NAME 10

The person appearing on the screen was Jaehwan. Seowon answered the call immediately.

“Hello?”

— Are you in the office?

“Yeah, what about you?”

— I just got in. How about coffee?

“I was just about to drink some, Kanu.”

— Really? I bought two cups on the first floor, so if you want to drink, come up.

He couldn’t bring himself to say no. Since he was craving coffee, the offer was too tempting. Seowon replied that he understood and put the instant coffee back in its original place. Then he went straight toward the emergency stairs.

‘Hmm?’

However, he sensed an unfamiliar presence behind his back. He turned his body, wondering if someone was following him.

‘What is it?’

No one was there, so why? Had his nerves become sensitive?

He stood still and scanned the surroundings before turning back. As he stepped inside the emergency door, the fragrant smell of coffee called out to Seowon. His footsteps heading downward quickened.

“Are you that happy to see coffee?”

Jaehwan lightly teased him at the sight of Seowon’s hurried appearance. Seowon let out a chuckle as he took the coffee offered to him and sipped it.

“I’ll pay you back next time.”

“It’s just a thousand won, don’t worry about it.”

“To me, it’s worth ten million won. I really wanted to drink this.”

Seowon squatted on the stairs. He felt a bit sorry toward Jaehwan to just snatch the coffee and leave, and on the other hand, he wanted to enjoy the luxury of a cup of coffee for a moment.

While Seowon sipped his coffee, Jaehwan sat down right next to him.

“Are you very busy?”

“I’m picked for overtime again today.”

“Again? Don’t overdo it.”

“It’s not up to me. This is all because of the Team Leader, ah, never mind.”

He shut his mouth because he didn’t want to talk about Baek Kanghyun if possible. Before he knew it, the paper cup was empty. He should be getting up now, but he found himself unnecessarily conscious of Jaehwan. Suddenly, he sensed Jaehwan’s hand draped over one of his shoulders.

“I’m okay. That’s why I didn’t contact you.”

“That’s a relief.”

The conversation with Jaehwan ended there. Jaehwan stood up first before Seowon did. Now he just had to go back up, but Seowon couldn’t easily take a step. Jaehwan was looking at him with suspicious eyes.

“What?”

Seowon suddenly had his hand caught by Jaehwan. At the same time he heard a whisper saying your pheromones seem to be leaking a bit, their lips overlapped. It was a short but thick, slurping kiss.

“Lee Jaehwan, you!”

“I’ll take this as the price for the coffee. Good luck with the afternoon.”

Jaehwan left the emergency stairs as if running away.

𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟

“Assistant Manager Jeong, are you still far from finished?”

“I’m working on it. I’ll finish it and give it to you as quickly as possible.”

Throughout the entire afternoon, Baek Kanghyun badgered Seowon. He pestered him to turn in the report quickly almost every thirty minutes, and if Seowon even tried to leave his seat for a moment, he gave him a look that told him not to waste time uselessly.

‘I’m going crazy.’

He wondered if Baek Kanghyun had eaten something wrong for lunch, or if he had been rejected somewhere and was taking it out on him; all sorts of thoughts crossed his mind. The work was already a lot and he was dying from being pressed for time, but with Baek Kanghyun intentionally picking on him, he wanted to throw everything away and run away.

“Sigh…”

Still, the report was somehow in progress. The file he received from Sales Team 2 was a huge help. Combined with the power of a cup of coffee traded for a kiss, Seowon was able to manifest a concentration close to a miracle and complete the report. He roughly checked for typos and sent a message to Baek Kanghyun along with the file.

[Assistant Manager Jeong Seowon: Team Leader, I have finished the report and am sending it to you.]

He moistened his dry mouth and throat with plain water and collapsed onto his desk for a moment. His eyes were aching as if they would pop out and his shoulders were heavy as if boulders had been placed on them. He closed his eyes, soothing himself by saying he should rest just until Baek Kanghyun called him, and that since he had worked without even breathing properly, surely he could rest this much.

“Assistant Manager Jeong.”

However, the tone of Baek Kanghyun’s voice calling Seowon was somehow unusual. Seowon jumped up, quickly performed a dry wash of his face, and went to him. The man was frowning while having the report Seowon wrote and another document displayed on the monitor.

“Yes, Team Leader.”

Despite Seowon’s answer, he continued to just glare at the monitor without a word. His heart tightened at the sound of the mouse wheel turning. He trembled with resentment at the sight of the man appearing to contemplate what flaw would be best to pick.

“Assistant Manager Jeong, is work a joke to you?”

“Pardon?”

“You understood me, so let’s not make me say it twice.”

“A joke? No. That is absolutely not the case…!”

Baek Kanghyun jumped up from his seat and pointed at the screen. As a man who was almost a span taller than Seowon blocked his path, a primal fear coming from the difference in physical build weighed down on Seowon.

“The specific content is almost identical to the Sales Team 2 data; is it possible that my eyes are mistaken?”

He was speechless. Among the files displayed on Baek Kanghyun’s screen, one was that very PDF file Seowon had received from Sales Team 2.

“Company work isn’t homework; does it make sense to copy another team’s data? You might as well have just submitted it after changing the file name. Did you think I wouldn’t know if you submitted it after editing it cleverly?”

“Copying? It’s absolutely nothing like that. I only received and used objective data related to marketing, and it is true that I organized and wrote the rest myself.”

The gazes of the Sales Team 3 people were pinned on the two of them simultaneously and then scattered in an instant. The office atmosphere froze like a thin sheet of ice.

But saying he copied it was an absurd story. He had only received a little help from another department to save time on finding and organizing data. In Seowon’s mind, this was a reasonable trick of the trade, but it seemed Baek Kanghyun’s thoughts were otherwise. He criticized him fiercely as if Seowon had committed a fatal foul.

“The moment data is organized by a human hand, objectivity is already lost. Have you only worked once or twice? As someone who is an assistant manager, you didn’t even know that?”

“Ah…”

He moved his lips but then just shut them and lowered his head. Looking at his distorted face, he knew that excuses would no longer work. It wasn’t that Baek Kanghyun’s words were entirely wrong, and he thought that arguing with him further would be a waste of time.

“I’m sorry. I will do it again.”

While returning to his seat, his head throbbed. He had expected to be rejected once or twice with the report, but he really hadn’t expected to be yelled at to this extent. At any rate, it was true that he had cut corners, so he didn’t need to feel wronged, but his heart was thumping. How could he do that so much in front of people?

“…”

He held his breath because even sighing felt like it would draw attention. He thought he should wash his face to snap out of it, so he quietly stood up.

This type of hardship was not familiar even to someone as strong-willed as Seowon. If he just thought of it as something that happened because he did something wrong, he would feel much more at ease, but he kept wanting to resent Baek Kanghyun.

“Sigh…”

He loosened his tie, put it in his pocket, and unbuttoned his shirt. After undoing his cuffs and rolling his sleeves up to his elbows, he turned on the cold water. He stared blankly at the coolly pouring stream of water before washing his face and neck. After repeatedly wetting his skin until it felt tingly, he turned off the faucet.

“Dammit…”

Even his bangs were soaked. He roughly brushed off the moisture and stared at his reflection in the mirror. His face was pale, devoid of all color, while only his lips were bright red.

How long will it take to do it again? Will he even be able to go home today? The cold voice and determined expression of Baek Kanghyun, who had emphasized that it was due by today, lingered before his eyes.

“Son of a bitch.”

It was just as he muttered the insult under his breath and was about to leave the restroom. As soon as he turned around, he came face to face with Baek Kanghyun. In that moment, Seowon froze.

“…”

Whether he should call it a relief or not, Baek Kanghyun did not open his mouth immediately and stayed silent. He was terrified that the man might have heard the curse he just said, but Seowon did not show it and bowed his head to show courtesy. Then he brushed past him. No, he intended to brush past him.

“Did you cry, by any chance?”

If only Baek Kanghyun hadn’t said such a nonsensical thing. Seowon denied it immediately.

“It’s not like that.”

He refused to do something as stupid as blubbering just because he was chewed out by a superior. He grumbled internally, saying the man was making all sorts of misunderstandings just because he washed his face.

He roughly wiped the moisture remaining on his face and neck with his shirt sleeve and sat in front of his desk again. Leaving behind Assistant Manager Seo Jiyeon’s worry asking if he was okay, he opened a new file with a determined mind.

Since things had turned out this way, the report he wrote earlier had become useless. It was a crisis situation where he had to rewrite it from beginning to end. He wondered if he would even be able to go home today…

The look in Seowon’s eyes as he checked the clock was anxious.