I didn't mention it last chapter, but I haven't had to save someone yet, but I've recently gotten recertified, so the process is still in my head. This chapter does have some things I'm more familiar with, like card games on rainy days, some of my favorite memories.

Woohyun felt like celebrating when patrons slowly began leaving as a heavy rainstorm rolled through the area. It’s wasn’t a thunderstorm, which was sad, because that meant the pool would close, if only for a half hour every instance of thunder, but it was still a good bet that most of the members would leave. And if they wouldn’t, then the snack bar would have to deal with their chief source of entertainment--getting food.

So yeah, he got the short end of the stick, but there was a plus. The guards would all be off stand--if no one was on the grounds or near the pool--and they probably hang out with the kitchen staff. And guess who just walked in for his shift?

Lee Howon, also known as Hoya (no one knew why, but it was a cool name, so no one complained) and who was currently the target of Woohyun’s affection.

He wasn’t sure there were actual feelings involved, despite the little slip up opening day (they had definitely jumped to conclusions, because to be honest Chae Seon kinda freaked him out, so of course he likes Hoya more) but he liked to flirt with and tease Hoya, that was for sure. He liked seeing his stunned and unresponsive face as he tried to come up with the right response (or any response, really) to the words Woohyun had thrown at him.

It was a game, one Woohyun liked playing, and one Hoya couldn’t wait to get out of. But somehow, Woohyun just knew that Hoya didn’t really mind. After all, Hoya could easily have shut down like he did with the members, keeping a cold expression on his face whenever he needed to go to the snack bar, but he didn’t, and he let Woohyun embarrass him time after time again.

But of course, Hoya just went back to the sign in office once he realized no one was here, probably with no intention of coming out to talk to the snack bar staff.

Woohyun huffed. He was already bored, and disappointed. But mostly bored.

The sign in office was absolutely silent. Of course it had to be. It was just Hoya and Myungsoo in the office. Everyone knew that the go-to preference of these two--and Chae Seon, but she wasn’t here--was absolute silence. The silence, however, was comfortable: the two were relaxed and on good terms with each other--calling them friends was pushing it--so they simply didn’t feel the need to break the silence and change the mood from comfortable to awkward.

But of course, there’s Dongwoo. And he bounded into the sign in office with the same gusto he’s shown every day.

“Let’s play a card game!” He announced loudly, a large grin on his face.

“Are we allowed to play, hyung?” Hoya asked. “Won’t Sunggyu-hyung get mad?”

Dongwoo shook his head. “What he doesn’t know won’t kill him. Besides, there’s no one here anymore. If there was, I wouldn’t have asked.”

The two looked at each other briefly, before Myungsoo stood from his seat and reached for the cabinet containing all the games and pulling out a deck of cards. “What game, hyung?”

The assistant manager didn’t reply, but stuck his head out the door and called out, “Anyone want to play a card game?”

“Oh, I do!” Hajin said, standing immediately and heading inside.

“Can’t I join!” Sungyeol called from the snack bar.

“No you can’t! Guards only!” Hajin yelled.

“Yah, Lee Hajin! You’re such a mean cousin!” Sungyeol yelled as she walked inside. She waved him off.

Myungsoo perked up. “Sungyeol is your cousin?” How had he not noticed? Hajin often had a strangely familiar expression on her face, her energy was similarly energetic, and her mannerisms were also comparable to Sungyeol.

“Unfortunately,” Hajin joked, a jovial smile on her face. “Why do you ask?”

This was when Dongwoo spoke up, ready for an opportunity to embarrass the mysterious and stoic guard. “L-ah here likes your cousin,” he announced, giving Myungsoo a rather heavy-handed pat on the shoulder.

Myungsoo immediately reddened and ducked his head, turning away from the two. Hoya, who had been drinking his water, choked, doing a comical spit take in his shock as Dongwoo and Hajin burst into laughter, enjoying this rather funny change in the two stoic guard’s personas.

“You? You like... Sungyeol?” Hajin gasped, in between laughs. “My cousin?”

“I-I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Myungsoo denied unsuccessfully.

Dongwoo hummed disbelievingly. “Yeah, suuurrre,” he drawled.

“Hyung!” The whine that came out of the guard’s mouth would have shocked any member who heard it--the oh-so-silent-and-mysterious hot guard, whining like a kid--but all the staff were used to it. It was a well kept secret, in fact: Myungsoo and L were different people.

All the members called Myungsoo “L” because that was his persona towards them: he was cold, reserved, polite, and quiet. L did his job and didn’t care about the members personally. L always wore black and had a cold city boy air about him that was as attractive as his appearance. Girls longed to get L’s attention, but they never had it for too long: he made sure they were okay, and then moved on.

The staff called L by his real name, Myungsoo, because he was cute. He was known to be adorable and weird and awkward to the staff, and was rather affectionate with others, especially Sungyeol, his best friend from college. Myungsoo was as clingy as a koala, often giving back hugs and touching the other staff, with the exception of Hoya, or Chae Seon: neither one particularly liked being touched, so Myungsoo respected their wishes.

“Aw, Myungsoo-ah!” Hajin cooed playfully, reaching over to squeeze the guard’s cheeks. “You’re so cute!”

“Ah, Noona,” he complained, shoving her hand away gently. “Don’t tell Sungyeol, okay? I don’t want him to know just yet.”

“Then make sure you don’t talk about it so loudly where others can hear you.”

Everyone jumped, turning towards the door, where one of the snack bar staff was standing, arms crossed.

“Thankfully, I’m not Sungyeol,” Areum said, an amused smile on her face.

“Noona...” Myungsoo began, but he was cut off by the law major.

“Don’t worry, Sungyeol won’t hear a word from me,” she assured him. “Anyway, I heard there was a card game going on in here?”

“Yeah, what do you want to play?” Myungsoo said, grateful to get off the topic of Sungyeol.

In the end, they play “Bull,” a card game that Hajin chose. Dongwoo wanted to do Mafia, but Hoya and Myungsoo both agreed that it would get too hectic, and if any members were to come in (or worse, one of the administration) it would be bad to see them screaming at each other instead of doing their jobs.

Unsurprisingly, both Myungsoo and Hoya were good, as both had a strong poker face, whereas Dongwoo looked too gleeful when he tried to lie, and Hajin tried to act normal, but she ended up overcompensating, and it was her tell.

While they played, they got to know each other better. They learned who these people were beyond their job and the little things.

“You’re a dance major?” Dongwoo asked, a wide grin on his face. “That’s so cool! I teach a dance school nearby. If you want a job after college, I can try to get one for you.”

“Thank you, hyung,” Hoya smiled gratefully. “I’ll check it out.”

“You’re welcome,” Dongwoo grinned even wider, if that was physically possible.

“Can we see one of your performances?” Hajin piped up.

While he was usually pretty comfortable with dancing--it was his major, and he’d done a ton of performances in front of a lot more people--he felt strangely uncomfortable around these people. Maybe it was because he worked with these people; they weren’t just nameless faces in a crowd of people who wouldn’t talk to him afterward, they were people he would be seeing on a regular basis for three months. He always thought of himself as pretty confident, but right now, he was feeling strangely self-conscious.

Picking up on that, Dongwoo said, “Maybe another time, when he’s less likely to slip and fall.” His words reminded everyone of the pouring rain outside that had allowed them to hang out in the office. “Myungsoo, you’re a photographer, right?”

“I’m an acting and photography major,” Myungsoo replied easily. “I had an exhibition at my university a week ago, and I swore I saw Sunggyu hyung there, but he denied it.”

“Oh, he was there,” Dongwoo confirmed. “I would have gone, but I had a class to teach. But he got all dressed up, and looked up what to do at photo exhibitions, so he was prepared.”

“How do you know all this?” Areum asked, curious. Everyone was. The dynamic between Sunggyu and Dongwoo was so different than Sunggyu’s dynamic with... well, everyone else. He was always so harsh and distant, even when he was being friendly. No one could forget he was the boss, even for a second. He allowed everyone to call him hyung, but there was still another layer of respect to him that didn’t fit a hyung-dongsaeng relationship. The fact that Dongwoo felt absolutely comfortable with him, to the point where he would touch him rather affectionately was a source of confusion for most of the staff.

Dongwoo cackled. “I live with him, that’s why!” Everyone gaped, shocked at this revelation. “We knew each other from high school and university, so when we both got jobs in the area, we decided to move in and save money.”

“You live with Sunggyu hyung?” Myungsoo asked incredulously.

“You guys didn’t notice that whenever we need to be at the pool at the same time, we come together?” Dongwoo pointed out.

Areum and Hajin both let out a breath. “Damn,” Areum muttered. “You’re right. I never noticed.”

After a few moments, Dongwoo’s smile slipped from his face, but didn’t full disappear; it was a more serious smile, one that wasn’t always seen on the assistant manager’s face. “You do know that Sunggyu hyung really does care about all of you, right? He may seem mean and harsh, but he thinks a lot about you. He knows when you are stressed, and when you need a firm push. He’s always worrying about you guys.”

No one knew what to say to that. No one had ever thought about Sunggyu caring that much about his employees. “Wow...” Hajin said quietly. “I never thought about it, but there’s been so many times...”

Hajin thought about the time she hadn’t cleaned the locker rooms after the pool closed well enough, and the guard who came in the next morning had to clean the room again. Sunggyu had pulled her aside and scolded her, but had paired her with a more experienced guard to help her learn the ropes, and made her clean the locker rooms by herself every night for a week, until she got it right. She had thought he was punishing her, but she realized he had been letting her learn on her own, without the scrutiny of others.

Hoya thought about the time he had been mobbed with fangirls once he got off the stand. He’d had a tough dance practice before his shift, and he was running on little sleep, so it wasn’t long before he got mad, and was going to snap and tear them all down, regardless of the consequences. It was then that Sunggyu had come, yelling at him to get back to work and told him to check the boy’s bathroom, ignoring Hoya’s protests that it wasn’t his fault. At the time he had wanted to rip his boss apart for blaming him, but now he realized Sunggyu had prevented him from yelling at the girls and being fired, and gave him time alone to calm down.

Myungsoo thought about the time he had been utterly exhausted towards the end of his shift. He had had to do several “saves,” though they had turned out to be fake drownings to get his attention. He was getting sick of this job, and he was so tired from having to deal with girls and the cold water and all the attention that all he wanted to do was lay down and nap. At that moment, Sunggyu had come in, putting Myungsoo on office duty, doing nothing but the most menial tasks. When he had done it, Sunggyu had then told him to stay in the office for the rest of his shift, forty-five minutes, to give the other guards a “break from office duty.” He had thought it had been lucky that he had gotten this task, so that he could rest, and give any lingering fangirls an excuse to keep them away. Now, he realized that Sunggyu had kept him there so that he could rest; it wasn’t a coincidence like he had thought.

Dongwoo nodded. “I don’t think he wanted you to notice, so he’s usually pretty harsh. But sometimes you need it, and sometimes you don’t, and he sees that.”

Card game forgotten, the guards and Areum stayed in their seats, in shock.

“What took you so long?” Sungjong demanded as Areum came back.

“Sorry, I lost track of time,” Areum shrugged.

Sungyeol could tell there was something more. For one, Areum looked so different to when she left: brighter, happier, calmer, like one of life’s mysteries had been solved.

For another, she kept looking at him with a strange expression. And that was bothersome. Well, it wasn’t at first, but when it happened fifteen times later, he had had enough of it.

“Okay, what’s going on?” He bursted, scaring a lot of the people in the kitchen.

“What do you mean?” She said innocently. Fake innocence, he was sure.

“You keep looking at me with a face... that face!” He yelled, pointing at the strange expression that had appeared on his face again.

Woohyun had other ideas, apparently. “You wouldn’t know that if you kept staring at Areum,” he teased. “Is there something you want to tell us, Sungyeol-ah?”

Everyone chuckled as Sungyeol spluttered. “Wha-What? N-No! I don’t like Areum-noona like that!”

“We know that, Sungyeol,” Sungjong, ever the voice of reason, said. “We just like teasing you.”

“I have noticed you looking over at Sungyeol more though,” Woohyun said speculatively. “Is there something wrong?”

Areum shook her head. “No, not at all,” she said. There was a pause before she continued, “It’s... Myungsoo.”

Sungyeol’s head snapped towards her. “What about Myungsoo? Is he okay?”

“Yes, he’s okay,” she said patiently. “I said nothing was wrong, didn’t I? I was just... thinking about Myungsoo and his fangirls. It must be hard for him to work here.”

He hadn’t really thought too much about it. Why did Myungsoo stay here, when the fangirls were just harassing him all the time? “I guess... he figured he was strong enough to power through.”

“Figure, huh,” Areum hummed contemplatively. “I guess so. I just don’t know how someone like him would be able to handle this, day in and day out. I guess he has a really good reason.”

I guess he has a good reason.

he has a good reason.

has a good reason.

a good reason.

good reason.

reason.

Why was this thought fluttering around in his head? There was a strange weight to them, like there was a hidden meaning Sungyeol was supposed to decipher easily. It also that this was Myungsoo, his best friend, she was talking about. The guy he knew better than everyone else here, and yet here Areum was, acting like she’d known Myungsoo all her life. It bothered him, more than anyone knew.

But, being the choding everyone knew, Sungyeol knew he would just come off as childish and whiny if he complained about it, and no one would take it seriously. So he didn’t say anything, just shrugged his shoulders and went back to his work.

Woohyun knew something was up. He knew Areum hadn’t been trying to set Sungyeol off, but she had somehow. There was something she knew, and it was bothering the choding. So, after the pool closed, he found himself trailing Sungyeol as he went to talk to Areum.

“What do you know?” Sungyeol demanded of her, not cornering, but still intimidating.

“What do I know about what?” Areum challenged, not one to back down from a challenge.

“About Myungsoo,” he said, “What do you know about Sungyeol that I don’t?”

“Nothing,” she said, then, “and everything.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Sungyeol snapped. “Nothing and everything? They’re polar opposites!”

“Not really, if you think about it,” was Areum’s retort. “I don’t know as much about Myungsoo that you don’t, but what I do know is important, and I don’t divulge others’ secrets.”

“This is my best friend you’re talking about, practically my brother. If it’s that important, why hasn’t he told me?” Sungyeol said.

“Here’s a hypothetical situation,” Areum offered instead, going for vagueness again. “If Myungsoo started dating one of the staff, one who was pretty visible to the members, wouldn’t it repel the fangirls?”

Taken back, Sungyeol stared at the law major in front of him for a few seconds before his mouth dropped open, and he said, “you mean someone like you?”

Silence. Areum stared at the tall, lanky chef for a few heartbeats before responding. “I’ve said too much. I’ll leave it up to you to figure out.” Without another word, Areum brushed past Sungyeol.

Woohyun’s mind was in overdrive. He knew what was going on. Aigoo... what was he going to do?

Thank you guys for reading the first chapter! I hope you liked it! What do you think of this chapter? I had a hard time with Sungyeol's character. I hope he didn't sound too mean! He just wants to know what's going on.

Please don't expect another chapter every week. I had to push off a lot of homework to get this done (my fault, not yours) and I need to crack down on my work now. So, apologies in advance! I hope this little tidbit will get you through:

The next chapter's name is "Dance Showcase" which will have the guards finding some of Hoya's dance performance videos (and a few performances by Hoya himself) and a little Woohyun getting jealous, cause SOMEONE dances a little... provocatively (Good Kisser, anyone?) :)