The first thing Jongdae saw when he came into the office on Thursday morning was Jinkyung hovering around his desk, busying herself with something inside that thick ring file she was clutching in her hand. The rest weren't here yet, and the office was unusually quiet. 

Still, it was barely fifteen-minutes-past seven in the morning and Jongdae probably still had crust around his eyes. 

"Hey, Jinkyung," he smiled as he ambled over to his table. "Why are you here so early? The rest won't be coming in for a while." 

She seemed excited to see Jongdae. "Good morning! Actually, I have something to show you." 

Jinkyung walked over to him and handed him the ring file, which Jongdae received with alacrity — a much brisk and ready cheerfulness. "This," she breathed excitedly. "Is a proposal I was working on for the company. I was hoping you would vet it for me and see if it's up to standard. And… maybe if it is, then can you help me to pass it to the higher positions for them to take a look?"

"Sure," Jongdae beamed as he proceeded to read the pages of charts and words Jinkyung had printed out. He had honestly never encountered any trainee who took the effort to come up with a proposal as Jinkyung did, and thought that she really was one hardworking trainee. 

He would admit that the more he read, the more impressed he got. This was probably the first time ever in the history of WS Group that a trainee of slightly less than a week came up with a proposal — an extremely detailed and practical one at that — that could be actually utilized by the company. He was sure of it. 

"You have ambitions of becoming the next CEO?" Jongdae playfully asked when he was done, but Jinkyung didn't laugh as he had expected. 

"Yes," she stated matter-of-factly. "If that's not possible, I'll expect myself to become at least a Managing Director." 

Jongdae was a little shocked, but he tried not to let it show though. In the end, he just nodded. "That's good. Continue to let your ambitions motivate you," he grinned. "Your proposal, anyway, was really great. I don't think even I, as your senior, can come up with something like this." 

Jinkyung's face brightened considerably. "Really? Then you think it can be accepted by the company?" 

"Well, that is up to them to decide. I mean, personally, I think it really does stand a big chance. But for now I'll just vet it properly before handing in over to your seniors. If there's anything that needs to be changed I'll call you over, okay?" He waved the file at Jinkyung before setting it down on his desk. 

Jongdae could tell Jinkyung was elated. 

The rest of the interns only started filing in near to eight, when the sun was out and gleaming high in the sky already. Jongdae briefed them on what to do for the day — he set Chaeyoung and Taehwan out to count some stocks in the WS Supermarket in Seongdong district, Jinkyung to work on translating a few reports and Hyejin to finish up a PowerPoint slideshow for a Keynote presentation one of the employees in the upper team had to do. 

As for Jongdae himself, he concentrated on vetting Jinkyung's proposal, as well as finish the remaining tasks he didn't distribute to the interns. He was a little stressed, but it was manageable. At least for now. 

______________________________

Hyejin stood at the coffee machine, trying to figure out which buttons made which type of coffee. What were the capsules at the side for, then? Wait — were there even options for the type of coffee? She put a cup under the machine, then pressed a random button, then two more for good measure. The coffee machine beeped twice, then stopped. The small red light at the top blinked, and Hyejin blinked back at the coffee machine, confused. She always thought it would be better if there were actual instant coffee sachets at this office like those she had at home. Hyejin was fully capable of making coffee by hand instead of dealing with this dumb machine. She was one step away from punching the machine with her hand. All she wanted was one cup of coffee, for goodness' sake. 

Hyejin picked up one capsule and turned it around, hoping to find instructions on how to use it. Suddenly, she saw a hand reach out for another capsule in a different colour, and felt the presence of someone behind her. Looking sideways, she saw that it was Chen there, looking amusedly at her like he always did. 

"What coffee do you want?" He asked Hyejin, throwing the capsule in his hand up and down. "Cappuccino, Latte, Espresso, Mocha, decaffeinated or something else?" 

"I-I'll take a Latte. How do you even work this thing?" Hyejin felt a little stupid asking that question but she figured it would be better to ask now than to have Chen come to help every time she needed a coffee. 

"Oh, you won't be able to get it, it's really difficult," Chen said as he picked out a capsule. He opened the top lid of the machine and popped in the capsule, then pressed the biggest button at the top. The silent coffee machine whirred into life, and coffee began to drip into the cup slowly. It look less than fifteen seconds for the whole process to be complete and the latte to be ready. 

"It's tough, right?" Chen nodded at the coffee, then laughed. "I hope you can tell I was being sarcastic, Jasmine Princess." (Jasmine Princess was Chen's new nickname for Hyejin — she had long already gotten used to its strangeness)

 Hyejin stared at the machine, blinked at it, and started to giggle. She didn't know why, but it was funny to her. 

"What's so funny?" Chen asked, obviously amused again. 

Hyejin tried to catch her breath between the giggle which had by then turned into a chortle. She grabbed onto the table for support. "I-I don't know," she chortled, then tried to hold the rest of her laugh in. "It's just… I'm so dumb." Then she began to laugh again. 

Chen raised his eyebrows at her, and began to chuckle along. "You're weirder than I thought, Hwang Hyejin." He lifted Hyejin's latte up and passed it to her. "Here, drink it before it gets cold," he said and playfully shooed her back to her seat. 

Hyejin set the coffee down on her table and glanced over at Jinkyung who was busy translating some reports written in French. Her mind slowly got boggled as her eyes scanned the page full of words she couldn't read, much less understand. 

"Woah, you understand French?" Hyejin asked in amazement. "And here I am just struggling with my basic English," she chuckled. 

Jinkyung nodded without looking up. "I took a course when I was studying in my university. As for English…" she glanced up for a second and raised an eyebrow before looking down again. "I thought it was basic? Anyway, it's okay. I'll help you if you need assistance with your English." 

Hyejin shrugged and let out an embarrassed smile. "Yeah… I guess it was basic. I just didn't learn it well enough. Thanks, though! I'll ask you if I need any help. You're really nice." 

Jinkyung tucked a strand of hair behind her ear nonchalantly and gave a quick smile to Hyejin, but didn't make eye contact again. (She didn't really want to look at Hyejin in case she took that as a sign to start a proper conversation — then Jinkyung would be behind on work again.)

Hyejin, however, didn't exactly realise it. She did have a inkling that Jinkyung wanted to concentrate on her work then, but she shrugged it off. Jinkyung was friendly — she had no doubt about that. She didn't want to doubt that. 

Taehwan and Chaeyoung sure did take long to come back from Seongdong. Hyejin was left alone when Jongdae called Jinkyung over to discuss some sort of a proposal.

That was the first time she saw Jinkyung's face brighten so much that day — when Jongdae called her over. Hyejin was curious, but decided not to pursue the matter. She sat there facing her computer screen, typing notes, sipping her latte and humming tunes to herself as she waited for Jinkyung's, Taehwan's or Chaeyoung's return. 

When Jinkyung did return, she came back with a large ring file in her hand. She could tell Jinkyung was purposely hovering it in Hyejin's line of sight for her to notice. 

"What's that?" Hyejin asked, out of pure courtesy. She knew that Jinkyung was waiting for that question. 

"Nothing much," Jinkyung shrugged and hugged the file casually but Hyejin could tell she was excited about whatever was inside. "Just a proposal I wrote out for the company. I got Jongdae to vet it for me and now I'm just going to make a few amendments to it. He said that there was a high chance of my proposal being accepted by the company." 

Jinkyung couldn't help but let out a beam, and Hyejin sincerely congratulated her. "You're seriously great! When would I be able to do something like that?" Hyejin laughed and joked about her own stupidity. She felt something squirmy in her heart at that moment and brushed it off as just the feeling of being inspired by Jinkyung's competence. 

"I'm going to contribute to the company as well," she thought. Hyejin really desired to become someone like Jinkyung — someone people would look up to as an example, the type of person that people would love to work with. She would try, at least. 

Strangely, the feeling became a weird, uncomfortable one that gnawed on Hyejin's heart throughout the whole morning, and she didn't know if she knew the reason why. She thought she knew, but thought it couldn't be possible at the same time. Either way, she tried to escape from that thorny feeling and hoped it would go away soon. 

Lunch approached. Jinkyung wanted to try the food in the office canteen, so she went with Chen (who still refused to go out of the office for lunch, for some reason). They asked if Hyejin wanted to join them, but she wasn't hungry. 

So Hyejin stayed in the office, alone with her computer. 

The main reason she stayed in wasn't actually because she wasn't hungry, but because she wanted to figure out and ascertain what was making her feel out of sorts. She felt a little sad, a little uncomfortable, a little stressed — Hyejin basically just didn't feel very good that day. 

Opening a new tab on her Internet browser casually, she stared at the search box blankly. Then her fingers landed on her keyboard, and she slowly started to type out the first few letters of her search term. 

How, she typed, then clicked on one of the suggestions below the search box. To find out what you're feeling. 

Hyejin scrolled through the results, her hand lazily poised over her mouse. Nothing really seemed to be feasible at that point. The suggestions the search engine gave her included things like to plant plants, talk to friends, take a nap… Suddenly, something caught her eye, and she stopped and stared at the screen. 

Create a blog, it read. Some problems are difficult to be shared with people, or realised by yourself even without writing them out. Blogging can help you express your thoughts, find out what you're feeling and make you feel better. 

It was tempting. The link was right there in the middle of the screen, and she stared at it. Should she? Would she get distracted by it too much? What was the point of it? 

"Ah, I don't know anymore," she said as she clicked on the link. It was too hard to resist. (Nope, it wasn't her fault, it was the suggestions'.) Hyejin clicked through the tutorials, chose a simple template and settled on a name for her blog (that part was easy — she had simply named it 'Hwang Hyejin's Blog'). 

The last part of setting the blog up was the hardest: giving a web address to the blog. Hyejin had tried hwanghyejin.daum.net, hyejinsblog.daum.net, even jasminesandme.daum.net, but all the site addresses weren't available. 

Signing, she cocked her head to one side and glanced over at Chen's empty desk. She pictured, in her mind's eye, Chen sitting in his usual position there, tapping his foot on the ground in a steady rhythm while hunching over a stack of paper, or staring intently at the large computer screen of his, his fingers running races on the keyboard. 

She watched the Chen in her mind stand up and walk towards the coffee machine as he had been doing every day for the past week, fill a cup with coffee and ask if anyone wanted a cup too. Then she saw the faint picture of Chen teasing her about her jasmine perfume again, and trolling her (that image was stuck with Chen for life — he even got the name Chen from trolling Hyejin). "Just kidding!" He would exclaim. If it wasn't that, then it would be "I was just trolling you." 

Trolls, she thought to herself, then typed out subconsciously. Jasmines, she typed again. And me. 

Then she pressed enter without thinking and immediately a congratulatory message on creating her blog came up. 

Congratulations! It read. Your blog is now ready. Post an entry or promote it to your friends: trollsjasminesandme.daum.net. 

Wait, what? Trolls, jasmines and me? What kind of a dumb address was that? Crap. Hyejin attacked the backspace button but it didn't work. She was now stuck with a blog with the address trollsjasminesandme. 

"Whatever," Hyejin sighed, then proceeded to create a new blog post. 

She hesitated to type at first, but when she did start to do so her fingers flew around the keyboard. Hyejin knew exactly what she wanted to say, she just didn't know how it would turn out when it was all written out like that. 

She wrote about how the feeling felt in her heart, how she felt a little sad when her university friends didn't want to lend her a listening ear, how she was struggling to cope with being in a completely new environment, and how, well… Jinkyung always seemed to remind her that she was just Hyejin. 

Plain, old Hyejin.  

Hyejin considered deleting the last few sentences but decided to keep them there in the end. It was uncomfortable acknowledging it at first, but Hyejin soon realized that this was the main reason for that weird, pinching feeling which had been attacking her the whole morning. 

Was it wrong? Was it morally incorrect to feel that way about a colleague? Jinkyung was so nice to her, offering to help her with English and introducing her to all the trainees when she saw that Hyejin was having trouble. Hyejin would admit that there were a few times she got the vibe that Jinkyung was a bit of a dominator, but most of the time she was friendly. Right? 

No, of course Hyejin wasn't feeling jealous of Jinkyung or anything, she just thought Jinkyung reminded her of how a perfect person should be, and when Hyejin looked at her she found herself shrinking back just slightly. It wasn't Jinkyung's fault. 

Hyejin guessed the fault was kind of her own. 

Oh well. Never mind.