Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

I got him back for it.

When he first read that message from his soulmate, Kim Dokja had no way of knowing that he would eventually come to rue the day he met Han Sooyoung.

It seems like some habits of yours will never change, Yoo Joonghyuk.

He had been twenty nine and still working in the general QA department at Minosoft.

When I picked him up I realized the bastard was so drunk he didn't even notice me next to her. After that, we left him to himself.

Kim Dokja had a black eye when he went into work that Monday morning.

He remembered it was a Monday because Yoo Joonghyuk had explained earlier that morning that the injury he incurred came from his Sunday date night with his girlfriend.

Apparently, they had a run in with a drunkard who had mistakenly thought it wise to hit on a taken woman. When Yoo Joonghyuk pushed the guy away, he had taken a wild swing, bashing Kim Dokja's soulmate right in the eye with the butt of a wine bottle.

That Yoo Joonghyuk… it had worried Kim Dokja quite a bit when he saw that dark mark form over his eye while brushing his teeth on his own lonely Sunday evening. He had spent the whole night rereading that text file on his phone from the last time Yoo Joonghyuk had gotten into a fight, way before he had met Lee Seolwha, and taking note of all of the progress he had made since then.

How could he be back spiralling into violence after all this time? Kim Dokja had been anxious to learn about the details of the fight. What grand emotional disturbance could have driven his soulmate back to his old ways?

Hearing that it was from some stray remark made about his girlfriend was a strange feeling. Seeing Yoo Joonghyuk fight for somebody else instead of because of his own bizzarre, internal sense of logic… well, it made him seem a bit more like a protagonist, didn't it?

It was still sort of annoying, though, that Kim Dokja would have to walk into work tomorrow with a black eye because of this valiant soul mate of his…

…

Kim Dokja couldn't stay mad at him for that next part, though.

Seolwha made me put a cold pack on my eye. She told me that people only use steaks for bruises in movies because it's cold, but she recommended against it because of the pathogens that can come on raw meat. I didn't know that, before.

Even if Yoo Joonghyuk's temper hadn't quite changed for the better, Kim Dokja had been happy that his soulmate wasn't alone in the aftermath, that time.

…

… Raw steaks?

Had that soulmate of his really been using raw steaks on his bruises, before?

Kim Dokja hadn't slept well, thinking about this.

Maybe that was why his report to Deputy Yoon was finished so much later than usual at work the following day.

When he finally did get that report ready, it was already past the QA department lunch break, but for some reason Deputy Yoon wasn’t at his desk.

Ugh. Kim Dokja had groaned internally as he stood up from where he had been waiting by the printer and gathered the report papers in his hands. He felt the urge itching at the back of his mind to just open up his phone and get back to reading that web novel chapter he started at lunch. After all, it wasn’t as if there was anything better to do until Deputy Yoon got back…

… But then again, if this report didn’t get processed by Yoon and turned in at the end of the day, Kim Dokja’s superior would definitely point fingers. He’d end up getting chewed out by Department Head Han, or worse, have to listen to one of his condescending lectures about ‘what it means to succeed in the workplace.’

It was easy to conclude that turning in the report on time was a lot less work than dealing with the consequence of it being late.

That was the reason why Kim Dokja, an employee who always gave it the bare minimum when it came to work, ended up going on a scavenger hunt for his superior that afternoon.

The office secretary told him that Deputy Yoon wasn’t on his break, so Kim Dokja assumed his superior would be going to or coming back from one of the other departments.

So it was, of course, very surprising when Kim Dokja heard a familiar voice coming from the break room on his way to check the HR department.

Kim Dokja pretty much turned right around after seeing the scene in the break room.

Deputy Yoon had been leaning over a woman by the water cooler, his hand on the wall behind her.

Damn. What exactly had Kim Dokja just walked in on?

He stood frozen, just out of sight around the corner of the breakroom, contemplating what his next steps should be.

Seeing a scene like that had really thrown him off… although, maybe that was just because it was a different genre than the work life that Kim Dokja knew about.

Theoretically, he supposed, he knew that his co-workers formed relationships and had… romantic inclinations.

It was probably only because Kim Dokja himself didn’t have such things in his own life that he found what he had seen so shocking.

Right. His workplace life was not one involved in such things. He avoided every company mixer and ate alone at lunch and took odd break times, thereby avoiding office gossip and water cooler banter. He had missed so many of these social opportunities that he was certain no one at Minosoft would even notice he was missing when his contract expired at the end of next month.

So all he had to do now to fit into that narrative of the nobody low level employee who never got involved in office drama was just walk away. Go back to his desk and keep his head down. Wait for Deputy Yoon to come back to his desk and act like nothing had happened.

Yes, Kim Dokja was a person who would have done this, given the chance.

Except, he couldn’t do it, just then.

That was because, just as Kim Dokja was turning away, he caught the tail end of something that Deputy Yoon had just said.

"-you're feisty…” It was a smug, self satisfied tone of voice that came out of the Deputy Director. “... I like that."

Kim Dokja had never heard words that were so obviously ripped from a male villain speaking to a female lead in a romance drama in his entire life.

His own incredulity held Kim Dokja in place just outside the breakroom.

"Oh yeah, and where'd you get that one?” The woman spoke up in an annoyed tone, as if she had been going back and forth with this guy for a while now and was tired of it. If this were to be a work place drama, she would be in the position of the heroine. “You know that's the standard dickhead's response to a woman telling him to fuck off in every drama ever, right?"

Yes! That’s right! Kim Dokja thought that this aggressive, self-aware heroine was someone who was easy to root for just now, even though Deputy Yoon was someone he had known for a longer time.

"I actually don't get a lot of chances to watch dramas.” That self-satisfied tone… had Kim Dokja’s superior always seemed so obviously villainous? “Maybe I could take you out to one, some time?"

Kim Dokja frowned as he was reminded of something.

A memory flashed through his mind of a boy who had beaten him bloody in highschool smiling and acting harmless and sweet in front of his girlfriend in class.

Deputy Yoon reminded him of that kind of guy, one who would just change their entire way of acting in front of a woman.

Of course, he was the opposite sort, acting nice and harmless in front of male coworkers, and then turning around to treat any woman like a piece of meat he was negotiating the price of.

It really just depended on who a person was willing to accept was another person, Kim Dokja supposed.

"Oh please .” He found himself glad that this sneering woman was standing her ground against Deputy Yoon’s bullshit. “I definitely make more money than some third rate desk jockey."

"Eh?” Deputy Yoon sounded genuinely incredulous. “You might be a bit mixed up, see, I’m a Deputy Director…”

“Oh yeah?” The woman sounded viciously amused. “Well I’m a Director, dumb ass. And I get royalties on the side. I could buy and sell your skeez-ball hide if it was even worth my time."

Kim Dokja felt relief as he heard this firm put down. He started backing away from the doorway, certain that Deputy Yoon would come out soon with his tail between his legs.

Except that wasn’t what happened.

Deputy Yoon’s voice actually got quieter and more self assured, as if he had gained the confidence to lean further into the wall, rather than back away from it.

“You don't have to say that sort of thing just to impress me, you know.” He whispered in that sinisterly amiable tone. “The trend nowadays may be 'equal partnership' but I actually think it's better for the man to take care of everything."

Oh. Wow.

"Okay, you have to know how fucked up that is, right?” Kim Dokja had always liked protagonists who would voice what the readers were definitely thinking. “Are you kidding."

Wait… protagonist?

Kim Dokja was suddenly reminded that this was real life and not a web novel. Deputy Yoon’s cartoonishly villainous responses had caused him to forget that he was standing just outside the break room where two real people were having an argument.

"Oh no, little missy, I'm not kidding around."

If he was reading the situation correctly, something dramatic would happen very soon.

"Pfft. Little missy. What are you, 50?"

The two of them had been going back and forth too long for the woman to not try slapping that dumb guy across the mouth soon. Or even worse, Deputy Yoon might try something...

"You talk a lot about the stuff that's fucked up about me. But you know what I think?"

Well, whatever it was, Kim Dokja shouldn’t be around to see it. He would have to pretend like he hadn’t anyway, if something like that happened, or he’d end up getting involved.

"No I didn't know that you thought at all, actually."

Yes, Kim Dokja should definitely leave before something like that happened.

"I think what's really fucked up is that you and I haven't-"

"Deputy-nim."

Kim Dokja was surprised by how calm the words coming out of his mouth sounded, considering the fact that every muscle and nerve cell in his body was shouting that he had WALKED IN THE COMPLETELY WRONG DIRECTION.

He had somehow ended up inside of the break room instead of back in the QA office.

Deputy Yoon still had his arm on the wall, but he turned around to give Kim Dokja a mildly disgruntled expression.

"Eh… Dokja ssi?” As soon as he recognized his subordinate, Deputy Yoon closed his eyes and pinched his forehead with his freehand, as if he had some sudden headache. “Can't you see I'm busy right now?" He asked.

While he did so, Kim Dokja's eyes wandered to the woman behind his superior, who was giving the deputy a look as if he were the stupidest person she had ever seen.

Even though her features were scrunched up in disgust, Kim Dokja could understand a little bit why a guy like Deputy Yoon would try and shoot his shot with this woman. Her looks probably wouldn't have Yoo Joonghyuk slapping his cheeks, but in a drama that beauty-mark by her eye would have given her the distinctive appearance of a main character, despite the fact that the shoulder-length black bob she wore was a common hair style for an office worker.

"Sorry, Deputy-nim." When he turned back to his superior, Kim Dokja lied out of polite office-place habit. "But Department Head Han said that you were the only one with the qualifications to handle it."

"Ugh…" Deputy Yoon looked aggrieved. "I'll definitely get around to it, but me and this young miss here were in the middle of-"

*Click. Trickle trickle.*

The sound of the water cooler tap being flicked on interrupted Kim Dokja's superior.

Both Kim Dokja and Deputy Yoon looked to see that the black haired woman had completely walked away from where Yoon had been pinning her, as if the Deputy Director hadn't been standing in front of her at all.

Ouch. Kim Dokja wondered if his superior's self assured expression would waver now. How could this complete rejection go unnoticed?

Sadly, as Deputy Yoon straightened himself up, his smile appeared refreshed.

"Some girls are shy, you know?" Deputy Yoon directed a comment toward Kim Dokja that made the latter feel grateful that the woman with the black bob was ignoring them.

"Here." Kim Dokja shoved the report papers into his superior's hands in order to avoid having to speak with him.

Deputy Yoon received them easily enough, but when he looked down and began to leaf through them, he started to frown at the report in his hands.

"Aghhh... Han, that slave driver." He continued to speak in that light tone of voice he used when trying to be relatable to his subordinates. "All he cares about is going home early so he can spoil that pretty daughter of his. Makes the rest of us do all the work, right?"

Wish this guy wouldn't lump me in with him…

Luckily, Deputy Yoon didn't seem to expect an answer from the antisocial Kim Dokja, focusing on the report and muttering as he headed out of the break room.

As his footsteps faded down the hallway, another sound could be heard.

*Click."

Kim Dokja looked back to see that the black haired woman had stopped filling up her water cup.

In fact, she had already turned away from the cooler all together, now fully facing Kim Dokja.

She was squinting at him with a strange expression, as if unsure what to make of the person who had intruded on the bizarre scene she had just been a part of.

A sort of tense silence filled the break room between these two people, who found themselves outside of their expected genre of life.

…

The thought occurred to Kim Dokja that if he were Yoo Joonghyuk, he probably would have known what to say to this woman right at that moment. He would have been able to ask her if she was alright or if she wanted to report Deputy Yoon to HR or if there were other things he could do to help.

But Kim Dokja was not a person who knew how to say something like that.

So he didn't say anything at all.

He just turned around and walked right back to his desk in the QA department.

Kim Dokja left work that day at five pm. When he got home, he read his webnovels until late at night. In the morning, he went to work again.

As the next few days passed and the date of Kim Dokja's contract expiration approached, he found himself giving even less than the bare minimum of effort at work.

Unlike Yoo Sangah who started at the same time and worked twice as hard, he knew that he wouldn't be coming back to Minosoft at the end of the month, so there was no motivation for him to do well. Working hard now would only really benefit the statistics of his superiors, so it really wasn't worth the effort for him.

Because of his slipping work ethic, Kim Dokja ended up turning in his reports to Deputy Yoon at the same late time everyday.

Eat, work, read, sleep.

A new bullet point started to form under the second entry of that monotonous list.

For some reason, the Deputy Director always ended up being in that same breakroom trying to catch that woman at the same time on her break whenever Kim Dokja had his daily report finished.

"Again?!" Deputy Yoon snapped at him on Friday. He had come earlier than usual. That black haired woman hadn’t even arrived yet.

"I apologize,” Kim Dokja lied, “but Department Head Han said-"

"Ugh… Just save it, Dokja-ssi." Deputy Yoon’s easygoing smile that had always put Kim Dokja on edge was nowhere to be found as his superior snatched the report papers out of his hands.

Kim Dokja had to keep the corner of his lip from twitching upwards as he watched Deputy Yoon trying to maintain his composure while he stormed out of the breakroom in a huff.

“... What are you smirking about?”

The words of the person who had just walked in from the other breakroom entrance behind him were enough to thoroughly suppress the smile Kim Dokja had been failing to contain.

He abruptly turned his head around, almost immediately locking gazes with those black eyes that had that easily recognisable beauty-mark just below them.

Upon noticing the woman standing there, Kim Dokja’s thoughts shifted uncomfortably.

This time, he had to hold himself back from frowning.

It was because the only thing he knew about this woman was that she was the Director of a different department.

Even if she had good reason to dislike Deputy Yoon, Kim Dokja couldn’t be so glib about his own dislike of the Deputy Director in front of a superior from elsewhere in the company.

Being as low ranking on the corporate ladder as he was, Kim Dokja couldn’t help but think that the other department’s director had caught him doing something he shouldn’t… as if his smirk had been going against the company dress code, or something.

“... Just happy that I got my report done on time.” Kim Dokja hoped that the customer service smile that he said these words with would be convincing to the Director.

“Bullshit.” Apparently it was not.

As the superior from the other department continued to glare at him, Kim Dokja tried to keep smiling.

“You think I’m stupid or blind, do you?” Kim Dokja was mentally berating himself as the Director accused him, because he realized he had somehow let this interaction turn into a conversation.“I don’t even need to be a genius to figure out what’s going on here.”

Kim Dokja kept smiling. “Well, I guess you’re right about that.” He admitted. “Even a low level employee like me can figure out turning in a report to a superior…”

“Tch. Be honest.” The Director’s short black hair bobbed up and down as she crossed her arms and sneered at him. “You think you’re the male lead, don’t you?”

… Kim Dokja would have asked her to elaborate on that nonsensical, completely inaccurate statement, but he didn’t want to say anything that would risk it seeming as though he was actually interested in having a conversation about it.

“You think that coming over here and corralling that pervy dog from your department makes you some kind of hero, don’t you?” Unfortunately, the Director continued on without needing his participation. “You better wake up from that fantasy right this instant, because I never asked for your shitty, half-assed ‘help.’ If you had even cared enough to consider the fact that I was a person and not whatever damsel in distress type you have me scripted as in your head, you would have noticed that I could handle assholes just fine without you sticking your nose into my business.”

She’s right. Kim Dokja realized as the Director continued to talk.

He really didn’t care about any of this even a little bit, and should not be considered as involved with it at all.

There was a reason he didn’t read a lot of workplace dramas, after all. Too many depressing details, aggravating power dynamics, and unrealistic plots that bastardized real social issues. He had enough bullshit in his own work day to deal with… although now that he thought about it, he had liked that one with the novel protagonist who was sort of reverse-isekai-ed into ending up working in an office...

As Kim Dokja’s mind wandered to the webnovel he had been reading last night, he started backing up towards the door to his own department.

“To make the point absolutely clear,” the Director continued her melodramatic, genre-savvy speech, “nothing any of you misogynistic wage-slaves could ever do would make me care about you any more than a speck of dirt on my shoe.”

Kim Dokja was about to put her words to the test.

The second that he reached the doorway, he immediately turned around and began walking quickly back to his own department.

Half way down the hallway, he thought that maybe he had gotten away with it.

“Hey! Get back here, asshole!”

Damn. Kim Dokja was forced to stop in his tracks as the Director yelled at him down the hallway. After all, if she followed him back to the department, he might end up being the one filling in a workplace harassment form with HR…

… but it wasn’t like he was going to go back and stand around while she yelled at him just because she said so.

So for his final escape attempt, Kim Dokja turned back around half way with his best attempt at a polite smile.

“Sorry to cut you off mid-sentence,” he tried to keep his tone respectful even though his words were a bit rude, “but some of us aren’t on break, Director-nim.”

Kim Dokja thought that he might have failed his attempt at civility, as the Director's eyebrows raised at his statement. Her angry expression was replaced with one of someone caught off guard. As if Kim Dokja had said something she hadn't expected him to.

He didn't see why the Director would be that shocked at his slightly rude statement when she herself had been cursing at him moments ago, but Kim Dokja wasn't one to waste opportunity when it arose.

Taking advantage of the lack of response to his apology, he quickly turned around, heading back to the QA department.

The weekend that followed Kim Dokja's departure from work at exactly 5 pm on that Friday was only made notable by a few descriptions of Pacheonmaeng's anual team bonding event.

Thankfully, nothing involving alcohol. Kim Dokja didn't know exactly what the Pacheonmaeng members knew about his soulmate's habits, but he assumed that the excursion to a theme park rather than a typical drinking work party was more due to the fact that a few of the junior members were under age than anything else.

On Monday, Kim Dokja had been so busy turning the details of the previous night over in his head, that he had barely noticed not seeing the black haired woman at all that day.

Deputy Yoon had, of course, made Kim Dokja walk the extra few steps to the break room, but he managed to turn in his report without having to interact with her again.

By Wednesday, he realized that the woman must have gotten her break schedule changed.

On Friday, the Deputy Director actually stayed at his desk to receive the report.

Kim Dokja never saw that director in the QA department break room ever again.

The usual monotony of office life resumed as if there had never been an aberration.

It had come on so naturally, that it was only disturbed when Kim Dokja was assigned a 'special' task on the second to last week of working in the QA department.

Apparently, some sort of office prankster had mixed in a large amount of hot pepper with the coffee grounds kept in the QA department's break room.

Department Head Han had discovered this fact in a manner that led to a huge spray of black coffee leaving a stain on the break room wall, and he seemed to be quite livid about it as he put Kim Dokja on the case.

According to the department head, Kim Dokja was the best employee for this task, because his lack of a future at the company would mean he wouldn't have the incentive not to sell anyone out.

Now, Kim Dokja normally would have just taken this slightly rude statement and declined the assignment, but the department head promised him a letter of recommendation for his next interview if he got the job done, and Kim Dokja figured it would just be stupid of him to refuse after that, seeing as he had absolutely no way of earning income after he got let go next week.

So Kim Dokja half assed his way through some inquiries with different staff at the QA department. Most people had solid alibis. He ended up pretty much just clearing almost everyone in the department, going through the employee records he had been given access to in the investigation and just copying their names down on his list of innocent parties.

… Discovering the profile of Han Sooyoung in this perusal was definitely coincidence and not curiosity on Kim Dokja’s part.

In fact, that distinctive heroine’s face of her’s had almost startled him when he came across it while clearing new hires.

Although, her being a face he knew wasn’t the surprising part.

How did a new hire get promoted to Director right away? As Kim Dokja had asked himself this question, his eyes had wandered further down the page of information. In this hesitant form of reading, he gleaned that Han Sooyoung was actually the head of a project, not a specific department underneath a project. As a gaming company, Minosoft had a peculiar structure when compared to other types of companies, with each game produced by the company having a number of sub-departments under it.

If this Han Sooyoung was the director of a project and not just another department, that meant that she was even higher ranked than Kim Dokja had assumed…

He began to wonder if he should have treated this superior more respectfully than he had, but such speculations immediately ceased the moment he spotted the pen name listed in the ‘Additional Information’ section of her employee page.

“ Black Flame Empress. ”

Upon seeing that name, Kim Dokja almost put Han Sooyoung on the list of suspects he was going to hand to the department head.

After all, the pen name attached to the Project Director gave him the crucial character evidence that she was a person with absolutely zero morals to speak of.

… But unfortunately Kim Dokja found that, even with his own below average sense of morality, he couldn’t justifiably accuse the Project Director of a prank that happened after she had ceased her visits to the QA department breakroom.

So Kim Dokja put Han Sooyoung’s name on the ‘Innocent’ list, despite resenting the very notion of such a label being attached to one so diabolical.

Then, he flipped the page to the next employee. He was still at work, of course.

Kim Dokja kept flipping through employee files, eventually ceasing to note individuals as innocent and instead ruling out entire departments.

In the end, the innocent list was a mile long, while the list of suspicious behavior was practically empty.

It didn't exactly make for a great report.

…

Well, whatever.

It was 5:00 pm already, and Kim Dokja would rather be reading a web novel than going through more employees. And anyway, even if he did get that letter of recommendation, it wouldn't change the fact that he would probably be spending at least part of next month in the homeless shelter again… Ah, well, he supposed that the comfort of corporate monotony had been nice while it lasted.

…

If Kim Dokja had tried interrogating his own memories just a bit harder, he probably would have recalled that one night he had been late to leave the office, catching up on a web novel while pretending to be working on the overdue report that was his ticket out of having to go drinking with the rest of the department.

That night, there had been an unauthorized visitor to the break room, hadn't there…

...

But, well, the affairs of the HR department weren't really Kim Dokja's concern, were they?

So Kim Dokja did not mention Yoo Sangah in his report, nor did he question who she had been trying to trick into drinking pepper grounds in their coffee.

He did, however, note some unauthorized trips to the break room from a certain member of his own department.

The report was done by Wednesday, the day of the week that Yoo Joonghyuk had conveyed some confusion regarding some of Yoo Mia’s math homework. While reading this, Kim Dokja had been practicing some division on his own savings balance, as he started rationing his spending to one kimbap roll a day just to make sure he had enough rent for one more month at his current apartment.

On Thursday there was also some sort of news from Yoo Joonghyuk, but Kim Dokja struggled to recall it. It was because the surprise that Kim Dokja felt from reading whatever news his soulmate had was far outweighed by the shocking event that occurred at his own work place.

Apparently, Department Head Han had terminated Deputy Director Yoon after it was somehow determined that he was the culprit behind the peppered coffee incident.

It was certainly an unexpected thing for Department Head Han to do, considering the information that he had. He would have needed to make a large assumption to jump on Deputy Yoon of all people as the office prankster, considering that the guy had always been a huge suck up to the QA department leaders.

… but for some reason Kim Dokja didn’t feel any pity towards the contorted expression of the most likely wrongly accused former superior, as he walked out of the QA department holding a box containing everything from his cleaned out desk.

It was probably just because he was relieved that his own work would become slightly easier.

The new Deputy Director tended to stay at her desk when not on break, so there would be far less obstacles in the way of Kim Dokja turning in his reports.

The rest of this week, and then the next which would be his last… they would now pass by with no disturbance.

Or so he had thought.

The Friday of that week, finding out that Yoo Joonghyuk had been two hours late for a team meeting that he himself had planned was only the second most disturbing thing that happened to Kim Dokja.

He had been sitting at his desk, reading a web novel on his phone under the table as he pretended to be looking at the spreadsheet pulled up on his computer monitor.

The novel was an old one that he had finished reading at some point in his first year of highschool, but Kim Dokja had thought to read it again because he had been reminded of it recently.

As he read it, he was reminded of how he had liked the attitude of the main character, which was always a big selling point of a story to him. Kim Dokja often found that the main character of the novel would always end up being his favorite in any story, even if there were more interesting secondary characters or antagonists besides.

He thought that was pretty normal, though.

A protagonist was a person that a story couldn’t exist without, after all.

The protagonist of this particular novel was a morally grey heroine who tended to put her more abrasive side first.

Maybe that was why Kim Dokja hadn’t noticed the woman doing so in real life until she said his name a few times.

“Hey, answer me.” Kim Dokja almost dropped his phone as a hand slammed down on his desk. “Your name is Kim Dokja, isn't it?”

Kim Dokja was a little too stunned at realizing the presence of the Project Director standing in front of his small desk in the QA department to actually respond to her question.

Apparently his looking up at her in confusion was enough for her, though, as Han Sooyoung began to speak again.

“I guess you didn’t really get it last time we spoke.” The Director leaned against the desk as she made this declaration, folding her arms together. The white stick of some candy waggled up and down in the corner of her mouth as she spoke, the smell of artificial lemon on her breath accompanying her words. “So I’ll cut straight to the point this time.”

Despite saying that she would get straight to the point, Han Sooyoung looked askance as she chewed on the stick in her mouth with a thoughtful expression.

Kim Dokja couldn’t possibly imagine what purpose the Director had to berate him, now that Deputy Yoon was no longer annoying the both of them with his impromptu break room trips, but the pause in her speech gave his startled state time to calm into a firm annoyance. An annoyance not for the woman leaning casually against his desk, but for an old grudge of the past he had to leave unsaid...

The annoyance was stirred up into surprise again when Han Sooyoung pulled that candy stick out of her mouth and finally asked…

“Did Sangah put you up to this?”

Han Sooyoung turned to look at Kim Dokja in the eye as she asked this question. There was something that lay beyond her aloof expression. An emotion that Kim Dokja couldn’t quite recognize on someone else’s face.

“... Yoo Sangha-ssi?” He ended up uttering out the name of the only Sangah he could think of, even though he knew his guess was most likely incorrect. He’d be shocked if the Director was referring to the Yoo Sangah from HR in such a casual way and with such a strange look in her eye. Considering their difference in rank on the corporate ladder, it would actually be surprising if the two women knew each other at all.

When Han Sooyoung nodded as if the identity of the woman she was referring to was obvious, Kim Dokja almost wondered whether she was purposefully deceiving him.

“I thought I recognized your name when I looked into why that asshole ended up getting fired.” The antagonist to Kim Dokja’s ability to slack off reading webnovels revealed the backstory to her dark plot. “Don’t lie about knowing her, she mentioned you once.”

Kim Dokja couldn’t help but wonder why the one named Black Flame Empress was acting as though out of the two of them Kim Dokja was the deceptive one…

“... We interviewed together.” Kim Dokja answered honestly, although he was afraid there was some greater reason behind her line of questioning and that not quite getting it now would bite him in the ass later. “Sangah-ssi isn’t really the type of person who would associate with someone like me long term, though.”

“Cut the crap.” Unfortunately it seemed Kim Dokja’s admission triggered some more dramatic lines from this villainess. “She told me you were friends just last Thursday.”

… Friends?

…

…

No.

More like they were on friendly terms. Han Sooyoung was probably just misinterpreting what Sangah had actually said to fit her own suspicions. It was obvious that, in reality, of the two of them, the Director must be closer to Yoo Sangah than Kim Dokja had ever been, seeing as they had been talking to one another just last Thursday, whereas he and Sangah hadn’t had a conversation in weeks.

Kim Dokja was about to say so to Han Sooyoung, but she continued to speak before he could formulate the sentence in his head.

“Just tell me, yes or no.” She demanded preemptively. “Did you report that guy to HR?”

“No.” Kim Dokja’s response was once more the truth. Of course he wouldn’t have gone to HR without being prompted to. The affair was, as Han Sooyoung had unnecessarily taken it upon herself to explain to him, not really any of his business.

“Good.” Somehow this appeared to be the response that managed to convince the Director that Kim Dokja was not needlessly deceiving her. She even seemed to relax, letting the gaze that had been scrutinizing him before wander back out over the office as she began to chew on her candy stick again.

“That woman thinks she knows everything,” she muttered, half to herself, “but I told her already, I don’t need her or anyone’s help. I chose this company because of the stock predictions, not because she works here.”

“… Sure.” It was probably just Kim Dokja’s negative perception of the Director that was making him suspect that her side of this story most likely contained some falsehoods.

“Ugh.” The Director rubbed at a spot between her eye socket and her nose as if experiencing a sudden headache. “You know, I thought having her around was going to mess me up at work, but it ended up being a nobody like you who ruined all my plans…”

Her plans? Kim Dokja wasn’t sure what she meant by that, but he was sure that he didn’t care enough to ask her to elaborate. Certainly doing so would only trigger another villainous monologue explaining her motivations…

Apparently, such input from him was not necessary. The Director was the one who asked him a question next.

“That guy - the sleaze ball - you got him fired somehow, didn't you?”

“Well, obviously not.” Kim Dokja dismissed the outlandish claim in an even tone of voice. “He was my superior, of course I didn’t have any authority regarding his employment here. If you want to ask why he was terminated, you would have to go to department hea-”

“Shut up.” Han Sooyoung ignored his obvious misdirection. “I know it was you.”

Ugh. Kim Dokja resigned himself to conversing with this person a little longer.

“You may say you have no power in this situation, but I'm not an idiot.”

The Director chewed on the end of the white candy stick once more, as if it were something annoying her at that moment.

“Whatever scheme you pulled off was the conclusion to your arc.”

She took the stick out of her mouth, using it to make a dismissive gesture with her hand.

“Obviously you're getting off on being the hero saving a gorgeous woman from your evil boss.” Han Sooyoung made this claim as if it was self-evident. “That's understandable, I mean, you're obviously trapped in the depression of corporate purgatory and need some form of escape.” Her hand around the candy stick now formed a fist. “But what pisses me off is that your fantasy of 'saving me' got in the way of me taking care of things my way!

Kim Dokja was too amazed at how she had managed to call herself gorgeous while telling him he was the deluded one to interrupt and tell her that she was entirely wrong about this whole situation.

"Honestly, a gorgeous girl genius just can't plot her own revenge these days without some shitty so and so getting in the way…"

She complimented herself again…

"I mean, do you know what I was going to do to that guy once I got him transferred to my department next month?"

The woman next to him suddenly seemed far more dangerous than moments ago, as a dark light appeared in her eyes.

"If things had gone my way, he'd be leaving this office without his soul instead of just without pension."

... Kim Dokja would reiterate the fact that he had absolutely no part in Deputy Yoon's termination, but he had a feeling that this crazed, villain-like superior wouldn't believe him no matter what.

So, instead Kim Dokja said, "I'd say you dodged a bullet."

He looked up to meet Han Sooyoung's glaring eyes. For once, she hadn't interrupted him yet, probably still silently imagining the tortures she had planned for her subordinate that would no longer come to fruition.

"That guy only got to be Deputy Director because he was good at schmoozing in front of superiors." Kim Dokja found himself being unusually honest to this rather dangerous looking director. The confidence probably came from knowing he was already jobless at the end of the month, anyway. "If you had actually asked him to sit down and do quality assurance work, he probably wouldn't have done a good job."

“So what?” Han Sooyoung snorted with derision. “‘Quality Assurance,’ that's basically just another corporate buzzword to distinguish a person as some flavor of the millions of depressed office workers that inhabit this world." Her word choice was dramatic, but Kim Dokja couldn't exactly say she was wrong as she scoffed at the position he had spent the entirety of his adult career in. "How would you even know a good job from a bad job with grunt work like that?”

If Kim Dokja had known at the time what his future held, he probably would have said something more eloquent in response to Han Sooyoung’s question. Something involving words like 'work ethic' or 'market statistics.'

But instead, Kim Dokja spoke the cynical-sounding words that he actually thought.

"It's just about what everything in customer service is about." He said with a shrug. "Selling the customers a story they’ll believe in."

Kim Dokja then turned back to the papers on his desk, breaking eye contact with Han Sooyoung. "That's the perspective of a low level corporate grunt, I suppose."

There was a silence, for a moment.

Kim Dokja felt the gaze of the director still on him, but suddenly couldn’t find it in himself to care. After next week he would be gone from Minosoft for good, no matter what he did here.

Because of this, Kim Dokja brazenly pulled out his cell phone from where he had hidden it beneath his desk, opening it to continue to read that web novel he had enjoyed in his youth.

He thought that it would be a clear enough social signal to convey the fact that he was no longer interested in the conversation the Director wanted to have. Hell, Kim Dokja even contemplated for a moment that she might recognize some of the words over his shoulder and feel some sense of shame, although he knew it was unlikely.

He soon became too engrossed in the narrative where he had left off to keep contemplating such things, though.

In fact, he didn’t even wonder why the Director asked that question that she did, next.

“... Did you say that your name was Kim Dokja?”

Kim Dokja was busy reading, now. He didn’t modulate his tone much, as he accurately reported the contents of their conversation.

“I don’t think I actually did say that, Director-nim.”

She had asked him if that was his name, but he had never introduced himself.

"..."

Kim Dokja felt the gaze of Han Sooyoung on the back of his head for just another moment.

Then…

"Hmph." She made sort of a disgruntled noise before shoving off of his desk and starting to walk away, presumably back to her own department.

As Kim Dokja went back to pretending to do his work, he thought that would probably be the last time he ever saw that black haired woman.

So he was naturally quite confused when, immediately after his contract expired at the end of the month, Han Sooyoung offered him a job.

“This is the contract.” She had dropped the paper-clipped pile of paper on the smooth surface of a shiny new desk in the office that she had begun operating out of just after it was built in the latest of Minosoft’s building renovations.

Kim Dokja, sat in a chair across that desk from where Han Sooyoung was sitting down in her cushy office chair, looked down at these papers as though they were some sort of hunger induced hallucination. Certainly it wouldn’t be surprising if they were, considering the fact that he had been half convinced that this entire situation was a figment of his imagination from the moment he timed in on his last day of work and received notice of this meeting.

“Well?” Her voice, accompanied by the crinkle of a wrapper, drew Kim Dokja’s eyes from their dazed state to the Director picking up a lemon candy from a bowl on her desk. “Aren’t you going to read it?” His superior asked only this of him, before popping the lemon candy into her mouth.

Kim Dokja didn’t respond to this question verbally, but he did answer with an action, reaching forward to bring the contract up to his eye level. The texture of the smooth, freshly-printed paper against his fingertips was another strike against the theory that he was dreaming.

The evidence for the opposite being true was, however, still quite prevalent.

Take, for example, the strange line at the top of the page.

Position: Representative Head of Omniscient Reader’s Quality Assurance Management

A ‘Representative Head’ was a position that Kim Dokja had never heard of before on Minosoft's corporate ladder.

Even worse was the job description below it, which had one line describing his job as 'Assuring the Quality of Omniscient Reader,' and then the rest of a many numbered list that included words such as 'hours of eul will be supervised by gap,' 'eul will procure supplies from stationary storage facilities when required,' and even 'eul will deliver a pot of black coffee from the break room to gap every day at 8:15 AM.'

“... This doesn’t look like a Quality Assurance position.” Kim Dokja eventually commented.

“You’re right, it’s not.” Han Sooyoung confoundingly confirmed his suspicions, talking around the lemon candy in her mouth. “I just put that on the position description because it’s what’s on your resume."

As she made this admission, the Director leaned back into her chair.

"Truth is," she said, "I don’t care what your old job was.”

Ah.

Kim Dokja felt that he was starting to get a better idea of what was going on here.

"... So this is the punishment for getting in the way of your plans?" Kim Dokja came to the only possible conclusion, setting the contract back on the desk. "Even with Deputy Yoon fired, you still needed a lackey to torment, so you picked the guy you hated second most, right?"

“Hehehe… ” Kim Dokja would have thought the Director’s wicked cackle was a sign of confirmation, but her next words contradicted this notion. “Maybe you’re not as smart as I thought you were.”

These words surprised Kim Dokja, because nothing he had done in front of the Director thus far had demonstrated anything but a below average intelligence. Why would one who managed to get on the bad side of as many superiors as Kim Dokja did appear smart in any way shape or form?

Kim Dokja didn’t ask this question, though, as the Director went on.

“I thought a little about what you said.” Her eyes were focused on the head of the lemon candy she was twirling in her fingers. “And I eventually came to the conclusion that I probably would’ve wasted too much time on breaking that stupid guy when I’ve got bigger fish to fry.” She popped the candy back into her mouth and continued speaking around it. “From the way you handled it, I decided that you’d probably be good at doing the things I shouldn’t have to waste my time on, right?”

Kim Dokja wasn’t convinced. He might not understand Han Sooyoung’s motives yet, but there was no way that the one named Black Flame Empress would have intentions as innocent as those she had presented thus far.

“Forgive me if I’m wrong,” he spoke these polite words in an even tone, “but from what I recall you seemed rather upset about the way the termination of my superior was handled by the department.”

“Relax.” The Director’s thus far cool way of handling the interview cracked to show a budding sense of annoyance with Kim Dokja's tight-lipped manner of speaking. “Sure I might need someone to go grab a coffee for me from time to time and your position is the prime candidate for it…” The candy stick teetered back and forth between her teeth as she spoke. “…but mainly I just need you to read for me.”

“Read?” She wanted him to read… as his job?

“Well, you’ll probably have to edit, too.” Han Sooyoung’s pointed finger nail came into view as she tapped some line of text on the document between them. “That’s what the assuring quality thing is about.”

Kim Dokja was now looking down at the contract as if it was written in some language of opportunity indecipherable to him.

The thing was that he shouldn’t have been feeling the way that he was feeling about this job offer. It was… it was obviously very suspect. Suspicious. There weren’t jobs like this in the world that could be offered to someone who had always tried as little as Kim Dokja. So it couldn’t be a real job offer. It was some sort of prank or trick, because it had to be for some reason that he just… just couldn’t quite describe.

…

It was hard to think about reasons right now.

Because Kim Dokja’s head was too full of a memory from his first week of highschool.

A teacher had seen him reading a book and asked him if he wanted to be a writer when he grew up.

Teachers are people who assume their students are going to grow up, so Kim Dokja had told him he wanted to be a reader, not a writer.

The teacher told him that it was a good dream. That stories need readers as much as they need writers.

And then that teacher died later that month.

Hopes for impossible things never lasted long, because they died easily with the people foolish enough to follow them.

Kim Dokja should have known that lesson, by now.

And yet, some sort of emotion swelled up from his chest, clouding his mind when the woman in front of him had offered him a job she described as ‘reading.’

…

“You know, you’ve actually read my writing before.” Kim Dokja blinked away the pressure building behind his eyes in time to notice a guarded expression had slipped onto Han Sooyoung’s face as she spoke. "In fact, one time you even accused me of plagiarizing my own work."

Kim Dokja’s brain grappled onto Han Sooyoung’s words without really processing them. It was because they loosely fit in with that gut feeling of his from before. The too good to be true mistrust he felt as the core of his rationality was given a simple reason when he recalled the crimes of the Black Flame Empress.

She was a plagiarist.

Plagiarism was, in Kim Dokja’s opinion, a falsehood of the very worst kind.

It was because, in that first year of highschool, the same one that claimed the life of that teacher who was unrealistically kind to him, Kim Dokja was the only reader of a particular story.

The False Last Act.

It was the extremely genuine story of a very talented liar. A young actress who felt that she had built herself up based on falsehoods, and struggled to genuinely connect with others in her supposedly perfect life because of it.

The first few chapters got quite a few hits, but the view count on each chapter of the daily update slowly began to trickle down to only one when it finished just after Kim Dokja turned fifteen.

He still remembered those last words.

The final author note of The False Last Act.

Thank you for reading this far. This is the last chapter. I had planned to make it longer, but you see, I lost motivation, because the work wasn’t popular.

Because it wasn’t popular, nobody in the world noticed when that story died except for Kim Dokja.

So how was he, the only one who that dead story could be remembered by, supposed to feel when that soulless, bastardized copy suddenly blew up on the web novel platforms?

It was an insult of the lowest kind to see SSSSS - Final Act, with its characters almost identical in name to those of The False Last Act, copy only the shallowest aspects of that genuine story and somehow gain that one thing it lacked.

Kim Dokja felt that he was the only person in the world who could truly despise that popular story with the deep scorn that it deserved.

It was because of this deep resentment that Kim Dokja’s next words to Han Sooyoung were a lie.

“I’m not sure what you mean by that.”

Kim Dokja leaned away from the table where the contract lay, as he let the notion that he shouldn’t accept it out of principle ease into his mind. Seeing that rejecting the offer was difficult for him despite being the only path, he decided that he would make things difficult for this Black Flame Empress too, for as long as he could manage.

Han Sooyoung made an expression that properly rewarded this effort of his.

“You know the web novel SSSSS - Final Act?” She asked this question as if she already knew the answer.

“It’s popular trash.” These rude words came to Kim Dokja easily, a deep satisfaction following them despite the fact that he could feel the opportunity of eating well next month slipping through his fingers at the admission. “A complete rip off of The False Last Act.” He arched an eyebrow towards Han Sooyoung that he hoped properly conveyed his disdain. “Are you saying you wrote it?”

Han Sooyoung bit into her lemon candy so hard that there was an audible crack.

She murmured her next words through grinded teeth, her restrained tone making Kim Dokja wonder if he had misheard her, at first.

“I’m saying I wrote both, asshole.”

“... The False Last Act was written by tls123.” Kim Dokja pointed out.

“I’m tls123.” Han Sooyoung replied, rubbing her jaw.

“I thought you were Black Flame Empress?” Kim Dokja recalled.

“I’m both.” The Director sighed as if this was an obvious twist she was already bored of explaining. “I was writing as ‘tls123’ in middle school, but I switched over to ‘Black Flame Empress’ to actually start my writing career.” She looked off to the side, now muttering to half to herself again. “Although I suppose I couldn’t expect a guy who uses his real life name as a username to understand the purpose of an author using pen names…”

As Han Sooyoung’s words trailed off, there was a moment of silence, where the one receiving them was still processing the information he had just learned.

“...”

“...”

“The original was better.” The words coming out of Kim Dokja’s mouth broke the silence before he could think better of them.

“How could you possibly think that?!” Han Sooyoung exclaimed her response so immediately that she almost interrupted him, slamming a hand down on the smooth wood desk between them as she went on. “It’s not even a complete story!” She brushed her hair back, out of her face in a way that made her incensed expression seem slightly unhinged. “I left so many narrative threads untied because I simply created them and then had nothing to do with them! By the final chapter I was ending it just to be done with having to write it, not because it even made sense for the arc of the characters!”

“So what?” Kim Dokja suddenly felt much calmer internally as he spoke honestly, a sharp contrast to the increasing intensity in Han Sooyoung’s speech. “A story has more parts than just its ending. The characters and the struggles they went through in what was written were-”

“Not that good either!” Han Sooyoung picked the flattened candy stick from between her grinding teeth and aimed it toward the waste bin under her desk. “You left a comment on every chapter of that old thing and I remember that at the time I understood them but yesterday when I reread them I just…”

She threw the stick with a bit too much follow through. It bounced off the rim of the waste bin, clattering to a standstill on the floor just below it.

“... I just can’t remember what was going on in the head of the thirteen year old me who wrote that shitty story at all.” Han Sooyoung didn’t bother to pick up the trashed stick, moving to clutch her head instead. “I mean, didn’t you even read the one I worked on as an actual author? How could it possibly not be better than that…”

…

For some reason, in that moment Han Sooyoung looked to Kim Dokja more like an author than a director.

“Well, obviously the writing craft is technically more sound in the pla- I mean, the other one…” Kim Dokja found that even he was capable of relenting that much. “… But there was so much that was good about the original that it lacks.”

“... You’re kidding, right?” Han Sooyoung fixed Kim Dokja with a disbelieving stare. “Aren’t you the one who accused me of copying everything from the original on each chapter that I posted? Down to the protagonist’s name only being a few syllables off?”

Kim Dokja frowned.

“You may have used the same name and premise for the heroine, but you cut out a lot of her character from the original.” He pointed out. “In the revision she seemed too palatable, whereas the original was more complex. She didn't always do the right thing, even though she was trying to be better.”

“There are certain things that people like to see in heroines, you know…” The Director gave a half hearted defense that implied a justification rather than actually explaining one.

“You also cut out the relationship with her soulmate.” Kim Dokja continued to barrel in despite this, zeroing in on one of his major complaints.

Han Sooyoung’s face turned an interesting shade of red.

“S-soulmate romances are too predictable nowadays to be interesting!” She declared. “And all of the developments in their relationship I originally wrote were so cringe worthy! I couldn't even reread them now without dying of embarrassment…”

“I liked those parts.” Kim Dokja’s voice was even, although he didn’t meet the flustered author’s eyes, looking at the papers on the desk in front of him instead. “The emotions you described felt real. Unrequited crushes can seem meaningless if it's just used as a plot point, but you put in enough history and conflict between the two characters to make it understandable why they weren't together. The moments where they argued but were still somehow drawn to support one another were interesting. The way you wrote their relationship really made it seem as though the two of them were honestly fated for one another…”

As he explained these things, Kim Dokja found himself pulling the contract on the table closer, trailing off as he read it over again.

“… do you really think that?” Han Sooyoung asked him in a wary tone of voice.

“Why else would I say it?” Kim Dokja replied as he uncapped a pen from the jar on her desk. “You think I’m trying to butter you up already, Boss-nim?"

Han Sooyoung looked as though she wanted to say something to that remark, but she merely watched in silence as Kim Dokja went through signing his name in the blanks of the contract.

…

“The plagiarism was total trash though…” Kim Dokja only muttered this once the file was already safely tucked away in the desk cabinet.

“AGH!” It was a good thing, too, since his new employer’s voice expressed enough frustration to easily rip his measly contract in two. “I just finished telling you why it's not plagiarized!”

This would be an argument that Kim Dokja and Han Sooyoung would continue to have the entire time they knew each other. Which would turn out to be quite a long time, as when he joined on development of the game had only been just getting started.

About a month in, his new boss-nim had somehow gotten it into her head to start doing after work drinking parties with their two person office. While Kim Dokja had initially pointed out the awkward atmosphere it would surely create, Han Sooyoung was so bent on recreating this aspect of the standard office drama that she recruited a “supervisor” from Human Resources. In fact, the supervisor she picked out had ended up contributing her two cents to the discussion of Han Sooyoung’s prior plagiarism, courtesy of her first grade degree in Korean history.

“You know,” Yoo Sangah has spoken with a smile just barely less than devilish, “in an academic setting reusing even your own work without citation is counted as a form of plagiarism…”

“A mistake, it was a mistake I tell you…” Han Sooyoung made a dramatic gesture as she started walking away from the two of them at the bar. “I should never have hired you… You’re lucky I’m leaving before you say one more thing to get yourselves fired…”

Even though this threat actually could have affected Kim Dokja’s livelihood, neither he or Yoo Sangah heeded Han Sooyoung’s warning. In fact, Kim Dokja had even grown curious enough to inquire towards Yoo Sangah’s opinion of Han Sooyoung as a person, rather than as a boss.

“That woman…” Yoo Sangah had let out an aggrieved sigh as if recalling something troubling. “... she’s the type of person who thinks she knows everything.”

Kim Dokja blinked, unsure if he had heard her correctly. He found that it wasn’t such an odd answer, knowing the woman himself, but… hadn’t Han Sooyoung used those exact same words to describe Yoo Sangah?

No wonder the two of them were soulmates…

Strangely, thoughts like these became a common occurrence in Kim Dokja’s mind. Wednesday evenings became the one night out of the week that Kim Dokja was forced to think more about these people from his work than Yoo Joonghyuk. It was easier than expected, he supposed, occupying the life of a background character in the office place drama Han Sooyoung and Yoo Sangah were obviously the heroines of.

And even though these late nights out became a fixed aspect of Kim Dokja’s week, it was hard for him to actually think of the work he did for Han Sooyoung as monotonous in any way.

Sure, there were only so many ways to correct a writer’s typos before you started to learn what to expect, but…

Kim Dokja got to read.

Every day he got to come into work and dig into the world of Han Sooyoung’s Omniscient Reader.

And even with everything else that could possibly happen in his life, from giant praying mantises, to strange children and their kittens, to disturbing meetings with someone he…

Through anything, Kim Dokja could just come into work the next day and read for hours on end.

For money. He was paid to do that.

Of course, that initial, uneasy gut feeling of ‘too good to be true’ could never leave someone like Kim Dokja.

He tried not to edge too close to that fear when, only a few days after the new year when Kim Dokja had been working for Han Sooyoung just over 14 months, his boss made a surprising announcement.

“I’m going to expand the QA department.” She made this declaration casually as Kim Dokja handed over her morning coffee.

“What, are you that tired of me already?” Kim Dokja didn’t let any worries over the future of his own company position cloud the teasing tone his voice naturally fell to as he leaned over his boss’s shoulder to peek at what she was typing.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t any sort of new dialogue between the Reader and the Regressor, one of whom was the playable character and the other of whom happened to be Kim Dokja's favorite NPC. In fact, it wasn’t a script at all. The PDF that Han Sooyoung was typing into appeared to be some sort of company form…

Han Sooyoung turned the computer screen away from his prying eyes anyway, probably out of habit.

“You edit writing adequately, but you have the weak hands of a little girl.” She told him. “I need to hire some people who can fit their hands around the controllers and test the competitive play mechanics.”

Kim Dokja frowned. He had actually seen glimpses of the game play when Han Sooyoung used him as a messenger boy to the Dev Department. It was necessary for him to take this position, even though it wasn't in his initial contract, in order to ensure that the Project Director didn’t cause a scene throttling Jung Minseob while trying to negotiate certain elements of the UI. From the glances of the sandbox testing he had seen, Kim Dokja had been a bit excited to try his hand playing it eventually…

“Aren’t your hands smaller than mine, though?” Kim Dokja muttered this defense half to himself, as he was disappointed that it was the best he could think of.

Han Sooyoung heard him anyway, and snorted in response.

“I shouldn’t have insulted the gaming skills of young girl geniuses.” She admitted. “Your fingers are more like the flopping tentacles of a squid.”

“Alright, alright, I get it.” Kim Dokja sighed, leaning back and waving his hand. “Go ahead and hire your battalion of gamers.”

“Don’t act as if I’m asking for permission…” Han Sooyoung grumbled as she continued to type up what Kim Dokja now assumed was a contract for actual QA department hires. “You know I’m your boss right?

“Of course, whatever you say, Boss-nim.” Kim Dokja said these deferential words in a monotone as he checked the time on his phone.

“Shut up.” Han Sooyoung used to make an effort to correct him on their respective ages, but had given up at some point. “The dev team took care of sandbox testing already, so I’ll only need three or four in the initial group for the alpha v.1… but the salary acquisition…” It didn’t take long for Han Sooyoung to go back to muttering to herself about the forms she was filling out.

Only three or four, huh?

“First time I’ll ever have underlings.” Han Sooyoung didn’t seem quite ready to fire him yet, so Kim Dokja felt safe making that observation.

“Yeah, yeah, don’t get too cocky,” Han Sooyoung pointed a distracted, wagging finger at him, “I’m still your boss.”

“Well, maybe you are,” Kim Dokja admitted, “but I just so happen to be an employee who knows who your boss is.”

“I don’t have a boss.” She said.

“Eh, is that so?” Kim Dokja asked as though he were genuinely surprised. “Maybe I should go to the HR department and-”

Han Sooyoung suddenly tossed a lemon candy at him like a projectile weapon.

“Shut your mouth, Kim Dokja.” She demanded.

Kim Dokja caught the candy in one hand. Taking Han Sooyoung’s violent action and even more murderous glare into account, he unwrapped the candy and popped it in his mouth to keep his smug grin in check.

He had worked with Han Sooyoung long enough to know that the one who could really give the Project Director trouble wasn’t some company big wig. It was a woman in the HR department with a refreshing smile, who Kim Dokja just so happened to be on good terms with.

Han Sooyoung returned to her computer for a moment, typing furiously and clicking around a bit, before heaving a great sigh and slumping her head down on the keyboard of her laptop.

“Eugh… This accounting bastard says I need to name the new department for the company record if I want to allocate the funding.” She complained. “All this damn meaningless bureaucracy…”

“Hey, they’ll be working under me, right?” Kim Dokja asked as he sucked thoughtfully on the lemon candy. “Why not just call it Kim Dokja’s Company?”

“Tch.” Han Sooyoung was rather quick to express her disgust. “That’s a lame name. Why not Han Sooyoung Corporation?”

“What, are you in charge of the QA department now?” The sour flavor of the lemon candy wasn’t Kim Dokja’s favorite, but he had grown a taste for it over time.

“Yes,” Han Sooyoung replied, “I’m in charge of everything, as a matter of fact.”

“What was the name of the position you made up for me again?” Kim Dokja pretended as though he could not recall. “Something like… Representative Head of-”

“Fine.” Han Sooyoung relented as if only to shut him up. “I’ll put your stupid name down, but it’s just a place holder. I’ll think of something better. I’m a genius writer, after all.”

“What, like Han Sooyoung Corporation?” He asked. “You were obviously just copying my idea… They say plagiarism doesn’t pay, you know.”

“How is it plagiarism when the idea was so unoriginal in the first place?!” Han Sooyoung snapped at this provocation. “And I didn’t even say what you said! I said corporation! Corporation is different than company!”

“Eh, the difference is so small…” He continued to shake his head as if witnessing some despairingly villainous occurrence.

“Kim Dokja!” Han Sooyoun had been pushed just barely past the limit, slamming her hands down on her desk. “Get out of my office!”

“Absolutely, Boss-nim.” Kim Dokja suddenly became very obedient, bowing at a slight angle before exiting the office almost immediately.

As soon as the door closed behind him, he very hastily made his way to the nearby men’s bathroom.

It was a Friday, after all.

Of course, as soon as Kim Dokja managed to lock himself in a toilet stall, he rolled up his sleeve instead of undoing his belt.

When he had left off that morning, Yoo Joonghyuk had been exploring his options for financing his investigation into his parents, and he specifically mentioned that he was expecting news back from his manager soon.

It was useless.

Kim Dokja felt his heart sink as he read the words that had appeared since that morning.

Smaller tournaments are prohibited under my contract because of the company reputation.

Geez… what was Yoo Joonghyuk supposed to do now?

Kim Dokja felt that nervous sense of anticipation in between updates. Yoo Joonghyuk's story was not one that would update regularly as a web novel did, and it was not one that always progressed like a web novel would, either. There would be no telling what could happen next in the struggles that Yoo Joonghyuk faced. Some plotlines that Kim Dokja had anxiously turned over in his head many times while reading his soulmate's life in real time would slip Yoo Joonghyuk's mind, and never even be resolved. What if the mystery behind his origins would become one such a plotline because of this unforeseeable financial roadblock?

When Kim Dokja felt like this about a currently updating story, he thought that it was important to reread what was already written of it.

This was because just reading a story once was not enough to consume every aspect of it. Within a single story were bound to be infinite perspectives and details that a single read through would never be able to fully recognize. In this way, reading from another perspective, Kim Dokja was not only rereading, but reading again.

The question behind Yoo Joonghyuk's origins was one that any reader would have expected to learn the answer to eventually. It was something that Kim Dokja had wondered about since almost the very beginning of the story, when 14 year old Yoo Joonghyuk had made an off handed comment about cooking his own meals.

As Kim Dokja rooted out this section near the top of his text file, he glanced over it, remembering how at the time his question of 'how come' had been born out of a smidgen of jealousy. Going back to those cousin's house after the events that had transpired had been a certain kind of hell on Earth for the boy whose paternal relatives all had good reason to despise him. When Kim Dokja first asked questions about his soulmate's family situation, he had certainly been thinking 'how come that couldn't be me, right now?'

Those particular cousins hadn't hit him ever, or deprived him of basic needs like food or clothing.

But they had looked at him with scornful gazes as he silently ate their hard earned rice and wore the baggy uniforms that could have been meant for their own children.

From that house to the streets to his school to the psych ward and back to that house again…

Kim Dokja as a child had never been able to escape that feeling of being watched and judged for continuing to exist.

It was one of the reasons that it was so easy to sink into the story of Yoo Joonghyuk, who had never been watched after by anybody at home, and didn't care enough to notice any judgement from others out in the world.

Kim Dokja remembered these emotions as he glanced through some of the early parts of the story that had set the scene of his life. The young Yoo Joonghyuk's life, wherein parents were only a theoretical concept… yes, Kim Dokja had remembered feeling this way about it…

But then Kim Dokja paused.

He scrolled back to the top and reread these things again.

It was because he remembered something.

" I wonder what the bond between parent and child is supposed to look like. "

He remembered the words Yoo Joonghyuk had written as he admitted that witnessing a guardian hugging their child had made him feel as though it was some foreign action to him.

The emotion he had Kim Dokja experienced with these words in his mind, as he read the recipes for single person meals his soulmate had deigned to share in his teenage years, was more melancholic than even reflections on his own pitiful life.

Even though the touch of a parent was nigh impossible for Kim Dokja himself to look back on without complicated emotions, he thought about how those emotions still occupied that space in him. For Yoo Joonghyuk, in that same space would only be emptiness. What would that have felt like for a young child, Kim Dokja wondered.

His head tilted slightly, as he considered the thought.

…

For some reason, Kim Dokja found himself thinking about some kids that he knew in real life, too.

It was something that didn't happen often, but Kim Dokja was distracted from reading because he was thinking about Lee Gilyoung and Shin Yoosung.

They were both kids who, from an outside perspective, did not seem to have a close relationship with their parental figures. However, the two of them had been interacting with one another near daily for long amounts of time in the past weeks, taking care of Biyoo, and seemed to have gotten closer than before. It was something that was gladdening to Kim Dokja, to know that at least these kids had each other, even without parental support.

Unlike…

…

Kim Dokja had turned off his phone screen, then. It had suddenly become a bit difficult to read, and he needed to go back and grab the new batch of scripts before he really did get fired…

As Kim Dokja flushed the empty toilet in front of him and went out to wash his hands, he flattened out his expression and reminded himself how to be Kim Dokja again.

Kim Dokja was a person that worked with a rather unhurried temperament. He was also a person who kept a rather separate work and personal life. This was something that was easy to say for a person that did not have much of a personal life.

For a long time the only thing in Kim Dokja's life outside of work was Yoo Joonghyuk.

Now, he also had responsibilities at home, such as taking care of Biyoo.

These two worlds had somehow ended up intersecting, leaving him constantly wary of the fact that Yoo Joonghyuk and the characters from his life could appear in front of him once more at the slightest whim of those odd kids that he knew…

… but somehow, this worry did not follow him to the world of his workplace.

That was why, on that morning after the night when Yoo Joonghyuk had written the first good news since meeting Kim Dokja…

The company found something for me. An advertising job. Interview on Friday.

… Kim Dokja had only carried a faint sense of satisfaction from reading it to work with him, on that day when Han Sooyoung had shown him the new Quality Assurance Office for Omniscient Reader.

"Tell me what you think." She had said as she opened the door.

Kim Dokja came into the room and saw…

"... It's an office." He observed with only a shrug of his shoulders.

"Is that it?" Han Sooyoung looked towards Kim Dokja as if his words were disappointing to her. "Come on, isn't it much shinier and sleeker than the office you worked in before? Look at those new computer models and adjustable desks. What about the big windows, isn't it a nice view?"

Kim Dokja looked out the window as instructed. Through that window, he saw another window, the one on the building just across from him. Inside that window was another office, nearly identical to the one they were standing in, save for the features that Han Sooyoung had mentioned, as well as the fact that this department only had equipment for about five employees so far.

"... It's an office." He repeated, reporting on the view he could see.

Han Sooyoung sighed.

"Eh, we're both lucky you're only editing dialogue. You have no appreciation for descriptive prose."

"Hm." Kim Dokja made a neutral sounding noise. He had already had enough debates with Han Sooyoung about how the 'writers craft' of in depth imagery descriptions could get in the way of telling a concise, character focused story at times, and didn't want to push his luck to the point of actually getting fired by picking it up again now.

"Well, anyway." Han Sooyoung thankfully moved away from the sensitive topic, flapping her hand around a bit in a gesture. "You get first pick of desks since the others aren't here yet, lucky guy."

Kim Dokja didn't really have a preference which desk he sat at. He had been mostly working out of Han Sooyoung's office in the past, and figured that he'd probably still be doing that, since she basically treated him like a personal assistant at times.

"This one's fine." He said, gesturing to the nearest desk.

"... Figures you would choose the one closest to the door."

Kim Dokja ignored this rather astute comment from his boss, bringing up something he was curious about instead.

"There's four other desks here." He observed. "Does that mean you've already hired four of the gamers you wanted?"

"Ah, sort of?" Han Sooyoung gave a vague answer as she went up to sit on the edge of a desk, specifically the one that Kim Dokja had picked out. "I mean, it's a bit of a special case. I was able to allocate some of the marketing budget to hire some people from a company who play… what's that game? The one with the angst-machine protag."

Kim Dokja had stiffened a bit at hearing these words. "... It's not Ways of Survival you're talking about, is it?" He asked, doing his best to keep an even tone.

"Nah." Kim Dokja tried not to relax too visibly as Han Sooyoung dismissed his concern, opening up her phone as if to check some sort of note. "... Its name was…. Infinite Regressor, I think."

"Ah." Kim Dokja knew about that game, but didn't have much affection for it. It was a sort of cheap version of Ways of Survival where the RMT business had been good for a while. Kim Dokja had bad memories of it, though, as it was something Yoo Joonghyuk had only played in that time of his life that was rather rough.

"You ever hear of a guy called Joonhyun?"

Kim Dokja shook his head in response to Han Sooyoung's question.

"Well, apparently he's really good." Han Sooyoung told him. "He's even a little bit famous from what I've heard."

“Mhm.” Kim Dokja just nodded his head again. He had never paid a lot of attention to the online gaming community beyond whatever Yoo Joonghyuk was doing at the time, so his mind was beginning to drift off to thinking about some moments from the rounds of the last tournament that his soulmate actually had competed in…

"I ended up striking a deal with his company.” Han Sooyoung was still explaining the advertising deal, too busy looking at her phone to notice that her employee wasn’t paying that much attention. “Him and his team are going to come test for the initial, very hush-hush phases of development, and then later in the spring Minosoft will hold a tournament for that game he's good at, and when he wins his company will announce Omniscient Reader on the stage."

“Mhm.” Kim Dokja nodded again. His train of thought shifted at the word tournament, as he began to think that if the tournament had been for WoS instead of Infinite Regressor, then Yoo Joonghyuk could have competed for the money he needed, rather than doing that advertising job he mentioned...

“It's basically all set in stone with the company,” Han Sooyoung appeared to be sorting through her email now, “but the team members are going to come in and interview in the next two days to make sure they can actually do the job.”

“Mhm.” Kim Dokja wondered if Yoo Joonghyuk would be in a commercial or some sort of billboard advertisement. It would make sense, of course, with the man’s good looks slapping the cheeks of most professional models, but he imagined that his soulmate would end up being a bit of an unintentional diva to work with, what with his dreadful habit of being ‘fashionably’ late… How awful would it be to schedule a photo shoot around that guy? Come to think of it, most photos of him used in his promotional material seemed as if they were edited out of his video clips, not like he had them taken professionally… somehow that dumb guy still had fans… well, perhaps some faces could just sell anything, no matter how poor the photo…

“-ja. Hey. Are you listening to me? Earth to Kim Dokja.” A face that definitely needed a high quality camera to portray it flatteringly suddenly got close to him as Han Sooyoung snapped her finger in front of his nose.

Kim Dokja realized that he had been spacing out, thinking about Yoo Joonghyuk’s annoying qualities. He didn’t bother to acknowledge it, or apologize to his boss, however, because it was something that happened often enough these days that they should both be used to it.

“Do I need to do anything?” He found himself asking. “For the interviews, I mean.”

“Psh. Of course not.” Han Sooyoung scoffed at the suggestion. “That company of theirs works from 8 to 5 on weekdays, so the interview times are at 6 pm and 7 am.

“Ah.” Kim Dokja relaxed a little, knowing that his next Friday would be free from this kind of responsibility. Not only was that the day that Yoo Joonghyuk had off work, but that morning was also the time that he had his interview with the advertising company. It was fortunate that Kim Dokja didn’t have to do something like meet new people on that day, because he figured that he would be rather distracted by watching on in horror as his soulmate somehow managed to make himself late for yet another important appointment.

Kim Dokja's reading of this situation would prove to be perfectly accurate.

At first, on that Wednesday, Kim Dokja had a spark of hope that perhaps he would be wrong. It was because Yoo Joonghyuk had written a reminder for himself on his arm.

Interview in two days.

… Except, when the next day came, the words hadn’t been erased. Kim Dokja’s soulmate had only added on to the arm some calculations regarding the profits from an RMT deal it seemed as though his soulmate had spent the night figuring out.

Well, it’s fine if he skips work today to sleep it off, the team is used to practicing without him. Kim Dokja noted to himself. But if he leaves that note there…

This was why Kim Dokja knew his prediction was correct on Friday morning, when he had woken up to see that two day late reminder still etched into his skin.

Oh, Yoo Joonghyuk… Kim Dokja was free to sigh over this thought on the train to work, as Lee Gilyoung wouldn’t be accompanying him until his school got off break next month.

When he got to work, however, his plans to fretfully check for any sign that Yoo Joonghyuk had actually woken up that morning were woefully interrupted by the responsibility of being Han Sooyoung’s personal errand boy.

“Here.” As soon as Kim Dokja set her black coffee down on the desk, Han Sooyoung had thrown a set of keys in the general direction of his emptied hand.

Of course, Kim Dokja caught the suddenly incoming keys rather easily. After all, it wasn’t that uncommon for him to be sent down to the locked administrative storage closet for whatever stationary his boss happened to be out of that day.

… Except, when he looked down at the solid plastic gadget on the chain in his hands, he realized that the keys he held had the shiny logo of that expensive car model that belonged to Han Sooyoung.

“... I know I do all your grunt work, Boss-nim,” Kim Dokja commented, “But making me clean your car is a bit much…”

“Tch. Who said I want you to clean it?” From Han Sooyoung’s scornful expression, Kim Dokja assumed he had made the wrong deduction. “I wouldn’t trust you to put any of your work hours into washing anything but your own face while you’re hiding away in the men's bathroom as an excuse to slack off.”

Kim Dokja frowned, recalling that particularly poor excuse he sometimes gave for getting up to go check his arm.

“Anyway, I’ll tell you the situation.” Han Sooyoung didn’t say anything to indicate she noticed that frown, but Kim Dokja thought that she spoke a little more smugly after getting her jab across unchallenged. “One of the interviewees missed his time. The company said he had trouble with transportation, but my intuition tells me they’re just covering for their star player’s lazy ass.”

Han Sooyoung’s gaze turned a little vicious as she said these words.

“So I’m calling their bluff.” She declared.

“Ah.” Kim Dokja understood the situation with only this much explanation. “Since they said the issue was with transportation, we provide that transportation.” On the surface, it might seem like a charitable thing for an employer to provide transportation to a potential employee, but in the reality of the situation with the deal Han Sooyoung had brokered with this company…

“Taking care of their company’s scheduling mistake with your own resources will give you more leverage in negotiating the salary.” Kim Dokja concluded.

Han Sooyoung’s devilish grin was enough to confirm this theory, but she added on more evidence with a rather villainous line.

“That lazy celebrity gamer bastard will be working practically for free when I’m done lowballing the shit out of him.” She seethed the menacing aura befitting one of her height on the corporate ladder, suddenly beginning to murmur something about redirecting finances from marketing to the development team, using economic terms that made her seem as though she were speaking in tongues to the untrained ear.

…

Kim Dokja slid the coffee on the desk a little closer to his boss, after thinking about Han Sooyoung getting to work at 7 AM and waiting for a guy who never showed up without any caffeine in her system. How long would it take for someone like that to come up with this dastardly plan?

Han Sooyoung looked up from where she had been muttering at the slight sound the white paper cup made as it was pushed across the wood desk.

For a moment, she glared at Kim Dokja, most likely writing some perceived intention of his into the action he had just taken.

…

“Tch.” Han Sooyoung grabbed the coffee and took a sip. “Get going already.” His boss’s expression didn’t seem any less annoyed, but her words weren’t quite snapping at him.

“Alright.” Kim Dokja rested his hand holding the keys in the pocket of the white winter coat that he hadn’t been in the office long enough to take off yet.

“Ah, wait.” Han Sooyoung stopped him from turning around. “Hand your phone over.”

Kim Dokja frowned, his other hand going instinctively to cover the pocket that held his phone.

“Oh, come on, I’m not confiscating it or checking your search history or anything like that.” Han Sooyoung waved her free hand dismissively as she took another sip of coffee. “I need you to bring that guy back here before I have to meet with accounting over the salaries, and knowing you, you’ll spend hours getting lost in traffic if I don’t enter the address into the GPS for you.”

“Ah.” For once, Han Sooyoung said some words that both of them knew to be true.

Kim Dokja knew that previous superiors of his, such as Han Myungoh who talked about his car almost half as much as he spoke about his daughter, would never have entrusted such a thing to an employee. Han Sooyoung was a bit different because, as Kim Dokja had come to learn over months of working with her, she did not really have enough experience before becoming Project Director to know how to fit in with general office worker society.

The major sign of this inexperience was how she treated Kim Dokja, her subordinate, as if he were her equal, as their two person office would have after work drinking parties on Wednesdays, with HR member Yoo Sangah ‘supervising.’ If one were to look at them from afar, however, they would really just seem like three friends sitting at a bar together, rather than Project Director, HR Supervisor, and subordinate.

There had even been some nights where this unprofessionalism of Han Sooyoung’s had led Kim Dokja to be the one driving her fancy sports car back to her home and dropping Yoo Sangah off on the way, as Kim Dokja himself tended not to enjoy drinking enough to become inebriated and was able to take the train home himself after everyone was dropped off.

Of course, Han Sooyoung’s unprofessionalism did not mean she was unreliable.

In fact, for some reason, Kim Dokja had never felt as secure in his employment as he did, now, working under this odd Boss-nim of his.

And because Han Sooyoung thought that Kim Dokja was an employee she could rely on to simply drive a car, Kim Dokja thought that Han Sooyoung was a boss that he could rely on not to nose around his text files when he ended up handing her his phone.

Of course, he first made sure to exit out of all the tabs he had open regarding Yoo Joonghyuk.

Han Sooyoung looked unimpressed as she looked at the home screen of his phone, which used the default background, before navigating to the GPS app herself.

She pulled up something on her own phone, and seemed to be copying down an address with those fast typing fingers of hers.

It took her a second, and in that time, Kim Dokja’s mind began to wander back to Yoo Joonghyuk… had he missed his interview too? What about-

“Hey, what are you googling baby kittens for?” His train of thought was suddenly interrupted by that absolutely untrustworthy, plagiarising, cold-hearted boss of his. “Don’t tell me you actually like cutesy things?”

“Hmm…” Kim Dokja faked a speculative tone to cover his annoyance at Han Sooyoung snooping around his non-incriminating search history. “I wonder how HR will feel about my direct superior looking at-”

“Gah!” Han Sooyoung forced the phone back into his hand as if tossing a hot potato that burned her finger. “Just go already.” She ordered.

“Yes, Boss-nim. Right away, Boss-nim.” Kim Dokja nodded as he spoke in his sarcastically obedient tone, before heading out the door.

He made his way down to the parking lot of the building and quickly identified Han Sooyoung’s familiar, pseudo-expensive Ferrarigini in her parking spot near the building. It was Han Sooyoung, so of course even her sports car was a knockoff of two popular car brands, but Kim Dokja still thought it was nicer than anything he’d ever own as he adjusted the pleather seat so that his head didn’t hit the ceiling at the settings for his boss’s height.

Surprisingly, he only managed to get turned around a few times before parking near the building indicated by the arrow on the GPS app.

It was a building of apartments that Kim Dokja stood in front of, but it was a lot nicer looking than his own complex. For one, there were a lot bigger windows, as though the size of the individual apartments were much larger, and for another the building was quite a bit taller, consisting of maybe about twenty stories.

Kim Dokja had looked at the apartment number on the address Han Sooyoung had written for him, then.

1865 .

The eighteenth floor… Kim Dokja felt relief when he noticed multiple elevators in the building’s front entrance. Walking up all that way would be nothing short of torture for someone as lazy as him.

Although, as he got on the elevator up, he was partially reminded of his soulmate’s exercise routine… Yoo Joonghyuk had only really started working out to recover from his wrist injury, but it had proved to be such a good outlet for him that he had stuck with it, adding exercises for every part of his body… Or at least, that was always Kim Dokja’s interpretation of the progression in his soulmate’s workout routines, which had at some point begun to include jogging up and down the stairs of his own apartment complex…

Almost automatically, Kim Dokja had pulled out his phone in the elevator, opening up that long, long text file of his, scrolling further down it as the elevator went up.

By the time he had gotten to the 18th floor, he was engrossed in a bit of nostalgia for that funny moment when Lee Seolhwa’s soulmate had accused her of only wanting Yoo Joonghyuk for his washboard abs…

Because of this, he had his nose buried in his phone, and ended up almost passing the door with 1865 on the front.

He knocked on the door right away, but didn’t put his phone away quite yet. He heard some noises from far inside the apartment and figured he still had some time to read one more part...

Of course, Kim Dokja closed the notes app as soon as the door opened. Doing so was almost instinctual, at that point.

And he was very lucky that it was.

Although, he was still ultimately an unlucky person, as Kim Dokja was still looking down at his phone as he began to greet the man on the other side.

“Hello, I’m the ride who’s supposed to take you to your Minosoft interview, Joo-”

According to the information Han Sooyoung had given him, the end of that sentence was supposed to be a respectful address to some sort of Infinite Regressor Champion who Kim Dokja was to call Joonhyun-nim.

That was what it was supposed to be.

It was most definitely what Kim Dokja would have said, if he had not made the extremely unfortunate mistake of looking up to meet the eyes of the person who had opened the door.

“-onghyuk.”

As in: Yoo Joonghyuk.

That was how Kim Dokja finished that sentence.

Because standing in that open doorway was his soulmate.

…

Also, he was not wearing a shirt.

…

Kim Dokja was taking too long to process this information.

This was the part, he supposed, where he began to rue the day that he met Han Sooyoung.

Seriously… how could she mix up Joonghyuk who played Ways of Survival as Joonhyun who played Infinite Regressor… that no good, forgetful, plagiarist boss of his…

…

Theoretically Kim Dokja understood that meeting Yoo Joonghyuk in person again was something that was very likely to happen. In fact, there was hardly a day that went by recently that Kim Dokja’ didn’t have some dreadful imagining of his soulmate once more barging into his life in some unorthodox way, accusing him of something strange like kidnapping his sister again.

Of course, the time that he had spent daydreaming about ways to escape such situations on the train, at home, or wherever he had been thinking them up, none of it mattered now that he found himself in front of Yoo Joonghyuk’s own apartment, already standing there in plain view.

As Kim Dokja’s brain was scrambling to comprehend this situation and confirm that, yes, running away in a dead sprint down the hallway would only make him look more suspicious, he managed to notice Yoo Joonghyuk’s handsome features were turned down in a subtle frown. He looked displeased, although, come to think of it Kim Dokja couldn’t recall ever seeing in person an expression one could call not displeased… maybe that was just his resting face?

… No, that was just wishful thinking.

In reality, it was most likely that Kim Dokja was always doing something in front of his soulmate that annoyed him. Antagonizing his teammate on the subway, causing a panic over watching his sister, and now knocking on his door to tell him he was late for an important interview… no wonder he was used to that handsome frown…

And yet, even though Kim Dokja knew the reasons behind Yoo Joonghyuk’s feelings here, he still…

… found it extremely annoying.

“You know, you’re the one who’s late.” Kim Dokja pointed out his honest thoughts before he could think better of them. “Didn’t your company notify you?”

Yoo Joonghyuk’s eyebrows furrowed slightly.

Damn. Kim Dokja cursed himself. What did that reaction mean? Was his soulmate getting angrier?

It was extremely hard to avoid panicking in this sudden interaction, but with his prior experience Kim Dokja was able to feel around for a role that suited him. A plausible explanation for his presence in his soulmate’s life.

“Oh,” one of Kim Dokja’s eyebrows tilted up, “are you mad that I called you Joonghyuk?”

He suddenly relaxed his shoulders a bit, flapping his hand around dismissively. He found that he was suddenly acting the way that he did with Han Sooyoung, settling into the role of a do-nothing office worker.

“I mean, I know I’m representing the company and all,” he shrugged while carrying on the flippant tone, “but is it really appropriate to call a guy younger than me ‘-nim’ when I’ve even looked after his younger sister before?”

Shit.

Kim Dokja’s heart almost stopped. He felt as though he had made such a large mistake, considering the fact that he didn’t even know if Yoo Joonghyuk had recognized him before he mentioned that fact. The memory of the murderous glare that was the last expression he had seen from his soulmate was enough to make Kim Dokja nearly flinch in the present, faced with the fact that he might have to drive all the way back to the office while under such a gaze…

Yoo Joonghyuk’s expression, however, didn’t worsen in the way that Kim Dokja had expected it too. He simply continued to look neutrally displeased.

Except… there was something else there. Something in the way he blinked so slowly under those furrowed brows of his…

Oh.

Kim Dokja realized the truth, this time.

He’s tired…

Yoo Joonghyuk’s usually silky looking hair was mussed all over in a “just got out of bed” sort of way, and his eyes had bags under them that almost rivaled the deep, dark depth of them.

There was, uh. Also the fact that he wasn’t wearing a shirt. Which Kim Dokja only noted because Yoo Joonghyuk tended to sleep shirtless, and not because of his soulmate’s many, many muscles that he was definitely, absolutely not looking at.

…

Come to think of it, this guy had been pulling some RMT all nighters, hadn’t he… Ha, this idiot.. He didn’t have the patience to just wait for his job interview…

… Hm… Perhaps Kim Dokja could get out of this situation by convincing Han Sooyoung to reschedule?

He suddenly brightened up at this idea, and began to ask his soulmate, “Hey, did you want to-”

“Stop talking.” Yoo Joonghyuk interrupted him almost right away, hand going to rub at the corners of his eyes as if listening to someone else’s voice was giving him a headache.

Kim Dokja felt the heart that had lifted slightly in his chest at the possibility of an escape plan plummet to the ground floor of the highrise apartment he stood in, as Yoo Joonghyuk walked back into his living room and grabbed one of his signature black turtlenecks from somewhere, pulling it over his wide, muscled back.

Ah, right.

It was at this time that Kim Dokja remembered that his soulmate was not someone to agreeably go along with someone else’s plans.

Yoo Joonghyuk would do whatever he wanted to do, no matter who got in his way.

So, naturally, if Kim Dokja wanted to get out of this unscathed, he would just have to make sure Yoo Joonghyuk got what he wanted.

I just need to get him to the office…

Right. Once he was at the office, he was Han Sooyoung’s problem.

Kim Dokja repeated this thought to himself, keeping his chaotic insides in check with a neutral expression as he waited outside his soulmate’s door.

“...”

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t speak as he closed the door behind him. The job interview clothing he had chosen to wear was his typical black turtleneck and coat. Kim Dokja was prevented from internally scolding his soulmate for his choice of clothing by the mantra he had determined was necessary to repeat to himself, simply nodding to Yoo Joonghyuk in acknowledgement before turning down the hallway.

“...”

They were silent on the elevator, too.

“...”

It was only when they were outside the building, in front of the car, that one of them spoke.

“I thought you were a babysitter.”

“Huh?” It took all of Kim Dokja’s strength to not be startled by his soulmate’s sudden statement.

Although he himself was already opening the driver’s side door, Yoo Joonghyuk stood on the other side, merely looking down at the passenger side door with that furrowed brow expression of his.

“Ah.” Kim Dokja looked down at the expensive sports car as well, now understanding the point of his soulmate’s confusion. “This is the Director-nim’s car.” He explained. Then, since he felt like that wasn’t enough, he shrugged his shoulders as if it was something out of his hands. “You’re lucky she thinks you’re a gaming celebrity, by the way. Otherwise she would have just called you a cab.”

Kim Dokja held himself back from peeking at his soulmate’s reaction, pretending not to care as he slid into the driver’s side.

After another silent moment, the passenger side door opened.

Yoo Joonghyuk sat next to Kim Dokja in the car.

Even though he thought he was already reaching the limit of how anxious a single person could be, Kim Dokja felt another balloon of panicked emotions pop violently within his chest.

He nearly dropped the car keys and almost forgot to buckle his seatbelt before starting the ignition.

It was hard to do anything properly.

There was something that was just… suddenly a lot different about sitting down next to someone like Yoo Joonghyuk in a car.

It was something that Kim Dokja definitely would have needed a lot more time adjusting to if he were to think it was even in the realm of possibility of things that could happen.

Unfortunately there was no time to deal with the shock, as he had to keep up appearances, and he started driving out of the parking lot almost right away.

Their silent journey to the Minosoft Office began, then.

Yoo Joonghyuk spent the whole time staring out the window.

He was still too close for comfort.

Sitting as far away as possible, the man only spoke once throughout the length of the entire trip.

“Your driving sucks.” He had murmured darkly, quiet as if it were an observation he was making to himself.

Kim Dokja felt a bit better, after his soulmate said that.

Maybe it was because he took the fact that was all his soulmate was saying to mean that Yoo Joonghyuk hadn’t noticed they had been driving for near an hour now.

In his distracted state, Kim Dokja had taken so many wrong turns that the distance between Yoo Joonghyuk’s apartment and Minosoft’s building was artificially quadrupled.

He was a little grateful that his soulmate was too half asleep to tell the passing hour, but on the other hand he was incredulous of how the man had managed to function as an adult up to this point…

"Sorry for the wait."

Even though Kim Dokja privately theorized his soulmate hadn't noticed the time, he still felt the need to apologize as he finally pulled back into Han Sooyoung's designated spot right in front of the Minosoft building doors.

Yoo Joonghyuk didn't reply, just blinking a little hard, as if trying to wake himself up.

Kim Dokja's soulmate let out a sigh as he carded a hand through his hair, combing it slightly.

His breath was visible on the window sill.

It was the same air that Kim Dokja himself had been breathing all throughout that silent drive.

And even though breathing was a fact of life…

This moment of existing next to Yoo Joonghyuk still felt impossible, no matter how long it lasted.

Kim Dokja pushed open the car door.

The cold winter air stung his lungs as he breathed it in.

"Come on." He said, not looking over his shoulder as he exited the car. "You're late enough, as is."

Kim Dokja found himself anxious with anticipation as he hurried Yoo Joonghyuk along through the Minosoft building to Han Sooyoung's office. It was because handing Yoo Joonghyuk off to his superior was that nearest possible end goal for him. The targeted task after which he could pause. Go somewhere he could be alone and actually process what was happening.

At this point, he realized, he wasn't even anxious that his soulmate would figure him out just then. Yoo Joonghyuk was clearly quite out of it, and Kim Dokja himself still had his long sleeved black button up and white coat securely covering his arms. His soulmate hadn't sussed him out the last two times they had met, what could really happen now differently from then?

Even though some logical side of Kim Dokja was thinking this…

… for some reason, just being near Yoo Joonghyuk was making his heart thump loudly in his ears.

The worry that Yoo Joonghyuk might hear it, that it would be this traitorous heart of his to give him away, only made the sound of it ring louder in his own ears.

“Here we are!” The even tone of Kim Dokja’s voice tilted upwards at the relief of reaching Han Sooyoung’s office. This was, of course, the first time in his life that arriving at his place of work had inspired this much internal celebration. In his excitement, Kim Dokja’s hand went right for the doorknob.

“Wait.”

Kim Dokja froze.

God. He couldn’t catch a break, could he.

What could Yoo Joonghyuk possibly want from him no-

The sound of a jacket rustling interrupted his thought.

When Kim Dokja turned around to look at him, his soulmate was holding out a handful of paper won bills.

“Gas money.” He declared, pushing the wad into Kim Dokja’s open hand.

“I…” Kim Dokja took hold of the money before Yoo Joonghyuk’s fingertips could graze the bare skin of his hand. “But that wasn’t my…”

He had already said it was the Director's car, hadn't he? So why would Yoo Joonghyuk…

…

Kim Dokja had a memory of an incident that occurred when Yoo Joonghyuk had still been working at that first gaming company he had been with. One of his shitty superiors had deducted some of the team's cab fare from his paycheck… the sense of injustice that he had felt at that time had been enough for him to start interviewing at other companies… could it be that he was worried about…

"Do what you want with it." The deep voice of Yoo Joonghyuk sent a chill down Kim Dokja's spine as he remembered he had lost the clarifying sentence he was trying to speak to his own internal train of thought. "Just know that I don't owe you anything else for the ride."

When Kim Dokja looked up from the bills in his hand, Yoo Joonghyuk had already turned his glance past him, gazing at the door to the office behind him with an intense look in his eyes.

"A-ah, I see." Kim Dokja realized Yoo Joonghyuk's real intentions as he followed his soulmate's gaze to the name plaque on the door, tucking away the paper won in his pocket as he did so.

Yoo Joonghyuk was more analytical than Kim Dokja gave him credit for, at times. He had probably already realized that sending a car was a play by Han Sooyoung to negotiate his salary. Volunteering gas money to even things out was obviously just his way of looking out for his own interests.

… This dumb guy. Throwing his money around, even though now more than ever he ought to be saving up for…

…

For some reason, Kim Dokja's hand was still frozen on the door handle.

“Hey.” He found himself speaking suddenly, sparing a glance at Yoo Joonghyuk over his shoulder. “A word of advice about the director. She’s…” Kim Dokja thought about some more of Yoo Joonghyuk's former employers and wondered if such memories were also filling his soulmate's own mind. “... Probably not what you’re expecting."

Yoo Joonghyuk's abyssally deep black eyes met his as he finished that sentence.

Kim Dokja suddenly remembered he ought not to speak with this man any more than he absolutely had to.

"Eh, well you’ll see, I guess." He shrugged, cutting his explanation of Han Sooyoung short and turning the doorknob in a way he hoped didn't appear too frantic.

"… Or not. "

Kim Dokja opened the door to find that Han Sooyoung's office was empty.

Fuck.

"Sorry. One second."

As soon as Kim Dokja realized his escape attempt was about to fall through, he slipped into the office and immediately slammed the door behind him so that Yoo Joonghyuk wouldn't follow.

When he was finally alone, Kim Dokja almost collapsed against Han Sooyoung's desk in relief.

Of course, he couldn't do that, or else the ink drying on the strongly worded note his boss had left behind for him on her neat, lined stationary would have left a mark on his face.

You got lost, didn't you, dumbass.

The editor in Kim Dokja noted that Han Sooyoung should have used a question mark at the end of the sentence instead of a period. No matter how certain of her statement she was, it was still phrased like a question.

He grabbed a red pen from the jar on Han Sooyoung's desk before continuing to read, writing in the margins as he went.

You got lost, didn't you, dumbass . ? Well, whatever , it's not like I didn't already

predict that you would, anyway. I'm just a genius like that. <-- You used 'like' twice very close to each other. Awkward.

Like I said, I'm in a meeting with that accounting bastard right now.

It looks like you'll have to do the interview , I guess. Here's some instructions

so simple, even you couldn't mess it up . : <-- Colon fits punctuation better than period, considering the sentence's introductory clause.

Reading with this level of interaction he was familiar with helped Kim Dokja calm down, as he began to accept the task that was ahead of him.

On the car ride over he had been very focused on getting over the initial shock. Handing off Yoo Joonghyuk to somebody else just to get some time to himself to process what was happening.

Now that he had that time to think, Kim Dokja was realizing the full weight behind his soulmate's reason for being here.

That's right he… he was trying to get a job. Here. In the very QA department where Kim Dokja worked. The place that had this far been the last bastion of his boring, isolated life that had seemed separate from the world of Yoo Joonghyuk.

The very thought of it was something that shook Kim Dokja to his core.

Even though he should know by now. He had seen enough proof of the fact that his soulmate existed in real life. He shouldn't feel as if… as if… he should be separate. Like a character in a story far away… someone who went through struggles but was still far away enough for Kim Dokja to never be the cause of…

…

Kim Dokja was usually someone that fully accepted the fact that the past could never be changed.

But just then, he cursed himself, thinking that the moment he had heard about his soulmate's prospective career in gaming, he should have avoided interviewing at any company even remotely related to the concept.

Because now Kim Dokja had been put in a position to cause his soulmate even more suffering than he already had.

According to the note from the terrible villain who had hired him to this position, Kim Dokja either had to give Yoo Joonghyuk the go ahead and sign up for seeing him every week day for the rest of the year, or turn him down and send him off to find some other income for that search for his origins that was so important to him.

Honestly, which was worse?

…

…

Well. Kim Dokja thought he probably already knew the answer to that question. Didn't he?

His own peace of mind at work... Well, it wasn't worth much, compared to Yoo Joonghyuk's story. Even the selfish Kim Dokja could realize that much.

It was something he was more than willing to sacrifice, for the continuation of that story which he so loved.

After Kim Dokja finished reading Han Sooyoung's instructions, he took a deep, stabilizing breath.

Resigning himself to a future where he had to work with Yoo Joonghyuk, Kim Dokja began to make a few plans.

I should try and get along with him in the interview... I know that he already dislikes me, and that was fine when we were strangers, but if we're going to be working together...

Oh. If he wanted to get on his soulmate's good side, he shouldn't leave him waiting outside the office for too long, should he.

Kim Dokja slapped his cheeks a bit, getting into character. He didn't have to be Yoo Joonghyuk's soulmate right now. He had to be a prospective coworker.

"Eeh, sorry about that." Kim Dokja didn't meet Yoo Joonghyuk's eyes as he slipped out of the office, closing the door behind him. "I contacted the Director, and it looks like we missed her free spot for the interview this morning." He scratched the back of his neck. "Don't worry, though, I've got instructions to handle it."

Kim Dokja's hand went to his pocket. As he grabbed the paper within it, he realized that he had unfortunately left the instructions on Han Sooyoung's desk and it would be too awkward to go back for them now.

"Here," he said, taking out the won Yoo Joonghyuk had given him, "I know you said it was for gas money, but since I'm doing your interview now, I can't accept it."

Kim Dokja finally dared to look the man in the eye as he said this, and he noticed that Yoo Joonghyuk's gaze held a certain new scrutiny within it. Perhaps he thought Kim Dokja was in a higher position than he had assumed, considering he was able to conduct the interview himself.

When he took the money back, there was a not so short moment where his fingers rested on the edge of Kim Dokja's palm. He was, unfortunately, forced to notice this because Yoo Joonghyuk's hands were very warm compared to his own, which were still cold from nervousness.

"Come on, then, Joonghyuk." Kim Dokja tried to smile his nerves away, patting the man in front of him on the shoulder of his dark black coat. "Let's get you playing that video game, eh?"

As Yoo Joonghyuk's expression darkened, Kim Dokja tried not to notice how much more comfortable his new role seemed.

He led the glowering Yoo Joonghyuk to the new QA department office for Omniscient Reader .

"This is where you'll work, if you get the job." Kim Dokja explained as he opened the door, trying to remember what Han Sooyoung's instructions had been. "You'll be alpha testing before the advertising deal with your company kicks in, so we're just going to have you play the latest version of the game from the dev team and see if you can pick it up, alright?"

"Hm." Yoo Joonghyuk made a neutral sounding noise as if to indicate he understood, although his expression was still dark.

Kim Dokja avoided thinking about what thoughts of Yoo Joonghyuk's might be causing such an expression as he went over to start booting up one of the PCs with Omniscient Reader already installed.

His heart rate started picking up the pace again.

Why was that?

He was specifically avoiding thinking about all the things that might cause him anxiety so…

Oh.

Kim Dokja watched Yoo Joonghyuk sit down in front of the computer as the intro sequence began to boot up.

[OMNISCIENT READER]

As the title faded to a black screen, the reflection of Yoo Joonghyuk's face suddenly became visible, with Kim Dokja himself standing far back enough to look like a skin colored blur over his shoulder.

Kim Dokja looked at those intense eyes of Yoo Joonghyuk's, deep even when only reflected, and felt a bit unsure of himself.

Showing someone important to him a story that he really, genuinely enjoyed… Kim Dokja hadn't done something like that since…

It was a serialized web novel that no one seemed to read.

Yoo Joonghyuk's face was soon covered by the introductory text.

Back then, I had no idea.

On the day I finished this webnovel…

… The story I alone had been reading for the past ten years turned into reality.

…

Why did Kim Dokja suddenly care so much about whether or not Yoo Joonghyuk liked this story?

He glanced away from the familiar words on the screen, towards the expression of the man sitting down next to him.

He still had on that unhappy looking expression from earlier. Kim Dokja couldn't tell if there was any spark of interest in his eyes, as he read the story.

*BOOM.*

The intro faded out with the sound of a large explosion, opening on a third person view of the Reader standing just outside the subway car.

Yoo Joonghyuk frowned down at the keyboard in front of him.

"Uh, the full intro and tutorial aren't completely done yet." Kim Dokja felt the urge to explain, as Yoo Joonghyuk seemed confused over the controls. "Here, I can hold your hand for a bit if you need-"

As Kim Dokja reached for the keyboard to try and show the character options, Yoo Joonghyuk slapped his hand away, putting his own fingers on the keyboard.

Ah, this jerk…

Kim Dokja only watched on tensely as Yoo Joonghyuk managed to figure out the arrow keys controlled movement and maneuvered himself safely out of the subway.

But as soon as he got to the first enemy encounter…

"Wait, you're going to-!"

*SCHHHHK.*

Yoo Joonghyuk triggered his character's bookmarked flame attack too powerfully, which immediately hurled the Reader directly off of the bridge. The game made a gruesome sound effect as he was impaled on the rocks below.

YOUR ■■ IS INCOMPLETE.

The death screen read.

Read Again? >Y/N

Upon noticing Yoo Joonghyuk's deepening frown, Kim Dokja tried to speak up again.

"Here, let me show you a-"

Yoo Joonghyuk grabbed the wrist of Kim Dokja's hand before it could reach the keys.

"I got it." He muttered darkly.

Kim Dokja retracted his wrist from that warm grip as soon as he could, and Yoo Joonghyuk pressed the confirmation key that rebooted the game to the beginning.

He wanted to be annoyed with the man's bullheaded attitude, but Kim Dokja was forced to be begrudgingly impressed as Yoo Joonghyuk really had managed to figure out the controls and ended up winning the encounter on the bridge his next try.

Except…

"Wait a second." Kim Dokja found himself saying. Yoo Joonghyuk had done something he hadn't expected, running up to attack the guy who was taking Moonlight Girl across the bridge. "If you go on here, you won't meet the Regressor."

Usually the protagonist of a story would be Kim Dokja's favorite, but since the MC of Omniscient Reader was sort of a no-personality palate for player self insert, he found himself rather drawn to the story of the deuteragonist, instead.

"Do I need to do that." Yoo Joonghyuk grumbled more than asked.

"Well, you don't need to, I suppose…"

Kim Dokja tried to say these words in a way that implied that, yes, Yoo Joonghyuk did need to trigger the Regressor's route.

Kim Dokja's soulmate gave an aggrieved sigh, as he turned the pov camera around in time to catch the explosion from the train station.

There he is…

Kim Dokja marveled at the character model work he hadn't had the chance to appreciate just reading the scripts, as the Regressor stepped out onto the bridge.

He was so mesmerized by the realization of the story into game form that for a moment, Kim Dokja had forgotten that the Regressor was not the sort of character who Yoo Joonghyuk liked.

In fact, while the scene where the reader dangles over the edge of the bridge played out, Yoo Joonghyuk had looked at the dialogue options scornfully.

"Why isn't there an option to punch this guy in his stupid face?" He had muttered darkly.

And then, when he entered the Ichthyosaurus dungeon…

Yoo Joonghyuk took his hand off the keyboard.

"You got me eaten." He accused Kim Dokja. "By a dinosaur."

"Uh, well, yes, I suppose…" Kim Dokja hadn't thought that Yoo Joonghyuk would choose the right option for this development… other choices would have led to some scenes that he honestly didn't like as much as this one…

"I'm restarting." Yoo Joonghyuk declared, reaching for the exit key.

"Wait, no!" Kim Dokja realized how much he wanted Yoo Joonghyuk to keep the save file where he met the Regressor when he noticed his own desperate tone of voice. "Uh, I know you've never worked with a company testing games before, but Omniscient Reader intends to be the sort of game where a player can never soft lock themselves into being unable to complete the story." Kim Dokja's voice calmed as he noticed Yoo Joonghyuk's glare had turned to him. "Testing your way out of situations like this will be part of your job."

Yoo Joonghyuk looked unhappy about this, but he took his hand off the escape key for now.

Unfortunately, a couple moments later, Yoo Joonghyuk picked a fight with the Dokkaebi and got fried to a crisp.

YOUR ■■ IS INCOMPLETE.

Read Again? >Y/N

Yoo Joonghyuk pressed the confirmation key with a lot of force this time, rebooting into the subway once more.

This time, he got through the first encounter even faster, which left him with more time to wait until the Regressor got onto the bridge.

Kim Dokja was delighted when Yoo Joonghyuk waited for the event to trigger, but was a bit confused when he picked the exact same dialogue options.

"Eh?" Kim Dokja blinked as he once more watched the Reader plummet off of the side of the bridge toward the gaping 3D-animated dinosaur maw below. "You let yourself get swallowed again?"

"You said that to get the job I had to get out of the dinosaur." Yoo Joonghyuk sounded annoyed.

"Ah, but I didn't really say…" Kim Dokja started to explain himself.

One of Yoo Joonghyuk's fists clenched tightly on top of the desk.

"G-good job taking the initiative." Kim Dokja looked away suddenly, taking out his phone to avoid Yoo Joonghyuk's angered gaze. "I'll put it down on my report…"

Yoo Joonghyuk managed to survive the Ichthyosaurus dungeon in that round, which Kim Dokja was thankful for as it seemed as though the immersion kicked in afterwards, and Yoo Joonghyuk stayed focused on the screen instead of being angry at him.

The interview went smoothly, after that. Yoo Joonghyuk played the game without any major hiccups, and honestly Kim Dokja didn't pay much attention as he went through the earlier levels. After all, he already knew he was giving Yoo Joonghyuk the job, and the Regressor didn't show up again until the Chungmuro stage…

Yoo Joonghyuk only had the Reader on his way there, when the interview time ended.

"Nice work." Kim Dokja tried to hide his disappointment at not getting to see more gameplay. Of course, he already knew the whole story, but there was something different about reading it again with Yoo Joonghyuk playing through…

Kim Dokja tried not to think about that too long.

"Here's what the contract looks like."

He pulled out the piece of paper he had managed to remember to bring from Han Sooyoung's office.

Yoo Joonghyuk accepted it when Kim Dokja handed it over, taking it into his hands and beginning to read it line by line.

Eventually, he got to the end.

"The salary isn't listed." He observed.

"Ah, yes…" Kim Dokja took a pen out of his pocket. "We're supposed to negotiate that now, I suppose."

"..."

Yoo Joonghyuk placed the contract down on the table in front of him, his gaze turning analytical.

"..."

Kim Dokja looked down at the blank spot on the paper that would soon be filled out with Yoo Joonghyuk's new monthly salary.

As he did so, he recalled the words of Han Sooyoung.

"That lazy celebrity gamer bastard will be working practically for free when I’m done lowballing the shit out of him."

Kim Dokja sighed.

"Here."

His arm brushed the shoulder of Yoo Joonghyuk's coat as he leaned over to write on the document.

"I'm the kind of guy who always wants to be out by five o'clock." Kim Dokja explained. "So I'll just put down what we're willing to pay and we won't waste time negotiating."

As he looked at the blank spot on the contract, what was coming to his mind even more than the words of Han Sooyoung was a certain number.

That number was, of course, the exact amount of money that the most expensive detective agency Yoo Joonghyuk had spoken with charged per month.

So, naturally, while writing down the salary estimate Kim Dokja thought about this number and rounded up.

"..."

Luckily for Kim Dokja, Yoo Joonghyuk was someone who did not like to speak about anything more than necessary.

After agreeing on the contract and getting Yoo Joonghyuk's signature, Kim Dokja brought it back to his boss's office, and Yoo Joonghyuk took a cab home.

Of course, Kim Dokja didn't get off work as early as he had hoped.

It was because Han Sooyoung had a lot of things to say to him about salaries and budgeting and leaving 'passive aggressive grammar checks' on her reprimanding notes as she furiously waved around the contract he expected her to sign with Yoo Joonghyuk.

She was a person who was very creative with words, after all.

Kim Dokja didn't mind this, all that much, though.

Because at some point after he had gone home that night, Kim Dokja had held Biyoo in one hand and rolled up his sleeve with the other.

The interview went well.

Kim Dokja looked fondly at these words, finding that he couldn't help but agree.

Spending company money feels a lot better than spending my own. He noted underneath that entry.

It was actually quite gratifying to Kim Dokja that there was no mention of himself in Yoo Joonghyuk's story that day. His soulmate only ever mentioned people who were important or excessively annoying, and it was good to know that he had this far managed to be neither.

Yes… Kim Dokja thought to himself. Maybe it was okay to just tweak the story a little, from the background. Do what he could to push it in just a slightly happier direction…

Surely that wasn't too much to want, right?

.

.

.

Yes, yes it was.

Kim Dokja came to that conclusion Sunday night, looking down the barrel of what would soon be his first Monday of many working in the same office as Yoo Joonghyuk.

Biyoo, who had recently spawned the ability to maneuver herself around on her stumpy little kitten legs, walked around on his stomach mewling while he tried to focus on the study of that large text file on his phone.

Kim Dokja offered some scritches to the happily purring kitten with his free hand, but he had a hard time melting into admiring her adorableness. Biyoo was almost about a month old now, which meant a few things. Advice from the internet and a certain knowledgeable young girl indicated that he would need to start training the kitten to use a litter box, and at eight weeks he should begin to wean her off of formula to eating solid food… which meant he would have to set aside money to buy those things… and he would also probably need to schedule vet appointments… and find someone to watch her when the kids went back to school in a week…

“Baaaaaht!” Biyoo’s unique cry was deepened with the accompaniment of a purr that seemed almost too powerful for her little body, as she rubbed the underside of her tiny chin against his fingertips.

“Huuu…” Kim Dokja sighed a little. “Alright, alright.”

He set down his phone as it seemed that Biyoo was big enough now that both his hands must be employed in the act of properly petting her. The kitten leaned in to sniff at his other hand, which was still a little cramped from holding his phone, and she put her little pink nose so far forward that she almost fell off her paws.

Kim Dokja pushed this outstretched nose back, slightly, correcting his posture to sit up and cup the little kitten in his hands as he often did.

“Ah, you’re a little bigger than a baseball now, aren’t you?” He commented, feeling the kitten’s purrs humm through his fingers as he rubbed circles into her fur.

“Baaht!” Biyoo replied. She used to just sit calmly while he pet her, but she seemed more energetic and playful these days, wiggling around in his grip and nipping at his fingers with her gummy baby kitten mouth.

“Alright, I get it.” Kim Dokja extracted a slightly slimy finger from Biyoo’s reach, standing up to go to his kitchenette with the kitten still in hand. The feeding schedule required a bit less frequency as the days went on, but Biyoo was still better at communicating the times she was hungry to him than the phone alarms he had set.

It was only after he had fed the happy kitten, while still standing in the kitchenette filled with the sweet scent of warm milk, that some words appeared on his arm, and Kim Dokja remembered he had left his phone back on his bed.

New job this morning.

Ah… Kim Dokja’s troubled frown returned to him. There goes my only hope.

If Yoo Joonghyuk had forgotten about work tomorrow, then Kim Dokja would have had just one more day standing between him and his new reality… but after rereading so many of his soulmate’s notes over the past few days, Kim Dokja knew that even that sunfish wasn’t bad enough to misinterpret a reminder written just the day before.

Which meant that tomorrow, as he had been dreading since Friday, Kim Dokja would have to endure a day where he was Yoo Joonghyuk’s coworker.

That Friday he had been a little too optimistic, thinking that he might somehow manage to get on Yoo Joonghyuk’s good side. Once Kim Dokja had some time to really, honestly think about it and consult the wealth of information he had on the man, he eventually came to the conclusion that being someone who Yoo Joonghyuk thought favorably of was a near one in a million chance.

Actually, for someone like Kim Dokja it was more like a one in a billion chance, considering the fact that the people Yoo Joonghyuk tended to value in the workplace were usually those with high level skills so useful that he couldn’t ignore them as he would most likely prefer…

Kim Dokja was a person who didn’t really have any particular talent and never came off as very useful, so aiming to be someone Yoo Joonghyuk thought favorably of was definitely setting the bar too high.

Instead, by the time work rolled around the next morning, Kim Dokja had decided on a different course of action, one that played to his strengths.

… Just avoid interacting with him as much as possible. He had reminded himself, while waiting for the coffee machine to warm up in the break room that Monday morning. That shouldn’t be so hard…

Yoo Joonghyuk would be testing versions of the game in the QA department. Even though Kim Dokja technically worked in the same office, he spent most of his day doing errands and editing for Han Sooyoung. Theoretically, there could even be days where Kim Dokja didn’t have to interact with his soulmate at all.

Kim Dokja, still groggy from the morning time, let himself slip a bit too much into this fantasy; so much so that he didn’t notice the man walking up behind him until a half-bandaged fist collided with the cabinet just an inch away from his face.

“Subway grasshopper…” Kim Namwoon growled an insulting nickname from where his face was positioned just over Kim Dokja’s shoulder.

Oh, shit.

Kim Dokja had completely forgotten about this guy.

“Ah, it seems there is a Junior Company Member speaking to me.” Kim Dokja greeted Kim Namwoon as if unaffronted, not even looking at the guy wearing ripped black jeans in an office as he started taking out one of the filters for the coffee machine. “This is the break room, not the hiring office. Did you get lost?”

The Chuunibyou General made a noise approximating a growl of frustration, which Kim Dokja couldn’t help but ridicule internally.

“Listen here you motherfucking-”

“Kim Namwoon.”

A voice that almost made Kim Dokja’s shoulders tense up, even though it wasn’t entirely unexpected, came from the doorway.

How does she sound so much like him...

“H-hey, Lee Jihye!”

Kim Namwoon immediately lost all of his tough guy posturing, fumbling to lean against the counter as if he had just been innocently standing there the whole time.

Kim Dokja couldn’t help but sneak a glance over his shoulder at the girl he recognized sneering at her colleague.

Lee Jihye.

The girl was a popular live streamer despite her young age, having competed in big league WoS tournaments since the age of eighteen. She had a particular character build that utilized combining the effects of certain RNG reliant buffing spawn skills with sea related stigmas to wipe out her opponents. Her unique strategies had put her at the top of the WoS junior stat board and would safely keep her there until she surpassed the age limit and turned twenty years old.

She was also someone who Yoo Joonghyuk had considered to be his protege ever since she began as an intern at Pacheonmaeng’s parent company over a year ago.

This fact was why Kim Dokja immediately turned back to making Han Sooyoung’s coffee as she continued to speak.

“I told you to pretend not to know me.” Lee Jihye let out an exasperated sigh. “The orientation starts in less than ten minutes. Stop wasting everyone’s time.”

“Uh, uh…” Out of the corner of his eye, Kim Dokja saw Kim Namwoon stutter pathetically.

He heard a scuffed footstep, as if Lee Jihye had turned away to the door.

“In addition, if you cause a scene that will trouble Master on our first day…” Lee Jihye’s voice sounded a lot colder speaking to Kim Namwoon than the peppy tones she usually directed to her fans on stream. “... I’ll kill you.”

Lee Jihye then left the breakroom.

“Hey, wait up, Jihye!” Kim Namwoon seemed to have forgotten about Kim Dokja entirely, pushing off the counter to follow his teammate out of the room. “I was just joking around, I-”

Kim Dokja stopped being able to hear Kim Namwoon’s voice at that point. Whether it was because he had gotten too far down the hall to hear or because Lee Jihye had actually killed him as promised, Kim Dokja did not know.

He was just left to listen to the sound of fresh coffee dribbling into a pot, factoring in a few unexpected complications to his ‘avoid Yoo Joonghyuk’ plan as he did so.

Ah, that was right… there had been four spots in the department, hadn't there?

… and of all the players currently associated with Pacheonmaeng's parent company, there were only three that Kim Dokja had known his soulmate to care enough about to mention by name.

Of course, even though he hadn't quite put the pieces together until now, it wasn't as if Kim Dokja was any less prepared to encounter these people than he was Yoo Joonghyuk himself.

After all, while conducting his research that weekend, Kim Dokja had focused in particular on snippets mentioning his soulmate's work life. What things coworkers did that annoyed him or endeared him or made any lasting impression that Kim Dokja was determined to avoid.

It was, in the end, from knowing a lot about the people that Yoo Joonghyuk liked that Kim Dokja came to the comforting conclusion he could, would, and should never be one of them.

It’s because the only people important to him are those with great talents...

Yes, that was the common factor that existed between his proteges, Lee Jihye and Kim Namwoon, despite their personalities differing greatly between diligent and deranged.

Yoo Joonghyuk was very picky, only choosing to care about people who were so useful that he was forced to take note of them in acknowledgement of their skills.

Perhaps this was why Kim Dokja himself had never made headlines in the daily reports his soulmate printed out on his arm. Even if he was annoying, he hadn't done anything notable enough to be worth caring about… in fact, it would be pretty surprising if that Yoo Joonghyuk even knew his name…

That was right, Kim Dokja thought as the timer on the coffee machine went off and he started pouring his boss's cup, in all the times they had met so far, Kim Dokja had yet to introduce himself. Yoo Joonghyuk had never even asked for his name.

Even though he often found this habit of his soulmate's quite annoying from the perspective of the only reader of Yoo Joonghyuk's story, Kim Dokja felt strangely comforted by it, now. The idea that even though they were working together now, he hadn't made any substantial impact on his soulmate's story at all.

Of course, every advantage of anonymity Kim Dokja momentarily considered being grateful for was ripped from his grasp as soon as he opened the door to Han Sooyoung’s office, her hot cup of coffee in hand.

“Kim Dokja!” His boss called out his name in an annoyed tone of voice. “About time.”

Kim Dokja had never been the kind of employee to flinch at a harsh tone of voice from his boss. It was because he had a hard time finding it within himself to actually care about the opinions of authority figures in his life.

So the reason that Kim Dokja physically recoiled and almost dropped the cup of coffee he held onto the ground was not because his boss yelled at him as soon as he came in through the door.

It was actually because when he opened the door, he hadn’t quite expected to already find himself in the exact same room as the man standing in front of Han Sooyoung’s desk.

Luckily, Yoo Joonghyuk’s wide back was faced towards the door, and Kim Dokja was able to stand out of sight of his soulmate, as he scrambled to secure his hold on the coffee cup in his hands.

There was a moment of silence, before Kim Dokja regained himself, walking up to place the coffee cup on the desk with an unsteady hand.

When he looked up from the desk, Han Sooyoung was giving him an odd look.

Kim Dokja didn’t give any thought to this, as Han Sooyoung was a person who always looked a little odd, focusing instead on backing up to be out of Yoo Joonghyuk’s line of sight again.

He only realized that maybe he should have said something in response to the greeting his boss had leveled at him when she turned away from him to say something to Yoo Joonghyuk.

“Anyway, there aren’t a lot more details about the data entry.” Han Sooyoung seemed to pick up some point of discussion momentarily dropped at Kim Dokja’s unceremonious entrance. “The dev model installed in the QA department PCs of the competitive modes prompt for a bug report after each match ends. Then that info goes straight to my code monkeys, and you don’t have to bother with it anymore.”

Han Sooyoung paused for a moment. There was a lull in the conversation in which an observer might have expected some sort of small, affirmative sound from the one playing the part of the listener. Certainly it was a time when Kim Dokja would have given one of his patented, neutral sounding “hmm” noises, so perhaps that was what Han Sooyoung expected of the man in front of her desk that her gaze was angled towards.

Kim Dokja followed her gaze to where Yoo Joonghyuk stood, looking down at some sort of paperwork laid out on the desk with his arms crossed.

The first thing he noticed about the man was that his eyes appeared a little different than they had at his interview. They were still that infinitely deep black jewel color, but something about those black vortex pupils that sucked one in was slightly sharper. Yoo Joonghyuk looked more alert today, more prepared and focused. It made sense, Kim Dokja supposed, considering that the guy had been up late doing RMT jobs the day before his interview. Ah… even though it was a bit of an inconvenience for him, Kim Dokja couldn’t help but feel a little bit of something like pride, looking upon this Yoo Joonghyuk who was on time and well rested…

Luckily for him, Yoo Joonghyuk’s focused eyes were too busy reading through that paperwork to take note of Kim Dokja’s gaze.

Being near him like this isn’t so bad… Kim Dokja found himself relaxing a bit, watching his soulmate do something at the office that didn’t involve him at all…

“Ahem.” Han Sooyoung coughed as if to draw attention.

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t look up at her, but Kim Dokja did. He noticed that his boss’s eyebrow was tensed up, like some rather annoying thought was crossing her mind.

“Well, if you have any other kinds of problems with my game…” Han Sooyoung seemed to realize halfway through speaking that her distaste for the notion was coming through too visibly in her tone, putting on a strained smile as she corrected, “Or, that is to say, if you have any broader comments about the mechanics, we on the production team would really value your input.”

Han Sooyoung then proceeded to do something that Kim Dokja would never forgive her for.

“Just go looking for your senior here.”

She pointed at him.

“I’m sure he’ll be around somewhere… when in doubt I recommend checking his hiding spot in the men’s bathroom.”

The grin of this terrible, awful, wretched villainess of a boss turned a little more genuine as she poked fun at him.

It was honestly a shame that Han Sooyoung would never know what was going on in Kim Dokja’s head at that moment, as her eyes were still focused on trying to get into a staring match with the uncooperative Yoo Joonghyuk. She’d probably get a kick out of knowing that telling his soulmate to actively look for him at work and the location of one of his primary hiding spots was the most actively malicious thing she had ever managed to do to him.

“What about the story mode?”

To Kim Dokja’s surprise, hearing Yoo Joonghyuk’s deep voice for the first time that day didn’t startle him as much as he feared it might. Perhaps he was too busy lamenting the defeat of his hiding spot back up plan to be nervous anymore. Although, he supposed it could just be that it was much easier to be in a room with his soulmate when the man’s attention was focused on something else… there was less pressure when he just had to listen to the conversation with Han Sooyoung without having to participate.

As Kim Dokja continued to observe, he noticed that Han Sooyoung raised her eyebrow as if confused at Yoo Joonghyuk’s previous statement.

“What do you mean?” She asked.

“You specified that the dev model was only for the competitive mode.” Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t look up from the contract as he spoke. “You haven’t given us any information required to properly test the story mode.”

Han Sooyoung’s eyebrows went even higher after his words passed through her ears. Kim Dokja first thought she might be slightly nonplussed by the fact that Yoo Joonghyuk had actually been listening to her while he seemingly focused on reading, but the reality of the situation was revealed as his boss’s strained smile took on an edge of smugness.

“Joonghyuk-nim I’m a little shocked.” Han Sooyoung spoke in a voice that Kim Dokja knew for a fact was not the one she used when actually shocked. “Of course, any employee applicant as esteemed by their company as Yoo Joonghyuk-nim would be expected to thoroughly read the terms of a contract before signing it…”

She looked pointedly towards Yoo Joonghyuk who seemed to be reading over the contract he had signed even now as they spoke.

That’s rich, coming from you . Kim Dokja thought to himself about the time this woman who was condescending to his soulmate now had ordered him to spend the busy fall quarter putting her stamp on any document that came across her desk because she was too “in the zone” with her writing to be bothered.

Although, Kim Dokja had been at the interview, and he was fairly certain that Yoo Joonghyuk had read over the contract then… hadn’t he?

…

Kim Dokja began to worry slightly, as Yoo Joonghyuk still seemed to be reading…

Don’t tell me he didn’t-

“Of course I’ve read the contract previously.”

Geez… Kim Dokja felt some relief as the stupid jerk’s words finally took him out of suspense.

“But it seems some of the terms have been altered slightly. In addition, some new words have been added here.” Yoo Joonghyuk pointed one of his long fingers towards a spot on the paper in front of him.

Ah, nice! As expected of Yoo Joonghyuk... Kim Dokja found himself internally celebrating this action of his soulmate’s as if it were one of his tournament winning kills…

Han Sooyoung, however, didn’t look like her boss’s health bar had gone down even a bit at Yoo Joonghyuk’s statement.

“Well spotted.” She spoke through her toothy smile. “The alterations are purely semantic. You see, we changed the verbiage regarding the game modes to be clearer. Previously we referred to the competitive mode as the “Together” mode, because in the final version of the game the main menu will list the options for story and competitive mode as ‘Read Viewpoint,’ or ‘Read Together.’ One of your colleagues seemed confused by that in the interview, so we changed it for him and altered the other contracts to match.”

Ah, that made sense… Kim Dokja found himself wondering which one of Yoo Joonghyuk’s teammates that was, although he could probably take a pretty good guess at which was most likely… How were their interviews conducted? Most likely more smoothly than Kim Dokja had managed Yoo Joonghyuk’s…

“-and then aside from that typo correction,” Han Sooyoung continued to speak, but Kim Dokja only really focused on a few words she said, “the dates and venue picked out for the tournament have been added in the sections that were previously marked ‘TBD.’”

“There’s going to be a tournament?” Kim Dokja momentarily forgot his plan to just observe this interaction without speaking, as he focused on trying to feign only a mild interest in this subject.

Han Sooyoung’s strained smile disappeared in an instant as she turned to give a genuine scowl towards her subordinate.

“Kim Dokja.” It was fairly obvious from her tone that Han Sooyoung would have addressed him much more rudely if they had been alone. “Are you telling me you didn’t even read that contract before slapping a quarter of our preliminary advertising budget down on the salary line?

At her words, Kim Dokja noticed Yoo Joonghyuk shift slightly at the edge of his peripheral vision. He tried his best not to notice, focusing on his boss.

“Of course I didn’t.” He replied honestly to her question, leaning over her desk a bit to glance at the contract as he did so. “It’s not in my job description to read over employee contracts. Unless you want me to check for typos…”

“Gah! You’re useless.” Kim Dokja had hoped that would be enough to get Han Sooyoung to once more banish him from her office, but found he had no such luck, as she stood up and grabbed his shoulder, facing away from Yoo Joonghyuk as if trying to speak in secret as she actually answered his question.

“The reason we hired Pacheonmaeng instead of regular QA staffers is because Minosoft is going all-out for Omniscient Reader’s advertising.” Han Sooyoung’s tone of voice was annoyed, but Kim Dokja strangely found that her face seemed a lot less strained in this strange huddle they were doing away from Yoo Joonghyuk. “Apparently the parent company recently bought the studio that produced some other video games, and through some capitalist nonsense they decided to put on a tournament for the most popular one, Ways of Survival .”

“Hm.” Kim Dokja decided that he wasn’t going to feel bad about spending a quarter of Han Sooyoung’s advertising budget on Yoo Joonghyuk. Not that he felt bad in the first place, but now he actually had a reason. It served his boss right for remembering the name of Ways of Survival now, only after he had the option to opt out of going to his soulmate’s apartment and seeing him open the door shirtless and… all the other stuff that happened.

“At the end of the tournament, we’re going to announce the release of Omniscient Reader with a live demo.” Han Sooyoung discreetly gestured her thumb towards Yoo Joonghyuk across the desk. “That’s what our Joonghyuk-nim here is for.”

Now she calls him Joonghyuk-nim… Honestly, how could someone mix it up as Joonhyun. Kim Dokja definitely didn’t feel sorry for wasting this person’s money.

“Is that enough exposition for you, asshole?” She hissed these words towards him, signalling the end of her explanation.

Kim Dokja shrugged.

“I stopped caring halfway through.” He lied.

“Perfect.” Han Sooyoung grumbled. “That’s exactly what exposition is for. Now stop hovering over my desk uselessly.”

Kim Dokja idly wondered if these words were enough to warrant his dismissal from the office, but before he could decide, someone else got up to leave first.

Yoo Joonghyuk had stood up almost as soon as he had finished flipping through the contract, now turning around as if to walk out.

Han Sooyoung’s glare turned to his movement immediately, frown deepening. “Where are you going?”

Kim Dokja wouldn’t have thought it unnatural for his soulmate to just keep walking when addressed like that, but Yoo Joonghyuk actually paused, turning to speak over his shoulder.

“If someone is talking as if I am not in the room, then it is a waste of my time to remain in that room.” He turned around, his tall figure now fully facing the both of them. “Do you find fault with that assumption?”

Ah, this jerk… Kim Dokja restrained a curving upper lip at this reminder of his soulmate’s demeanour. If that gaze of Yoo Joonghyuk’s was directed at him instead of his boss, he might have feared some bubbling wrath from the man, but having seen so many actually angry faces of his recently, Kim Dokja consider that Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t actually appear to be all that mad in this moment. It seemed that this was just the way the bastard spoke to people in person, and the fact that he had paused to speak at all made it seem as though he cared somewhat about his superior’s impression of him…

Han Sooyoung’s shoulders tensed back to the attack position they had been in before Kim Dokja had come in with her coffee.

“Ah, I wouldn’t want to waste your precious time, Yoo Joonghyuk-nim.” She smiled once more through the strange teeth she had, the shorter incisors making her canines appear just a bit longer and sharper than the average person’s. “After all, your time is my time now.”

She moved back to her seat at the desk, gesturing back at the chair where Yoo Joonghyuk had been sitting as if expecting him to do the same.

“There’s just one more thing I need to go over with you.”

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t leave the office, but he didn’t sit back down, either. Just standing in front of Han Sooyoung’s desk with his arms crossed.

Kim Dokja saw his boss’s smile become ever so slightly thinner.

“There’s something I don’t know if my subordinate made clear enough in the interview.” She explained. “I need to draw your attention to this paragraph.”

Han Sooyoung flipped the contract right to the section she spoke of, as if she had memorized its placement on the document.

"Initially it wasn't as important for your group to win.” Han Sooyoung commented. “You're a big name, so just participating in the tournament will draw other WoS players.” Her eyes didn’t move from Yoo Joonghyuk as she spoke, but the next words were clearly directed towards a different person. “But thanks to someone overestimating your salary…”

Kim Dokja did not let himself react to that statement.

His boss went on.

“... I have to justify your team’s expense to the advertising department we allocated funds from.” Han Sooyoung’s finger moved to a particular spot on the page. “If you look at the language of the contract here…” The finger tapped up and down on a certain line. “... there’s some legal precedent in this phrasing to void your contract if you don’t win that tournament, salary included.”

Yoo Joonghyuk raised a single one of his thick, angular eyebrows.

Kim Dokja also wanted to raise his eyebrows at his boss’s statement.

It was because it had suddenly become obvious that this crazy Boss-nim of his was trying to scam Yoo Joonghyuk of all people.

Unbelievable.

“Of course, that won’t be a problem for the Supreme King, right?” Han Sooyoung kept her cool. “After all, there will be no reason for you to be… oh, say, for example… mysteriously disqualified on the day of the tournament final.”

Like at The Great War of Saints and Demons, She didn’t say.

Kim Dokja thought that his heart may have stopped beating for a moment.

Then he found himself wishing it had stopped for longer than a moment, as he realized that his own colossal fuck up from a month ago was being used as justification for his boss to cheat Yoo Joonghyuk.

Which she wouldn’t even feel the need to do if he hadn’t written down that weighty number on his soulmate’s salary line…

He couldn’t stop himself from tensing up as the weight of his actions began piling up on his conscience.

Of course, the true threat that had made Kim Dokja panic before was not really that Yoo Joonghyuk would discover his identity.

It was that Kim Dokja would somehow find a way to mess up his soulmate’s life just by being in it.

And somehow he had already managed to do exactly that...

The fear of potential failure gripping his stomach had by now morphed into the sagging, despairing feeling caused by failure that had already come to pass. As Kim Dokja became increasingly focused on maintaining his external, neutrally expressive appearance, it seemed that Yoo Joonghyuk had been processing Han Sooyoung’s words as well.

“It is as you say.” He replied after only a moment, speaking as if Han Sooyoung’s declaration did not matter to him. “I won’t lose.”

With that statement, Yoo Joonghyuk turned back around, as if his work here was done.

Right. Kim Dokja latched onto Yoo Joonghyuk’s words to retain his emotional composure as the man walked out the door.

He won't lose.

Yes, right.

Yoo Joonghyuk never lost anymore.

Nothing Kim Dokja did mattered, as long as Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t lose.

And he wouldn’t.

He was Yoo Joonghyuk, after all.

The change in the air was almost palpable as the door closed behind the man’s broad back.

Kim Dokja felt as though he could breathe evenly now without as much effort. He was able to reflect that Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t look phased at all by Han Sooyoung bringing up the past that was no doubt Kim Dokja’s own fault.

The stupid sunfish had shown a remarkable restraint, one Kim Dokja hadn’t come to expect from knowing him so long. He didn’t even glare grudgingly at anyone as he backed out of the door.

Then again… Yoo Joonghyuk was a suspicious person like that… he never trusted things he found "too good to be true." Perhaps he had anticipated there would be some catch to his contract, and so was more relieved than anything by his new employer showing her hand this early on.

Regardless, there was no doubt that his opinion of Kim Dokja would obviously worsen because of this interaction. Anyone could see that Kim Dokja was clearly at fault for his current contract situation… Maybe the suspicious guy would even think that Kim Dokja had colluded with Han Sooyoung to intentionally ensnare him in a shady contract, going as far back as the incident causing his disqualification from the last tournament…

Ah, but… well Yoo Joonghyuk coming up with some conspiracy like that was the worst case scenario. It wasn't that likely, even for that stupid jerk.

"That stupid jerk." Kim Dokja's thoughts were interrupted as Han Sooyoung suddenly spat out a completely uncalled for insult, leaning back in her desk chair with her arms crossed.

Kim Dokja processed this comment half heartedly, part of his mind still on Yoo Joonghyuk.

“You know Boss-nim," he tried to defend himself, "it’s rude to talk about me as if I’m not right in front of you…”

Apparently Kim Dokja had guessed the meaning of her words incorrectly, because Han Sooyoung began to look at him as if she thought he was an idiot.

“Are you an idiot?” She asked him a question that matched the look on her face. “I’m not talking about you, dumbass." Han Sooyoung rubbed at her tensed forehead. "I mean, damn, did you even try to speak three words to that Yoo Joonghyuk guy before forking over practically all of our salary budget to him?”

Ah. Kim Dokja had almost forgotten that this Boss-nim of his was turning out to be the villainess of Yoo Joonghyuk’s new life as an office drama protagonist. In fact, it was stupid of him to assume that she wouldn’t resent the guy, even though she was the one trying to scam him.

“Is it so hard for you to believe that he had a good interview?” Kim Dokja asked, a little disgruntled.

“Yes.” Han Sooyoung replied immediately. “That guy acts like he’s such hot shit." She grumbled. "Coming to work dressed like a cover boy for a Chuunibyou magazine. He doesn’t even use any honorifics when he speaks…”

Kim Dokja frowned at his boss’s words. He couldn’t really deny the specifics, but he found himself generally displeased that she had such a poor impression of his soulmate as his employer.

“Those are small idiosyncrasies.” He tried to dismiss his boss’s statements. “Overall, he makes the impression of a competent employee.”

Han Sooyoung froze from where she had been leaning back in her chair, looking up at the ceiling and grinding her teeth, suddenly turning her eyes on Kim Dokja instead.

Not so startled by his boss’s odd behavior, Kim Dokja kept his neutral expression as Han Sooyoung analyzed something about his face.

“Oh, god.” Han Sooyoung made a grave expression. “There’s something wrong with you, isn’t there?”

Kim Dokja’s expression was flat as he heard these words that didn’t make much sense.

"Obviously you've been off lately," the expression his boss was making was a little scary, "but I didn't think you were this far gone..."

“What are you talking about?” He asked.

“You’re not dying, are you?” Han Sooyoung ignored his question, asking one of her own.

“I’m not-” Kim Dokja tried to say.

“I can’t believe you’re dying and you didn’t tell me, your beloved boss-nim.” Han Sooyoung now put on the appearance of being quite distressed at his supposed passing. “If capitalism is going to kill you, at least hand me a knife to do it directly instead of falling on the sword of our terrible company health plans!”

“Boss-nim you can’t be seri-”

“Kim Dokja, if you’re dying it’s fine.” Han Sooyoung stopped him from finishing again, wiping a phony tear from her eye. “You don’t need to change your whole personality and be kinder to people while you’re still here. You can keep being a bastard, really.”

“Shut up.” Kim Dokja said.

“Ah, that’s more like it.” Han Sooyoung’s tone admitted to her goal being only to tease him.

This was a moment where a lazy guy like Kim Dokja might try to engineer his escape from his boss’s office, but because of the factor of Yoo Joonghyuk it was actually more advantageous to simply endure this small talk with his superior rather than go back into the war zone of the office.

“... You know, I wasn’t kidding about you seeming a little off today, though.”

On any other day, hearing such a probing comment would lead to a deflection from Kim Dokja’s end. Some counter attack that would distract Han Sooyoung by inciting her anger instead of her concern.

Kim Dokja didn’t want to be kicked out of the office just then, though.

For this reason, his only response was to say to his boss, “I don’t know what you mean by that.”

Han Sooyoung’s eyes narrowed.

“It’s just that… I mean don’t you usually hate guys like that, too?”

“...”

“... Now that I think about it, actually, you’ve been acting strangely since that interview on Friday.”

“...”

“...”

There was a moment of hesitation in the conversation, before Han Sooyoung looked away from him to ask her question.

“I mean, nothing off happened at the interview, right? He didn’t, like, threaten you, or something like…”

“No.” Kim Dokja didn’t let his boss finish that thought, appalled that her opinion of his soulmate was already this low after just one meeting.

“Pfft, right, of course not.” Han Sooyoung changed tracks almost instantly at his dismissal, seemingly so relieved by not having to have a serious conversation with him that her tone easily slipped back into annoyed teasing. “Clearly you were just seduced into giving him all our money by that celebrity face of his.”

On second thought, Kim Dokja thought he might detest this joke as much as the strange concern of his boss’s that he had to dismiss.

“... Did I mention I was going to visit the HR department on my next break?” Kim Dokja attempted some tried and true threatening of his own.

It seemed to work, as Han Sooyoung seemed alarmed by his declaration.

“H-hey I was just joking! Lighten up.” She attempted to placate him.

“You know that’s-”

“ Yes I know that’s what every asshole says in every drama with some sort of plot about sexual harassment in the workplace.” Han Sooyoung admitted to her cliche before Kim Dokja finished pointing it out. “But what I said was actually funny! I mean, it’s not like you even get attracted to people like that…”

Kim Dokja made a face. “What’s that supposed to mean?” He asked.

“Well, come on, I mean,” Han Sooyoung shrugged her shoulders as if being forced to explain something that was obvious, “You just don’t get interested in other people like that, you know?”

“Like what?”

“Do you- well.” Han Sooyoung started looking at him analytically again. “Oh. I guess I just assumed. I mean when any of us talk about dating you just sit silently and make odd faces… and you hang out with attractive people all the time and never ask anyone to… but maybe you’re just not interested in us because you don’t like women?”

Kim Dokja assumed that Han Sooyoung was referring to herself and Yoo Sangah who he went out with for drinks as what was usually his one social event of the week. It was still hard to grasp what his boss was getting at, however… she seemed to be criticizing him for not participating properly in their conversations?

“I like women just fine.” Kim Dokja felt a little offended. He might not be a perfect gentleman, but he certainly wasn’t a misogynist on the level of the higher ups his boss always sent him to deal with.

“Ah. Right. Okay. Nevermind.” Han Sooyoung seemed quick to dismiss the topic all of a sudden, turning away to pull out a file from the shelf in her desk. “Uh, anyway, you’ve stood here doing nothing for long enough.”

She tossed the folder onto the desk towards him and Kim Dokja reflexively picked it up.

“Those are the new employee’s files.” She told him. “Go orientate them or whatever.”

Ah, wait, what?

“Shouldn’t someone with some more expertise be the one to do that?” Kim Dokja attempted to dodge the new responsibility that would throw him back out into the world of Yoo Joonghyuk.

“Don’t be lazy.” Han Sooyoung rebuffed his concern as if she expected it, beginning to shift her focus to some work she was pulling up on her laptop. “All you have to do is show them their schedule and then make them start playing. Then you can just sit back at your desk and do nothing like you’ve always wanted to.”

Damn. Kim Dokja opened his mouth as if to utter out another paltry excuse, but Han Sooyoung’s statement of his laziness was almost impenetrable. His own efforts to be a completely useless office worker were working against him, as there was now no way to deny his boss’s claim without going against that very image… and there was certainly no way to explain why he would even do such a thing just to avoid Yoo Joonghyuk. His boss already seemed to think poorly of the guy and Kim Dokja shouldn’t do anything to push that concept further in the mind of his soulmate’s employer…

So instead of saying much at all, Kim Dokja just sighed out of that open mouth.

“Haaa… My life is so complicated.” He complained, tucking the orientation files under his arm and pulling out his phone.

Han Sooyoung didn’t respond to this statement, but she grimaced up at him from the paperwork she was beginning to tuck into.

Kim Dokja, for his part, pretended not to notice his boss’s vitriolic gaze, tapping around on his phone to check if any serials he was following had updated recently as he walked out the door.

Of course, nothing was updating at that time of day. It was a shame, as a few of them had left off at rather nasty cliff hangers…

When Kim Dokja exited Han Sooyoung’s office, he looked up from his phone.

Down the hallway, he saw the door to the new QA department office.

…

Kim Dokja supposed, as he took a slow, even pace down the hallway, that opening that doorway would be a lot like checking for an update, in its own way.

Yeah. Yes, that was right.

He was just checking for an update from one of his favorite stories.

It would be a lot like watching one of Yoo Joonghyuk’s live streams. He was fine making comments in the chats of those, so what was so different about standing on the sidelines here?

…

Besides, like, basically everything.

I can’t do this. Kim Dokja’s thoughts reflected the winning side of his mental tug of war as he came to a stop in front of the office door.

There were too many things that could go wrong… and even more things that had already gone wrong for him to be here having to make this decision in the first place.

Yes… it really would just be smarter to ignore his superior’s orders and walk away, wouldn’t it? Leave the team to their own devices and go reread his favorite webnovels instead. That could probably suit him just fine, seeing how lazy and unmotivated he-

“Do we really have to wait?” Kim Dokja found another negative trait of his in his tendency to eavesdrop, as he heard Lee Jihye’s voice through the door.

“The Director-nim said to wait for further instruction.” Another familiar voice chimed in.

“Ugh! Who cares.” Ah, that whiny voice was also easily recognizable. Kim Dokja heard the squeak of a chair rocking back and forth as Kim Namwoon continued to complain. “It’s not like we don’t know how to play video games already. Are we just being paid to be bored to death??!”

The squeaking of the rolling chair going back and forth increased with frequency.

“Hey cut that out you idiot!”

“But Jihyeee…”

“Don’t call me-”

“If you break that chair,” all others fell silent as the deepest voice Kim Dokja knew suddenly chimed in, “It will stay broken. We are not paying this company to repair or replace it.”

…

The squeaking of the chair stopped.

And all of the emotions swirling in Kim Dokja’s gut stopped, too.

It was because he had suddenly remembered that they didn’t matter.

Any feelings he had about this, the anxiety, the nerves, the tentative excitement…

Kim Dokja let all such notions drain out of him.

The only thing that remained was the important fact that this was the way things were. His feelings served no purpose but to get in the way of the task that he knew must be completed by him and him alone.

I just need to go in there and accomplish my tasks as a supervisor. Kim Dokja reminded himself.

As he opened the door to the office, Kim Dokja imagined that he wasn't, really. That even though he was crossing into the room, he was still taking the wall that stood between himself and the members of Pacheonmaeng with him. Even though their eyes turned to the door as he entered, they couldn't really see him there, only the projection of the person they would assume him to be.

"Hello." Kim Dokja spoke in his plain, monotone voice. "Welcome to Minosoft."

Kim Namwoon seemed to become a little agitated upon hearing his words, trying to stand up as if to confront him once more, but he sat down rather suddenly with a yelp.

It was easy to assume that Lee Jihye, who was sitting in the desk across from him in the 5 desk island, had stomped on his foot, or something of the like, in an attempt to stop him from embarrassing the team.

Kim Dokja let his eyes scan over the entire room for a moment.

"It seems I can already put names to three of your faces." Kim Dokja calculated the amount of information he ought to be aware of at this point in time, turning to address the one member he hadn't yet crossed paths with. "You must be Lee Hyunsung-ssi?"

"Ah, that's right!" The bear-like man who occupied the end table of the island closest to the windows nodded a little sheepishly. "You must be Kim Dokja-nim?"

Kim Dokja felt the emotion of surprise flicker somewhere in his mind far away, but the feeling was quickly stomped out.

"The Director-nim must have mentioned I would be supervising. But I'm just her assistant, not your superior, and we're around the same age." He clarified these facts both for the sake of himself and Lee Hyunsung who seemed nervous about corporate life. "You can call me Dokja-ssi."

"Alright!" Lee Hyunsung nodded his head again with the same enthusiasm. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Dokja-ssi!"

A part of him wanted to smile, but Kim Dokja merely nodded instead, before looking down and thumbing through some of the papers he held in his hand.

These sorts of feelings seemed to be the hardest to distance himself from. It was difficult not to show any uncharacteristic care towards these people that Yoo Joonghyuk's story had so endeared him towards.

Lee Hyunsung in particular was an important figure.

He, like Kim Namwoon, was also a person from his previous company that Yoo Joonghyuk offered a spot on his new company, Pacheonmaeng.

Unlike Kim Namwoon, however, Lee Hyunsung was someone who had worked not as a junior professional gamer, but instead as an assistant at the company campus's gym while he was temporarily on leave from the military.

Yoo Joonghyuk initially only interacted with him while still recovering from his wrist injury, and even though Kim Dokja knew his soulmate must have been jerkishly oversensitive about his reasons for working out, Lee Hyunsung still did his best to reliably support him in that time when Yoo Joonghyuk still had very few people around him.

A lot of his workout statistics would often contain a note next to them with some sort of blurb about the assistant trainer, which Kim Dokja always thought was a little touching of his soulmate to note.

When Yoo Joonghyuk recruited him to Pacheonmaeng, Kim Dokja almost dared to hope that he did it for sentimental reasons, wanting to give someone who had been good to him aid in his goal to stay out of the military in the future.

It soon became clear from the way Yoo Joonghyuk wrote about him, however, that Lee Hyunsung was only a valuable asset to him because of his great skill at following directions. Kim Dokja's soulmate was easily able to mold the man's skillset into the kind that he needed for the team.

"Hey Hyunsung-oppa, which one of these modes looks the most..." Lee Jihye whispered something to Lee Hyunsung, leaning around the corner of the desk island to point to his screen.

Kim Dokja couldn't help but think that it was good for Hyunsung to be on the team even if Yoo Joonghyuk didn't appreciate him fully, because his reliable nature was such a good contrast to the more inconsistent Junior members.

He hadn't known what to think when Yoo Joonghyuk had decided the last member of the team would be one not even old enough yet to compete outside of the junior league of WoS. But as Yoo Joonghyuk wrote so many notes about her overwhelming progress in just the first few months of training, Kim Dokja found that he didn't mind that the team would only be in individual player tournaments until Jihye turned twenty.

Back then it had been so good to see Yoo Joonghyuk genuinely invested in the development of this team as he never had been before. He was making sure to build a unit that he could be proud of, not just one that would get him by. It was no wonder that the other three had agreed to this position, even though they probably didn't know exactly what Yoo Joonghyuk needed the money for. It was difficult for a reader such as himself not to feel affection towards how close knit the four of them had be-

"Ugh! Come on, come on, when are we gonna start- ow!" Kim Namwoon was once more mysteriously cut off from his intended statement.

... Well, maybe it was better that Yoo Joonghyuk was closer to some than others.

"We'll begin shortly." Kim Dokja realized that he was still pretending to flip through the papers in his hands. "There's a lot of information about the project."

Actually, as Kim Dokja began to focus more on the document in his hands, he realized that they were just dossiers about the individual members of the team. He had just flipped past Kim Namwoon's pages to Lee Hyunsung's.

Name: Lee Hyunsung

Age: 30

Height: 187 cm

Occupation History:

... I already know all of this. Kim Dokja realized, as his eyes scanned down the list.

He took his thumb out from between the pages and let the papers fall back into the stack.

On top was some simple directions for the interview.

At the end of the itinerary was a short, personal note.

Kim Dokja, it said, if you spell check this, I will fire you.

Ah... Good old Boss-nim.

"Okay." Kim Dokja looked up from the papers as if he had accomplished whatever task they might assume he was completing. "We're starting with the game mode called 'Dark Castle.'”

If it were him making this description he might go into the function of the map in the story mode of the game, but as it was he was just repeating what he read off of Han Sooyoung’s instructions.

“It's a mode reminiscent of RPG dungeon crawlers, but with some specific rules and the game mechanics you're most likely aware of from the brief test play during the hiring process."

Brief? Kim Dokja realized as he read the document in front of him that the play testing was apparently not supposed to take up the majority of the interview time.

"You should see a shortcut to the program on your screens."

Kim Dokja heard the clicking of left mouse buttons as it seemed all the employees followed his instructions and booted up the dev model.

"Oh." Something occurred to Kim Dokja that wasn't in the notes he was given. "By the way, some of you may not have seen this depending on which mode you played in your interview, but this dev model has the character customization screen for the reader character."

Kim Dokja had by this time migrated the short distance between the door and the spot directly behind his own desk. Unfortunately for him, it seemed that Kim Namwoon had selected the desk next to him in order to be across from Lee Jihye, who sat on the other side of the island presumably to be next to her mentor.

Which meant he was the one right across from Kim Dokja's...

...

Kim Dokja glanced over the shoulder of Kim Namwoon, who had rolled his eyes when Kim Dokja had explained the character select screen. He had already managed to configure an avatar with only the most chuuni options selected, seemingly without any regard for the way it affected his stats.

... Of course, the stats were not too bad. It was because Han Sooyoung herself enjoyed playing with similar character builds...

Kim Dokja couldn't stand to watch any longer as the Chuunibyou general selected the option to give his character shark teeth, seemingly only for the purpose of aesthetics. He decided that it was within his purview in the role of supervisor to go around observing the other players' monitors.

Lee Hyunsung seemed to still be scrutinizing the instructions, so Kim Dokja walked around his end of the desk island to peek at what Lee Jihye was doing.

She seemed to have taken a more strategic approach, selecting the teen girl build that favored the speed and special attack stats over others. The sailor suit skin she chose for the character seemed to be her only attention to personal flair, as Lee Jihye had once confessed in a livestream that she preferred nautical themes in her character builds because her soulmate was bizarrely a big fan of movies about oceanic warfare.

“Pretty smart, right?” Lee Jihye seemed to notice Kim Dokja scrutinizing her screen from behind her and took the opportunity to boast.

Kim Dokja nodded in affirmation. “Well done.” He said. “You seem to already have a pretty good handle on this mechanic.”

Except...

“If you wouldn’t mind, could you take a closer look at some of our more unusual features as well? For instance, even adjusting the shape of your character’s teeth is something that can affect your stats.” Kim Dokja phrased his recommendation as if he were asking a favor.

“Whoa, really?!” Lee Jihye began fiddling with the slider that sharpened her character’s teeth, seeming to make the decision of whether she wanted the attack bonus at expense of the stamina that normal teeth gave. “I mean, uh, obviously I already knew about this feature, but I’m happy to test it out for you.”

Ah, this kid … It was once more difficult not to note how Lee Jihye’s attitude was evidence of being her mentor’s student…

“Hey Jihye!” Kim Dokja once more found it easy to stamp down such feelings as Kim Namwoon spoke up. “If you put pointy dragon teeth on your character like mine we can be a team!”

…

Lee Jihye ultimately made the decision to switch her character’s teeth back to normal, even if it affected her min/max strategy.

For some reason, Kim Dokja also felt annoyed at Kim Namwoon’s words.

“Actually,” he found himself saying, “The matchups for this mode have already been decided.”

“What?!” Kim Namwoon’s angry gaze suddenly found Kim Dokja once more. “Who are you to tell us how to do our jobs? We’re the ones who are professional gamers.”

“It's not up to me.” Kim Dokja lied, coming up with some bullshit on the spot. “Teams were assigned on random draw for statistical purposes. The Director-nim needs them to convince marketing why you four are even employed here in the first place.”

Kim Namwoon’s gaze darkened. “What's that supposed to-”

“Kim Namwoon.” Yoo Joonghyuk, the jerk, almost disturbed the barrier Kim Dokja had set between himself and the man with the harsh tone of voice he directed towards his subordinate.

“Tch.” Kim Namwoon shut up and moodily went back to customizing his character, clicking his mouse very aggressively.

“The match up is Yoo Joonghyuk with Lee Jihye.” Kim Dokja went on as though he hadn't been interrupted. “Kim Namwoon is teamed with you, Hyunsung-ssi.”

“Right, got it.” Lee Hyunsung seemed a little surprised at Kim Dokja’s address, but responded affirmatively nonetheless.

Kim Namwoon, of course, grumbled, sinking down a little lower in his seat as he found he wasn’t paired with either his team leader or his fellow junior member.

Of course Kim Dokja had been lying about the team assignments being randmoized, but it wasn't as if he had split Kim Namwoon from Lee Jihye just to be spiteful.

In fact, the teams Kim Dokja had just decided on would actually be far more beneficial to Kim Namwoon than the ones he had asked for.

If he were on a team with Lee Jihye, the two would lose almost immediately, because while Lee Jihye preferred to strategize war game battles to end a round with few concise strikes, Kim Namwoon relied on raw power rather than strategy. He would no doubt go out trying to gather the most powerful map resources right away, leaving behind a frustrated Lee Jihye to come up with her own strategy, which would leave the two of them separated and vulnerable to Yoo Joonghyuk, who would just pick them off while Lee Hyunsung happily maintained a base somewhere else.

The teams Kim Dokja had picked would be the most beneficial for everyone.

Yoo Joonghyuk was obviously an all rounder, whereas Lee Jihye's bag was building hyper specialized movesets. So he could provide the cover she would need while figuring out her strategy. Meanwhile, Kim Namwoon was the type to always choose the most offensive moves possible, even if they had drastic rebound effects on stats a game had such as HP, MP, speed, etc. Assuming he would select moves like that, it would be good for him to learn to work better with Lee Hyunsung who leaned towards gathering defense and buffing skills, tanking damage while dealing out consistent, moderately strong attacks. He was a good match for covering Kim Namwoon while he recovered from whatever damage he had dealt himself.

Of course, even though he was the only partner that wouldn’t get Kim Namwoon killed by Yoo Joonghyuk right away, the Chuunibyou general had never showed Lee Hyunsung the proper amount of respect…

“Pff, whatever! Get ready Captain, I’ll beat you to the ground all on my own!” Kim Namwoon demonstrated this very trait right then, acting as if partnering with Lee Hyunsung meant he was going solo with his insolent claim.

“Huh? What are you saying, you arrogant brat?” Lee Jihye tried to deadpan her insult as Yoo Joonghyuk would have, but the trace of her grin could be easily seen as she teased her colleague. “You think you can even touch master? Even I could kick your ass, the way you take to new games like a fish to land.”

Ah, while this was all well and good…

“The focus of the first round in the Dark Castle game mode isn’t pvp.” Kim Dokja pointed out. “You should have read that in the dev note with the rules in the start menu. Didn’t you see it?”

Lee Jihye blinked in surprise. “Oh, uh…”

Kim Namwoon squinted his eyes, also appearing to have missed something.

It seemed that the two junior members had rushed to the character creation right away…

Kim Dokja sighed at their behavior, although it wasn't really a frustrated sigh. He was still fighting how charmed he felt about the similarities the junior members he had imagined from Yoo Joonghyuk's stories shared with these two in reality.

“Ah, it’s alright, Dokja-ssi!” Lee Hyunsung spoke up as if trying to assuage some annoyance he seemed to perceive in Kim Dokja’s demeanor. “I still have the rules pulled up here.”

Kim Dokja in reality was far from annoyed. In fact, he was now thinking fondly something along the lines of, Ah, good old reliable Lee Hyunsung…

Of course, this was an emotion that could not breach the surface of Kim Dokja's smoothed out expression. His face remained flat as he nodded towards the former soldier.

Lee Jihye and Kim Namwoon hadn't waited for any confirmation from him at all, having already scooted their wheeled chairs around the sides of Lee Hyunsung's desk to peer at his screen.

While Lee Jihye flopped her head onto Lee Hyunsung's shoulder to get a good angle, Kim Namwoon went low, leaning forward to look until his head was just barely hovering over Lee Hyunsung's left hand on the keyboard.

It was a scene that looked much more like two children trying to see what their older brother was up to on his computer than a professional interaction between people who were only coworkers.

Lee Hyunsung for his part didn't look the least bit perturbed, smiling at the two of them with a good humor sparkling in his eyes.

"See, it says here that the first round has us fighting Mobs across a rather large map." Lee Hyunsung pointed to something on the screen with the hand that wouldn't hit Kim Namwoon if he lifted it. "I think the reason they have that is because the way the game works is we gain the 'skills' and, uh, 'stories' by fighting certain monsters or earning coins to buy them from the shop feature. I think it's called the, uh…"

"The 'Dokkaebi Bag.'" Lee Jihye chimed in.

"Ah, that's right!" Lee Hyunsung nodded.

"Ok yeah, I get that." Kim Namwoon brushed off Lee Hyunsung's explanation. "But what's this stuff about rankings… there can't already be national rankings and high scores if we're the first ones play testing the competitive mode right?"

"Tch. Can't you even read?" Lee Jihye was much quicker to point out Kim Namwoon's mistake than Kim Dokja, who had fallen completely into the role of observer at this point.

"That rule is saying that there is a ranking of the monsters we're fighting in the first round." She pointed out. "On our screens we'll always be able to see the scores of the top ten strongest 'incarnations' in the map. Killing the stronger monsters gives you more points."

"Oh… the 'incarnations' thing has to mean that players show up on the leaderboard the same as the mobs?" Kim Namwoon observed something correctly for once.

"Yes, that's right." Lee Hyunsung nodded agreeably once more. "It seems like only players who get on the leaderboard by the end of the round get to play round two, which is a basic combat round between teams…"

"Wait, what?!" Kim Namwoon lifted his head slightly to scrutinize the rules. "We have to be in the top ten?? How is that possible?"

"I mean, it seems pretty straight forward." Jihye lifted her head from Hyunsung's shoulder to shrug, looking towards her fellow junior member dismissively. "You fight lower level monsters until you have the skills to beat one of the ones in the top ten. Then you get to take their ranking. They're just mobs so it doesn't seem that hard."

"Ah, that must be how it's similar to an RPG dungeon crawler." Lee Hyunsung commented. Perhaps he had been a fan of such games before he ended up joining the military. "Having to beat one of these monsters by the end is like preparing for a big boss fight at the end of a level. Except you sort of get to choose the difficulty by aiming for a certain place on the list and choosing the monster to fight accordingly…"

"Then is it sort of a race to go after the number ten monster?" Lee Jihye asked. "After all, it seems like that's the easiest meal ticket to the second round…"

"That makes sense if you need a wimp's way out." Kim Namwoon commented. "That's real smart Jihy-Ack!"

Kim Namwoon was cut off with a yelp as Lee Jihye hit him roughly on the bicep.

"Who are you calling a wimp?" The glowering look she gave her coworker made it seem as though the title of demon fit her much more aptly than the guy rubbing at the spot on his arm.

"Heyyy," Kim Namwoon whined a little bit, "All I meant was that it's a good backup plan if you can't take on one of the bigger ones…"

"That's not what I'm saying, though." Lee Jihye frowned, crossing her arms. "I'm saying that since the only incentive to be in the top ten is to move onto the next round, it makes sense that we'll end up competing to take the easiest ticket."

Ah, that's not quite right … Kim Dokja understood Lee Jihye's thought process, but noted that she should have read the rules a little closer.

Although Kim Dokja was thinking this, it didn't occur to him to point out Lee Jihye's misunderstanding. It was out of habit as a reader that he instead interpreted this moment as some sort of foreshadowing, imagining the reveal at some point in the gameplay that would show the error of her assumption…

"That's not quite right."

Kim Dokja was suddenly jolted back to reality, having to work a considerable bit harder at maintaining his neutral expression as someone who had not spoken in a while stepped in to clear up the misconception.

"Read the rules again." Yoo Joonghyuk instructed his teammates. "Players who end the round in higher positions get helpful rewards."

"Oh…" Lee Jihye deflated a little as her error was clarified, eyes turning back towards Lee Hyunsung's screen.

"In addition," Yoo Joonghyuk went on, "Every monster is given a ranking, even besides those in the top ten."

Kim Dokja turned to look towards Yoo Joonghyuk as he spoke. His arms were crossed and he was leaned back in his rolling desk chair just slightly.

"Say that you somehow managed to slay monsters with enough points to be in the twelfth and eleventh positions." Yoo Joonghyuk proposed. "What would happen then?"

"Ah… So it's possible to get more points than the monster in tenth place by killing a few monsters of similar strength." Lee Jihye responded to Yoo Joonghyuk's question thoughtfully as a diligent student would.

"That's correct, yes." Kim Dokja decided to confirm Lee Jihye's statement, if only because he was trying not to get too caught up in just watching the conversation unfold.

He almost regretted this as the eyes of the three at Lee Hyunsung's desk were suddenly turned to him, but thankfully the hair that would have broke his camel's back just turned back to his own computer.

"Ultimately pvp is not incentivised early in this first round." Kim Dokja managed to clarify his point from earlier. "It is generally much easier to deal with the NPC incarnations than other players, so unless you already have your place on the board it's a waste of your time."

"Oohh." Lee Jihye was suddenly nodding as if finding this new information much more interesting than her earlier assumption. "But maybe someone who is on the leaderboard would target someone who isn't in order to impede them from earning points… or players already in first and second place might target each other in order to compete for the top spot."

"Those appear to be possible scenarios, yes." Kim Dokja confirmed once more. "It's great of you all to be thinking about these things." He complimented. "It would be good of you to think about which mechanics you find either difficult to understand or too easily exploitable so that you can note it to the development team at the end of each play test."

"Sure thing!" Lee Jihye grinned, looking rather pleased with herself as she spun her chair back over to her own desk.

Kim Namwoon, however, was still scrutinizing the rules.

"Hmm… if we make it to round three I'm pretty sure I could beat you at least, tin man." He commented.

Kim Dokja thought that was a rather insulting thing to say to one's teammate, but Lee Hyunsung responded with good humor.

"If you think so then I'll do my best to get us there." He said with a smile that was somewhat indulgent.

The rule that they hadn't read out loud was about the scenario of the third round. The winning team from the combat in the second round would then have to compete with one another for the 'Demon King' power up.

Once a player nabbed the 'Green Jade' and managed to use it, the combat system where lowered health bars lead to players being 'knocked out' would change to a sudden death between the two remaining players, and the one with the power up would have the advantage of a new health bar as well as an improved range of skills and attacks.

This event was actually based off of one in the original story mode... There was a route that led to a very dramatic and touching scene where the Regressor sacrifices himself as the demon king to save the Reader.

Kim Dokja had found this part so tragic that he convinced Han Sooyoung to add in an alternate route where the reader sacrifices himself instead to gain early access to the lower demon realms, arguing that it added replay value and ignoring how Han Sooyoung groaned about having to then write even MORE alternate scenes of future events with the regressor being present instead of super dead.

"Hhhn…" In regards to the final round, Lee Jihye put her hands together and bowed slightly towards Yoo Joonghyuk. "Master," she pleaded, "When we get to the last room, perhaps you could go a little easy on your favorite junior member…"

"Hey, don't act like you've already won the first two rounds!" Kim Namwoon called out challengingly as he moved to settle back behind his own desk.

His statement seemed a little ignored, though, as Yoo Joonghyuk responded to Lee Jihye instead.

"The only thing I can promise," he declared, "Is that I will act quickly."

Ah this prideful jerk… of course he would treat even his own disciple this way…

"The Director-nim would probably like for you to play it through multiple times today." Kim Dokja theorized. "We're trying to catch as many bugs as possible, so you'll be prompted to type out a bug report after each round. There should be a shortcut to pull it up in game as well."

Kim Namwoon took on a sour expression as he seemed to whenever Kim Dokja spoke, but the rest of the team nonetheless seemed to make some final adjustments to their characters.

Lee Hyunsung hadn't started his yet because of carefully reading the rules, but he managed to put it together fairly quickly since he followed his habit of simply min-maxing for tank stats.

“Okay.” Kim Dokja looked at the clock. "It's a quarter to nine right now." It had taken longer for them to all get settled in and orientated than he had thought, considering that his shift had first started just a little past 8 am. "You should be able to get through this game mode by ten." From what Kim Dokja remembered, the first round was about half an hour to get through and the remaining matches were however long the players could last. "At that point in time you may all feel free to take your fifteen minute breaks."

The first forty five minutes of the day had gone by quickly, Kim Dokja reassured himself as he sorted out the team's schedule in his head. Getting to the break at 10 am would only be 1 and ⅔ times the amount of time he had already spent at work. And then just 1 and ⅓ that time until the lunch break at twelve and 4 times that time to the other fifteen minute break at 3:30 and then just another 1 and ⅓ that time until clock out at five…

…

Kim Dokja's eyes darted to the clock again.

The minute hand hadn't shifted since he had last checked the time.

…

"Please start now." Kim Dokja’s voice came out surprisingly bland as he pleaded in vain hope that the time would go faster watching his favorite gaming team play his favorite video game than it had while he was calculating shift times.

"Alright!" Lee Jihye set her fingers into the optimum position for reaching the game’s hotkeys with just one hand, drumming just the tips over the keyboard casings. “I’ve been ready to play this game since last Thursday.”

“Ugh, finally!” Kim Namwoon whined a little as he followed Lee Jihye’s example.

Kim Dokja could see from where he once more stood behind his own desk that a ten second countdown to the beginning of the round had begun on Kim Namwoon’s screen.

“Hey Jihye, whoever gets out first buys the other lunch!” The foolish guy suddenly spout out one of his characteristic challenges as the timer went from five seconds to four.

“You’re on!” By this point Lee Jihye seemed to forget the hard stance she tried to take on Kim Namwoon’s informal way of addressing her.

“We’ll see about that…” Kim Namwoon responded challengingly, but the comment didn’t seem to have much bite behind it. If he didn’t know any better, Kim Dokja would have thought the young man was only making the bet to have an excuse to take his coworker out to lunch, but unfortunately he knew enough about Kim Namwoon to know that the guy would always hold his unearned sense of confidence in his ability to win a ludicrous challenge over any other ulterior motive.

… Case in point being when Kim Namwoon tried to attack Yoo Joonghyuk right at the entrance to the Dark Castle.

“Oh shit, what the fuck?!” Kim Namwoon smashed the keys even though his character was clearly immobile due to the ‘knocked out’ status that fighting Yoo Joonghyuk had left him. “One hit and I’m dead? What a shitty fucking game design…”

“Are you an idiot?” Lee Jihye said some words that Kim Dokja wasn’t sure he would have been allowed to say to a new junior employee. “Didn’t you even read the rules at all? Deaths are temporary until the last round.”

“Tch. That’s dumb.” Kim Namwoon ceased punishing his keyboard for his own incompetence to lean back in his chair and cross his arms.

“Here, Kim Namwoon.” On the junior member’s screen, Lee Hyunsung’s character came over and awoke Kim Namwoon’s edgey, 3D rendered monstrosity with a gentle shake of the shoulders. “If you get downed, just call me and I’ll help you up.”

“Aww, that’s a cute mechanic!” Lee Jihye probably witnessed this exchange, as she was currently visible on the corner of Kim Namwoon’s screen attacking the low level demons just within the entrance.

Kim Dokja thought to himself that the animation of one teammate pulling the other up by the hand would be much cuter if the one on the ground didn’t need to have that amount of aesthetic black chains on the character.

“Whatever.” Kim Namwoon’s camera swiveled away from Lee Hyunsung’s character to go after some demons without even so much as a ‘thank you’ from the junior member to his senior.

“Oooh, I forgot how smooth these graphics were…” Lee Jihye made an appreciative statement as some monster slaying sound effects came out from her speakers.

“Hah, actually...” Kim Dokja had started walking over to take a peek at Lee Jihye’s screen, but he was stopped at Lee Hyunsung’s desk by the sound of the man’s voice. “I think I may have already spotted a bug with the visuals on this part of the map… Dokja-ssi, does this clipping seem odd to you?”

“Hmm…” Kim Dokja peered at the limb of the character model intersecting strangely with the weapon Lee Hyunsung had picked up. “A little, yes.”

“Ah,” Lee Hyunsung nodded, “I'll put a note, then.”

“Tch. Don’t waste too much time doing that, Tin Man.” Kim Namwoon’s complaint caused Kim Dokja to frown back in his direction.

“Did you just walk through that wall?” He asked as he spotted Kim Namwoon clipping on the screen.

“Yeah? So what.” Kim Namwoon brushed him off like he wasn’t worth talking to.

This was, of course, how Kim Dokja would theoretically prefer to be thought of by Pacheonmaeng, but there was a certain amount that even someone like him actually had to do their job.

“That's not intended.” Kim Dokja pointed out. “Your position here requires that you report it as a bug.

“Tch, of course you would be obsessed with bugs, Grasshopper man…”

“Kim Namwoon.” Kim Dokja wondered if his own face made the same slightly startled expression that smoothed over to annoyance that Kim Namwoon had as Yoo Joonghyuk spoke to him, but his own face actually didn’t seem to have moved at all.

Kim Namwoon grumbled some more, but ultimately paused to write a snide remark about the clipping wall in the bug report box before going on to bash in more monsters.

After this event, Kim Dokja surprisingly found himself focusing a bit more on his actual job of supervising than just watching the players he liked play the game that he liked. He found that Kim Namwoon was the one who needed the most actual supervision to do his job properly, whereas Yoo Joonghyuk and Lee Jihye were diligent about reporting on their own, and Lee Hyunsung only felt he had to ask the occasional question of his supervisor out of seemingly an instinct to follow orders rather than an actual need of direction or advice.

This meant he was mostly standing in the corner between Kim Namwoon and Lee Hyunsung, which suited him fine as it was the spot on the desk island furthest from the seat of Yoo Joonghyuk.

He did hear the occasional outburst from the other side of the room, however.

“Gah!!” Lee Jihye cried in frustration a little more than halfway through the round. “I keep getting useless skills.”

“Hm.” Kim Dokja made a neutral noise as he walked around Lee Hyunsung’s desk to see what she was working with. It seemed as if Lee Jihye had picked up some cosmetic skills she had gotten after fighting some crossdressing npcs called the Pink Kids. Honestly these were characters whose inclusion in this combat mode was under debate… but there were a few advantages to cosmetic skills in certain combos…

“You know, it might not seem like an obvious part of the game’s mechanics if you just play competitive mode, but the skills you gain in the game are based on the ‘stories’ of the mobs you get them from.” Kim Dokja advised. “So characters like the ones who you just fought who are weak and mostly only have the design trait of being pretty are going to give you skills that only really have the effects of cosmetics.”

“Uh. Okay.” Lee Jihye only seemed to be half interested, as she had already started fighting another monster. “So, like, if I kill this lightning guy I might get a cool lighting skill, right?”

Kim Dokja shrugged. “Sure.”

Lee Jihye didn’t seem that happy with his answer, but her face lit up when she managed to get a rather difficult sword combo on the first try.

“Yes, finally!!” She exclaimed as the monster died, leaving behind the transcendent level skill Electrification .

Oh, that’s a good one… Kim Dokja moved to check on Kim Namwoon again, half lost in thought thinking about how hard that skill was to acquire in the actual story...

“Wait. Whaaaaat?” He looked back to see Lee Jihye looking exasperatedly at her screen. “It says the skill is incompatible with my character model… Don't tell me it's a bug?”

Ah, right… She wouldn’t know this skill’s special condition, it was a hidden piece...

“Sorry, no. It's just a rare skill.” Kim Dokja tried to explain without giving it away. “There are some very powerful ones that have strange conditions like that.

“Ghhh…” Lee Jihye seemed unhappy, but she just moved on, eventually managing to get her hands on some boat themed skills that she seemed to like a lot better.

Getting close to the end of the round, Yoo Joonghyuk was, of course, miles ahead of everyone else at number 1 on the leaderboard, and Lee Hyunsung was solidly number 4, but Lee Jihye and Kim Namwoon seemed to keep trading second and third place between one another as they killed other monsters.

Yoo Joonghyuk eventually took up the sensible, teammate-supporting strategy of keeping Kim Namwoon from getting any more points while Lee Jihye solidified her spot.

“What the fuck!?” Kim Namwoon called across the room as he started spamming his keyboard to let his character get up. “Captain, stop killing me! Gah!! I'm going to murder you!!”

“Kim Namwoon, if you come to the base I set up you can get the points you-“ Lee Hyunsung tried to strategize, but his teammate cut him off.

“What do you think I’m trying to do, tin man?” He rudely addressed his well-intentioned senior. “I can’t exactly move when someone keeps KILLING me every five fucking seconds!!!”

Soon the round was basically over, with Li Jihye firmly in second place. She didn't seem to have any thoughts of going for the top spot, though, as Yoo Joonghyuk was still miles ahead. In fact, her character on the screen didn't seem to be doing much of anything as the rest scrambled for last minute skills to give them the advantage in the next round.

"Uh, hey, mister supervisor guy?"

Kim Dokja looked up from her avatar on the screen to see that in real life Li Jihye had raised her hand up like she was asking a teacher a question.

"Could we take a break before the second round?" She asked. "I drank a huge iced coffee this morning and kind of need to, uh, take care of it."

"Oh." Kim Dokja found himself checking the little schedule he had calculated out in his head before he remembered something. "Actually, this game can't be paused mid-round, because it's intended to eventually be played over the internet…"

"Gah… what???" Lee Jihye looked back at her game. Her character was standing in one of the spots to enter the arena of the next round. The countdown clock at the top left corner indicated that only a few minutes remained.

"Er, how far away is the bathroom?" She asked him with her eyes still focused on the screen.

"Just down the hall." He replied without thinking. "Go left from the breakroom."

Kim Dokja then shut his mouth, hoping that Yoo Joonghyuk hadn't been listening too closely when he revealed that his hiding spot wasn't very far away at all.

Lee Jihye looked at the door, then back at the clock on her screen.

Then her eyes suddenly fixed on Kim Dokja's again.

"Ahjussi, I'm going to run for it." She told him, already getting up. "Can you just make sure I don't die for a sec? Ok, thanks, bye-"

Lee Jihye didn't wait for his response, dashing out of the room before he could even open his mouth.

She must have had a lot of iced coffee… Kim Dokja thought. As abrupt as that interaction had been, it was a little interesting. Even though she had been rather severe with Kim Namwoon about formalities earlier, the way she approached her bathroom break was strangely casual. Maybe having her first experience at a gaming company had given her a different idea of formalities in the workplace… There was also obviously the fact that if he were only reading a story where someone like Lee Jihye was a character, he probably wouldn't see something about a bathroom break or a preferred drink like that...

… This analytical side of him shouldn't be at the front of his mind, though.

Kim Dokja's eyes went to the character on Lee Jihye's screen whom he was charged to watch over.

He stopped himself from then darting those same eyes over to Jihye's teammate whose desk was next to hers.

It felt to him that it would be uncomfortable to sit down in Lee Jihye's chair, considering the fact that she would be back soon, so he just stood back watching the timer on the screen.

Unfortunately, Lee Jihye didn't return before it hit zero.

"Damn it!" Kim Namwoon swore as he got his incarnation in front of the gate where the rest of the avatars had been standing for a while with their entrance tickets just before the time was up. "I'm still in third…"

"At least you got to the gate in time." Lee Hyunsung offered some words of comfort to his teammate.

As the cut scene transitioning to the next round started up and the two continued to talk, Kim Dokja heard the clicking of someone typing quickly on their keyboard.

Before he could stop himself, his gaze flickered over to the source of the sound.

Yoo Joonghyuk had opened up the bug report notepad as soon as the dev-mode button had appeared for it during the cutscene.

Kim Dokja found himself surprised at the speed with which Yoo Joonghyuk typed. He had already typed enough to cause the need for a scrollbar on the big report window.

What was he writing about? … it seemed as though he was noting bugs that occurred all throughout the round, as if he had saved them until the round was over to report.

Kim Dokja couldn't help but watch him type, even if the story of the glitches he saw throughout his playthrough couldn't exactly be called interesting…

He thought that it was safe to look at him now, because Yoo Joonghyuk was too focused on typing to notice his gaze.

"Do not be concerned." Kim Dokja remained calm as Yoo Joonghyuk suddenly started speaking to him in that low voice of his. "I can perform adequately in the team round while Lee Jihye is gone."

"... Sounds good." Kim Dokja gave an affirmative response even though his feelings were a bit conflicted. Of all of his gaming skills, teamwork was the one Yoo Joonghyuk needed to work on the most. But then again, Kim Dokja didn't really want to have to go looking for Lee Jihye, or have to operate her character in her place, so Yoo Joonghyuk's jerkish statement worked out for his purposes at the very least.

After the cut scene ended, Yoo Joonghyuk closed the bug report window, and the prize selection started. Being the first place winner, Yoo Joonghyuk would be guaranteed a choice of S or A rank skills, whereas second place would be guaranteed at least a C level skill with chances through to S level, and so on with each successive rank having a lower chance of high level skills.

There was only a minute to choose from a randomly generated list, so it looked like Lee Jihye would probably miss out on this part.

Kim Dokja looked to her screen to try and pick out a good skill for her, but it seemed as though her luck really was quite bad with skills this round…

…

Kim Dokja noticed a certain skill.

It was comparatively low level to some of the B rank skills and the A rank skills that definitely wouldn't fit Lee Jihye's character build, but…

What was that electric skill that she picked up again? And the cosmetic skill…

Kim Dokja wished he could check his skills, but it wasn't possible to open from the skill selection menu… maybe he should leave a note of his own to the dev team about that…

Ah, well, even if Lee Jihye might end up hating him for it later, Kim Dokja had to take the risk. If he was right, then even someone like him could win the third round, which seemed impossible otherwise considering…

…

Yoo Joonghyuk kept true to his word. As soon as the second round started, he did more than 'hold his own,' easily knocking out Kim Namwoon who had, of course, charged right at him.

Lee Hyunsung actually managed to cast some buffs on his junior before he charged the second time, and he got some good hits in before Yoo Joonghyuk dispatched him again.

While he was doing that, however, Lee Hyunsung had managed to store up a charged attack skill and fired it at Yoo Joonghyuk.

The guy jumped over the attack and shielded as gravity took him back towards the trajectory of the attack. This move was executed well, but the shield skill didn't last the duration of the attack, and Yoo Joonghyuk took some damage.

Afterwards, Yoo Joonghyuk began to multitask between beating down Kim Namwoon and intermittently forcing Lee Hyunsung to switch to shielding whenever he tried to use his charged skill with focused attacks.

The entire time he managed to keep the fighting away from Lee Jihye's avatar who still stood by the entrance to the room.

Kim Dokja didn't touch the arrow keys, but he was leaned over the keyboard typing. He was writing out a dev note about viewing skills and possibly adding the ability to pause in the dev model, and afterwards, just out of curiosity, he opened Jihye's skill list to see if he really had made the right call at the skill selection.

As he did so, he heard some blasting sound effects. He looked over to Yoo Joonghyuk's screen to see that he had emerged victorious, with his health a bit too low for comfort, but with still no K.O.s to his incarnation.

Lee Hyunsung declared a good game while Kim Namwoon whined incessantly.

Kim Dokja didn't pay much attention to their exact words, as he realized Lee Jihye still hadn't gotten back from the bathroom yet. Considering that the third round wasn't on a timer like the first two, it was likely she wouldn't be back before it ended if Yoo Joonghyuk were to go on testing the fight against his teammate without her operating her character… but on the other hand, if they just waited for her to get back it would be just that much longer until they were all allowed to take their breaks…

Kim Dokja made an executive decision, then, sitting down in Lee Jihye's spot.

Yoo Joonghyuk looked up at him, then. The guy hadn't looked at him in a while despite being in the same room for almost an hour. Kim Dokja thought that some distant part of him must be getting chills from having those deep black eyes on him.

The surface of his face, however, was still.

"It would be a waste of company time to not test the third round right now." He explained himself. "I'll just take the place of your opponent until that junior member returns."

"Hah!" Kim Namwoon had stood up from his desk and come around to look at Yoo Joonghyuk's screen and made an exclamation at Kim Dokja's statement. "As if you could even put up a fight against Captain, subway grasshopper…"

"Ah, you're probably right." Kim Dokja replied nonchalantly as he selected three skills to his 'Bookmark' hotkeys.

The first one he used right away. It was a cosmetic skill that Lee Jihye picked up from the 'Pink Kids' called 'Sex Change.'

Instead of a teen girl in a sailor uniform, Kim Dokja maneuvered a character that looked like a boy in a student's uniform to stand in front of where he knew the jade spawn point to be.

When the cutscenes of the jade rising out of the ground did pop up, Kim Dokja found himself smiling, slightly.

"Don't go easy on me, though." He warned Yoo Joonghyuk.

He could only tell when Yoo Joonghyuk's eyes returned to his own screen when the jerk's incarnation darted forward to land the first hit on Kim Dokja's character.

It seemed obvious right away that Yoo Joonghyuk's strategy was to hit lock Kim Dokja with fast strikes until he was knocked out, so that he could grab the jade without any hassle.

The problem with that was that Yoo Joonghyuk's hits only came fast enough to prevent the action of pulling out Lee Jihye's sword. It was a good thought if one assumed that Kim Dokja was going to fight like Lee Jihye would have, without access to good combat skills and relying on the high level weapon they had collected together in the first round.

But it seemed that in the end, Yoo Joonghyuk's overconfidence would be his undoing…

Kim Namwoon seemed to think the opposite, jeering Kim Dokja as he watched from Yoo Joonghyuk's screen.

"Pfft. What did you mean, 'Don't go easy,' Grasshopper man?" He smirked. "You're not even putting up a-"

There!

With his health at just barely under half, Kim Dokja made his move before Kim Namwoon could even finish his sentence.

Yoo Joonghyuk had taken just too long to hit him on the back swing, and Kim Dokja was able to activate his two remaining bookmarked skills at once.

The second on top of 'Sex Change' was another cosmetic skill, the one he had selected as a prize from the first round.

'Miniaturization.'

Time seemed to slow down as Kim Dokja's character shrunk, narrowly avoiding the return of Yoo Joonghyuk's blade.

That wasn't the only reason he used this skill, however.

The true purpose behind cosmetic skills was related to the storymode of the game. Every high level attack skill was associated with a constellation or returnee who was a character in the game. Looking similar physically to the incarnation of a constellation or returnee made it easier to use their skills, often giving attack bonuses or special effects.

In the case of the third skill that Kim Dokja used, the original creator was a tiny man from Main Scenario 6. Thusly, having the small body that 'Miniaturization' granted was a requirement for the skill's activation, and using 'Sex Change' to become a guy, like the original user was, made the powerful skill easier to use at a higher level.

This skill was known as 'Electrification.'

The name made a lot of sense, because as soon as Kim Dokja attacked Yoo Joonghyuk's character, white lightning filled the screen.

When it finally cleared, Yoo Joonghyuk's incarnation was knocked out against the wall, and Kim Dokja's was holding the jade, health low from recoil damage.

"What the fuck!?!?" Kim Namwoon yelled a little too loud to be contained by the office walls. He suddenly looked to Kim Dokja, something new in his eyes. "How did you do that?!?"

Not really eager for the attention, Kim Dokja took his arms off the keyboard and just crossed them over the desk.

Yoo Joonghyuk's brow was tensed, and his fingers spammed the recovery keys in a frustrated manner, but his character still had to take time to recover from the knockout, which was doubled from the stun effect of 'Electrification.' There was no way he'd get up before the jade's transformation activated.

As the green gem's power once more filled the screen with light, the door of the office swung open suddenly.

"Jihye!" Kim Namwoon turned away from the game to greet his coworker. "What took you so long? You won't believe what just happened!"

"Gah," Lee Jihye looked annoyed, walking over to where Kim Namwoon stood on Yoo Joonghyuk's right to whisper to him a little too loudly, "That ugly Ahjussi gave me the directions to the men's bathroom instead of the women's… I had to go to the other side of the floor…"

Oops… Kim Dokja realized his mistake as Lee Jihye said it. At this company, bathrooms were gendered and placed on opposite ends of the floor, for some reason.

"You'll never believe what happened while you were gone!" Kim Namwoon's words weren't rude for once, but he only seemed to be whispering because he was excited to be whispering with Lee Jihye. "He just beat Captain to the Demon King spot! Now you might have a chance to-"

"You're joking!" Lee Jihye turned away from Kim Namwoon completely and rushed over to look at her own screen, where the demon king transformation was happening presently. "Ahjussi! Tell me how you did that! Did he let you? He must have let you. Except… Master doesn't let other people win just to let them win… not even his little sister either…"

Lee Jihye seemed truly puzzled by this, as if it couldn't possibly occur to her that some random guy might be a better gamer than her mentor.

To be fair, she was right. Kim Dokja had only pressed three buttons to win himself the jade. It was only luck that the right skills had been gathered, and that Yoo Joonghyuk had decided to fight at close range when the main disadvantage of 'Electrification' was the miniscule hitbox of its point of impact. If he had known about the formidable combo he had acquired, Yoo Joonghyuk surely wouldn't have let him get so close.

Of course, there was no real talent for the game on the part of Kim Dokja.

He said as much, as well.

"I actually don't have much of a talent for video games." He said. "That's why the four of you were hired on. I just read scripts."

"You literally just beat Captain though." Kim Namwoon frowned towards him as if he were a suspicious person.

On the screen, the transformation cutscene had ended and Yoo Joonghyuk had gotten up. The demon king transformation added a health bar on top of the original incarnation's, but after recoil damage from extended probability usage, Yoo Joonghyuk made quick work of it despite the demon king's new stats.

"See? There." Kim Dokja rocked himself out of Lee Jihye's chair and onto his feet, gesturing at the momentarily prone form of the demon king on the screen. "He won that time, so it was a fluke."

"Do you think we're blind??" Lee Jihye grimaced at him. "Your hands weren't even on the keys! You let him kill you!"

Shit. Were they really going to interrogate him about this?

"Eh? What are you talking about?" Kim Dokja let his posture lean back a bit, putting his hands in his pockets. If these junior members were going to treat him like an old man he might as well use it to his advantage and feign ignorance. "Look, he's killing me again."

"You're not even touching the keys!!" Kim Dokja's words seemed to get the response he wanted from Lee Jihye as she got frustrated with him.

"Hmm, well it's your keyboard after all." Kim Dokja pointed out. "Shouldn't you be playing?"

"Come on!" Lee Jihye seemed so antagonized by his teasing that she forgot the veneer of professionalism that had caused her to critique Kim Namwoon and only whisper to him while calling their supervisor 'ugly' earlier on. "Can't you just show us what you-"

"Enough." Kim Dokja only realized that the sound of an incarnation fighting a demon king had stopped when Yoo Joonghyuk spoke up. "Just sit back down."

For a moment, Kim Dokja wondered incredulously if this jerk was so upset about losing that he forgot his opponent was his supervisor, but he realized the comment must have been directed at Lee Jihye when she responded.

"Y-yes master." Her head bobbed up and down slightly as she tried to take her place back in the fight.

Unfortunately, she seemed to have some trouble figuring out her new attack specials, and Yoo Joonghyuk had already gotten used enough to the auto attack patterns that he ended up getting most of the hits in the fight.

It almost seemed that Lee Jihye could turn the tides near the end when she figured out the stat boost to her pre-existing sword skills, but she couldn't get the right angle for her 'Insta-kill' before Yoo Joonghyuk managed to do her in.

"Good work everyone." Kim Dokja complimented genuinely. "After 'probability 'is awarded based on your places in the 'story,' you'll get the last bug report window and you can all take your break."

"Minor antagonist???" Kim Namwoon read the title he had earned from the fight off of his screen. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Hmm, I think they're based on what we did during the game." Lee Hyunsung theorized. "If it's sort of like a novel or fable of some sort, then Yoo Joonghyuk-ssi would be the 'protagonist' who defeated the demon king."

"Oh, that's cool!" Lee Jihye exclaimed, looking to her own screen. "Let's see… ooh, mine says 'Fallen Comrade' and 'Main Antagonist.' Hah, how did I end up with that…"

"Some titles are given out based on achievements." Kim Dokja stepped in to explain from where he now stood behind Lee Hyunsung. "For instance, Hyunsung-ssi has the title 'Loyal Comrade' next to 'Minor Antagonist.' That's because he shielded comrades the most and had the least friendly fire throughout all the rounds combined."

"Oh yeah! Having more of these probably means you get more… experience? Is that what this is?"

Kim Dokja went over to see what Lee Jihye was talking about.

"Not quite." He explained as he spotted the numbers on her screen. "That's called 'probability.' It's a feature that's intended to be used to determine matchups in online play eventually, but it's also supposed to be an expendable currency."

Kim Dokja walked back over to his own desk, glancing at the notes Han Sooyoung had given him to check something.

"I'm not sure if it carries over in this dev model, but theoretically you'll be able to spend it to waive penalties and requirements on certain skills." He continued. "That's part of the reason we're worried about testing the leveling of the game competitively, because it's an experimental system that originates from the story mode of the game."

"Ohh, so I could use that op electrical skill you did without… doing whatever it is you did?" Kim Namwoon guessed.

Kim Dokja shrugged. "Pretty much." He said.

"Whoa!!!" Lee Jihye who was now leaning over to peek at Yoo Joonghyuk's screen exclaimed suddenly. "Master, it looks like you got a lot!!! You have three titles?"

Yoo Joonghyuk squinted at the screen as if he were still trying to make sense of the screen in front of him. Kim Dokja could imagine the titles he had received simply from having watched him play before. Regardless, though, the big money ticket for probability was the role of 'Protagonist.'

"It's considered significantly harder to kill the demon king as a regular player than to kill another player as the demon king." Kim Dokja explained. "So naturally, the title of 'Protagonist' grants more advantage than the role of 'Antihero' that the demon king would win."

"Ah, so if you're a particularly good player it's actually an advantage not to take the jade…" Lee Hyunsung pointed out.

Kim Dokja couldn't stop himself from glancing briefly in Yoo Joonghyuk's direction before replying.

"Essentially, yes." Kim Dokja said. "It's actually based on a moment in the story where one comrade becomes the demon king to let the others kill him and pass through to the next scenario more easily." He wondered if he should have spoiled that before quickly shaking off the concern, as no one else seemed to care.

"There's a lot of information from the original story that is helpful in competitive mode." He went on. "For instance, the requirement for using that electric skill was becoming a 'small person,' because it's original user in the game was a 'small person.'"

Kim Dokja wondered if he really should be saying this much, but no one had interrupted him yet and he wanted them to know how important the original story of the game was in all of its elements, even if they didn't have to play it.

"There are more skills with strange requirements like that." Kim Dokja went on while trying to think of some way to tie it back into their work. "Some are restricted by the 'sex' or 'age' of your character, but you can transcend the restrictions when you have 'probability.'" Maybe if he went for this angle… "Please try to find these combos by experimenting. The dev team is looking at the statistics of skill usage to see if they need to adjust certain parameters to make gameplay more leveled and interesting."

"Aww, man…" Kim Namwoon frowned. "Can't you just tell us what they are?"

"Sorry, no." Kim Dokja actually had no idea if that was the case, he just didn't want to be hounded for information by overly enthusiastic junior members. "Please navigate to the bug report windows and then clock out for your ten minute breaks."

He had walked around the desk island and ended up behind his own seat once again.

"After that, don't expect me to supervise as closely." He said. "It seems like you all basically know what you're doing. I'll just be here to answer questions."

"Alright." Lee Hyunsung nodded at him. "Thank you very much for your time, Dokja-ssi."

Kim Dokja pretended he didn't see Kim Namwoon roll his eyes at his teammate's words.

"The pleasure is mine, Hyunsung-ssi." He replied politely. "I have confidence that the director hired the correct team for this job."

Lee Hyunsung seemed genuinely invigorated by these words, as he nodded before looking back at his screen.

Kim Dokja probably would have convinced himself to believe his own words too, if not for the fact that as everyone's heads tucked down to start writing out their bug reports, he had to sit down at his desk across from Yoo Joonghyuk.

It was hard not to feel as though the man was looking at him, thinking about him, forming an opinion of him that was completely out of Kim Dokja's control, even though his face was half hidden behind his computer monitor.

Kim Dokja couldn't convince himself to take out his phone for fear that he would somehow accidentally open up a certain text file, so he ended up spending the moments leading up to the break just staring at himself in the blackened screen of his monitor.

Were the bags under his eyes really that deep, or was it just the darkness of the screen?

It'll get easier , Kim Dokja wanted to tell his own reflection. Eventually, he would get used to being coworkers with Yoo Joonghyuk.

.

.

.

By the end of the week, however, Kim Dokja still found himself counting down the minutes until his breaks.

He's been here for two hours, he thought to himself that Friday morning when the clock on his monitor finally turned to 10 AM on the dot, so there's five minutes left until the break. That's only one twenty fourth of the amount of time he's already been here, so it will go by quickly.

Kim Dokja ignored his own internal critique of this technique, which was that for the majority of the last two hours he actually had scripts to read over and edit. Obviously the time went by a lot faster when there was actual work to do. Regardless, Kim Dokja absolutely needed to believe no matter what that staring blankly at his computer screen for the next five minutes was a normal and not at all crazy response to the fact that whenever he looked over that screen there was a scant chance that he might meet eyes with Yoo Joonghyuk where he sat across from him.

The worst part of the past four days was that Kim Dokja had already done that a couple times. Accidentally made strange eye contact with these people from his favorite story. Bumped into them in a weird way. Commented something they didn’t quite seem to follow.

And then afterwards, when his automatic panic response wore itself out, everything would be fine. Normal, even.

The most wretched experience was knowing that he was overreacting… and not being able to stop himself anyway.

So Kim Dokja let out an even breath as he watched the seconds on the computer clock count upward. With it, he let all those unbearable thoughts about himself and his situation float away.

Naturally, this led him to start thinking about Yoo Joonghyuk again, recounting to himself the most recent updates from that week.

His soulmate seemed to be adapting to his new work environment quite easily. In fact, after his first day at Minosoft, he had written out some detailed analyses of the game mode he had been playing as well as his own performance.

Tested a new game. Seemed RNG heavy at first, but randomized elements lose variability as players gain experience. It was my junior and I against three others. Then I faced her in a 1v1.

I won.

Set backs: suboptimal hotbar setup, gap in combo knowledge, limited build...

Reading this would, of course, trigger a somewhat nostalgic feeling for Kim Dokja, who could remember many such analyses from the past. This was the way that Yoo Joonghyuk wrote when he was picking up a new game and felt he needed to improve his performance. 

Of course, it was the kind of thing that was much more common in the early days of his correspondences, and honestly Kim Dokja was a little surprised to see that Yoo Joonghyuk had really been thinking that much about the game he was hired to play here. 

It was interesting how working with Yoo Joonghyuk, however unfortunate the circumstance was, gave him some insight at how competent Yoo Joonghyuk might appear to others, while the story on his arm relayed only his missteps and potential improvements. This revelation made Kim Dokja consider some segments where he had thought Yoo Joonghyuk might really be struggling with his current gaming endeavor a little differently… Although, even if the conflict might have been heightened past the point of accuracy, it still added to the narrative of the story in a way that the reader could find compelling, whether or not that was the authorial intent…

Authorial intent… Kim Dokja had to remind himself that with Yoo Joonghyuk the concept was not really applicable. Maybe he had forgotten from having to question such a factor in reading so many pages of Han Sooyoung’s work as of late, but Yoo Joonghyuk wasn’t really a writer in the classical sense.

No… It was much more likely that Yoo Joonghyuk was just genuinely that hard on himself. He might be a bit of a frustrating character because of it, but Kim Dokja’s soulmate was the kind of person who took his shortcomings and losses to be no one else’s fault but his own. 

In fact, if Kim Dokja thought to think back to his own reactions to Yoo Joonghyuk’s words, he had been a bit concerned that playing a round against his soulmate that first morning might cause his own name to be hazardously featured within the story. 

Yoo Joonghyuk, however, was reliably predictable in this manner. To him, opponents were very rarely memorable. They were more like a hurdle to jump over than an actual competitor. Of course, if he tripped on one he would think to himself of what he could do to correct his own form and make a better jump. Someone like Yoo Joonghyuk saw no use in noting down exactly which hurdle he had missed and swearing some sort of vendetta against it. It was, after all, only a hurdle.

This would obviously be annoying to most gamers pitted against the man in competition, but Kim Dokja found it a comforting reminder of the leeway he had as somebody who would be obviously unremarkable to Yoo Joonghyuk in all aspects except for the one he couldn’t ever possibly know about.

His eyes shifted from the clock for a moment, glancing towards where he had been reflexively pulling his sleeve down.

The cuff of his black work button up had somehow slipped  to cover the knuckles of the hand that was supposed to be comfortably resting on his mouse as if he were doing something on his computer other than watching the time, not holding his own sleeve in a death grip.

Kim Dokja glanced at Kim Namwoon to make sure his eyes were still on the bug report he was typing up, once more thinking how unfortunate he was to have ended up in the seat next to the chuunibyou and across from Yoo Joonghyuk, before subtly readjusting the sleeve so that it rested normally on his wrist.

This action was necessary because, once again, Kim Dokja was reflexively overreacting to the situation at hand. The only markings on his arm at that moment were some thoughts about what his soulmate would buy for Yoo Mia’s school lunches next week, and they were far too close to the elbow for him to worry about anything peeking out of his sleeve. It was, in fact, much more suspicious to look like he had something to hide...

“Hey, Supervisor-ahjussi.” 

Kim Dokja got even more annoyed with himself as he had to remember not to be surprised at Lee Jihye’s voice being directed at him.

The junior members had been referring to him pretty rudely as if he were an old man, but he hadn’t corrected them forcefully enough the first time and so had to accept it was how he was going to be addressed from now on.

“I finished my report from the last round.” Lee Jihye informed him as soon as he looked her way. “Can I take my break now?”

Kim Dokja blinked, looking back at the clock he had looked away from only moments ago. 

Now, it was actually reading 10:06.

“Yes.” Kim Dokja got out of his own chair in as insouciant a manner as he could manage upon noticing the time. “Everyone, feel free to take your ten as soon as you’re done.”

He stretched a little as if unhurried, before going to the door in order to escape to his own break.

Lee Jihye actually stayed back, leaning over to look at what Yoo Joonghyuk was typing out in his own report.

Kim Dokja didn’t wait to hear if she said anything to him, just walked out the door.

In the past few days, he had managed to observe the general pattern of the company’s breaks. For the most part, the stretch between the department’s break room and their office was compromised completely, as whether or not the four of them would go back and forth between them was extremely variable. 

On Monday they had spent only one break actually in the breakroom, as on their first ten they had stayed back in the office while the junior members goofed around with the character customizer, on their lunch Kim Namwoon had to take them all out somewhere from losing his bet, and then on their second ten they had gone to the break room while Kim Dokja stayed back in the office.

Tuesday, however, had been an entirely different story. Both tens were spent in the breakroom, and while Kim Dokja had thought that the four of them had once more gone out for lunch, he found that he had made a fatal miscalculation when he went to the breakroom and discovered Yoo Joonghyuk already sitting at one of the tables eating the lunch he had brought from home. 

Kim Dokja couldn’t help but feel especially idiotic at that time, as it was completely obvious that Yoo Joonghyuk would never make a habit of going out to eat with his coworkers. Not only was he trying to save up a lot of money at the moment, but unless they went to his favorite restaurant, ‘First Murim,’ every day, Yoo Joonghyuk wouldn’t be able to eat anything because he found other restaurants’ food simply “Not delicious.”

Because of his error, Kim Dokja was forced to sit in the breakroom table furthest from Yoo Joonghyuk and eat his meager lunch in silence only a few meters away from the man just to keep up the appearance of normalcy.

Without undergoing this durressful situation, however, Kim Dokja wouldn’t have been able to come up with the game changing strategy that, by Wednesday, he had been able to put into effect.

In a move that Kim Dokja honestly wished he had thought of much sooner, he rearranged his breaks to take his lunch first, with his two tens occurring afterwards. This effectively gave him two real breaks: about fifty minutes on his lunch where the company members would be confined to the office working while he could go wherever he liked, and another fifty minute break when they went out for lunch while he could just stay in the office and relax on the clock.

The only kink in that plan had then been to work out where exactly ‘wherever he liked’ was. There were a few options that were obviously out of the question. He couldn’t go to Han Sooyoung’s office because Han Sooyoung would be there, and thanks to her treacherous villainy he couldn’t go to the men’s bathroom on the same floor as the new QA office either… The breakroom was an obvious candidate until one realized that it would be on the way from that office to the bathrooms that the members of Pacheonmaeng could leave for at any time… which would actually eliminate basically the whole side of the floor…

Having conducted this experimentation on Thursday, Kim Dokja was actually quite settled on his destination by his break that Friday morning. 

It was an old hiding place of his, from before Han Sooyoung hired him. Before he had even met the woman, actually. 

A cabinet in the breakroom on the floor of his old department. He used to crouch in there so he could read webnovels while pretending to do overtime to get out of after work dinner parties.

Kim Dokja had to spend a few minutes of his precious break time traveling up the several flights of stairs between that department and the one he currently worked in. He still knew the path fairly well, because it was one that Han Sooyoung was averse to traveling to herself for a few obvious reasons, so she forced him to play courier with any ‘paperwork’ that she needed to send.

Of course, Kim Dokja should be somewhat averse to that department as well, considering that his goal was to find a place to be alone and recuperate. But this move was worth the risks and expenses if it meant that Han Sooyoung would have no way of outing any knowledge of his new sanctuary…

He felt especially as though he had made the right move as he finally reached the break room where his destination lay, a little out of breath. According to his phone he still had fifty three minutes left on his break, and, much to his delight, the room was empty, save for the sound of some brewing coffee trickling from the machine to the pot in the corner of the room.

It had been practically perfect… the ambient noise was just loud enough to cover the shuffling noises that would occur as he shoved himself into the cabinet...

At this point, Kim Dokja began to make such noises, as he opened up the cabinet’s door and raised his foot to step into the protective cavity within.

Until the one thing that could go wrong did go wrong.

“D… Dokja-ssi?”

At the familiar voice, Kim Dokja was quick to look over his shoulder, leaving him head turned back with one foot in the cabinet and his hand on the door.

That was when he locked eyes with the very entity inhabiting this floor which imbued it with its naturally Han Sooyoung repellent properties.

Yoo Sangah stood at the entrance of the break room staring at his strange position with a surprised expression on her face.

“Oh, Yoo Sangah-ssi.” Kim Dokja straightened himself out slightly, but couldn’t think of how to retract his foot from the cabinet without drawing attention to it and instead just tried to adjust himself to look natural. “I didn’t realize you took your breaks at the same time as mine.”

In fact, from the amount of times Han Sooyoung had made him courier messages to the woman, he had been almost entirely sure that her first break was always scheduled an hour after his own. And Yoo Sangah wasn’t the type to slack off and take her break early like he was...

“Ah… well, I don’t, usually.” Although she still looked at his actions with a quizzical expression, Yoo Sangah’s politeness worked to his advantage as she answered his question instead of making inquiries of her own. “It’s just that I had to come in very early to help the finance department head on his video call with some foreign executives. I’m taking my break early so I can get a cup of coffee…”

Wow. As expected of Yoo Sangah… It was probably because of her hard work at studying languages that she was chosen to attend a call with foreign executives…

Kim Dokja knew he had taken too long musing about this when Yoo Sangah’s expression furrowed slightly, approaching concern as she opened her mouth.

“Dokja-ssi do you need some… assistance with—”

“Ah, no, I can reach it just fine.” Kim Dokja enacted the usual backup plan  for when, in the past, he’d found in this situation while avoiding his office work: stepping up as if using the cabinet as a ladder to reach what was on top, even though the top of the cabinet would have been within his reach from standing on the ground.

He could feel Yoo Sangah’s quizzical eyes on his back as she witnessed his charade, but didn’t turn around to look at her, focusing on the top of the shelf as if he was looking for something.

Hmm… It seemed that the geography of the office had changed somewhat, as Kim Dokja found that the stacks of random files that were usually atop this cabinet had been replaced with a basket for storing extra coffee grounds and creamers…

“Er, Dokja-ssi, I have a pot on right now.” Kim Dokja turned from where he had already been automatically picking up one of the coffee ground packets to see that Yoo Sangah was looking towards the coffee machine, which had been brewing since before he entered the room. “There’s more than enough to go around if you need a cup.”

He mentally cursed himself for this observation, noting that the next time he attempted to enter a breakroom like this he should take a brewing coffee pot as a signal not to enter. The brewer would obviously return momentarily for their drink…

Kim Dokja looked down at the packet in his hand, scrambling for an excuse.

“I was just checking the expiration dates.” He replied as if that were not an explanation that made him sound even more odd. “Hmm. This one will last until August. We won’t have to restock for a while, it seems.”

“Ah… That’s… good.” Yoo Sangah’s bewildered tone had flattened out slightly, and Kim Dokja assumed that she had come up with her own reason for his actions, whatever they may be.

There was a pause in the conversation that might have developed into an awkward silence had the coffee maker not begun to beep.

Yoo Sangah turned around to attend to it, so Kim Dokja could return the coffee grounds and sheepishly clamber down from the cabinet while still escaping her notice.

“Come to think of it, I’ve never seen Dokja-ssi drink coffee before, not even as a new hire,” Yoo Sangah said. Most likely just to make some conversation. Kim Dokja felt bad for her; as he was coming down from the panic his own awkwardness had set upon him, he realized that she was in an even less favorable position than he was, coming into the break room to enjoy a cup of coffee on her own only to be forced to make conversation with some strange guy who worked under the soulmate who she had a somewhat contentious relationship with…

“Ah, well, I hear it's bad for teeth in the long term.” Kim Dokja came up with another excuse, wondering if that was the real reason. It was certainly one of the things his soulmate had cited a couple times as reasons for his own diet, as he seemed to look down upon far less muscle-bound former teammates for ruining their health with long nights and energy drinks. At one point, Kim Dokja may have been paranoid that coffee stains were transferable through the soulmate bond, but that didn’t make much sense honestly… 

“—ue. I think it’s smart to save caffeine for special occasions, like this early shift of mine— Oh, do you want any cream or sugar?” Yoo Sangah had continued speaking as Kim Dokja thought of this, and even poured him a cup in addition to her own.

“No, thank you.” Kim Dokja nodded gratefully for her kindness, before bringing the coffee cup to his lips. It wasn’t as though he especially liked the strong bitter flavor of coffee as opposed to the taste of cream and sugar, it was just that he liked the things he ate to taste how they were supposed to taste in his mind. This was why the most intolerable food of all to Kim Dokja was the tomato, which was a vegetable with such a variable flavor and texture that sometimes it would be sour and sometimes it would be sweet, not ever tasting like a vegetable should at all.

The coffee was good. Dark as expected, and without any of the ‘surprise’ flavors he had come to know Yoo Sangah to favor over the terms of their current acquaintanceship.

…Speaking of which.

“I have to apologize for not being present to assist in entertaining our superior for the past few Thursdays in a row,” he admitted as the thought crossed his mind. “It occurs to me that this is the first time we’ve crossed paths in a while.”

Yoo Sangah gave him an odd look that, after a moment’s consideration, he deduced to mean she thought something he said was a little funny.

“Nevermind it Dokja-ssi, we all get busy from time to time.” Her smile grew refreshing as she continued to address him, and Kim Dokja noticed that her teeth didn’t have the coffee stains her soulmate’s did.

… And why would they, anyway? It was obviously a bond that was only in the marks on skin…

Kim Dokja took a longer draw of his coffee on the second sip, feeling the heat of the freshly brewed drink burn at his throat as he swallowed.

“I think that the circumstances just make our encounter here more fortuitous. It’s a good time to catch up!” Yoo Sangah’s smile remained steadfast as she spoke to him, the glint of humor to her eyes still alight as she walked over to one of the breakroom tables. “Come to think of it, Sooyoung-ssi may have mentioned you were taking your breaks at odd times lately?”

Kim Dokja found himself covetous of Yoo Sangah’s ability to be so congenial in an encounter she most likely found irksome. He himself still felt awkward, following her lead to sit down and coming to terms with the fact that he would not make it to his cabinet hideout.

“I suppose that’s true,” he replied to Yoo Sangah’s comment as if it weren’t that big a deal that his boss seemed to have caught on to this abnormal behavior of his. “I’m actually on my lunch break right now, oddly enough.”

“Oh, really?” Kim Dokja wondered if he had misstepped slightly in making casual conversation, but Yoo Sangah’s eyebrows only inclined slightly at his comment. “I always thought Dokja-ssi preferred a kimbap roll for lunch, rather than a cup of coffee…”

“Well, I’m not really using the time to eat lunch.” Kim Dokja pushed past this factual statement, assuming that Yoo Sangah was only showing the polite amount of concern that his strange actions warranted. “It would be more accurate to say that the break is for the sake of my mental health. To increase my overall productivity, of course.”

He thought that he was doing a good job of using some corporate buzzwords to explain himself politely, but Yoo Sangah made another strange face at him.

“...Dokja-ssi, are you even clocked out right now?”

Wow. The doubt in Yoo Sangah’s voice was almost enough for Kim Dokja to feel abashed.

He didn’t bother responding to the inquiry, instead taking another sip of his coffee. He hoped that Yoo Sangah’s impression of him as a lazy office worker would fill in the gaps and cement itself better than any excuse he’d make up could.

“Ah, well..” Yoo Sangah took a conspicuous sip of her coffee as well, eyes momentarily glancing towards the side of the breakroom where the roast grounds were kept next to the machine, as if remembering something there.

When her eyes returned to Kim Dokja’s, she gave another refreshing smile, then changed the topic in that skillful way of hers, as if nothing had been said before.

Kim Dokja couldn’t help but be impressed once more, as the two of them began to chat idly about some company business she had attended to recently. It was actually a fairly decent distraction from Kim Dokja’s own workplace woes, as Yoo Sangah had a way of storytelling that made her engaging to listen to and easy to nod along with when she got into it.

It was probably that heroine’s aura of hers. Hearing her speak about business was like reading some necessary exposition in the latest chapter of her office drama, and Kim Dokja found himself falling into the role of background character without having to think as much about it as he usually did, despite the office drama genre not being one he preferred…

… Although come to think of it, there was one novel he had kept up with a while ago that had an interesting setting. He had stopped reading it around the time he began script editing for Han Sooyoung because the plot had become somewhat repetitive and low stakes, but the initial premise was good. It was about a hero of a fantasy world who lost his soulmate in a great war and made a wish to a dragon that he could live with his soulmate comfortably in another world, one without war… and naturally that setting was one where the famous war hero was forced to be a middle manager in an office for the sake of supporting his soulmate with a stable income… There were some compelling themes about duty and love, but the comedy that mainly came from the duality between the experience of war and the workplace was sort of depressing at times… ah, that was probably why he stopped reading it… 

“—date yet Dokja-ssi?”

“Hm?” Kim Dokja realized that Yoo Sangah had asked him a question while his thoughts had wandered. “Date?” he asked, latching onto one of words he had managed to hear to pretend he had been listening while still asking for clarification.

“Ah, I suppose she didn’t tell you about it, then.” Yoo Sangah had a conflicted expression on her face, and Kim Dokja felt guilty as he realized she had been trying to entrust to him some information that troubled her while his mind wandered to the web novel updates he could be checking right now. “She probably got it all out of her system last night, considering how long she was talking about it…”

“Oh, I see.” Despite knowing himself to be a terrible conversation partner, Kim Dokja attempted to engage with this point. “Another online date gone wrong?”

“Seems like it.” For all that Han Sooyoung failed to have appropriate workplace boundaries between personal and professional, she seemed to keep most of her complaints of romantic troubles for when Yoo Sangah was present, as Kim Dokja assumed she knew he had no words to contribute on the matter. Yoo Sangah, however, seemed to have the impression that it was a topic that they had both been subject to and endured together, sighing exasperatedly as she went on. “Honestly I don’t know what Sooyoung is expecting from these dating app guys… It feels to me as though people our age really ought to focus on their career first.”

Kim Dokja stopped himself from just humming in agreement, and took a moment to actually weigh what Yoo Sangah was saying against his own impressions of Han Sooyoung.

“...I know that Yoo Sangah prefers novels that are more realistic and deal with themes and philosophies about working society…” Kim Dokja remembered one time being cowed out of mentioning his own fantastical tastes by her mention of Murakami Haruki and Raymond Carver. “...but if one were in the position of reading Han Sooyoung’s work for a living, they might notice some dissimilar preferences of hers.”

“Oh, really?” Yoo Sangah’s expression seemed intentionally reduced as to not give off the impression of interest, but she still let her head tilt to the side slightly, indicating her curiosity. 

“Yes…” Kim Dokja restrained himself from making a face as he remembered one of Han Sooyoung’s earlier works, a webnovel that made him feel particularly unlucky to know the author in person. “...She has a tendency to write characters in a stereotypical soulmate’s romance in the age range most college students fall into. Her current project’s script being about a single 29 year old is somewhat of an anomaly in that sense.”

“...That sounds like Sooyoung.” There was something behind the sigh that Yoo Sangah let out that Kim Dokja couldn’t quite identify. “She’s always been a bit of a romantic. Caring so much about every little thing like that… honestly most people would find it concerning.”

“Hmm.” Kim Dokja hummed at her comment, tipping back his finished coffee to his lips just for the room temperature droplets that remained at the bottom. Interpreting Han Sooyoung as a “romantic” who “cared too much” painted a very different picture from the way he viewed the woman he worked for, but he supposed Yoo Sangah was offering a soulmate’s perspective.

“Ah… don’t tell Sooyoung-ssi I said that.” Yoo Sangah waved dismissively, suddenly feeling the need to refer to Han Sooyoung with a professional distance once more. “You wouldn’t want to restart that old argument.”

“Mhm.” Kim Dokja set his cup back down, playing mum as to the argument she was referring to, although he had some idea of it. It was the central conflict at the core of who Han Sooyoung and Yoo Sangah were, what made them the pillar figures in this office drama of theirs. Present in the argument of whether she would bike or be driven home from drinks, in the fact that Han Sooyoung wasn’t allowed to come bother Yoo Sangah in the office where she worked, in the coffee grounds that were tampered with in a breakroom Han Sooyoung used to visit a little too close to Yoo Sangah’s department… 

An argument that was fundamentally about someone wanting to care for a soulmate who didn’t want to be cared for by anyone.

Kim Dokja remembered being interested in such a story as he observed it. He thought that such a conflict might come to a head after weeks and weeks of nights out drinking, but found that such events only served to shift his own support towards Yoo Sangah’s side. 

“If all I cared about was an easy life, I could have had it,” Yoo Sangah had said to him once when he tried to empathize with some unreasonable demands her superiors had made of her. “My parents had me all set to marry some young company head.”

Then she turned from her drink to look him in the eye, and if every night out with Han Sooyoung and Yoo Sangah provided even further evidence for the arguments that they had been making their entire lives, then Kim Dokja thought that moment must be Yoo Sangah’s thesis statement.

“But that easy life would not have been my life,” she told him. “If I only relied on others, I’d never know the true measure of what I could do on my own. I would never be truly free to know myself as I do now.”

And then she had knocked back the rest of her soju, letting the cup fall back down to the table.

“I’ve always promised myself one thing.” She spoke more to the wall than him, looking at some vague point. “That no matter what…”

Maybe it was the world at large who she addressed, now.

“I will live an ivory life.”

An ivory life. Yoo Sangah’s declaration had two meanings. The word for ivory was ‘sangah,’ so perhaps she had meant to say, ‘I will live the life of Sangah. No one else.’

This was certainly the meaning Kim Dokja took from her words.

And from that moment on, he found himself on Yoo Sangah’s side, unsure what feelings had him considering Han Sooyoung’s perspective in the first place. He thought that she was right, that a person like her should have the right to define her own life with herself as the main character. Make her own choices to decide who she was, rather than fit the role authored for her by the narrative of a different protagonist… 

…Which was the same position he found himself in: hiding out in his old department’s breakroom, avoiding the unpleasant responsibilities that accepting Han Sooyoung’s malicious job offer had saddled him with.

Yoo Sangah, who seemed to understand this at a basic level, skillfully changed the topic back to work-related matters.

“Actually, come to think of it, it’s strange that the protagonist of the Omniscient Reader project would be single by the end of it… Didn’t the marketing team make some projections that romanceable games would do better this year?”

Kim Dokja frowned.

“Oh, am I wrong?” Yoo Sangah smiled at him, and Kim Dokja once more conceded to her conversational skill, realizing she had picked the one topic that would without a doubt cause him to be properly engaged. “I thought that Sooyoung-ssi had to add romanceable routes for a couple characters… what was the main one she talked about… Moon Girl?”

“Moonlight Girl?” Kim Dokja felt incredulous as he scraped his own mind to remember scripts that actually made it to the final game. “Well… I guess she intended to make Moonlight Girl romanceable initially…” Some of the worst scripts with the most ‘kyaaa!’s in his opinion, but he managed to get some of them cut. “...Han Sooyoung ultimately decided it was more interesting to have the relationship in that route be a subversion of a typical meet-cute common in uncreative romance novels by having typical tropes be interrupted by apocalyptic happenstance and with Moonlight Girl eventually having to transcend physical and interpersonal ties to achieve a spiritual form that allows her to reincarnate as the successor of Sakyamuni, which in a way demonstrates the idea of the ultimate power a supposedly passive character can achieve at the cost of the connections to active heroes usually viewed as the limited scope of that power, which especially comes into play when the archetypal roles of a five man band are questioned and applied with parallels drawn between Moonlight Girl and Tang Sanzang in an arc of the story commenting on the culture of pastiche surrounding Journey to the West and what can really be called plagiarism when it comes to historical retellings—”

“Pff.”

Kim Dokja stopped talking. 

Yoo Sangah looked a little embarrassed.

“Sorry, Dokja-ssi, I wasn’t laughing at you,” she insisted. “It’s just, um… Funny to see you get so excited about something, you know? You rarely talk this much otherwise… I was laughing at the contrast.”

“Nevermind it.” Kim Dokja could understand that. He honestly wasn’t the best conversational partner. He didn’t have the skill that Yoo Sangah did to talk about his business without it coming out as massive dumps of information. He would hate to read a story involving himself, as no doubt he would exposit for paragraphs without much break up in between…

“Um... From your description it seems as though Dokja-ssi really has had an influence on the story, though,” Yoo Sangah commented.

“That might be fair to say,” he replied. Most of the time Han Sooyoung acted as though she wouldn’t listen to his suggestions in the least, but he was sure that he had somewhat influenced her to lean away from habits regarding certain cliches when he compared the final scripts she put out with previous work of hers.

“Are there… other romance options, then?” Yoo Sangah brought up the topic from before. “What about the main character’s soulmate, are they in the picture?”

“Not really, no,” Kim Dokja replied. Han Sooyoung had gone back and forth on whether or not to add soulmate elements with a couple different characters, but in Kim Dokja’s opinion it was better for the Reader to not mention a soulmate at all because of how it added to the themes of isolation present throughout the story.

“Oh, okay.” Yoo Sangah looked down at her coffee cup. 

“...”

At her pause, Kim Dokja realized that the conversation had somehow turned somewhat stilted without his noticing… but he couldn’t really trace back where it started or figure out what exactly his next step should be… 

“...You know, speaking of soulmates, I recently read an interesting social psychology article about a study on the soulmate bond in adolescent relationship development.”

Ah, leave it to Yoo Sangah. After only a moment of silence, she managed to come up with a topic change that managed not to sound too abrupt.

“Oh? That’s interesting,” Kim Dokja lied in order to give back the hold on the conversation to Yoo Sangah. Even though thinking about his soulmate was probably the opposite of what he wanted to do right now, he could probably listen to Yoo Sangah talk about the concept abstractly for as long as the rest of her break lasted.

“Yes, don’t you think so?” Yoo Sangah nodded, falling into the role of leading the conversation easily. “It mostly focused on the modern scientific understanding of the connection, which, as you probably know, is currently quite limited.”

“Ah, right,” Kim Dokja replied. “Something about how it’s hard to study since the bond doesn’t last past death.”

“Yes, something like that. Although the mechanics are actually pretty easy to understand from the structure of pigment expressors in skin cells that can be studied microscopically after cell death,” she corrected him gently with some information Kim Dokja was fine to let go over his head. “But the aspect of the study my coworkers found interesting focused on how the bond can still affect the romantic lives of people who don’t end up romantically with their soulmate.”

“Oh, really?” Kim Dokja put some thought into making sure that the interjectory remarks he used in the conversation weren’t too repetitive.

“The ladies in accounting took it as further evidence of ‘fated attraction,’ which I suppose is as fair an assumption as any given the incomplete picture science has…”

“But you don’t believe in soulmates being fated lovers,” Kim Dokja pointed out.

Yoo Sangah looked thoughtful at his comment, but she nodded in agreement nonetheless.

“I just think that the theory the original abstract of the study proposes is more interesting,” she admitted. Kim Dokja assumed from her knowledge on the subject that this was something Yoo Sangah hadn’t bothered speaking about with her other coworkers, already knowing their preference, and so she was now getting it out of her system in front of a mostly neutral party. 

“The theory proposed that because your soulmate is one of your earliest relationships outside of family members, the kind of person they are is going to really affect your social development and the kind of people you end up being drawn to,” Yoo Sangah explained.

She hesitated slightly, before going on.

“For instance, the article referenced a large study in Canada that found women who reported positive relationships with their female soulmates or negative relationships with male soulmates were more likely to go on to date women than women who indicated negative relationships with female soulmates or positive relationships with male soulmates.”

“That’s interesting.” Kim Dokja had circled back to repeating himself in his interjectory repertoire, but found that he actually meant his words this time around. Funnily enough, he thought Yoo Sangah’s statement was true to his own life, knowing that Yoo Joonghyuk was a man who had a poor relationship with a male soulmate in his youth and went on to be happily engaged to a woman. 

“...Although, those women in the study probably have more reason than just that to date other women instead of men.” Kim Dokja commented. 

“Ah. I suppose that’s true enough.” Something was hidden behind Yoo Sangah’s smile again, but Kim Dokja didn’t pay it much mind. “There are a lot of reasons someone might prefer that kind of thing.”

“Yes, lots of reasons,” Kim Dokja agreed. If he were to believe that his soulmate’s interpretation of his gender could have affected whether or not the man had ended up with Lee Seolhwa… the very thought made him sick to his stomach.

“...”

“...”

Ah… Something awkward had come over the room again while Kim Dokja wasn’t paying attention.

Yoo Sangah, of course, seemed to notice before he did, and accordingly came in to clean it up.

“It is interesting though.” Yoo Sangah backed out of the topic, pivoting slightly. “Did Dokja-ssi mention at one time that he had a poorer relationship with his soulmate than most?”

Unfortunately, Yoo Sangah touched on a sore subject, though through no fault of her own considerable conversational abilities.

“Yes, he’s terrible,” Kim Dokja complained. He was surprised at the emotionality in his tone as he knew he was speaking with some obfuscation, but he supposed that he was due a little bit of venting after the week of perilous encounters he had with the man. “Every time I see him I just want him to go away. It’s been that way since the time we first met.”

“Oh, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have brought it up…” Yoo Sangah backtracked slightly and Kim Dokja suddenly felt quite guilty.

“No, no. Nevermind it."  Kim Dokja found that his tone easily flattened itself out, as he reminded himself of the reason that he shouldn't try to share his troubles with Yoo Sangah in the same way that she occasionally shared hers with him.

In his own mind, Kim Dokja had a hard time remembering that the genre of his life’s story was a lot darker than that of most of the people around him. 

The greatest violence he could do against someone with a 'ivory' life such as Yoo Sangah was force her to play a sympathetic ear to a story such as his own…

…

"That's all in the past now." Kim Dokja insisted, trying to ease the downward tilt of Yoo Sangah's usually refreshing disposition.

"Ah, well, if you're sure." Yoo Sangah's smile quirked upward hesitantly, and Kim Dokja felt as though he had met the obligation to lift her concerns. "I was just going to point out that Dokja-ssi seems to dislike the idea of a romance plot in Omniscient Reader when I brought it up."

"Ah." Kim Dokja could see the point earlier in the conversation from which Yoo Sangah was drawing a correlation. "I suppose it would support the study if my bad soulmate relationship caused me to dislike romance."

Despite making this statement himself, he didn't utilize it for any further introspection before refuting it.

"Unfortunately, I actually feel neutral towards most romance plots," Kim Dokja admitted. He could even acknowledge that his favorite story in particular had a romantic development he had grown to appreciate. "Contrary to the assumption, I merely lack interest for the way that Han Sooyoung in particular writes her romances."

Yoo Sangah laughed at the comment made at her soulmate's expense.

It was a little bit of a sad laugh, though.

"I can't fault you for that," she admitted, eyes casting down to look into her empty coffee mug. "I have a hard time following them as well."

Her statement was a little confusing, considering that Yoo Sangah had never made it a habit to read through any of her soulmate's works previously. In fact, during their near-weekly outings she sometimes asked him to describe or summarize some of them to her while Han Sooyoung was in the bathroom, something to give her some teasing ammo for her soulmate’s inevitable return.

But maybe in this moment, the indiscernible emotion that dragged her gaze down to her coffee cup had been behind her eyes back then as well.

Kim Dokja wondered if spending more time with Yoo Sangah would eventually lead him to be able to read that something that was always lying behind her eyes.

But it seemed like he wouldn't find out today.

A timer on Yoo Sangah's phone went off.

Kim Dokja was surprised to feel disappointed rather than relieved when a somewhat startled expression drifted onto Yoo Sangah's face.

"Ah, I better get back to work," she excused herself, standing up and picking up her coffee cup.

"Oh, sorry to take up all your time…" Kim Dokja felt bad as he realized he had wasted Yoo Sangah's whole break with awkward smalltalk.

"No, it was good to talk to you Dokja-ssi." The smile Yoo Sangah directed towards Kim Dokja somehow seemed genuine. "Talking with you always leaves me feeling refreshed."

Kim Dokja thought that was a funny pleasantry for Yoo Sangah to utter towards him, seeing as she was no doubt describing the way that most people felt when they conversed with her rather than the other way around.

"When you take your real lunch break, make sure to get something to eat other than coffee!" Yoo Sangah advised as she put her own mug in the sink. She paused for a moment to flick the tap on and off in a quick rinse, before going on to say, "Actually, Sooyoung-ssi implied that there may be some ramifications regarding your employment otherwise…"

"Ah, I see." Kim Dokja could all too easily imagine the Yoo Sangah of last night's drinking party sitting next to a Han Sooyoung — red-cheeked, emptied cup of soju in hand — threatening to fire him through her drunken grumblings. "Thank you for the tip, Sangah-ssi."

She nodded. 

"Take care," she bade with her hand on the door.

"You too," he replied.

And then she left.

…

Kim Dokja still had about 40 minutes left in his break.

He didn't begrudge the time lost talking with Yoo Sangah, though.

That was because honestly, her arrival and departure had suddenly left Kim Dokja feeling calmer than he had all week. Sitting comfortably in a break room chair with an empty mug between his hands. He didn't know why that would be, considering how the range of topics had varied, but talking to Yoo Sangah had made him feel almost… normal? No… that wasn’t it…

…  

Well… it was probably the coffee making him calmer, right? Caffeine had the tendency to make Kim Dokja feel a little drowsy. And he still felt warm from drinking it, too.

As he contemplated this, he let himself absorb the calming atmosphere of the empty break room in silence. 

It actually occured to Kim Dokja in this moment that planning to hide in the cabinet had been maybe a little bit too much. A little too odd even for his panicked brain to have schemed up.

Once again, when given the space to reflect, Kim Dokja realized that he had been overreacting to Yoo Joonghyuk’s presence in the office. 

His gut twisted as these thoughts came into his mind. Somehow the mortification his miscalculated actions warranted only occurred to him in moments like this, when it was too late to just not have taken them. Rescheduling his breaks, moving breakrooms, hiding in a cabinet to avoid a conversation like the one he just had with Yoo Sangah… all of those conclusions had seemed natural to him in the moment.

When he was panicking and planning and panicking and counter-planning… paradoxically, the rush of these feelings was the only thing that kept the stress of Kim Dokja’s strange new existence from completely overwhelming him.

But thinking about how Yoo Sangah had caught him with one foot in the cabinet… well, it wasn’t a good feeling. He was lucky she was too polite to reveal her true thoughts about that moment.

Given the time to logically think about his own emotional responses, though, Kim Dokja’s mind ended up circling back to some things that Yoo Sangah actually had ended up saying.

“…make sure to get something to eat other than coffee! Sooyoung-ssi implied that there may be some ramifications regarding your employment otherwise…"

…The truth was that Kim Dokja had begun saving up his money to hire a cat-sitter for Biyoo when the kids went back to school on Monday. It had been manageable thus far. He sacrificed some won he would have spent on a few lunches and managed to save up the amount the neighbor woman he had conscripted would need to watch the kitten until his next pay day.

Kim Dokja had never thought about his own feelings of hunger as a huge obstacle towards his goals, so a few sacrificed lunches wasn’t a big deal for him. He had always been someone who could make a calculated decision like that. When to skip lunch to spend more time reading in grade school, when to save up loose change he found instead of buying a snack on his way home, or when to eat less rice at dinner so that a stingy relative wouldn’t end up taking away the time he was going to spend checking his arm or reading a new novel with an evening lecture or beratement… such a situation didn’t seem very uncommon to the logical part of Kim Dokja’s mind. 

His relationship with other basic needs, such as sleeping, was similar.

Because Kim Dokja wasn’t someone who subsisted due to these basic needs being met. There had, in fact, been many times in his life when such needs had no chance of being met at all, due to circumstances out of his control.

That’s why the only thing Kim Dokja really needed to survive was the persistence of a single story. A story that he knew would never disappear as easily as a food budget, a sound night’s sleep, or a place to call home.

And now that story was in danger.

Every time Kim Dokja came into work and crossed paths with Yoo Joonghyuk, he was looking into the beginning of his own personal apocalypse.

The world that had provided for him since he first read that story could end at any moment, with just the slightest misstep from any of the members at the company. 

But because none of them even knew of this world, Kim Dokja was the only true apostle of its end. 

This was the obvious reason for Kim Dokja’s panicked internal overreactions. And perhaps, in light of it, they could be truthfully considered underreactions.

Recontextualizing these thoughts now, though, Kim Dokja felt a lot calmer about his situation. After all, if he was the only one who could see what was about to happen, then all he had to do was stop the world from ending.

It wasn’t so hard when he thought about it that way, instead of remembering his problem in how his heart raced out of his chest every time he so much as brushed eyes with the man who was the bane of his workplace existence.

If those emotions were turning out to be an obstacle, then he needed to cut them off at their source. 

Kim Dokja knew from the words of Yoo Sangah that even Han Sooyoung, who had no reason to care about him at all unless his work ethic seemed to be slipping, had noticed there was something off with his eating habits. 

This wouldn’t have been a problem before, when the perceptions of those he worked with ultimately didn't matter in the grand scheme of Kim Dokja's life. He didn't have to pay attention to employment or food as much as his skincare regimen or whether or not something would bruise. But now that his soulmate had a visual on him at the workplace, things were different, weren't they… he may have to take care of these things as well.

This was the conclusion that led Kim Dokja to begin taking his own feelings of hunger into consideration that Friday.

It seemed like things such as good eating and sleeping habits would now need to be focused on — to the same extent as the condition of his skin was — in order to keep up the appearance of being average and unremarkable to his coworkers.

It was for this reason that Kim Dokja resolved to pay a visit to Jung Heewon right after work, ignoring any thoughts of guilt that crossed his mind.

Because honestly, it was pointless to the point of patheticness to feel guilty when he knew exactly what he was doing.

See, Kim Dokja knew that all of Jung Heewon’s good will towards him stemmed from a singular incident.

It had been late at night on some Sunday in autumn a year or so ago. 

The only reason that Kim Dokja remembered it had been a Sunday was because he hadn’t gone grocery shopping for the next week yet and was out of food. So he dropped by a convenience store to eat something on his way home that day.

He remembered holding the kimbap roll in his hands outside of the convenience store. 

As he walked toward his apartment, a man ran out of the alleyway adjacent to the store.

Kim Dokja let a curious gaze trace back along the man’s path without really thinking about it, and landed on a pair of eyes in the alleyway.

To Kim Dokja, in that moment, the eyes reminded him of those of a corpse.

“H-help.”

She was still alive, Kim Dokja realized.

From there, he naturally did what anyone else would do.

He didn’t remember much that happened after he phoned the ambulance, though.

There had been some thoughts intruding in his head, about how a single phone call could save someone.

If his mother had called an ambulance first thing that night, she might still be…

…

Something must have happened to his kimbap roll in the blur of talking to police and medical personnel, because Kim Dokja didn’t have it in his hand hours later, when he was sitting up at the woman’s bedside in the hospital.

It was hard to tell whether he had eaten it or not. As the hours had passed into the night, Kim Dokja had begun to rely on the stories displayed across his phone screen to sustain him. He alternated between rereading some of his soulmate's words and editing some new script copies he was supposed to have done for Han Sooyoung by the end of the day.

It was hard to remember the specifics of the stories he had been reading or rereading during those long hours. Although, it was easy to remember the overarching themes.

From this reading, Kim Dokja had been having some thoughts about responsibility and blame. The degree to which the actions of one person could change past outcomes. It was something that Yoo Joonghyuk seemed to think about a lot. Things he could have done or said differently to achieve different outcomes in his struggles in his career, his health, or especially his relationships…

After all, these thoughts were the reason that what came next was so memorable to Kim Dokja.

It had been almost morning when Jung Heewon woke up.

Like a scene out of a novel, her eyes only opened for half a second before she sat up straight like a shot.

"Where is that bastard?" These were her first words, gritted out in a hoarse voice, all her strength redirected to the hands that furiously held onto the sheets she woke up in. "I'll kill him."

That was when he saw her eyes.

They were not the eyes of a corpse that Kim Dokja recalled from first coming across the scene. There was now a fire lit in the woman's gaze that he could only describe as originating from the cold fury of hell.

It was easy to recall this memory, because the incident was the first of many lessons that would teach Kim Dokja a very important truth.

That Jung Heewon was one of the strongest people he had ever met in his life.

At that time, he honestly hadn't known what he expected her reaction to be upon waking up. He only knew of typical patterns from the regular sorts of trauma that had brushed by his own life.

The way that wondering what one could have done differently paralyzed a person. The way they started to blame themselves. The cycle of self loathing that came from the belief that your own choices were the cause of harm done unto you by others… 

Jung Heewon did not seem to suffer under the weight of such a fallacy.

She seemed to know immediately, without hesitation, that she had been hurt because someone tried to hurt her. It was this person whose fault the harm was, not any action or inaction taken by herself as the target of such harm.

Perhaps then, that clear look in her eye could be called more akin to the flames of an avenging angel's justice.

Such a look had made Kim Dokja hesitate for a moment. It was one that he had never seen before outside of a dramatic storyline, and he had to re-evaluate his purpose for being there to witness it.

It wasn't as if he thought this woman wouldn't be taken care of by the hospital staff. No doubt she was perfectly capable of contacting people she actually knew to fill the chair at her bedside that he currently occupied. There was really no reason for Kim Dokja to be here at all.

It was just… from. General experience. It seemed normal to be disoriented when waking up in the hospital. To… need someone to talk to. So that one isn't alone with themself. Anyone in a situation like this would want to just… get caught up on the state of things without any judgement. And maybe hospital staff or relatives weren't always the right people for that.

Yet, if none of those people were the right person for such a task, how could Kim Dokja claim to be?

Kim Dokja remembered that he had ignored his own hypocrisy that night, just obliging to answer the woman's question instead of thinking.

"Police weren't able to locate him based on the description I was able to give." He informed her as much as he knew about her assailant's whereabouts. "I told them that from what I saw, he was about 180 cm tall with short brown hair, wearing jeans and a dark coat. If you have more information about him, the police left a phone number with the hospital staff."

The woman turned to look at him with narrow eyes as he spoke. They seemed to light up with recognition as he spoke a bit about what he witnessed.

He thought she might be a bit disoriented, so Kim Dokja just kept describing information to her. What the conversation he had with the police and the medical staff had been like, how he hadn't seen the moment of the assault, some details about the ambulance ride, how it was only the next morning now.

While he spoke, she listened to most of the details rather intently, and he felt pressured to keep speaking. Eventually, though, she found her phone at the bedside table, and Kim Dokja’s information became somewhat redundant as she began to scroll through her missed calls.

Feeling that his purpose for being here had been essentially fulfilled, Kim Dokja was just going to take his cue to leave and let the woman make whatever private phone calls she needed to. Judging from the visible bruising on her neck, she should at least have some messages to answer from her soulmate. 

For some reason, though, he stopped when he saw the woman make an odd gesture, clutching at her stomach with a frown on her face.

"Are you hungry?" he guessed, taking into consideration the way his own stomach felt. It had been a long time since dinner, after all. At that moment, he quickly made a decision: "I'm going to the vending machine, if you want anything."

"Hm?" The woman looked surprised at his words, as if she kept forgetting he was there. As she began to respond, her hand went behind her back as if reaching for something in a pants pocket. "Oh, sure, I—"

She stopped when she seemed to notice she was wearing a hospital gown.

"... My wallet is missing." There was a frustrated edge to the woman’s voice at the realization. "I guess I'll have to pass."

"I could get you something anyway," Kim Dokja offered. It really seemed like the very least he could do.

"No, that wouldn't be right." She shook her head as if it were obvious. "I don't need free food."

For some reason, these words also left an impression on Kim Dokja, as he went out to the hallway's vending machines just as he said he would.

It wasn't as if he weren't hungry as well, and he had a pretty lenient food budget that week due to Han Sooyoung's interference, so he didn't feel bad about buying two of the most expensive snacks in the machine. They were just a couple of sugary packaged biscuits that were probably caked in preservatives, but they looked filling.

When he returned to the room, the woman seemed to have found her jeans, which the medical staff had placed aside earlier in order to verify the extent of her injuries. They were caked with dried mud, but she had put them back on anyway and was standing up with her phone in her hand.

"Tch. Don't be so concerned." Her voice was still hoarse and raspy, but as she dismissed the person on the other end of the phone call, it came out stronger than when she had spoken to him earlier.

The way that she had been collapsed into the dirt floor of the alley where he found her, Kim Dokja was surprised at how quickly she was recovering her motor capabilities. Perhaps at the time she was assaulted she had additionally been intoxicated with something, and treatment and rest had gotten it mostly out of her system.

"You know I’m the noona here, not you." Kim Dokja, standing awkwardly in the corner of the room, couldn’t help but overhear her as the phone call went on. "Well, obviously I know he's worried. Did he use his calling time to hound you for answers? Ha... Yeah, me too... Eight times before he thought to call you, I'm pretty sure…"

Kim Dokja eventually managed to tune out this conversation by opening back up the scripts he had been reading over while waiting up throughout the night. It occurred to him, as he made some final revisions, that it was a good thing he had gotten his editing work done now, as it meant he could probably sleep at the office when he was supposed to be doing the work later that day.

He also, very casually, began to slowly eat one of the biscuits he had bought.

When the woman finished her phone call, Kim Dokja carefully pretended not to notice her eyes straying slightly to his food as she turned to speak to him.

"My name is Jung Heewon." She stuck a hand out toward him, causing his eyes to focus on her distinctive gaze. "Thank you for helping me earlier."

Kim Dokja put his phone away to accept the handshake, but felt troubled about doing the same with her expression of thankfulness.

"It was nothing," he just said.

"Hm." Jung Heewon seemed contemplative upon hearing his words. "I can't really promise to offer you much in the way of gratitude." 

She spoke these words as if it were obvious to her that something he did was worthy of gratitude, even though Kim Dokja didn't see exactly why himself.

"My employment status currently seems uncertain, as I'm not sure what the management's position will be on my plans to murder my coworker. But... I might be able to figure something out by the time my little brother manages to drive here…"

Uh oh.

Kim Dokja thought from her tone of voice that some of her words might be humorous in nature, but he didn't respond to them as such.

"It's really fine." Realizing how close he was getting to actually being involved in this woman's story, Kim Dokja made an effort to quickly dismiss her concern. "Staying up to make sure you at least lived is not really something that needs thanks."

Kim Dokja thought he had done a pretty good job constructing the dismissal, but when Jung Heewon's eyebrows furrowed, he knew he had misstepped.

"You stayed up the whole night with me?" She seemed concerned by this point. "But I'm a complete stranger..."

Ah, yes, she probably thought that was pretty strange.

"You're right," he told her. "Don't worry, I'll be out of your hair soon. I just have to go tell the nurse that you woke up."

"That's not what I..." Jung Heewon was still looking at him as though he were quite odd.

Kim Dokja, not wanting to be confronted by that gaze, ducked his head back towards his phone.

"I have work soon anyway," he reported as though just now noticing the time. 

He then deliberately finished off his vending machine biscuit with a big bite, licking his fingers as if it were delicious.

Jung Heewon's expression was hard to read, but he assumed that her feelings of hunger hadn't changed.

"I don't think I'll have time to eat this," he lamented as he took the second, still packaged biscuit out of his pocket like it was some great tragedy. "I guess I'll just have to throw it away."

Jung Heewon's eyes narrowed again.

"Oh, do you want it?" Kim Dokja asked, casually. "I'm a cheapskate though. You'd have to pay me for it, even if I would throw it out otherwise."

"How much did it cost?" she asked flatly, definitely onto him.

"Not much." Kim Dokja shrugged. "Just 500 won."

He thought that they might both know that he was lying. After all, he had seen the coins she had found in her pocket when she told her brother she didn't have enough for cab fare on the phone.

He watched as this lie passed between the two of them. How it weighed against Jung Heewon's judgement.

Eventually, her hunger seemed to win out in the battle of sense against principle.

"Here." She made the exchange easily enough in the end, and Kim Dokja pocketed the coin as she tore open the wrapper.

He thought maybe he should have tried to get her some water, too, as he noticed how dry his own mouth became from eating his biscuit, but such thoughts dissipated as she began to make some talk about repaying him again.

"Ah, I really have to go," Kim Dokja said as he noticed the time on his phone, "My train leaves soon."

If Kim Dokja were a better person, he probably would have taken a moment to say some sort of proper goodbye to Jung Heewon, or at the very least wish her the best of luck in her 'litigations.'

But Kim Dokja actually wasn't lying about his train coming in soon.

He left the hospital as soon as he managed to flag down a nurse, and ended up being only a little bit late for work, which was honestly the usual amount.

It was very fortunate that Han Sooyoung was the sort of boss who would move on from critiquing his zombified appearance to being offended by the fact that he had actually done his job as soon as he put the suggested changes onto her desk.

It was less fortunate, however, that Han Sooyoung was also the type of boss who had become obsessed with the office drama genre of television shows at that time. Not only because the tropes of the genre started slipping into her work, but also because she kept trying to insert them into her life.

Kim Dokja had expected the time he met Jung Heewon to be the last time he ever saw her, but it was a few weeks later when he went onto his phone to escape having to read a draft — a conversation between two recruitable disciples that sounded like Junior employees fighting over a promotion — only to find a notification for a text from an unmarked number.

Kim Dokja, of course, couldn’t stop himself from reading this message, even if he really should have just blocked an unknown number texting him out of the blue…

The sender identified herself as Jung Heewon, explaining that she had gotten his number from when he had to put himself down as the temporary emergency contact for the hospital registration. The text was expressing some unnecessary gratitude about the night they met and how his written testimony had ended up being necessary to supplement a police officer’s poor eyesight in getting the proper arraignment of her assailant. The end of the message even promised him a free drink at the new bar she was working at

While parsing this information, Kim Dokja felt slightly awkward, as the goodwill Jung Heewon showed in reaching out about such a thing was obviously more of a result of her good nature than any actual deservedness from his own actions. After all, getting an injured person to a hospital was only the natural thing to do, and Kim Dokja hadn’t even offered this so-called “important testimony” in person, just because of his ultimately inconsequential feelings of dislike towards courts from a past childhood experience. 

Even worse was the fact that he wasn’t really the type to go out drinking, so there was really no way to respond to the text in a way that could soothe her generous conscience… Kim Dokja really would have just ended up not replying to the message if it hadn’t been for Han Sooyoung.

Villainess of his life that she was, Kim Dokja didn’t really think much of it when she asked him about local bars the next day and the name Jung Heewon had given was the only one that came to mind.

He should have known better. By the time he realized that Han Sooyoung was planning a classic office drinking party for their two person department, his boss had already convinced Yoo Sangah to be a “supervisor” and he had no way of wriggling his way out of his boss’s plans with his go-to threat of an HR complaint.

He also didn’t realize exactly which bar he was being dragged to until he was already sitting on a stool being cheerfully greeted by the woman whose texts he had been so callously ignoring the past few days.

From there, Kim Dokja never quite managed resolve whatever obligations of gratitude that caused Jung Heewon to “forget” to add something to his bill.

As the drinking party became a weekly occurrence at Han Sooyoung’s insistence, this pattern of unnecessary generosity would persist, as apparently his boss had managed to pick the one and only day that Jung Heewon would regularly have her shift no matter what.

If Kim Dokja were just a bit more like Yoo Joonghyuk, he would have just accepted Jung Heewon’s generosity the first time and swallowed his free drink without a word elsewise. The whole thing would already be resolved, then, and Jung Heewon wouldn’t have to spare a second thought to Kim Dokja’s own hang ups about whether or not he deserved gratitude for any of his actions.

But that hadn’t been his first instinct of Kim Dokja, and now he actually found himself in quite the quandary. 

Han Sooyoung had been devious enough to entrap Kim Dokja into going along with her nefarious drinking party scheme by first convincing Yoo Sangah, who only had Thursday off from the usual after work social engagements she liked to maintain, under the premise that he had already agreed to attend. 

As far as he could tell, Yoo Sangah’s personal motivations for this were that she simply needed the day marked off as busy to effectively turn down male colleagues from her department trying to schedule the more intimate two person get togethers that she had a distaste for. 

This meant that Kim Dokja had to go every Thursday, or else he would be leaving Yoo Sangah to deal with their superior on her own, an inaction that, without excuse, would be more actively hostile towards a fellow employee than just going along with the whole thing.

Furthermore, upon meeting Jung Heewon, Han Sooyoung had immediately formed a contentious relationship with her when she was rightfully critiqued for getting drunk a little too quickly. Upon witnessing their interactions, Kim Dokja knew that any attempt he made to move the event to some other would be met gleefully by Han Sooyoung, as giving her indication that he had anything but neutrally friendly feelings towards this acquaintance would only egg on whatever antagonistic machinations she had begun to develop.

Given the fact that for the foreseeable future Kim Dokja would have to go drinking with Han Sooyoung and Yoo Sangah where Jung Heewon worked every Thursday night, the reason that he refused her generosity towards him became much clearer.

Of course, Kim Dokja was the penny pinching sort of person who would recruit a grade schooler into an exploitative bug selling business to keep up with his rent, and he was even the sort to force an injured woman who had lost her wallet to pay him back for a piece of bread from a vending machine. Why would such a person continue to refuse something that was offered to him for free?

It was obviously because Kim Dokja had learned in his life that goodwill, like money, was something that had a limited supply. 

If one were to, say, have to live under the roof of a family member for a short while, they wouldn’t risk running low on good will, and it would be fine to accept generosity without precaution. 

If one, however, had to stay with that family member for a much longer period of time — as in, for the foreseeable future — it made sense to try and let that good will extend and last as long as it could by not expending it too early on inconsequential things (like speaking out of turn or eating too much at dinner) and save it for accidents and unavoidable situations (like breaking a dish or wearing out some clothing).

So knowing that Kim Dokja was the kind of person who would think about such things, it made sense why his seemingly altruistic actions had this skeezier side to them. The only reasonable explanation for it was, after all, that Jung Heewon’s gratitude simply wasn’t something he had any need for most days of the year. Thanks to the coercive methods with which Han Sooyoung gained his employment, he had enough money to comfortably pay rent without having a need for a free meal. So obviously he had already internally quantified this concept of a “goodwill debt” in order to save it for when it would actually benefit him.

This internal justification was what allowed Kim Dokja to become comfortable with his new Thursday routine, and though there had been some evenings that he had to leave for home early to check up on a particularly upsetting cliffhanger that jerk Yoo Joonghyuk might have left on him during the day, it became one of few time commitments he had really remained faithful to for almost a year now. 

The conflict that would eventually force Kim Dokja to break this routine entirely would, surprisingly enough, not be entirely Yoo Joonghyuk’s fault.

In fact, the existence that had forced Kim Dokja to skip his department’s Thursday drinking parties wasn’t even yet size of a soccer ball.

Kim Dokja was obviously already an awful guy for relying on two kids to look after Biyoo with the time that should be spent relaxing on the one month of winter they had off from school, so naturally he couldn’t justify prolonging the length of that imposition just to go drinking with coworkers. That would be the sort of thing that only a deadbeat dad from a protagonist’s tragic origin story would do.

Considering, however, that in order to maintain the current state of his world, Kim Dokja had to save up enough money to pay his neighbor who worked from home to catsit, while still not appearing obviously underfed before he got his paycheck on the first day of the new month… Kim Dokja ended up making the cartoonishly evil decision of delaying his arrival home from work that Friday in hopes of getting a discount on some takeout from Jung Heewon’s place of employment.

This wretched plan of his wasn't even that well thought out. He didn't even know if Jung Heewon was working that evening. If she wasn't, he would just have to go straight back home without imposing on her kindness.

In fact, upon first entering the bar and not catching sight of Jung Heewon on the main floor of the establishment, Kim Dokja had already halfway convinced himself of this course of action, when he was interrupted by someone calling his name.

"... Dokja-ssi? Is that you?"

Kim Dokja had to do his best to keep a blank expression as his head turned towards the voice.

As he realized who was walking up behind him, he gave a greeting that was deliberately neutral. “Hyunsung-ssi.”

Lee Hyunsung, his professional office-appropriate shirt unbuttoned to reveal a more business casual t-shirt beneath, approached him then.

If it had been literally anyone else from the office stumbling upon this atypical excursion of his, Kim Dokja probably wouldn’t have even managed to maintain his unaffected look. Of the two of them, Lee Hyunsung was actually the one who looked most surprised to see Kim Dokja.

“What are you doing here?” He looked at Kim Dokja with wide eyes, walking up to stand beside him with an unfortunately lacking amount of hesitation.

“Is it really so odd to see a salaryman at a bar after work?” Kim Dokja’s brain was being suddenly put on alert again, so, of course, he smiled pleasantly while double checking himself and his cover story to see if he had made any slip up that Lee Hyunsung could have already noticed, because if Lee Hyunsung of all people knew then that would mean that he would definitely have—

“Ah, I guess not really.” The slightly dazed Hyunsung shrugged as if it weren’t a big deal. “Dokja-ssi just didn’t strike me as the type who likes to go out drinking, is all…”

“... Is that so? Hyunsung-ssi’s been paying good attention to me, then,” Kim Dokja accepted this statement genially, shoving all those emotions that had been classified as ‘overreacting’ by Lee Hyunsung’s words down to some level where they couldn’t affect him. “I’m not really a person who enjoys drinking much.”

Kim Dokja didn’t dislike the taste of alcohol, but feeling drunk was a little too… uncontrolled, for his liking. The one time he had a little too much soju with his usual group, he had ended up saying something a bit too revealing to Yoo Sangah… Of course, he acted as though he had forgotten once he regained his faculties, but the memory lingered as a warning in his mind.

Thinking of that combination of this bar and a narrowly avoided spill of secrets, Kim Dokja was of a mind to take care of his scummy business here in the most expedient manner possible.

Lee Hyunsung had just been nodding along to his last statement, so Kim Dokja went on in a quick addendum:

“This is a great place to get a quick dinner — I’ll just be going up to the bar and getting something to go.” He tried to give himself some leeway for leaving as soon as possible with that statement, moving his head a bit in slight replication of Lee Hyunsung’s own nodding. “I would hope running into this co-worker didn’t trouble Hyunsung-ssi to delay from his own business for too long.”

“Oh— uh, it’s no trouble at all, really!” Lee Hyunsung’s look of surprise came back and he started shaking his head instead of nodding. 

Kim Dokja took his words as the dismissal he had been fishing for, just ducking his head one more time in indication of excusing himself, before stepping past to make his way towards the bar.

… Except, when he managed to find a seat there, someone immediately followed to sit in the bar stool next to him, and Kim Dokja realized that Lee Hyunsung hadn’t seemed to take his words as a goodbye at all.

As shocking as this was to Kim Dokja, he tried to smile in a non-strained, friendly way when regarding the man next to him. It wasn’t hard to channel some of the naturally friendly feelings he had towards the man as he did so — after all, the man had been a longtime favorite character of his, and most certainly was his most agreeable coworker in his new circumstance — but his expression wasn’t reciprocated, as Lee Hyunsung seemed to be staring in the direction of something behind the bar and thinking very seriously about it.

As he took notice of the fact that Lee Hyunsung wasn’t really paying attention to him, Kim Dokja got the chance to contemplate the man more seriously. In fact… wasn’t this person acting a little strangely? Stuttering through a few half hearted greetings and replies before following him over to the bar… like he was lost in thought… or maybe just lost in general?

That’s right, Kim Dokja realized, Lee Hyunsung seemed a little lost at this moment. 

It wouldn’t be obvious from only Yoo Joonghyuk’s perspective on his teammate, but from watching all of his filmed competitive appearances over the years, Kim Dokja felt as though he could recognize this certain habit of his. Whenever he gets lost, whether it be in a new arena while playing a MOBA style game, or in a particularly dicey interview about pro-gamer drama he didn’t know anything about, Lee Hyunsung had the tendency to follow authority where he recognized it. He was someone who listened to the rules of a new game and followed the orders of his team captain without question, almost reflexively… so perhaps if he was following his superior from work around the bar, it was because he was experiencing that feeling of being “lost” just now…

“... Forgive me for saying,” Kim Dokja hesitated for a moment, thinking about how to phrase his concern, “but Hyunsung-ssi seems to be a little out of sorts just now.”

“A-ah, do I?” Lee Hyunsung blinked, shaking his attention away from the point in the middle distance to focus back on Kim Dokja. “Well, uh, I suppose Dokja-ssi is probably right. It would make sense if I seemed a bit nervous, I mean… Seeing as, I’m, um…”

Lee Hyunsung started looking troubled again towards the end of his sentence, and Kim Dokja was beginning to wonder if he shouldn’t have tried to pry into this business, when Lee Hyunsung seemed to make the effort to pick himself up.

“Well, the truth is, Dokja-ssi, I came here today to meet my soulmate,” he declared.

Kim Dokja blinked. “Oh… your soulmate, huh?”

He had never really wondered about Lee Hyunsung's soulmate. Perhaps because it hadn’t seemed relevant to the concerns of Yoo Joonghyuk. Out of Pacheonmaeng, Lee Jihye was the only one whose soulmate was pretty public knowledge. It was some girl that was in her same class in highschool and it seemed like they probably still had a close relationship, sometimes doing streams together when Lee Jihye’s followers on social media voted for her to play two person games.

Kim Dokja was probably the only person in the world who knew both the fates of Kim Namwoon and Yoo Joonghyuk's soulmates. Realizing now that he had never wondered about Lee Hyunsung’s situation before, he couldn’t help but wish for more details… 

“Oh, no, uh—” Lee Hyunsung looked sheepish, as if feeling that what he said may have come off the wrong way. “Not for the first time, or anything. We met before- we, uh, before… well, we just haven’t met up in person in a while, you know?”

Agh. Okay. Kim Dokja was now deathly curious about this area of Lee Hyunsung’s story. The most he could glean from the barebones narrative stylings of Yoo Joonghyuk and his own imagination was that Lee Hyunsung was a character who was often in more of a position to support others through their conflicts than have his own arcs… it really made sense for Kim Dokja to feel he had an opportunity to get behind the scenes information on a character he particularly liked, right? But how much could he really ask about before getting too involved?

“... Is that not something to look forward to, for Hyunsung-ssi?” Kim Dokja couldn’t help but ask, in the end.

“W-well…” Lee Hyunsung chewed at his lip a little as he seemed to think about this for a second. “I mean, obviously I do really want to see her- but I mean, it’s a little… complicated? I mean, we used to date, so that’s one thing. And even though we ended up as just friends who call each other from time to time, I still really… Ah…  she’s just really always had this strong sense of right and wrong. And I admired that about her, but I felt as though because of that I always ended up forcing her to make decisions for me… and I thought that staying at my military service was a way to escape that burden I was putting on her and, you know, to do something to protect the people I care about instead of… And that seemed really right at the time and she told me she would respect my decision… But, well, you know, now I am… not. In the military, anymore. I mean, just…”

Lee Hyunsung leaned forwards over the table, putting his forehead in his hands.

“How am I supposed to tell my ex-girlfriend that I left the military to become a pro-gamer?”

… Wow. This was… certainly a question to be asked. 

Kim Dokja was momentarily a bit stunned, because honestly he hadn’t expected Lee Hyunsung to give away so much from such little questioning on his part. Really, how could someone feel so comfortable speaking to almost a complete stranger about a topic so sensitive?

But… well, Kim Dokja was the one who stuck his nose in and brought it up, so he definitely had to take responsibility and comfort Lee Hyunsung away from his currently visible distress.

“... It may not matter much when being said by a coworker whose only known Hyunsung-ssi for a week,” he started trying to word the reassurances that came easily to his mind in the least suspicious way possible, “but after reading that he was once an officer on his resume, I did think it made sense that Hyunsung-ssi must have been a person well suited for the army.”

Lee Hyunsung laughed a little bit at that, head still in his hands. It wasn’t the type of laugh Kim Dokja had come to expect from the man, neither a polite chuckle or a genuine guffaw, but still, it was a laugh that he could very easily understand. Army life may have been a casual topic of conversation for men their age, but actually committing to it as a career was a different matter entirely. It was a choice that required losing some other important things. Thus, people who could not let go of those things despite staying employed in the army, might not feel they could be called ‘well suited.’

“Still,” Kim Dokja was quick to clarify, “after meeting Lee Hyunsung-ssi in person, and seeing him work, I find myself very glad that he is here now, instead of in the army.”

“... Huh?” Lee Hyunsung looked up at that, but Kim Dokja didn’t mind, going on with the words he came up with.

“When I see Lee Hyunsung-ssi with his coworkers, I feel very relieved that his juniors have him to look to,” Kim Dokja told him honestly. “When I see him in the office calmly helping his team captain, patiently listening to Kim Namwoon, and cheerfully returning Lee Jihye’s smiles… I think to myself that this is really a job that only a person with Lee Hyunsung-ssi’s heart could do, and I’m glad he’s with us because of it.”

Kim Dokja could probably go on with his appreciation of Lee Hyunsung’s role as a support character for much longer, but he stopped himself as soon as he could manage it. Honestly what he had said already must sound outrageously fake coming from some random office superior to a guy who just started the job on Monday. He himself had been forced to sit through far too many “this corporation is like a family” lectures - from superiors he knew sneered at employees who went to pick up their kids from school instead of working overtime - to not know how presumptuous he was being just now…

So Kim Dokja let his statement just sit for a moment before he managed to work up the courage to check if Lee Hyunsung’s expression had improved any.

His eyes were very wide, containing an emotion that was hard to discern.

“... Is that so?” he muttered as if still taking in Kim Dokja’s words. 

Then Lee Hyunsung seemed to notice Kim Dokja looking at him, because his expression pulled into a smile that seemed almost out of habit.

It was a weak thing, but Kim Dokja couldn’t help feeling somewhat comforted by the sight of that smile.

Assessing that this was probably the most someone like him could manage on the front of reassuring Lee Hyunsung, Kim Dokja just nodded in response, before he turned his attention towards flagging down a waiter that was walking by the bar with some dishes in hand.

“Is Jung Heewon here?” he asked her. At this point, sitting in a conspicuous spot until his acquaintance took note of him probably wasn’t the plan that would get him out of the bar before he ended up third wheeling Lee Hyunsung’s important date.

“She’s on break.” The waiter’s brow was furrowed as she rearranged some of the dishes in her hand. Whether she was annoyed at him for calling her over or just stressed by how busy it was on the main floor he couldn’t be certain. Regardless, she gave a customer service smile and asked, “Could I get you gentlemen started on something while you wait?”

“No, that’s alright.” It put a bit of a dent in his escape plan to not be able to order right away, but Kim Dokja wasn’t sure if he’d be able to get a discount from anyone but Jung Heewon, let alone this employee who already seemed a little aggrieved. “If you see her, would you be so kind as to let her know we’re here?” He decided to include Hyunsung as part of his group. Maybe Jung Heewon would take pity on this guy, too, and get him something stronger than Kim Dokja’s tepid praises to settle his nerves.

“I’ll make sure to do that, sir.” The waiter gave a polite nod that Kim Dokja hoped wasn’t too insincere before walking back into the kitchen with her dishes.

Kim Dokja watched the swinging door, worrying about this for a moment, before looking down to check the time on his phone. 

Hmm… 

He was just wondering if Jung Heewon would come out soon or if he should just skip dinner tonight after all, when he realized that Lee Hyunsung next to him was oddly quiet and still.

Glancing back up at the taller man, Kim Dokja noticed a very strange expression on his face. Lee Hyunsung looked at Kim Dokja as if something he had done had… shaken him.

“Ah, my bad.” Kim Dokja apologized almost reflexively, his brain searching for things he might have done wrong. Maybe Lee Hyunsung needed that drink to settle his nerves sooner, rather than later. “Should I have let you order something?” he ended up asking.

“N-no, it’s fine… I just…” Lee Hyunsung’s head was shaking back and forth as he stuttered out his response. “H-how did you know my soulmate’s name?”

What?  

Kim Dokja blinked.

“Your…” Before he could quite connect the line between the dots, a new voice interrupted the conversation.

“H-hyungsung?”

Jung Heewon had just come out from the kitchen, holding the cords of her half-tied apron in her hands as she stared at the man sitting next to Kim Dokja like he was a living ghost.

"... my soulmate? Well, sure, we dated for a while. Things got serious for a bit, but then he went off to the military and we broke it off…”

Ah. Well… Hm.

Kim Dokja’s brain shut down for a moment.

If he could think of anything just then, he’d probably be worried that the dial up noise sounding in his head would be heard by the two people in front of him, who in fact seemed to be struck into silence as well.

As anyone who knew her may have guessed, the resilient Jung Heewon was the first to recover from the shocking situation, face twisting into a frown.

“Hey, aren’t you here way too early?” Her voice was almost scolding as she spoke to her soulmate, though she looked more caught off guard than really upset with him. “Didn’t I tell you that if you were going to drop by you should avoid the dinner rush?”

When Kim Dokja’s mind finished rebooting with this new information updated into his mental process, his first thought was an inane urge to slap a hand over Jung Heewon’s mouth. Heewon-ssi! Aren’t your words a bit too harsh? To see his real life friend treat his favorite supporting character like this… 

The nonsense train of thought was aborted when Kim Dokja’s full range of mental faculties returned and he remembered a few things. 

First of all, calling Jung Heewon a friend of Kim Dokja was a presumption that honestly had very little basis in reality. In fact, the revelation of her being Lee Hyunsung’s soulmate made Kim Dokja realize the false dichotomy that existed in his mind. He had been thinking of certain people from his life as being from “real life,” in other words, from his own world. Such people might include Jung Heewon, Yoo Sangah and Han Sooyoung, people who came into his awareness via chance encounters rather than through the point of view of Yoo Jonghyuk’s story. Of course, the line drawn between these categories was subject to dissolution due to the objective reality of his soulmate’s presence at work, but he hadn’t contemplated its retroactive effects; how the pasts of people in the two different groups could not necessarily be considered separate at all.

It could, in fact, actually be said that Jung Heewon had from the very beginning been a tertiary character in Yoo Joonghyuk’s narrative whose life had just so happened to collide with that of a faceless extra like Kim Dokja. Now that she seemed to be rising to a position in the narrative with this apparent reintroduction as Lee Hyunsung’s estranged soulmate, it put Kim Dokja somewhat at risk of becoming a tertiary character himself, as someone known to be in the vicinity of a secondary character… which could be good or bad based on exactly what kind of character Jung Heewon would turn out to be.

… Judging by Lee Hyunsung’s downcast expression, Jung Heewon might not fare much better than Han Sooyoung in the role department.

“Oh… Um…” Hyunsung looked miserable enough to cast his soulmate as a minor villain in that moment. “I’m sorry, Heewon…”

“Ah… Right, well…”

For her part, his soulmate seemed aggrieved at having caused such a reaction. Jung Heewon typically put forward scoldings and criticisms light heartedly among good company as a form of older sisterly affection, but this effect was clearly not being read in the interaction she initiated with Lee Hyunsung and it seemed to throw her off balance. Maybe, then, the encounter would speak more to the arc these two would have to undergo to be on the same page again after being away from each other so long, instead of just making Jung Heewon out to be the poor circumstance of a secondary character’s hard life outside of the company of the main cast…

“Oh! Dokja-ssi?”

Kim Dokja was forced to stop considering the character Jung Heewon from the woman he knew in real life the moment that she acknowledged his presence.

In fact, as soon as Jung Heewon had made eye contact with him, her eyebrows lifted from a scrunched position, and her shoulders relaxed, as if suddenly finding herself on more solid ground.

“I thought it might be you who was asking for me off my break!” she told him, grabbing the ends of her apron again to finish the knot she had aborted halfway through upon seeing Lee Hyunsung. “Did you need something?”

The response to his presence was warm enough that warning bells started going off in Kim Dokja’s head. A narrative where a jilted protagonist’s ex was cold to him while being friendly with a despicable superior… wasn’t that quite a common plot line?

“Ah, well, I wasn’t able to eat out last night with our mutual acquaintances yesterday, so I thought I’d drop by today.” Kim Dokja did his best to not look completely freaked out, casually glancing over to see if Lee Hyunsung was properly registering how he and Jung Heewon definitely did not have a close relationship.

… Okay, Lee Hyunsung was mostly still looking nervous and bewildered.

“Oh, Dokja-ssi, this person is Lee Hyunsung.” Unfortunately, Jung Heewon had followed Kim Dokja’s gaze and thought to introduce the two of them, further incorporating Kim Dokja into the conversation between important characters. “We were, uh, friends in highschool.”

If he were a more emotionally invested sort of reader, such a statement might have had Kim Dokja crying tears of blood in his heart for Lee Hyunsung’s sake. Demoted from soulmate to old highschool friend? How harsh, Heewon-ssi!

He was fortunate that he kept his expression tamped down, because the only change in Lee Hyunsung’s own comportment was some additional awkwardness.

"Ah, Heewon, a-actually…" Lee Hyunsung ducked his head as if apologizing for something. "Dokja-ssi already knows me quite well, y-you see, he's my superior at work..."

“Eh?” Jung Heewon looked surprised. Kim Dokja wondered if it was because she couldn’t imagine him being someone’s superior, before she supplied, “Oh, I see, so Hyunsung works at a company now…”

“Um. Uh. Y-yeah.” Lee Hyunsung appeared to still be preoccupied with his concern over having a disappointing occupation.

“Ah, so it was just office work…” Jung Heewon looked a little relieved, then as if she were mulling something over, before letting out a sigh and going on to say, “... Hyunsung you really should have said so.”

Lee Hyunsung seemed mildly alarmed at the note of disappointment in her words, but Jung Heewon didn't appear to notice.

“You know…” She turned to Kim Dokja and put her hand up to her mouth as if being discreet, but continued to speak at regular volume, “... the way this guy had been describing his boss over text, I thought he had quit the army to join the mob or something… but if he’s working under you, it turns out that boss was just Han Sooyoung…”

Usually Kim Dokja would be amused by Jung Heewon’s ribs at Han Sooyoung, but this time couldn’t help but feel a little offended… It was just… wasn’t that description of Yoo Joonghyuk just way too uncharitable? To compare his style of leadership to Han Sooyoung’s was just… Kim Dokja didn’t even want to think about it too long.

He must not have done a good job minding his expression at that thought, because Jung Heewon looked back and forth between the faces of Lee Hyunsung and himself before frowning.

“Uh, alright, geez,” she said, reaching over to heartily thump Kim Dokja on the back as if telling him to lighten up. “So did you two wage slaves come here together, or…?”

Why am I the one getting his back thumped? Kim Dokja was doing some mental math about the risk probability of this scenario as Lee Hyunsung responded.

“Ah, no, we just happened to meet here. Although… it seems like Heewon-ssi may have told Dokja-ssi we were meeting?"

What? Why would he think that? Was Kim Dokja now being set up as some kind of meddler in the relationship…? 

"Eh? Why would you think that?" Jung Heewon voiced the question Kim Dokja had failed to before his train of thought dissipated into anxiety induced half-recollections of drama sideplots.

"Ah, it's my bad for assuming." Lee Hyunsung waved his hands dismissively, "When we met at the bar I told him I was nervous about meeting my soulmate, and he gave me some good advice before asking around for you, so I thought he must have been aware of everything from the start… but I guess maybe it's just that someone like Dokja-ssi is naturally good at this sort of thing…"

"Oh, huh." Jung Heewon looked a little miffed. Kim Dokja thought she might have taken just as much issue as he did with Hyunsung's assessment of him being 'naturally good' at something, but her actual concern became more apparent when she turned to address him.

"Dokja-ssi…" Jung Heewon hesitated a bit, before seeming to make up her mind about what she would say. "I mean, I haven’t been trying to hide that Hyunsung’s my soulmate, and in any other circumstance I wouldn’t mind introducing him to you guys… but now that I know he works with all of you could you maybe…?"

Ah. Yes. Kim Dokja considered for a moment what might happen if the information he just learned got into the wrong hands. He himself could well understand the desire to keep a relationship with a soulmate separate from a relationship with real life acquaintances. Han Sooyoung and Yoo Sangah on the other hand, what with their own somewhat stifled soulmate relationship, were the types who might start forming opinions about this sort of thing. Knowing Han Sooyoung, if she found out someone she knew was Jung Heewon’s mysterious soulmate, she might feel strongly enough about it to interfere in such a relationship… and even worse yet, Yoo Sangah might sit on the sidelines with that knowing smile of hers and just start implying things.

So Jung Heewon didn’t have to finish her sentence for Kim Dokja to reply with a nod.

“I won’t bring it up, now that I know.”

This seemed like the natural response, but Kim Dokja rethought the idea when he started considering what Lee Hyunsung’s perspective on such a situation would be… Would he be hurt that Jung Heewon didn’t want her friends to know about him? Would he blame Kim Dokja for that?  

He turned to look, but the expression on Lee Hyunsung just seemed confused rather than hurt.

"You didn't tell him we were soulmates?"

For some reason, Jung Heewon gave him a weird look at that comment.

"Er… well no offense Hyunsung but you don't come up much in conversation…"

"No that's not…”  Lee Hyunsung’s eyebrows were knit now, and he squinted as if trying to recall something. “Dokja-ssi called you right over when I said I was waiting for my soulmate so I assumed he knew…" 

Lee Hyunsung had trailed off as if uncertainty had taken over him, but Jung Heewon reacted with a strong expression.

"Eh? Really?" She leveled Kim Dokja with a scrutinizing look. "That's crazy. How'd you know this guy was my soulmate, Dokja-ssi?"

By this point Kim Dokja’s Lie or Die response had him frantically searching for an excuse… but he found himself coming hard up… maybe he could just side step the question with a joke?

"I'm psychic." Kim Dokja blurted out in a deadpan.

"..."

"..."

It bombed!

"J-just kidding," Kim Dokja attempted to quickly recover. "I actually just remembered you speaking about his career as a soldier, so when I saw Hyunsung-ssi's resume, I thought it was similar…"

It only occurred to Kim Dokja after saying something so unbelievable that the truth of the matter - that he had just coincidentally called for Jung Heewon without knowing she was Lee Hyunsung’s soulmate - had actually not been very incriminating after all. Had there even been a need to lie? But now it was too late…

Between the three of them, Kim Dokja was alone in censuring himself over the explanation. 

“Ah! Unsurprisingly, Dokja-ssi is someone with a good memory for details.” Lee Hyunsung… praised him? The man also sent a completely undeserved and utterly genuine smile in his direction.

“Hyunsung, I know it's your job now, but make sure not to suck up to this guy too much or his head will get big…” Jung Heewon seemed less impressed, but there was an amused twinkle in her eye. She appeared none the wiser of Kim Dokja’s plight as she turned to say something conspiratorial, “My theory is that's what happened to that boss-nim of yours, Dokja-ssi…”

This time, Kim Dokja reached desperately for the conversational safe ground of making fun of Han Sooyoung.

“Yes, because obviously Han Sooyoung is a person whom I only ever say nice things about.” His deadpan delivery seemed to go over better in this context, and Jung Heewon laughed behind her hand.

“Ah, yes!” Lee Hyunsung glanced between them before trying to contribute, sincerely adding on, “Ever since she interviewed me I thought Sooyoung-nim seemed like a very accomplished person…”

“…”

“…”

“So, what do you want to order?” Jung Heewon thankfully changed the topic, protecting Lee Hyunsung’s positive outlook on his work environment from the awkward silence that had bloomed after his statement.

One of the few scraps salvageable from Kim Dokja’s initial plan was the math he had done on an order that would give him the most amount of food for the cheapest cost. When he recited it to Jung Heewon, he made sure to ask for a to go order so that he could make the meal last the weekend.

Unfortunately for him, Jung Heewon was able to catch the scent of him with only so much.

"That Han Sooyoung better not have cut back your salary just to hire Hyunsung's team…" Jung Heewon leveraged an analytical look at him while jotting down his order.

"No, nothing like that at all." Although Kim Dokja loved to complain about Han Sooyoung, and really this situation was her fault if he thought about it, purposefully stirring up discord between his boss and Jung Heewon would be more troublesome than not. "I'm just trying to increase my savings a bit," he said, brushing off her concern. "You know how it is."

"Mhmm…" Although her response was affirmative, that certain fire that Kim Dokja had come to associate with direct action lit in her eyes.

“Hyunsung.” The moment she turned to address him, her soulmate seemed to straighten up as if preparing to receive orders from a commander. “You should keep an eye out for Dokja-ssi at work. He’s that… special friend of mine.”

The phrase might have been concerning if Jung Heewon hadn’t said the word ‘special’ as if it meant ‘particularly diseased.’ Instead, the actual reason that Kim Dokja suddenly tensed up was Lee Hyunsung’s reaction to these words.

“Really?” the man asked, eyes wide. He was still sitting at attention in Jung Heewon’s direction, but he quickly glanced between her and Kim Dokja. “You mean, he’s the one who…”

“Uh. Yeah.” Jung Heewon suddenly adopted an avoidant posture, pulling out her phone. She started texting, walking back towards the kitchen and seemingly failing to notice that she hadn’t taken Lee Hyunsung’s order.

To be fair, Lee Hyunsung didn’t seem to notice his order hadn’t been taken, either.

In fact, Lee Hyunsung was the one who seemed to be taking orders between the two of them. He only relaxed when his commander turned away, taking it as his signal to be “at ease.” As his posture relaxed, his faced turned back towards Kim Dokja and… he just looked at him with a sort of emotional, complex gaze.

Obviously, going from having the buffer of Jung Heewon to suddenly receiving the full brunt of Lee Hyunsung’s attention was extremely alarming. 

Kim Dokja tried his best not to affectate strangely under such scrutiny, but in doing so he froze up like a deer in headlights.

It must have shown in his expression, because Lee Hyunsung was the one who broke out first.

“Sorry!” he apologized. “I didn’t mean to- I mean- It’s just that…” He regathered himself before asking, “Are you… the one who took Heewon to the hospital, that time…?”

Kim Dokja relaxed when he realized it was just about that. 

“Ah, yes, that’s how we met. ” This was actually a good chance to clarify things, “It wasn’t a big deal, but Heewon-ssi wanted to keep in touch afterwards…”

He trailed off when he realized Lee Hyunsung’s expression was only getting worse. The man looked to be near tears at this point.

“Dokja-ssi!” The man straightened before bending ninety degrees into a bow of gratitude. “Thank you so much! I just- there's so much I owe you-”

Kim Dokja felt immediately uncomfortable.

“There’s nothing to thank me for.” He waved his hand. “I just did what anyone would do, it’s not a big deal…”

“... I can’t speak for Heewon, but…” Although Lee Hyunsung didn’t get up from the bow, his eyes became visible, peering earnestly up at Kim Dokja. “... The fact that Dokja-ssi was able to get her to the hospital that night… even though it might have been a small thing to him, it was a very big deal to me!”

Not able to continue meeting that emotive gaze, Kim Dokja looked away. Obviously he wasn’t trying to minimize the impact of what Jung Heewon had gone through — on herself or her loved ones — it was just that he… really didn’t do much, alright? He was about as essential to the whole thing as a cog in a machine, just naturally doing what any bystander in such a situation should do…

“... Sorry, I didn’t mean to put Dokja-ssi on the spot.” Lee Hyunsung seemed abashed at Kim Dokja’s aversion to the topic. “It’s just that… well my life really changed a lot, that night, so…”

Augh. This was awkward, but Kim Dokja couldn’t figure out how to change the topic, before Lee Hyunsung went on.

“You know, I was still in the military at that time, and when I got back from my evening shift and saw the…” Lee Hyunsung was the one looking away now, a hand rubbing at his throat as if in pain. “... Back then, I always told myself that I was in the military because it was the best someone like me could do for my country… to actually make a difference in protecting people… but when something awful happened to someone I loved and there just… wasn’t anything I could do I…”

Lee Hyunsung began to shake his head back and forth. Kim Dokja saw it out of the corner of his eye, even with his gaze focused on the wood grain of the bar.

“... Dokja-ssi, that was a real wake up call for me,” he said. “Even though I told myself I was staying in the military for good reasons… I think I was actually just afraid of what I would be without it. I didn’t know what other career I might fit into, and I had grown so distant from Heewon… staying in the military was just a way to run from all of those difficult things in my life, and I didn’t realize until it was almost too late.”

The lines in the wood swirled into eye-like shapes. The pupils were centered, staring straight up.

“I used up all my calls for the week, only to get sent to voicemail… and when the mark started fading I thought she might have… and when I was finally able to call again and hear her voice…”

Kim Dokja found it hard to tell if he was hearing Lee Hyunsung’s words properly in that moment.

It was because a memory from his own military service had suddenly slotted into place.

Clouding his vision of the wood grain of the bar was a scene he had once spent some hours trying to memorize.

His arms once again covered in that facsimile mixture of ink, blood and bruises. Trying to make out the words in the dark of the military bunk after lights out.

Went out to drink. Ten guys  

I won.

“I had a chance to make things better between me and Heewon after that…”

Earlier, Kim Dokja had tried to console himself with the idea that this was an opportunity to learn more about Lee Hyunsung’s side of things in Yoo Joonghyuk’s narrative, but…

“… and the fact that she survived at all is really thanks in part to you, Dokja-ssi…”

Maybe this was a story that he already knew.

“... which is why I’m really grateful for Dokja-ssi’s part in letting me have that second chance…”

A familiar, heavy feeling settled in Kim Dokja’s gut.

“... if there’s anything I could do for him in return, I…”

Lee Hyunsung spoke as if everything was explained now, but Kim Dokja still didn’t understand why the man would be expressing gratitude to him, of all people. 

After all, it was Lee Hyunsung who decided to become more involved in his loved ones’ lives. He was the one who contacted Jung Heewon as soon as possible after finding out she was hurt. The one who changed his entire career path just so that he could be there for his soulmate, trying to mend their relationship. 

Lee Hyungsung was really a good person, wasn’t he? Thank goodness there was someone like him in Yoo Jonghyuk’s life, instead of… 

…

A good person would probably refuse to ask a favor in return for something they didn’t think deserved gratitude.

But, being Kim Dokja, he went on to say, “Actually, Hyunsung-ssi, there is something I’d like to ask, if it’s not too much trouble…”

.

.

.

Next Monday, Lee Hyunsung sat at the desk across from Yoo Joonghyuk, while Kim Dokja took his old spot at the computer nearest to the window.