The days that followed were slightly more relaxed in comparison to the very first. Seulgi was becoming more comfortable with Jessica and it made it easier for them to be seated quietly together in the discussion room they had been using. Jessica would sometimes throw random questions at her just to see if Seulgi was paying attention and also to teach Seulgi how to think like a consultant that she would be.

Seulgi managed to bull her way through with what little knowledge she had retained from her lectures and with some common sense. Jessica seemed to be satisfied with her answers and gave her an almost-nod of approval. Seulgi mentally patted herself on the back. Her job didn’t seem so hard after all. Seulgi heard a soft ‘famous last words’ and realised she had said it out loud. She spent the next few minutes being utterly mortified while Jessica smirked knowingly.

Taeyeon came over for a visit during their last day to discuss some other job assignments with Jessica over lunch. Jessica asked Seulgi again if she would be ok having lunch alone and she was more than happy to. As much as she liked her two superiors, a little time alone to relax sounded very appealing. Jessica waved her off, told her to be back by two and Seulgi practically skipped out of the room.

Seulgi made her way back to the restaurant Ms Bae had brought her to a few days ago. Settling for a table in a cosy corner of the shop, Seulgi took out her earphones and watched some videos her friends had shared with her throughout the morning while she waited for her food to be served.

Seulgi didn’t realise that somebody occupied the empty seat across from her until a hand suddenly appeared in her peripheral vision and she jumped.

“Oh my god you scared me!”

Seulgi almost shouted and was greeted by the sight of Irene who was trying very hard to stifle her laugh but failing terribly. A giggle escaped and Seulgi decided right there and then that she really liked it when Irene laughed, even if it was at her expense but she could live with that. She quickly wound up her earphones and shoved them into her pockets.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t resist. It was your fault. You were so focused on your phone you didn’t notice me. I was even standing beside you for a bit,” Irene protested, one brow raised ever so slightly and eyes sparkled mischievously. Whatever protest Seulgi was about to make died in immediately.

She’s adorable.

Seulgi didn’t get eat lunch alone that day like she wanted to but she decided it wasn’t so bad.

---

“It was still not a lunch date.”

“..okay”

---

“Seulgi, you’ll be going with Taeyeon’s team next week to help them out with their fieldwork. Her team will be meeting up at our office tomorrow, maybe after work, for a briefing to the members on the job scope. Listen well and ask if you don’t understand anything, alright?”

The said girl looked up from her notebook and nodded. It suddenly clicked as to why Taeyeon had visited them all of a sudden that afternoon.

“Ah! Was that why Taeyeon was here just now?”

“You’re smarter than you make yourself to be.” Jessica sounded impressed by how fast Seulgi had managed to piece things together and then went on to explain to her that she was in-charged of managing manpower in their company, assigning juniors to back-up team leaders in their fieldworks. Jessica needed to discuss with Taeyeon on the details before she could actually allow her whisk their company’s resources away for a week or two, effectively messing up the current team assignments Jessica had planned a few weeks ago.

“It’s annoying when they need back up but there’s nothing I can do about it. Our boss already approved her request.”

***

Seulgi had imagine fieldwork briefings to be something that was to be taken seriously. She had imagined it to be relatively short because since when do working adults like to prolong meetings? Besides, it was Friday after-work, surely everybody else had places they’d rather be than in the meeting room in their office.

She had imagined and expected many things but what she did not expect was for her new team leader, Yoona, to draw four semicircles on the board when everybody had settled into their seats. Capping the marker, she turned around looking very serious and Seulgi made it a point to open up her notebook, fully prepared to start taking notes.

“Choose.”

Seulgi blinked in confusion. What was Yoona asking them to choose from? She looked around the room. There were five of them in the team, excluding their supervisor, Taeyeon. Seungwan and Joy seemed like they were contemplating something while another senior, Seohyun, was shaking her head and fired up her laptop. It wasn’t until Taeyeon had answered did everything suddenly made sense.

“I want tuna on one of the halves.”

“Can we have pepperoni on one side and then triple cheese on the other half?” Joy asked after a short discussion with Seungwan.

Pizza. Yoona had asked them to choose pizza toppings. Taeyeon announced that she was buying, she handed her credit card over to Seohyun who was already on the restaurant’s website and in the process of ordering.

“So that’s 3 halves. We still need one more, guys.” Seohyun pointed out. “Seulgi, what do you like on your pizzas?”

“A-anything is fine.” Seohyun gave her a look that said please pick something and Seulgi continued. “Hawaiian? Can’t go wrong with that.”

“Ok. Do you want them to hold the pineapples?”

“I’m fine with or without.”

Seohyun nodded and completed their pizza order. Yoona was about to clean the whiteboard before Joy asked if they could get chicken too and the food discussion continued with them spending another fifteen minutes deciding on which flavour to order.

That was how dinner started and it ended with Yoona headlocking Taeyeon after they had wrestled over the last piece of chicken. Seulgi wondered why did Taeyeon even try because Yoona practically towered over their tiny supervisor and won with ease. That did not stop Taeyeon from protesting when Yoona finally bit on the juicy piece of meat and Taeyeon let out a very devastated cry as she watched Yoona deposit what was left of it into their makeshift trash bag. Seungwan and Joy were both laughing their heads off at the spectacle while Seohyun ignored them completely, obviously too used to her team members and supervisor behaving like such.

Seulgi scooted over closer to laughing duo and whispered, “Are they always like this?”

“Like how?” Joy had managed to catch her breath long enough to reply.

“This.” Seulgi gestured vaguely towards the battling duo. “Chaotic.”

“Oh. They usually aren’t like this. Sometimes they’re even noisier and rowdier, especially when Hyoyeon and Yuri are around. Right, Seohyun?”

“They may seem like two dumb dumbs but trust me, they’re the best when they’re in ‘professional mode’.”

“Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it.”.

Seulgi decided that if this was how fieldwork briefings were going to go then she picked the right place to work at.

The real briefing started a short while later and it was passed 9pm by the time they were done.

“Alright, team. That’s our new plan for the coming week. Any questions?” Yoona, glanced at her members and their supervisor after she had finished briefing them. They had spent the previous hour and a half explaining and discussing their client’s workflow for the department they were going to assess in the weeks to come.

Random questions were thrown at the youngest three in the group and while Seulgi had struggled to answer some of it, Seungwan and Joy handled them with relative ease. Which made sense since they had started working at the company a few months before Seulgi had joined them. Seulgi was determined not to fall too far behind and tried to participate as much as possible during discussion, earning her approving nods from Taeyeon who was quietly observing.

After Taeyeon was satisfied that her team was ready enough, she called it a night and let them go home.

---

“You have got to be kidding. I don’t believe you.”

“I kid you not. That’s how things go most of the time.”

---

Seulgi soon learned that no two fieldworks were the same. While the assessment fieldwork with Jessica was fairly quiet and simple, the one with Yoona was definitely on a whole different level. For one thing, Seulgi was given much more complicated tasks to complete and was no longer a glorified secretary.

Yoona had them going back and forth to their client’s staff with endless questions just to be able to grasp the workflow in the entire department properly. Seulgi would fall short with answers, sometimes having left out a question or be completely stumped when Yoona had asked her some follow-up questions to the one before.

“Right so you’re saying that if they were to make payments to their suppliers, all payment requests would have to go through their boss, the Finance Manager, did I catch you right?”

“Yes, that’s correct.”

“All the payments go through that one person? As in that one person has the power to approve all payments regardless of the amount?”

“Y-yes?”

“Seulgi, what do you think the risk might be if there is only one person in-charge of approving payments?”

“I-I uhm…”

“Tell you what, you can think about it and let me know later. Now, I need you to go back to the Finance Manager and ask him for a Payment Authorisation Matrix. He’ll understand. Bring it back and I’ll explain things to you.”

“Al-alright. I’m sorry, Yoona.” Seulgi bowed and exited the room in a rush.

Taeyeon whistled.

“Wow, Yoong, you’re scary. The poor girl was practically shaking!”

“Like, you’re the one to talk, Taeyeon. You scared me less when I first joined.” Yoona refuted.

“Fair point.” Taeyeon nodded and turned her attention to the other members in the room. “Who’s scarier? Me or Yoong?”

“To be fair, we find the both of you scary when you’re on ‘professional mode’.” Joy replied and Seungwan nodded like there was no tomorrow.

***

When Seulgi returned ten minutes later, Yoona had sat her down together with Seungwan and Joy to give them a little lecture on why it was important for a company’s payment to be approved by different people depending on the payment amount. The youngest three listened intently and Yoona sent them on their way again when they were done.

That day, Seulgi returned home after dinner and collapsed onto her bed face first.

“I’m so tired,” she whined to nobody in particular and fell asleep.

The remainder of the fieldwork passed in similar fashion - with Seulgi, Seungwan and Joy going about gathering information while Seohyun and Yoona used the gathered information to think of ways to improve their client’s work process and finding some implementation lapses along the way. Taeyeon had occasionally dropped by to check on their progress and left to supervise other teams.

There were one or two minor hiccups along the way but it was nothing Seohyun and Yoona couldn't handle. Seungwan and Joy had proven to be reliable assistants despite having worked there for less than six months. The others have taken to calling them Super Rookies because they could produce quality work. And from what Taeyeon had observed, Team Super Rookies would be getting a new member soon - Seulgi might be new but she was catching up to them quickly.

“Come on kids. Pack up and let’s go for supper before going home. There’s no way I’m letting you guys go home like this after a long week. My treat. Chop chop.” Taeyeon announced to the Super Rookies when the oldest three returned to the conference room after a wrap up meeting with the clients while they had sat out. They nodded enthusiastically and practically raced out the door towards the car park.

Supper had been fun even though most of them were dead tired. Everybody seemed to have regained some strength after eating and soon they were laughing their heads off while trading war stories from their previous fieldworks. Taeyeon had shared a hilarious story of how Jessica almost fainted that one time after work because Taeyeon had filled her car with bags of cucumbers.

“She had a death wish, clearly.” Seohyun snickered at the oldest.

“It was April Fool’s Day!” Taeyeon defended.

***

Seulgi spent a good portion of Saturday curled up in bed under the blanket, refusing to move because it was that comfortable and she was that tired. She had slept in that day - her way of rewarding herself for having worked hard all week. It was only when her stomach protested did she make an effort to whip up some kind of meal and showered afterwards.

She returned under the blanket in record time and fell asleep again until the sun was about to set. Blindly groping the bed for any signs of her phone, she squinted at the bright screen and decided it was just the right time to pay them a visit. It had been way too long since her last visit and knowing them, they won’t be happy.

When Seulgi arrived, she saw a decent queue was starting to form in front of her destination, a pink food truck with huge letters that read “Let’s Taco Bout Love” spray-painted all over it. The crew were busy and hadn’t noticed Seulgi approaching until it was her turn in the line. One of them took one look at Seulgi and turned away.

“Sunny ah, I think I just saw a ghost.”

Oh boy, here we go.

“What?” Sunny, who was busy at the grill earlier, looked up and saw who her partner was talking about. “Oh. You’re right. I see her, too! Who knew ghosts can be seen, Sooyoung ah! I’m scared. Maybe we should move spots next weekend, this place is haunted by the ghost of Seulgi past.”

“Good idea.”

Seulgi groaned at their exchanged, glad that she was the last person in line and nobody had queued behind her yet. It was going to take a while before they actually got to her order.

“I’m sorry for disappearing for so long. Work is crazy tiring!” Seulgi half whined at the duo.

“Sooyoung ah! The ghost talks! Maybe we should send in the application to move spots tomorrow.”

Seulgi could hear the rest of their crew snickering at their boss’ antics.

“Way ahead of you! Already got the forms downloaded in my phone.”

“That’s my girl” Sunny finger gunned Sooyoung and they high fived each other before turning fully to face Seulgi, looking up at them with a pout.

“I’m sowee. Can I order now? I’m hungry.” Seulgi was full on whining and pouting at that point.

“Ah we can’t have our little bear starving. What will it be today, little one? The usual?” Sooyoung reached out her arm to pat Seulgi’s head and she beamed in return.

“Yes, please! I’ve missed the food here so much.”

The two had joined Seulgi at one of tables set out to catch up with her. Their crew was more than happy to cover for their bosses while they chatted away with their regular customer. To say that Seulgi got special treatment from the bosses was an understatement. Sure, she had whined and complained about it countless of times but Sunny and Sooyoung didn’t care. Seulgi’s orders were always in a bigger portion and she got free refills of any drinks, if she wanted, but she rarely asked for one.

Seulgi had been frequenting the food truck for years and was very fond of the two young entrepreneurs, as they were of her. They would join her at her table most of the times and Seulgi often told Sunny and Sooyoung stories from her days in school, complaining about uptight lecturers and useless assignment group members. The two would listen intently and gave the younger girl some advice, even if she never asked for them. Some were neither good nor practical as the rest while some might have straight up gotten Seulgi arrested.

---

“How did you know them again?”

“They’re good friends I made when I first moved here as a student.”

---

TBC