Jessica skirts in the bright lit space of her office across her desk, chewing the arm tip of her reading glasses between her teeth and her glaring eyes casted over an invisible figure maybe only she could see roaming with her.

It’s quite disturbing. While minding the phones on her desk at a yelling distance, Yoona is vigilant enough to throw a glance every thirty seconds through the glass divisions separating from the bullpen, or in her boss’ words, the sanctum of incompetent underlings.

Nobody would notice the tension washing over Jessica’s face because no one dares to look through the glass in fear of her reigned terror, except for Yoona who is remotely responsible to be within Ms. Jung’s bubble every second of the day - the two year surviving assistant (a record set) who does beyond assisting by keeping everyone in the 31st floor in ground.

Yoona couldn’t sit still and passively let chaos unfold by the end of the day. So she shot up, straightening the little creases on her shirt and grabbing the tablet. She struts anxiously to the double doors and pushes one of them. She wistfully steps a foot to the lion’s den, invading Jessica’s space and feeling the thickness of the air, almost like a fog, that Jessica conjured. It doesn’t take a few more for Jessica to stop on her tracks and turn her heel around.

“Yoona, does the look on my face right now tells you that you could unceremoniously waltz into my office and interrupt my meditation or you turned blind because of the many colors happening in your shirt?”

“No.” She said, wincing to consciously scan herself and hugging the tablet against her chest in courtesy to relieve Jessica from her supposedly hideous clothing. Ironic because they’re in the fashion and lifestyle business and Yoona wears tops and bottoms that defy both words.

The checkered shirt didn’t look so bad in the mirror when she checked this morning. But Jessica never really approves of Yoona’s taste in fashion and always picks on it, just amongst the few things her boss manages to get a hang of and keeps doing so, although heavy of everyday remarks that doesn’t miss a beat.

“It does tell me that you’re stressed because you’re pacing back and forth.” Yoona took in Jessica’s unchanging icy expression. “It worries me.”

“Oh, how boringly sweet of you.” Jessica reacted dull. “And why should I care about what you think?”

Yoona wields the tablet, her life saviour at times when Jessica Jung has tendencies that could put her job at stake because of her boss’ whims. She runs her hand on the screen which isn’t necessary because Yoona has memorized Jessica’s schedule, basically because it’s in her job description to pen how the seventy five percent of Jessica’s life should transpire smoothly which is all about work, work and work. It’s just insurance policy, in case Jessica has random impossible requests to bark.

“There’s a board meeting in the next hour and a half. You always require yourself to be at peak because you don’t like most of them except for the millions they’ve invested in the magazine.”

A groan leaves Jessica. The image alone of a table crammed of old creepy rich men with half of them cheating on their wives makes Jessica want to vomit. “God, the burden of being in charged.”

“You like it though.” Yoona briskly comments that goes ignored. Her eyes follow Jessica, leading herself to pour a drink at her mini bar as early as three in the afternoon.

Scotch. Neat. That only means Yoona’s boss is not having the least disappointing of days.

“I noticed you got yourself worked up after I gave you that envelope this morning.”

Jessica juts her hip on the side and tilts her head. “You’re still here.”

“I told you. I’m worried, Ms. Jung.”

Dark beady eyes darting incredulously at Yoona and the girl isn’t daunted one bit. Jessica is sometimes marvelled by Yoona’s callousness that was formerly unfathomable because she’s a bundle of an awkward and snorting mess, not that Jessica openly shows it to the girl or for sure, she’ll be growing a new head (which, having known Yoona for two years, Jessica thinks is highly doubtful.) If it’s any of her low-level employees, one look could have sent them crying out of her doors.

Jessica rolls her eyes, while others might depict it badly, in this context, Yoona knows it’s a good sign. “Didn’t you read where that mail is sent from?”

Or not a good sign at all. “It came to the Jung Sooyeon mailbox so I didn’t open it and there isn’t any address at the back too, other than your name.” Assuming two names helps Jessica navigate in the business without riding the coattails of her mighty parents’ accomplishments attached to her everywhere when she’s Jung Sooyeon and some peripherals she prefers to no longer be incorporated. This letter, for example. Her life years back flashes right before her and Jessica feels her insides shaking.

“Was it a threat? Where is it from? I can get it tracked down by the IT and our security.” Yoona is surged with panic.

“It certainly came from hell that it might as well be a threat.” She spitefully said with a remarkably placid face. The metaphorical reference lulls Yoona to solace.

“Good thing it’s not from someone trying to kill you with a-”

Jessica holds up a finger that snaps Yoona’s mouth shut. “Don’t you dare finish that sentence or I will fire you.”

Yoona vigorously shakes her head in mercy. This isn’t the first time she heard that warning coming from her agitated boss. None of them has come true. Yet. It makes her swallow dry and hell it hurts, she could choke on her own saliva.

“W-what’s the letter about?” And she resorts to prying about the matter Jessica doesn’t want to touch, burying a foot further down the grave.

Jessica drinks the glass empty, eyes locked on Yoona that traps her from moving a bone and  breathing normally. She sets it down on the coaster on top of her desk along with her glass upon the spread of unfinished paperworks and layouts to be revised.

She walks with finesse over the coffee table worth Yoona’s six month salary and settles on the cushions of the pearl white couch, sitting crossed legs.

“Have a seat, Yoona.”

Yoona lags on her stance. The invitation is too kind and Yoona is wary enough that she could be walking into a y trap. But then it’s her boss and she doesn’t take insubordination very lightly. Nobody does, actually.

Does applying comfort to her will make whatever verbally ersed sentences Ms. Jung is about to say less harming? So Yoona goes around the table, avoiding to bump the sharp edges that Jessica might deduct on her pay for jostling them with the cheap material of her pants.

Sitting straight and with poise, she presses her knees together and lets her tablet lie on her lap. Jessica gives her a moment to breathe and she slides forward, like a venomous snake that almost catches Yoona off guard. Yoona is not blind enough to just follow without anticipating for the worse.

Yoona instinctively reels backwards and holds a gasp, intimidated by the decreased distance between her and Jessica. God, they’re so close. Yoona can smell the hint of rosy perfume that hovers to her side and the way Jessica’s arm drapes over the back, commanding a privy sense of space causing heat to come across Yoona’s cheeks. It’s noticeable at the angle she’s sitting from, but of course, Jessica is much too occupied with the content of the letter to point a slight blush.

“What I’m about to tell you is as confidential as the number of things the citizens of South Korea are dying to know about me.”

“Okay. My lips are shut.” Yoona makes a zipping action over . Jessica Jung is not the confiding type. It must be the alcohol coursing in her bloodstream that hauled her bars.

“That letter is an invitation to my high school reunion happening next week. Surprising as it may sound from someone of sophisticated beauty and prestige, my high school, like Buffy Summers, was hell.”

Jessica leans back and that’s when Yoona breathes out in a hum, freeing the air constricted in . “Uh. I can’t imagine.”

“You can. You have the look.”

“What look?”

“Of a girl who was extremely humiliated in high school and the memory haunts you every now and then.”

Yoona turns slightly pale, lured by the convenience of a simple denial that Jessica will most likely believe, but her face gives a confirmation of the sheer truth from what Jessica just said.

“No need to get down with the details, Yoona. I’m talking about me so let’s just stay on that course.” Jessica brushes off the topic. “Once upon a time, my parents decided that homeschooling is a radical option to educate their daughter whom they believe should go reveal herself to the world and spread her wings. I wasn’t the most confident person during our first day as freshman in private school, especially since everyone seemed astonished by the idea of home school which decimated their appeal as retarded fools when the logic of it is simple. It’s earning academic merits done at home. The words themselves are definition of their own. Do you get that, Yoona?”

“I do, Ms. Jung. As bright as a day.”

“Good. I’m not a keeper of an ignorant assistant and I don’t like disappointing my excellent judge of character.” Thank god because Yoona strives to not fall as one in the presence of Jessica Jung. Oh, did Jessica just throw her an alluded comment? “So, I came, I saw and I didn’t quite conquer. Almost, but I barely lasted the day. It must be the pressure of having to fit myself in a society that I was never familiar of and my only basis to get through the first day are high school films and television. And you know what this medium never taught us? That you can automatically land rock bottom on your first day and you’d never recover from it if you’ve embarrassed yourself at the worst fashion. Guess what,” Yoona tunes in to that deprecating chuckle, followed by a fleeting shame she’s never encountered from Jessica before. “I peed in our P.E class, in front of every other class in the school gymnasium because I didn’t think I have it in me to play a stupid dodge ball.”

Jessica Jung peed in high school. Yoona is sure she’s heard it right with help of the good acoustics in her boss’ office.

Who would have thought that high school was a giant therapy session for someone like Jessica and it happens that the same person sows fear and mental torture to her employees at the present.

Yoona blinked, lips tightly pursed. Jessica’s tone of voice solicits no hilarity.She doesn’t plan to snicker for about later once she’s dismissed. She decides on what’s best to say.

I’m very sorry you had a terrible high school. Yoona crosses that out. Besides that being irrelative and long overdue, Jessica detests the pull of pity card whenever things didn’t go the way Jessica planned and Yoona had listened to them. The preference of Jessica doesn’t take away the conjugated feeling behind the word sorry. She commiserates with Jessica who’s probably traumatized by that predicament, obvious with the poor handling of the news of an upcoming gathering with the same people that contributed to transcend her humiliation into quarter-life crisis. But props to her boss, not everyone can keep their dignity intact after unloading that kind of mortifying tale.

“I was Peeing Sooyeon for the rest of my high school days. I am not gonna relive the embarrassment again after I got myself out of it.”

“Which I think is a more valid reason for you to go.” Yoona morphs to her usual driven optimistic self that Jessica nevertheless finds odd. Yoona may seem like an average naive on the outside, but she has this savvy insight at the call of danger. And this is danger, right? It’s Jessica Jung’s social life hanging precariously on the line. “Success is the best revenge and you happen to be successful.”

“I’m aware of my status. I’m breathing the air of success. I don’t need to be told of my excellence.” She gloats. “Where the hell are you getting at?”

“Use it. Utilize on it. Isn’t that what you-”

“Oh, Yoona.” A consoling touch reaches Yoona’s knee and everything Yoona has mustered to say just dies. “I’ve mentored you about many significant things. Idiocy isn’t one of them.” Yoona would have missed the condescending tone if it isn't for Jessica’s hand tapping over the denim just above her skin.  “Don’t worry. It’s cute. Worthless. But cute.”

Yoona returns to meet Jessica’s eyes and there’s a brief smile that breaks on the older woman’s lips. “You have a few more to learn, Yoona and let’s take this opportunity for me to hand you down a lesson for the day. If I make my entrance to the said hotel, announce myself as Jung Sooyeon, the first thing that will welcome me once they hand out my name tag is, ‘Hey, Peeing Sooyeon, you made it!’ Do you mind doing a rain check on your pants?’”

Yoona frowns and she stammers. “Why, why, why would they do that? You’re Jessica Jung. They should know you.”

“But they don’t, in retrospect. They could’ve already come up to me when I was starting this company, shouting to everyone at arm’s length that I’m their former classmate who peed in class, which will eventually result to bad publicity on my part and an ego booster for them.”

Yoona cracks her lips open but catches a breath instead. None of this is making sense.  “Wouldn’t they recognize you then? For sure they looked up on you before sending that invitation.”

“The only reference they cared to mind is the school yearbook and the post office for my current address.” Jessica eyes on her perfectly manicured fingernails.  “And in consideration of your suggestion which I adore, thank you. As easy it is to attract attention and flaunt the thrive of my company to demand respect, I also dislike exposing myself out there that way.” Yoona fidgets timidly before Jessica from the way she overpronounced her words and looked directly towards her like she expects Yoona to gulp them whole.

“That’s the purpose of my pseudo name,” she continues, ignoring the hunched eyebrows and the crease on her forehead that remain on Yoona’s face. “so I could stay away from the clamor of my parents and I think I did fairly well because…” Jessica gestures her hand with grace over everything that denotes to the fruit of her labor. “Revenge is also child’s play, but I do agree that success is an honorable one. Except, nobody really cares about that. When you bought the iPhone, did you have Steve Jobs in mind when you were buying it?”

“No. It’s Apple, so-”

“Exactly.” She muttered perceptively and Yoona is mesmerized. Jessica Jung is really something. “It’s just the brand or the ambassador presented for you that you care about. Not the minds behind it. Right until they’re in front of you or someone tips you off, you realize they’re supposed to be these incredible people that you are not and there goes the shock factor. Same thing applies to me. They don’t care about me, Jung Sooyeon, much less to figure out that Jessica Jung, CEO and Editor-in-Chief of a now renowned media group is also me. And they’re lame and full of themselves, so I don’t think I’ll be awarded of the shock factor, which I can live without, apparently.”  

Jessica leans forward, her tepid fingertips touching Yoona’s chin to close hanging open like it’s the most natural thing she does.

“I understand your awe. Just don’t leave your mouth open like that.”

Yoona nods, wetting her lips and pressing them together. “Sorry.”

“What did I tell you a million times before?”

“No apologies.” She said submissively, mentally slapping herself for forgetting in a split second the strict reminder of her boss. “It’s just...what you said is great and you laid out a better and more perfectly constructed reason to grace your presence in-”

“I didn’t say I was going.” Jessica rises from the couch, runs down her hands to straighten her pencil skirt as she returns to her desk. She sinks down on her leather chair and picks up her glasses.

“But-”

“You may leave now. I’d like to be alone and….brood about it.”

Jessica sends her out with a gentle wave of hand and concentrates on the pile of work. Yoona gives up a word and complies with the dismissal.

“Yoona. A word. Now.”

Jessica pipes as she flies past Yoona’s desk and straight to her office. Yoona scurries from behind her table as fast as she can before Jessica decides in impulse that her gauge of temper has finally ran out empty. One, because of the board meeting that doesn’t fail to grind her gears. Two, because Jessica wasted thirty precious minutes of her life listening to old people whining when that value of time could have been rendered to at least half a million dollars worth of productivity. Three, because Jessica couldn’t do anything about it. Alone. Four, because she had to sit through it. Alone.

There’s a ton of bricks about to bury her alive and Yoona rummages through her mind why death is slinging right above her head. What makes the problem more severe, Yoona doesn't have any memory she’s done something wrong and Jessica has the keenest of eyes to see one.

Did Jessica find out that her latte this morning had whole milk in it?

Jessica clicks and clacks in the room, sending currents Yoona meekly listens to for a minute and suffer the agonizingly slow rise of suspense.

Then Jessica halts, hand is propped on her waist and Yoona’s heart may have skipped a beat or two.

“Where were you?”

Yoona doesn’t quite understand the question and it’s ing simple.

“Did I stutter?” Jessica irritably spits. “Where the hell have you been?”

“I was here-”

Jessica doesn’t even let her finish and she inches a few steps, as if challenging Yoona.

“So you’re playing solitaire for over half an hour while I get totaled at the conference room.”

“Wha-” Yoona clenches her hands into fists, losing control evoked by Jessica as the sentence decayed when she’s yet to form an actual word. She gathers herself together, but halfheartedly tames her grip on the threshold.

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