“Y/N, meet me in my office with Choi in 10 minutes,” Your boss, Bang Yongguk, said as he walked past your desk with a full coffee mug that read ‘#1 BOSS’ in red lettering, “I just need to have a short meeting with you two .” He smiled as you agreed to meet him in 10. Surely this would be a good meeting right? You couldn’t remember doing anything wrong in the past week, and ‘Choi’ or Junhong, as you knew him, hadn’t been doing his job wrong either…maybe you were getting promoted? Hmm..don’t get your hopes up.

So after 10 minutes of continuing on with your work, you headed off to your bosses office like he had asked you to, and bumped into Junhong on the way. You both nervously greeted each other, seemingly curious about what this meeting was for, you walked in the door together to find a completely empty office. He wasn’t even there yet, so the two of you just sat in the two chairs opposite his desk and sat quietly waiting for him to turn up.

It wasn’t normal of Bang Yongguk to be late to meetings, what was going on?

Suddenly loud ringing bells were heard from all over the office, a siren would ring twice and then stop, then ring another two times and stop, You and Junhong looked at each other in panic.

“That’s the evacuation siren right?” You said confused, you were both unaware there was going to be a drill on today, you had no idea which siren meant what, did you have to stay inside or leave? Or worse…maybe it wasn’t a drill.

Junhong looked out the window and you turned too noticing that everyone was moving into other rooms and locking the doors, “Nope, there’s an intruder.” He said in a panic, getting up from his chair and going over to quickly lock the door to your bosses office, still unaware of where exactly he was, “Get under his desk!” he said pushing you around to the other side of his desk.

You both crawled under and squeezed yourself into the small space under his desk, surely if an intruder came past he wouldn’t be able to see you at all right? You hoped you were totally hidden, your heart was pounding, hoping this was just a drill that nobody had been told about or maybe somebody had forgotten to tell you two today.

Suddenly your panic was interrupted when you looked beside you and realised how closely you and Junhong were crammed under that desk together. You felt incredibly protected by Junhong, he had acted almost like a hero. You hardly knew this boy but you all of a sudden had a good impression of him now and hoped this was all just a drill so you could tell him how cool he was in this moment.

Wait, why couldn’t you just tell him that now? What if you two didn’t make it out of here?

“What?” he asked in a whisper, you hadn’t even realised but you had been staring at his face this whole time and now he was staring back at you. You averted your eyes for a second feeling uncomfortable now.

But you could still feel him staring at you, it was hard to not feel it when you were in such a confined space together.

“That was really cool.” you whispered as quietly as you could, hoping he didn’t actually hear you, but the confined space really made it difficult for him not to.

He huffed a small laugh and then averted his eyes too. But then it became awkwardly silent between the two of you, and you just couldn’t deal with that.

“They didn’t tell me there was going to be a drill today.” You whispered to him, and he shook his head.

“Me neither,” he paused for a second, “but I don’t know if this is a drill.” He raised his eyebrows sadly at you, but you looked away hoping it wasn’t real. And then it was silent again as you thought about there really being an intruder in the building and coming in here and finding the two of you hiding under the desk right now.

“What would you do right now if we were about to die?” you couldn’t hold it in, asking him the question flat out. You were in panic mode. He looked at you in slight shock, not wanting to even think about that.

You just looked at each other for a second. As he thought, you watched him look around and then back to your face, his eyes flick towards your lips before averting away again, “Cry probably.” He whispered, making you laugh quietly.

“You can’t say that after I just mentioned how cool you were,” you paused, and he didn’t say anything back, “although I’d probably do the same.” You said starting to become a bit more serious.

“Then we can just cry together.” He said trying to bring the mood back. You laughed a little, nodding your head. And again there was silence as you waited for a sign that it was okay, but there was nothing and you got more worried with every second.

You tried to get your mind off of it and think about something else for a second, your mind immediately went to what happened just a millisecond before, when Junhong looked right at your lips when you asked him what he would do if we were about to die. You knew what he was really about to say, and you started to smile to yourself, feeling a chuckle or two come out of your mouth quietly.

Junhong turned to you, confused as to why you had started laughing, “What’s funny?” he said almost starting to laugh himself in anticipation.

You laughed a little again, “Nothing.” You said, but couldn’t hold back the ridiculous thoughts of kissing Junhong, did you actually really want to kiss him right now too?

“No really what is it?” he asked still wanting to know, he wasn’t going to let it go. You looked at him.

“It’s just…when I asked you what you would do,” you couldn’t even say it out loud, “you just..” as you were looking at him you saw his eyes look at your lips again, “you did it again!” you said trying to not raise your voice.

“What? What am I doing?” he asked in a panic. Maybe he had no idea that he was looking at your lips. Maybe he wasn’t thinking about kissing you. But now it was too apparent in your mind to let go.

You laughed at him being unaware of what he was doing, but your laugh turned into a sigh as you tried to sit up under the desk and you brought your face the slightest bit closer to his now.

“Junhong,” now you were both looking at each other’s lips, “what if we die?” you were so serious but you just wanted him to kiss you, what if you really did end up dead here, wouldn’t it be nice to think you experienced one last kiss with someone in the moment before you were gone?

You realised he finally got the message, possibly knowing what he had been doing all along as he started to lean in, so painfully slow, lips millimetres from each other now.

“Attention employees!” the two of your froze in place hearing the announcement over the loud speaker on the company floor, “Thank you for staying calm and following the appropriate procedure when the intruder alarm was sounded, however it was a false alarm and it is safe to move around the building as normal again. Thank you again for your patience and cooperation.”

With lips only brushing against one another, the thought of everything now being okay took away from the moment and you both backed away, looking at each other rather awkwardly. You crawled out of the desk first, standing up and stretching after being stuck under that desk for so long. Junhong stayed under the desk still for a second kicking himself that he didn’t kiss you sooner, but pulled himself together and crawled out from under the desk too, the both of you going to sit in the chairs opposite your bosses desk once again, there was still a meeting to be had.

You sat in complete silence waiting for Bang Yongguk to turn up again. Even though you were further away from each other now, you could still feel Junhong gaze in your direction as he sat slouched in his chair.

Yongguk walked through the office door, “Ah, are you guys okay!?” he said as soon as he walked in, “Sorry I was late! The alarm went off and I was stuck in the copy room.”

“It’s okay, we survived, boss.” Junhong piped up happily.

“Only just.” I added in as a joke, earning another tiny huff from Junhong. Nobody else in this office was ever hearing of what happened under that desk.

“That’s good to hear, now the reason for this meeting!” He continued, “I’m giving you guys a new office! You’ll be sharing but it is definitely an upgrade.” He seemed so happy to tell you the good news. What would happen now if you and Junhong had to share an office now? You would have to see this boy that you almost kissed in a panic situation every day.