Wonhee said, the sound of rapid typing audible in the background. “And right now, her analysis shows that Marketing is acting as a bottleneck. We need those assets by Friday, or we are flagging your department for non-compliance in the executive summary.”
Iroha sat up straight, her eyes narrowing at her monitor. “Non-compliance? Are you kidding me? Minju will literally set fire to the Strategy floor if you put that word in the summary.”
“Then I suggest you advise your director to adjust her expectations,” Wonhee said coldly. “We aren’t here to accommodate Director Park’s artistic temperament. We are here to run a business.”
“You know what, Wonhee? Why don’t you take your data models, charts, whatever it is you even do and—”
The line went dead. Wonhee had hung up.
Iroha slammed the receiver back onto its cradle, her heart hammering against her ribs. “She did not just hang up on me,” she whispered to the empty air of her cubicle.
“She totally did,” Moka said, poking her head over the thin, cardboard partition. She was wearing a pair of oversized, horn-rimmed glasses that kept sliding down her nose. “I could hear her condescending tone from over here. It has a specific frequency. It sounds like a dentist’s drill.”
“I am going to strangle her,” Iroha muttered, grabbing her tablet and standing up so fast her ergonomic chair rolled back into the filing cabinet with a loud thud. “I am going down there.”
“Bring me back a bag of those salt and vinegar chips from the third-floor vending machine if you survive!” Moka called out as Iroha stormed down the aisle.
The journey from the Marketing department on the fifth floor to the Strategy floor on the fourth was a descent into a completely different ecosystem. While Marketing was filled with open spaces, colorful whiteboards, and casual attire, Strategy was a grid of monochrome glass cubicles, silent keyboards, and women who looked like they hadn’t eaten carb and sugar since 2018. It was utterly boring and dead.
Iroha marched down the main corridor, her boots clicking loudly against the hardwood accent floor. She found Wonhee standing outside Yunah’s corner office, holding a stack of bound reports. Wonhee looked pale, her lips pressed into a thin line, her shoulders rigid.
Just as Iroha opened her mouth to launch into her tirade, the door to Yunah’s office flew open.
Yunah stood in the doorway, holding a thick folder. Her expression was completely devoid of emotion, which Iroha had learned was far more terrifying than when she looked angry. She didn’t look at Iroha at all; her focus was entirely on Wonhee.
“Lee Wonhee, this reconciliation report is missing the regional tax variance data for the European expansion,” Yunah said, her voice dropping like a lead weight.
“I... I requested that data from the Marketing team yesterday, Director,” Wonhee said, her voice tighter than usual. “They haven’t provided it yet.”
“Then you should have gone down there and extracted it yourself,” Yunah said smoothly, her eyes freezing over. “I don’t pay you to give me excuses based on Marketing’s incompetence. I pay you to anticipate gaps. This delay has cost us our afternoon review slot with the CFO. Fix it. Now.”
She dropped the folder into Wonhee’s hands. It was a heavy, unceremonious thud. Yunah turned back into her office and closed the door with a soft, final click that felt worse than a slam.
Wonhee stood perfectly still in the hallway for three long seconds. Iroha watched her, the anger suddenly leaking out of her own chest, replaced by an uncomfortable, heavy lump of sympathy. She knew exactly what that felt like. She had spent the last three weeks getting chewed out by Minju for things that were completely beyond her control, all because Minju was too furious at Yunah to think straight.
Wonhee turned around slowly, noticing Iroha standing there. For a moment, a flash of pure vulnerability crossed Wonhee’s face—her eyes looked wide, tired, and remarkably human behind her glasses. But within a millisecond, the wall went back up. Her expression hardened into a defensive glare.
“What do you want, Iroha?” Wonhee asked, her voice cracking slightly before she stabilized it. “Come to gloat? Or did Minju send you down here to personally deliver another delay?”
That was the first time Wonhee had addressed one of the high-postioned employees by their first name.
Iroha swallowed her initial retort. She looked at the heavy folder in Wonhee’s arms, then down at her own tablet. “I came down here to tell you that the tax variance data is in the shared drive. It’s been there since one o’clock. Minju just forgot to send the formal notification because she was too busy screaming at the IT director to block Yunah’s access to our creative servers.”
Wonhee blinked, a slight tremor in her hands as she clutched the folder. “It’s... it’s already in the drive?”
“Yeah,” Iroha said softly, leaning against the drywall. “Folder name is ‘Project_Phoenix_Ops_Trash’. Minju named it that out of spite, which is probably why your search filters didn’t pick it up.”
Wonhee let out a short, dry sound that was half-laugh, half-sob, immediately cutting it off by clearing her throat. “Right. Of course. Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me,” Iroha said, looking down the long, sterile hallway. “We’re both drowning here, Wonhee. It’s getting ridiculous.”
Before Wonhee could respond, the elevator doors at the end of the hall slid open with a cheery chime that felt entirely inappropriate for the atmosphere. Minju stepped out, accompanied by two junior designers who looked like they were marching to their execution. Minju’s eyes locked onto Yunah’s office door, and her face darkened instantly.
“Iroha!” Minju called out, her voice echoing through the Strategy floor. “Why are you standing around in the purgatory section? Come back up. We’re changing the entire launch strategy. We’re going fully experiential.”
Iroha’s jaw dropped. “Experiential? Minju, we don’t have the budget for that if Yunah cuts us by fifteen percent—”
“Yunah isn’t cutting anything because I am going to the board tonight to have her entire operational framework audited!” Minju snapped, marching right past Iroha and Wonhee toward Yunah’s door. She didn’t even knock. She yanked the handle open and stepped inside. “Yunah! We need to talk about your absurd little memo regarding our discretionary fund!”
Inside the office, Yunah rose from her desk like a shadow stretching across a wall. “Director Park, get out of my office. You do not have an appointment.”
“I don’t need an appointment to tell you that your management style is a liability to this company!”
The door didn’t close all the way. The shouting match erupted instantly, louder and more vicious than any fight they had had all week. The entire Strategy floor fell dead silent, every single analyst freezing over their keyboards, pretending not to listen while absorbing every syllable.
Iroha looked at Wonhee. Wonhee looked at Iroha.
Both of them looked completely, utterly broken.
By 6:30 PM, the office was mostly empty, the bright fluorescent lights shifting to a dimmer, automated evening setting. The silence should have been peaceful, but instead, it felt like the heavy, pressurized air before a tornado.
Iroha was in the print room, waiting for a massive 200-page brief to compile. Her eyes were bloodshot, her hair was a messy bun held together by a single ink pen, and she had given up on her shoes, standing in her black socks on the carpet.
The door to the print room slid open, and Wonhee walked in, carrying a box of legal-size paper. She looked equally wrecked. Her blazer was gone, her white button-down shirt was wrinkled, and her neck-tie was loosened. Her eyes were dark with exhaustion.
She didn’t see Iroha at first. She just walked toward the secondary printer, dropped the box onto the floor with a loud grunt, and then leaned her forehead against the cool glass top of the copier, letting out a long, ragged groan.
“Same,” Iroha said quietly from the corner.
Wonhee flinched, her head snapping up, her glasses sliding down her nose. She grabbed them, pushing them back up as she glared at Iroha. “Jesus, Iroha. Do you have to hover in the dark like a ghost?”
“Oh relax, you big baby. The lights are automatic, I didn’t turn them off,” Iroha sighed, leaning her back against the side of the massive industrial printer. “And I’m not hovering. I’m waiting for Minju’s new ‘War Manifesto’ to finish printing so I can read it before our eight-thirty PM alignment call.”
“An alignment call at eight-thirty?” Wonhee asked, her voice dropping its defensive edge, replaced by pure, unadulterated fatigue. “Yunah has me compiling a historical audit of every dollar Marketing has spent since 2022. I have to present it to her at seven o’clock tomorrow morning.”
“She’s making you do a three-year audit overnight?” Iroha looked at her, genuinely appalled. “That’s a three-person job for a full week.”
“She wants it tomorrow,” Wonhee said, her voice small, her shoulders slumping as she leaned against the copier. “Because Minju threatened to audit her framework. So Yunah is going to pre-emptively attack Minju’s financial record. And I’m the one who has to stay up all night pulling the receipts.”
“This is insane,” Iroha said, running a hand over her face. “They are literally killing us. They’re using us as proxy soldiers in whatever weird, toxic… relationship dynamic they have going on.” Her hands were pathetically flailing around, frustrated.
“It’s not a relationship dynamic, Iroha, they hate each other,” Wonhee said, though her voice lacked its usual bite. “They’ve hated each other since the merger.”
“Are you sure about that?” Iroha asked, tilting her head. “Because I’ve never seen two people look at each other with that much intensity who didn’t either want to kill each other or... well, you know.”
Wonhee gave a sharp, dry laugh, crossing her arms. “Please. Yunah doesn’t have feelings. She has operational protocols.”
“And Minju has nothing but feelings, which means she reacts to everything Yunah does like it’s a personal betrayal,” Iroha countered. “Think about it. Why do they only fight in public? Why do they always make sure the other one is watching when they succeed? It’s completely performative. It’s a drama.”
“Whatever it is, it’s ruining my life,” Wonhee muttered, looking down at her socks. She had taken her heels off too, Iroha noticed. Wonhee’s socks had little geometric patterns on them. It was a bizarrely endearing detail for someone who usually acted like a corporate terminator.
Suddenly, a massive crash echoed from the main corridor outside the print room.
Both of them froze.
“What was that?” Wonhee whispered.
“It came from the executive hallway,” Iroha said, her voice dropping.
They both crept toward the heavy glass door of the print room, peering out into the dim corridor. At the far end of the hall, near the central reception desk, Minju and Yunah were standing. They had apparently run into each other on the way out, and a large, decorative ceramic vase that usually sat on the reception console was now shattered into a hundred pieces on the floor.
“You pushed past me, Yunah!” Minju’s voice was a ragged, furious screech. “You literally rammed your shoulder into me!”
“I was walking in a straight line toward the elevator, Minju. You were the one weaving around like you’ve had three martinis for lunch,” Yunah’s voice was loud, her controlled facade finally breaking, showing a raw, jagged edge of anger that Iroha had never heard before. “You are completely out of control!”
“I am out of control? You’ve been trying to choke the life out of my department for six months! You’re a control freak who can’t handle the fact that I don’t bow down to your little spreadsheets!”
“I don’t want you to bow down to me, Minju! I want you to be competent!” Yunah stepped closer, her face inches from Minju’s. “I want you to stop making every single budgetary discussion a referendum on my personal character!”
“Your personal character is a desert, Yunah! There’s nothing there to discuss!”
Iroha and Wonhee watched from the doorway, completely paralyzed. The intensity of the argument was suffocating. It felt like watching a bomb count down in slow motion.
“They’re going to fire each other,” Wonhee whispered, her hand instinctively reaching out and grabbing the sleeve of Iroha’s shirt. “Or they’re going to destroy the building.”
“Worse,” Iroha muttered, her eyes wide as she watched Minju step even closer to Yunah, her finger pressed into Yunah’s lapel. “They’re going to drag this out until we both quit or have a stroke.”
Yunah suddenly grabbed Minju’s wrist, pulling her hand away from her jacket. For a second, neither of them moved. They just stood there, chests heaving, staring at each other with a terrifying, heavy silence that felt heavier than the shouting.
“Get your hands off me,” Minju whispered, her voice dangerously low.
Yunah let go, stepping back, her face pale. “Get out of my sight, Minju. Before I make sure the board revokes your contract entirely.”
Yunah turned on her heel and marched down the hallway toward the private executive elevator, her movements stiff and furious. Minju stood by the shattered vase for a moment, her shoulders shaking, before she slammed her hand against the wall and stormed off in the opposite direction toward the fire stairs.
The silence that followed was absolute.
Iroha let out a breath she felt like she’d been holding since nine AM. She leaned her head back against the print room doorframe, completely drained. Her limbs felt like lead. Her brain felt like mush.
Beside her, Wonhee looked equally hollowed out. She was staring at the shattered ceramic pieces at the end of the hall, her jaw slightly slack.
“I can’t do this anymore,” Wonhee whispered. She turned to look at Iroha, her eyes glassy with sheer exhaustion. “Iroha. I am serious. I cannot survive another week of this.”
“Me neither,” Iroha said honestly, her voice dropping its competitive edge entirely. “Minju is going to make me work through the weekend on a pitch that she’ll probably scrap the second Yunah looks at it sideways. It’s a loop. We’re stuck in a time loop of their personal dysfunction. Oh god, we're gonna die here.”
Wonhee stared at her for a long moment, her mind visibly working behind her eyes. Then, a sudden, sharp look of determination crossed her face. It was the look she usually got right before she found a major accounting error, but this time, it was directed at Iroha.
Before Iroha could ask what she was doing, Wonhee reached out, grabbed Iroha by the collar of her button-down shirt, and physically yanked her out of the print room.
“Whoa—hey!” Iroha stumbled, her socked feet sliding on the carpet as Wonhee pulled her down the darkened hallway.
“Shut up and move,” Wonhee hissed, her grip surprisingly firm as she dragged Iroha toward the massive, decorative Ficus tree that sat in a giant ceramic pot near the corner of the floor’s lounge area. It was a massive, dense plant that provided a perfect, hidden pocket of shadow between the wall and the structural pillar.
Wonhee shoved Iroha behind the large potted plant, stepping in right after her so they were crammed into the small, dark space, surrounded by dusty green leaves. They were close—so close Iroha could smell the expensive, minimalist vanilla perfume Wonhee wore, mixed with the distinct scent of stale office coffee.
“What the hell are you doing?” Iroha whispered fiercely, trying to straighten her collar while being pressed against the drywall. “Have you finally lost your mind? Are we hiding from the cleaning crew?”
“Listen to me,” Wonhee whispered, her voice low, intense, and sharp as a razor. She held Iroha by both shoulders now, her face inches away. “We are going to fix this.”
“Fix what? The vase? I’m pretty sure that’s a janitorial issue—”
“Not the vase, Iroha! Them!” Wonhee gestured wildly with her head toward the executive offices. “The bosses. Minju and Yunah. We are going to fix them.”
Iroha blinked, staring at Wonhee’s intense, slightly unhinged expression. “Fix them how? By sending them to corporate mediation? They’ve already failed that twice. The mediator quit, Wonhee. She literally went on medical leave.”
“No, not mediation,” Wonhee said, her grip tightening on Iroha’s shoulders, her eyes shining with a desperate, brilliant light. “We are going to make them like each other.”
Iroha’s jaw dropped. “You... what?”
“Think about it,” Wonhee urged, her words coming out in a rapid, hushed torrent. “Why do they fight? Because every interaction they have is a high-stakes, competitive, professional confrontation. They only see each other when they’re defending their territory. If they were fond of each other—if they were... soft on each other—they would stop treating every budget meeting like a cage match.”
“Are you suggesting we play matchmaker for two of the most terrifying executives in the tristate area?” Iroha asked, her voice rising in disbelief. “Are you insane? If they find out, they won’t just fire us, they’ll blackball us from the entire industry. I’ll be working at a drive-thru by Tuesday.”
“They won’t find out,” Wonhee said, her voice dropping to a fierce, confident whisper. “Because we are going to be precise. We manage their schedules, Iroha. We handle their correspondence. We know exactly what they eat, when they sleep, what music they listen to when they’re stressed, and what kind of pens they prefer. We have total access to their operational parameters.”
Iroha stared at her, her mind racing. It was an absolutely unhinged idea. It was dangerous, unprofessional, and defied every single boundary of corporate etiquette.
But then she thought about the 200-page manifesto waiting for her in the printer. She thought about Minju’s bloodshot eyes and Yunah’s icy, dead silence. She thought about working until midnight every day for the rest of the year because two brilliant, stubborn women couldn’t figure out how to talk to each other without breaking furniture.
“You’re serious,” Iroha whispered.
“I have never been more serious in my life,” Wonhee said, her eyes locked onto Iroha’s. “If we don’t do this, they are going to destroy this company, and they are going to destroy us along with it. We do this secretly. We manipulate the calendar events, we alter the catering orders, we slip positive feedback under each other’s names. We build a bridge between them, inch by inch, until they stop fighting.”
Iroha looked at Wonhee—really looked at her. The rigid, arrogant Strategy analyst was gone, replaced by a desperate, creative co-conspirator. For the first time since Iroha had started working at BeLift Global, she felt a genuine spark of connection with the woman standing in front of her.
A slow, dangerous smile crept onto Iroha’s face.
“You know,” Iroha murmured, leaning back against the wall, her arms crossing over her chest. “Marketing does excel at brand rehabilitation. And right now, Yunah’s brand in Minju’s mind is absolute garbage.”
“And Strategy excels at execution,” Wonhee said, a faint, answering smile touching her lips. “So. Are you in?”
Iroha looked out through the leaves of the Ficus tree, toward the empty, darkened hallway where the broken pieces of the vase still lay scattered on the floor.
“Yeah,” Iroha said, turning back to Wonhee and extending her hand. “I’m in. Let’s make our bosses fall in love. Or at least stop throwing things.”
Wonhee took her hand, her grip firm and decisive. “Operation ‘Alignment’ starts tomorrow.”
“That name’s stupid.”
“Oh, fuck off.”