“Hey mom, got any more funny stories from work?” Seulgi was watching some news clip on her phone when Yerim plopped herself down beside her on the couch.

“Shouldn’t you be studying? Finals start next week, yes?” Seulgi set her phone down and looked at her daughter who was clearly trying to procrastinate. “Your mother is going to nag you again if she sees you goofing off when she gets home later.”

Yerim smiled sheepishly at Seulgi and she understood what her cheeky daughter was trying to say. Her wife was out grocery shopping with her cousin and they usually took their own sweet time going through the aisles and picking out whatever they needed to get. It was a fortnightly event for the two cousins and why Jessica would tag along each time was beyond Seulgi.

She loved Irene to bits but tagging along with them every single time was really tiring. Seulgi had cautiously approached Irene about sitting out on their grocery runs, fearing that her wife would be offended by her lack of enthusiasm for it. But to her surprise Irene had laughed when she finally asked, saying that she was wondering when would Seulgi try to escape getting groceries with her and Taeyeon because she knew that they did take their time and it could go on for hours.

Seulgi sighed at the memory and glanced at the clock. They still had time, Irene had only been gone for about twenty minutes, she shouldn’t be back for at least another hour or so and Yerim had been revising consistently throughout the semester, a little procrastination wouldn’t hurt her grades.

“Well..” Seulgi began and Yerim’s eyes lit up as she made herself comfortable on the couch.

“What’s this one about?”

“It’s about that time your mother screamed-what? NO NOT LIKE THAT! Head out of the gutter right now, young lady!”

---

“Alright team. We are gathered here today after a long time to witness this special occasio-”

“Yoona, we don’t have time for this..”

“Right right. Sorry, Jessica.” Yoona flashed a cheeky grin at their manager before continuing, “So..Jessica over there has assigned us to look after this client of ours. They were previously under Yuri’s team but Ms Song had apparently reassigned it to our team.”

“Quit complaining, kid. Think of it as a promotion.”

“Anyway..” Yoona rolled her eyes comically and dismissed Jessica’s interruption. “We will be heading over in about two weeks so these are all you need to know about our client.”

Yoona spent the next hour explaining to Seulgi and the rest of the team what was going to happen in the coming weeks. According to legend, that particular client of theirs once forced Ms Song to mobilise almost the entire workforce their company had to complete a fieldwork a few years ago before Team Super Rookie joined. The job was fairly simple but there were a lot of documents to go through and that was what slowed things down for them.

It sounded like a tough job but after that behemoth of a fieldwork, Seulgi felt that they can take on anything Ms Song threw at them.

The first thing Seulgi did after the briefing ended was to text Irene about it because that client was only two train stops away from where CCSJ was. They could grab lunch or maybe dinner sometimes while she was stationed there. Irene was more than happy to hear the news. She liked the team of dumb dumbs quite a bit, there was never a dull moment whenever they were around.

Preparations were underway and soon the team found themselves standing in front of the client’s office building with the younger members looking a bit confused.

“Yoona, I thought you said the client was selling pre-owned cars. Why does this place look like a bank? Where are all the cars?” Seungwan asked and Yoona could see two other heads turn towards her and Seohyun.

“Well, they loan money to people specifically to buy cars from them. Kind of like a car dealer with their own private bank. The showroom is at another location.”

“Wow I need a moment to digest that. It’s too early in the morning for this.” Joy closed her eyes and massaged her temple. Seohyun shook her head and led them in to show them around while Yoona went to greet their client.

Seulgi found out soon enough why Ms Song had to send out every available staff to help out with that one fieldwork from years ago when she saw the amount of documents that were already prepared for them in the conference room they were to occupy. The client was a financial institute of sorts, kind of like a bank, there were all sorts of forms and documents the loan applicants had to prepare and the team was given the honour to vouch through every single one of their selected applicants to make sure that everything is in place. A simple task, but also a very tedious one.

The first half of the day passed quickly with them conducting interviews with the client’s staff to get a better understanding of the forms used and the entire approval process. Seulgi barely had time to sneak a few texts to Irene as they scrambled to keep up with what the adults were talking about. It was all fairly new to them, it was their first time there after all.

The rest of the day was spent familiarising themselves with the documents and loan application process - it was long and the documents involved were almost uncountable - Yoona needed to make sure that everybody knew what they were doing. It wasn’t until everybody could describe the workflow properly that Yoona was satisfied and they officially started their paperwork.

Everything went by smoothly before Seohyun nudged Yoona to notify her about the time. Seulgi looked up from her laptop when she heard their team leader clear and told them it was time to pack up to go. She was confused - it was still early, barely 6pm, they usually stayed later than that. Besides, they had so many things left to go through. Why on earth would they leave so early and risk not being able to finish towards the end of the fieldwork?

“No, we gotta go. Like right now.” Seohyun said firmly and the three of them packed up their things as quick as they could. It was rare that Seohyun spoke so seriously and they daren’t disobey.

Before they could finish, somebody knocked on the door and let themselves in. It was the security guard and eyes widened when they saw the gun he was carrying.

“Ladies, we’re locking up in ten minutes.”

“We’re almost done packing. Thank you.” Yoona thanked him and he left them alone.

The moment he shut the door, they exhaled in relief. It was the first time they ever saw a real gun that close and it was a big gun, kind of like those shotguns in the video games Seulgi played.

“Th-that thing is real, right?” Joy clarified with their seniors.

“Very. This is kind of like a bank, there’s lots of cash in this building and they need it in case anybody tries to rob this place. Plus, we’re in the shady part of the city. They really need it.”

A collective “whoa” could be heard as the trio processed the new information that was given. Seohyun looked at her watch again and hurried them out the door. There was an unspoken agreement between them and the client that they would not stay late because of safety reasons. Crime rate at that part of the city was relatively high and they would not be held accountable should anything happened to the team of consultants.

They stepped out of the office with smiles plastered across their faces. It was rare for them to end the day while the sun was still out. They were happy to be able to enjoy the sun even for a little while as they walked to Yoona’s car.

Irene was pleasantly surprised when Seulgi returned home earlier than usual that day. Seulgi sent her a text when she left the office saying that she would be home soon but Irene didn’t buy it - Seulgi’s definition of ‘soon’ varied according to the situation, especially if it involved work.

“Hyunnie, I’m home!”

“Wow, you weren’t kidding about being early today.” Irene called out from the kitchen when she heard the front door being locked.

“Nope!” Seulgi padded over and peered over Irene’s shoulders. “The soup smells really good, Hyun! Do you need help?”

“Sure but go put your apron on. You are not staining another shirt.” Irene raised her brow at Seulgi and the latter smiled sheepishly while fetching her apron. Seulgi had managed to stain most of her shirts because she kept wiping her hands on them while helping out in the kitchen. Removing the food stains had been a nightmare for Irene and it didn’t take long before they went shopping for matching aprons.

---

“Why are you always rolling your eye at me?”

“Why are you two always so insufferable??”

“Deal with it.”

---

“We can probably have dinner like this this whole week,” Seulgi grinned as she cleaned the kitchen when they were done with dinner.

“Yeah?” Irene stretched and made her way to the couch, picking up a small basket of yarn along the way.

“Yeah! We’re not allowed to stay late there because the area isn’t safe apparently. You should come into the office and wait for us to finish on Wednesday.”

“Is that even allowed?”

“Yoona said to pretend to be our new boss or something and walk in. It’ll be fine. Or just give me a call and I’ll come get you.”

Seulgi booted up her game console and settled on the couch next to Irene. Her girlfriend was trying to learn how to knit because she thought it would be fun to knit them scarfs for winter that year. It was a slow process but from what Seulgi observed, she was slowing getting the hang of it and was progressing well.

Irene looked up from her project when she heard the startup sounds of the game console. “Which game are you playing today? Can you play the one with the androids?”

“Sure! Wait...which one? I have two games about androids.”

“That one with the short haired girl. You know..the one with the button down shirt you like so much.”

“Are you jealous?” Seulgi teased when she caught Irene’s tone changed.

“Me? Jealous of a fictional character? Please.” Irene smirked before continuing, “I will kill her the first chance I get if I ever played this game.”

“Yeah right.” Seulgi smiled smugly. Just the day before Irene was making a big fuss when Seulgi accidentally killed the character while trying to navigate their way across a busy highway on foot. Irene had demanded that Seulgi replay the chapter because it was so sad. “You like her as much as I do.”

“Perhaps so.” Irene rolled her eyes and nudged Seulgi to hurry up. She was getting invested in the game’s story, she needed to know what would happen next. It was like watching a drama, almost. Seulgi was more than happy to oblige, it was rare that Irene was that interested in her video games.

***

When Irene arrived at the client’s office, she wasn’t sure what to make of the place. She was just as confused as Seulgi was a couple of days back. It looked exactly like a bank but that must not be right, Seulgi mentioned that they were some kind of car dealer. She would just have to ask her girlfriend about it later when they meet. Irene saw that they were already lowering the shutters of the front door and walked quickly towards it. There was probably no need to call Seulgi and disrupt her work, she could just waltz right in.

Or so she thought.

Ducking under the half drawn shutters, she stood upright and gathered herself before looking for somebody to ask where the group of consultants were at. She was about to walk towards the counters when she felt a tap on her shoulder.

***

A high-pitched scream echoed throughout the client’s office, catching everybody by surprised. Seulgi looked up from her laptop and bolted through the door immediately. She knew that scream anywhere - she recently played a horror game and her girlfriend had screamed at almost every jumpscare the game threw at them, even though Irene was already hiding Seulgi’s shoulder from the very beginning.

“Where is she going?” Seohyun asked when Seulgi disappeared from sight.

“That was Irene, probably..”

“Oh.” Seohyun nodded and went back to work as if nothing had happened.

Seulgi found Irene by the main entrance with the security guard who seemed to be apologising profusely for scaring her just now. She chuckled to herself and jogged towards the scene after seeing that Irene’s face had coloured slightly, probably a little embarrassed for screaming earlier.

“Ms Bae?” Seulgi tried not to laugh when Irene jumped slightly at her voice. “Jessica did mention you were going to visit us today. This way please. She’s with us, new manager.” she added the last bit quickly when she saw that the guard was a little confused.

“You okay?” Seulgi asked as she looped an arm around Irene’s shoulders once they were in the corridor that lead to the conference room.

“I’m alright. You didn’t tell me they had guns here.”

“We were shocked, too, on the first day. He brought the gun with him when he came to tell us it was time go pack up. Yoona and Seohyun were not affected though. Here we are, Ms Bae.” Seulgi grinned cheekily as she opened the conference room door and ushered Irene in.

The team of dumb dumbs greeted Irene before resuming their work. Irene brought out her laptop to do some work as well while waiting for them to finish - it didn’t seem professional to just be sitting there scrolling her phone.

—-

“That’s it? That’s ‘the scream’?”

“Yeah, what else did you think it was?”

Yerim shrugged at her mother’s question. She never knew where the stories were headed to and while she had not expected it to go the way it went, she should’ve expected it - her mothers were really just two dumb dumbs after all, despite Irene’s protests that she was not part of the team.

Seulgi was about to say something when they heard keys jiggling on the other side of the door. Eyes widened, Seulgi pointed towards the study table where their daughter should be at and Yerim sprinted towards it, trying to put up an act that she had been revising while Seulgi went to get the door and helped Irene with the groceries.

“Hey, Hyun. How was shopping?”

“It was great! There was a sale happening for the fabric softeners so I got us a few bottles to spare!”

Seulgi chuckled at her wife’s love for fabric softeners even after all these years. Irene made her way into the house to put away the groceries when she saw Yerim studying diligently.

Nodding approvingly, she asked, “So, what story did your mother tell you while I was out?”

Yerim put her book down slowly, eyes searching for Seulgi’s in a quiet cry for help. But when she saw that Seulgi was facepalming behind Irene, she knew there was no point in denying it. “H-how did you know?”

“Your book is upside down.” Irene raised a brow and smirked.

“Damn.” Both Seulgi and Yerim cursed under their breath but Irene caught it and burst laughing.

“What am I going to do with you two?”

---

END