If Seulgi were to compare the risk assessment she attended with Jessica to the one she was in-charged of, she would say that the relationship between the two of them had definitely improved. No longer did she felt intimidated or jumpy when it was just the two of them. In fact, it was quite comfortable. If she didn’t know any better, she would say that Jessica had thawed slightly, her aura no longer icy cold and she seemed to have mellowed.

Maybe marriage does that to a person?

Seulgi mused as she trailed behind Jessica and an admin staff from CCSJ who was showing them to their work base. They were seated in a small discussion room in a far corner of the company for that particular fieldwork, everywhere else seemed to be fully occupied. Irene had even helped looked around for some place better but she came up short.

The room seemed like it had seen better days - the furniture themselves looked a bit dated, the wallpaper seemed to be peeling off as well. Jessica had barely managed to control herself from making a face when they first entered the room that morning, nose scrunching up and lips curved downwards in disdain. At least they seemed sturdy, she commented as she appraised the wooden upholstered chairs, giving them a shake to prove her point. Seulgi shrugged and settled her things, ready to start her one-woman show, as Joy had called it.

“Alright, Seulgi. Ready?”

“Not really but yes.”

“Good. It’s showtime. Go call Ms Kim in, we’ll start the interview.”

Seulgi saluted Jessica and left to fetch a Ms Kim from the sales department, leaving behind a chuckling Jessica who was shaking her head.

Seulgi stuttered her way through the first half of the opening interview with Ms Kim, her nerves not quite in check yet. Jessica interrupted and took over for a few questions, giving Seulgi some time to compose herself. Being fully responsible for interviewing the clients for information was scarier than she thought, as compared to asking them for bits and pieces of information upon her leaders’ request, which most of the time was just to satisfy their curiousity. Jessica let her continue from where she left off once she was seemingly calmer.

They managed to get through the interview process in one piece, Seulgi sighing in relief without waiting for Ms Kim to exit the room and Jessica wanted to facepalm right then and there. Ms Kim had laughed at her.

“You’re just as adorable as Irene says you are, Seulgi. I can see why she likes you so much.”

“Huh?”

“I’ll be on my way now, I’ve another meeting. My assistant should have the documents ready before lunch.” Ms Kim said and made an exit, as if she hadn’t made the previous remark.

“Wow Seulgi..you sure are popular here.” Jessica teased, surprising Seulgi with her playfulness.

“Don’t…” Seulgi held a hand up at Jessica, she could already feel her face colouring.

***

Jessica left to supervise another team seeing how the most important part of the review - the interview - was over and she was quite sure that Seulgi knew what she needed to do. Seulgi gave her a not-so-convincing thumbs up but Jessica didn’t have much of a choice, the other team was in trouble and she needed to be there to do some damage control. And so Jessica left before lunch, leaving Seulgi to fend for herself again.

She was about to start tidying up her interview notes when she heard a knock on the door. It was Ms Kim’s assistant delivering the documents they requested earlier. Thanking him, she started to sort through the files to retrieve whatever was needed. Seulgi didn’t realised that it was getting late until she felt a series of vibration coming from under the pile of documents. Fumbling about, she found her phone.

“Hello? Jessica? Yes everything is ok. Yea I got the documents already. Going through them now. You’re coming back later? Ok. No worries. Thank you.”

Seulgi hung up and her eyes widened when she saw the time. She quickly gathered her things and went out front to meet Irene.

Irene brought her to a place that newly opened in the area, a Japanese noodle shop, a place she had been wanting to introduce to Seulgi for a while now because apparently it was that good. They had just missed the lunch crowd so the shop was not as packed as usual, Irene said. Seulgi apologised for being late again. Irene waved her off, flashing her a smile that she knew would leave Seulgi speechless.

She had a good laugh watching Seulgi eat her noodles that day, mainly because the younger girl flinched every time the noodles slipped from her chopsticks and whined when the splattering broth stained her shirt. It was quite the education, watching her try to keep the slippery udon in her chopsticks’ grasps, whining when they once again slipped and fell back into the broth.

“Seulgi-ah, do you need a fork? You can eat them like pasta!” Irene giggled at her own suggestion. Seulgi glared at her, eyes filled with determination as she continued her battle with her noodles.

“I can do this, Hyun. Otherwise I’ll change my name to yours.” She said firmly.

“Oh? You want to take my name? Seulgi, are you asking me to marry you?”

Seulgi choked immediately, the noodles having gone down the wrong pipe, and Irene burst into fits of giggles. Teasing Seulgi was something that never got old because the younger girl’s reaction were hilarious. She laughed even harder when she saw Seulgi pulled a noodle out of her nose, face contorted in disgust.

“Ugh..thank goodness I didn’t order the spicy broth version or this would be really uncomfortable.” Seulgi blew her nose into the napkin and drank some water to clear .

Once Irene had stopped laughing, Seulgi became serious. “Also, as much as I would love to marry you, Hyun, I think it’s a bit too soon at the moment.”

Seulgi winked and Irene turned red.

***

Jessica returned to see the tiny discussion room in a mess, it was practically a war zone with stacks of files covering every available surface of the table, some were even sitting on the floor. Seulgi had surrounded herself with a pile of papers stacked by her laptop. She looked up to greet Jessica before returning to her work. Her manager nodded approvingly at her.

Seulgi paused while going through the documents to check on the notes she had taken down earlier, to confirm something. She frowned when she saw that her handwriting was illegible in her effort to write while talking to Ms Kim.

“What are you reading?” Jessica asked when she saw Seulgi frowning while reading her notebook. The said girl had been standing at her seat reading for the last few minutes. She had rested a knee on the seat of the chair, something that Jessica had noticed Seulgi almost always did whenever she was standing near one.

“Trying to figure out what I wrote. It looks like a bunch of chicken scratch.”

“Please don’t do this, Seulgi. Those notes are important. Let me see them.” Jessica extended her arm, asking for the book. Seulgi leaned over on her knee to hand it to her but just as the book reached Jessica, a loud crack was heard, startling the both of them.

“What was that?” Jessica asked as she looked around for the source of the sound.

“I’m not sure-” Seulgi didn’t get to finish her sentence because Jessica burst laughing, hand slapping the table while another was covering . It was the first time she had ever seen her manager laughed like that without the presence of Taeyeon in the room. Seulgi wondered what had happened but she figured it out the moment she sat back down.

Seulgi had broken the chair she was leaning on.

“Jessica, what are we going to do?” Seulgi panicked as she inspected the chair for damages.

It would seemed that the force she had put on the upholstered cushion caused one of the spring coils to break through the bottom, leaving the chair unstable for use. It was also quite a huge coil so there was no way they could cover it up even if they wanted to. It took awhile before Jessica stopped laughing and assessed the damage inflicted on the poor, unsuspecting chair.

“Okay, let’s see what we have here.” She looked around the room and smiled. Pointing to the extra chairs lined up in a corner, she instructed Seulgi to swap a chair over. “Make sure you put the broken one in the far end so that it’s less noticeable.”

“Got it.” Seulgi got to work quickly, replacing the chairs and even dusting all the extra chairs to make the broken one less noticeable. It was quite obvious that they hadn’t been used in a long time, a thick layer of dust covered them. “Do they look okay? Does anything look out of place?”

Jessica took a few steps back to assess her handiwork. Everything seemed fine, Seulgi had even used one of the decorative potted plants to block the broken chair. It was hardly noticeable really. Jessica gave her a thumbs up and they resumed their work until it was time to go home.

---

“You broke a chair? How does one even break a chair?!”

“Again, not my finest moment thank you very much.”

---

Seulgi found it difficult to meet Irene’s gaze in the days following the fieldwork. She felt kind of guilty for damaging their client’s property, even if it was just a chair they barely used anymore. Everytime Irene spoke to her she would turn away quickly and look elsewhere. She suddenly found everything else in the room to be interesting and it was getting on Irene’s nerves.

Irene had let it slide the first few times Seulgi had avoided her gaze. She found it odd at first because her girlfriend had a tendency to stare at her when she thought she wasn’t looking. Seulgi would come up with all sorts of excuses, Irene’s favourite being the one where Seulgi said she could get lost in her eyes. So it was another mysterious mystery as to why Seulgi had been avoiding eye contact ever since she finished her solo fieldwork.

Seulgi was seated on the couch playing a new video game she had just bought. Irene never cared much about console games but it made Seulgi happy, so she had refrained from commenting how sometimes Seulgi would spend more time gaming than spending time with her. It didn’t happen very often, only once in a while when Seulgi bought something new.

Irene usually didn’t interrupt whenever Seulgi was playing, something Seulgi appreciated a lot. She would usually just sit beside her and watch, occasionally commenting on the story or how Seulgi was playing it. So she found it very odd as to why Irene was standing in front of her, blocking her view of the television.

Seulgi tried adjusting her posture to look beyond Irene to read the choices that came up on the screen. It was a quick-timed event so Seulgi didn’t have much time to waste because whether or not her character lived or died depended on how efficiently she made the choices. Seulgi continued playing until Irene cleared .

“Uhm..Hyun, I’m sorry but can you move for a sec? I’ll stop when I get to the next cutscene.”

Seulgi negotiated, her eyes never leaving the screen.

“Fine..”

Irene huffed in annoyance and settled on the couch beside Seulgi, leaning on the younger girl’s shoulder.

“Thanks, you’re the best.” Seulgi turned her head quickly and kissed the top of Irene’s head.

It took another 15 minutes before she reached the next cutscene, Seulgi having taken her time to make the choices and to look around for collectibles. She hit the pause button and settled the controller on the coffee table. She turned to face Irene but her eyes wandered around the room.

“Yes? You wanted to say something?”

“Seulgi..are you cheating on me?”

Seulgi turned to meet Irene’s eyes so fast she swore she pulled a neck muscle.

“Wh-what? Wh-what makes you say th-that?”

“Well, where do I even begin? How about the fact that you suddenly would not, for the love of god, look me in the eyes? Or the fact that you’re actually stuttering right now? Something you only do when you’re nervous. What are you so nervous about, Seulgi? Who is she? I can take it, Seulgi. Tell me.”

Seulgi looked at Irene in horror. How did she even associate it to Seulgi cheating on her? And she actually looked like she was about to cry. Seulgi felt like the worst person on the planet right then.

“I need you to calm down, Juhyun-ah. It’s not what you think.”

“Really? Because it definitely looks like what I think.” Irene narrowed her eyes at her and Seulgi gulped. “So, who is it?”

“It’s not the matter of who..more like a matter of what..”

“What?” Irene was more confused than annoyed at the moment. Seulgi was not making any sense at all.

“I..uhm..you see, something happened during the fieldwork..”

“I’m listening..” Irene crossed her arms and leaned on the couch armrest.

“Right..uhm. First, I need you to know that I’m not cheating on you. I love you too much to even think of doing that, Hyun. Secon-”

“You love me?”

“Yes, now secondly-” Seulgi stopped, realising what she had just said. “Oh..uhm..yes. I do..you know? Love you. Very much. Yes.” She could feel her face heating up at the confession, willing herself not to look away from Irene because she wasn’t doing any better either. Her face was probably redder than Rudolph’s nose at that point. “Wow your face is really red, Juhyun-ah.”

“Shut up!” Irene shoved Seulgi’s shoulder and hugged her knees to cover her face, leaving only her eyes visible. “Idiot..”

“Yes, idiot. Very much so. Yes.” Seulgi gave herself a shake and cleared before continuing, “I broke a chair in your office that day, Hyun. I’ve been feeling really bad about it. That’s why.”

“You what?” Irene straightened her posture.

“I broke one of the chairs in your office that day. It was an accident, I swear!”

Irene was looking at her incredulously as though she had sprouted a second head. Her lips quivered and she bit on them but it was useless. Irene was laughing before she knew it.

“Hyuuuuun…” Seulgi whined. “Stop laughing please!”

“That was you? Goodness we were making conspiracy theories on how could a spare chair in a spare room break on its own. My boss was just about to get a guru in to check on the place for spirits!”

“Oh my god!

---

“...at this point I’m not sure if you actually have game or you’re just winging everything”

“Trust me. I was winging everything.”

***