Chapter Text
"You gave me a dopamine rush."
Baek Saheon stared at him blankly.
"The what? Can you say it again?"
Kim Soleum nearly broke his act, slightly thrown off the course.
"Are you pretending to be dumb?"
"No?"
Everything about Baek Saheon was slightly off. His accent, the way he didn't seem to understand some names of the stations, the way his speech became completely incomprehensible when he got nervous... wasn't it ooc? Viper wasn't supposed be a foreigner. Or a dumbass. Or a dumb foreigner.
Kim Soleum, for now, prefered to live in denial. Because if Viper was a foreigner, this whole world was not the DER world he knows about, and his knowledge about it could be completely invalid.
"What is your problem with me? You are not even my superior, why are you bullying me?"
Kim Soleum glared at him.
"You tried to gouge someone's eye out! You don't deserve good treatment, Baek Saheon. So I'm going to show you your place."
"Fuck, how I was supposed to know I could escape without doing something like that? My sister is waiting for me at home, I can't die! Her life is stressful enough!"
Another discrepancy. Viper is a cold, ruthless guy who doesn't have any family or friends.
"I don't care about your excuses. I'll be watching you."
Kim Soleum decided to observe him for now, but keep threatening him when he has an opportunity to do so. Just in case.
When he walked away, he heard Baek Saheon mutter:
– Оце так везіння, блять... мій сусід абсолютно йобнутий на голову... (My fucking luck... my roommate is fucked up in the head)
Kim Soleum turned too look at him.
"What did you say?"
"Nothing."
It sounded like he swore at him in another language. Kim Soleum didn't have any energy to keep arguing with him, though, so he let it slide for today.
Next day, he saw Baek Saheon putting something in the fridge and kitchen cupboard. That "something" turned out to be a few big jars of fermented vegetables, jam and honey. One of the jars contained shredded cabbage.
"Are you making kimchi?" he asked.
Baek Saheon looked at him with disdain.
"Does it look like?.." He put the jar of cabbage in the fridge. "I don't even like kimchi. I hate spicy food."
"Yeah," thought Kim Soleum. "This guy is not Korean at all."
"So what do you want to cook with... all that?" he asked.
"Are you the food police or something?"
Baek Saheon put a few other products in the fridge and closed it.
"I'm trying to understand what's wrong with you." explained Kim Soleum.
"What a coincidence. Me too." he said. "Anyway, I'm cooking today some, uhh... dumplings? With cabbage." he said. "If you want to eat with me, do some chores instead. I'm not gonna feed you for nothing."
"Alright."
Kim Soleum filed a new entry into his imaginary Viper wiki page: "Somehow, is okay with feeding you even if he hates your guts."
In an hour, he saw Baek Saheon making the dumplings from scratch. At least twenty, from the look of it, perfectly round, flattened pieces of dough lied on the table. Baek Saheon put the filling on the dough with a spoon, that carefully folded it into a shape of a dumpling.
He looked so harmless while he was engrossed in cooking...
"So ooc." thought Kim Soleum.
"Need help?"
"Tsk, can you even fold a dumpling properly? You can deal with the filling, I guess... but you can't put too much or too little! You need balance!"
They ended up making the dumplings together and finished up quite fast. Baek Saheon then put a pot of water on the stove to boil and asked him:
"How many do you want?"
"I don't know... six? Seven?"
Baek Saheon smirked.
"Are you sure you can eat that much, skinny boy? They are huge!"
"Skinny boy?.. I'm sure I can eat at least that much." Kim Soleum felt confident in himself.
Oh, he was wrong. The dumplings turned out to be more filling than he expected... He barely finished the seventh one.
Kim Soleum liked how they turned out: savory and a little sour. It was just a shame that he overate, felt sleepy and wasn't in the mood to threaten Baek Saheon anymore.
To repay for food, he washed the dishes and wiped the flour off the table.
Maybe, living with Viper won't be as bad as he thought.
Kim Soleum ran into a problem. The psycho act he wanted to play relied on subtlety and a careful choice of words. He can't just straightforwardly threaten to kill or injure his coworker, after all. It all lied in the implication...
Baek Saheon didn't understand anything. He only saw him glaring and making scary faces. Instead of being scared, he was annoyed at him.
Kim Soleum overheard him talking with his sister over the video call once. His sister seemed to be practicing Korean, so she asked Baek Saheon in Korean:
"You said that you have a roommate, can you tell me more about him?"
Baek Saheon, of course, answered in that other language:
– Він дивний якийсь, наче намагається мене налякати, але спокійно їсть зі мною за одним столом та прибирає в хаті коли я попрошу. Він мене й на роботі іноді дратує, але я якось терплю. (He is kinda weird, as if he is trying to scare me, but he still eats together with me and tidies the apartment when I ask him to. He annoys me at work sometimes, but I endure it somehow.)
"Haha, really? How?"
– Ну, легко його пробачити, коли він такий гарний. Якби я ще розумів, що він мені каже іноді! Моя корейська не настільки просунута, бляха." (Well, it's easy to forgive him when he is so pretty. I wish I could understand what he says sometimes. My Korean is not that advanced, damn.)
"Oh, but your Korean is better than mine! It's good enough for you to work there, so how hard can it be?.."
They were still talking about him. Kim Soleum kept listening, because he had to get clues from the sister's questions and perfect his psycho act for better chances of survival! Not because he was curious! And certainly not because Baek Saheon's voice sounded so soft and smooth when he spoke in his native language!
– Ну... це важко пояснити. Наприклад, ти чула колись, що по-справжньому високий рівень володіння мовою – це коли ти розумієш жарти та сарказм? Я ще не там... (Well, that's hard to explain... Did you hear that you truly master the language when you start to understand jokes and sarcasm? I didn't get there yet.)
"Ah, maybe he is trying to tease you a little! You are so cute, Saheonie, people can't help but want to bully you!"
"What?! It's not like that!"
Kim Soleum heard more then enough to know that his psycho act completely failed. He needed a new strategy... Maybe, he should just forget about the act and simply behave like a strict older colleague. It probably should be enough. Meanwhile, he needed to know what language Baek Saheon was speaking... to learn the swear words and confront him about them, of course.
At the lunch break, he saw Baek Saheon watching a video on YouTube as he was passing by. He didn't hear anything, because Baek Saheon wore headphones.
Kim Soleum noted the channel name and looked it up.
He copied the channel description into google translate... and here it was. Recognized as Ukrainian language.
"Finally. You are not going to get away with cursing at me again, Baek Saheon..."
Suddenly, he was struck by an even better idea.
"Wait... what if I threatened him in his language instead?"
The next time they were thrown together in the darkness by chance, Kim Soleum approached Baek Saheon and whispered into his ear:
"Спробуй мене підставити і побачиш, що я з тобою зроблю." (Try to backstab me and see what I'll do to you.)
Baek Saheon shuddered and his face flushed.
"Oh... um... okay, sir... yes, sir..."
He was suspiciously obedient that time. Kim Soleum's threats finally worked as intended! They were supposed to work like that, right?.. Right?..