“Nice to meet you, I’m Choi Sarang.”

Sarang held her hand out with a friendly smile, waiting for it to be shook.

Seolhyun smiled back and shook her hand. “Nice to meet you too, I’m Park Seolhyun,” she said.

They then broke the handshake as Seolhyun went back to doing her project and Sarang glanced at Myungsoo over the wall in between their small workspace. The wall wasn’t that high, it just went up to her shoulder when she’s sitting which made it easy for them to make eye contact.

She saw him mouthing something, but couldn’t quite understand it. “What?” she asked with furrowed eyebrows.

Myungsoo widened his eyes and glanced at Seolhyun who was now looking at them curiously after hearing Sarang saying what she said. “Do you two know each other?” she asked.

Myungsoo looked back and forth between Seolhyun and Sarang. “Um… yes?” he said, unsurely. He then looked at Sarang, and saw her shrugging.

“Oh,” Seolhyun said before going back to what she was doing.

Even though her answer was short, Sarang could hear a slight disappointment in her voice. She then secretly smiled to herself. *Oh~, seems like the appearance change had some impact.*

All of a sudden, she felt a light poke on her arm. She then looked down and saw Myungsoo holding a piece of paper, waiting for her to take it. She looked up at him and saw that he was pretending to work, one hand trying a little too hard to type on the long keyboard by itself.

She took the paper with furrowed eyebrows and opened it close to her desk as to not let anyone see it.

“Why are you here?” it read.

After she finished reading it, she immediately started rummaging through her bag for some sort of writing utensil.

“Helping you of course.” She wrote back after successfully finding one.

She placed her pen down before folding the piece of paper back up again. She then discretely brought her hand down to hand it over to him from below the desks. He noticed her hand, sticking out from behind the wall, holding the paper out to him.

His eyes glanced at Seolhyun for a moment before it landed back on his computer screen. He pretended to focus onto the screen as his hand slowly went down to take the paper. After that, he read it and the process repeated over and over again. They continued writing on the paper to secretly communicate to each other without the target, Seolhyun, noticing them at all.

“How does this help me?”

“Think about it. The only place where you see Seolhyun most of the time and where you have the best chance to talk to her is here, at the office. But the problem is, you at talking!”

Myungsoo pouted after reading her comment about his communication skills. Sure, they weren’t good at all, but hey, at least he could order his own food at a restaurant and even successfully place a delivery for pizza. That might not seem like a lot to people when it comes to the skills of communication, but if he could keep himself fed by placing food orders, in his opinion he should be placed somewhere near decent for talking.

He started writing down his opinion about his communication skills, which ended up being more than a paragraph long, and tossed it over to her desk.

Sarang saw the crumbled up piece of paper land on her desk and stared at it for a full second before looking up at Myungsoo with wide eyes.

Myungsoo saw her expression and mouthed, “What is it?”

She then mouthed back, “You idiot.”

He furrowed his eyebrows at her since he didn’t understand why she just called him an idiot, but he was soon answered when he saw her using her eyes to indicate that he should look over at Seolhyun, which he did, and woah. He was completely caught off guard when he saw Seolhyun staring directly at him.

“Myungsoo-ssi, did you just…” She looked over at Sarang before directing her attention back to him. “…throw a piece of paper over to Sarang-ssi?”

Myungsoo froze up and didn’t know how to answer. He then started to regret throwing that piece of paper over to Sarang. It wasn’t like he was doing it to purposefully catch Seolhyun’s attention or anything, he just momentarily forgot to be secretive after writing a rather long BCR to Sarang explaining why his communication skills didn’t … that much.

“Oh, Myungsoo,” Sarang suddenly said. “Is your small recycle bin under your desk full? Oh, I guess it is huh? Well, I’ll just…” She picked up the piece of paper and held it up for a second to show to Seolhyun before immediately bringing it back down, all while forcing on a not-at-all nervous looking smile. “…throw this away for you.”

“But my recycle bin isn’t ful—“

Sarang shot a glare at him, which caused him to stop midsentence. It was actually a good thing that she glared at him since if she didn’t, he would have caused for their lie to backfire—even though he did say most of the sentence, but Seolhyun probably didn’t notice… he hoped.

“Ahaha,” Sarang nervously laughed. “I’ll just throw it away now.” She threw the paper into her recycle bin under her desk before looking up, smiled at Seolhyun, gave Myungsoo a subtle glare hidden underneath an eye smile, and looked back at her computer screen. Seolhyun looked at the two with an unreadable expression for a second, but then soon after went back to work.

But Myungsoo didn’t go back to work like nothing happened. He was devastated. The piece of paper was trashed. She didn’t even read it. Inside, he was tearing up over the fact that his beautiful, heartfelt BCR that defended him from being told that he at talking and continued on with an example about how he could keep himself fed with his good enough communication skills, was heartlessly trashed without even a hint of remorse—even though it was true that his communication skills , he might have liked it more if she could have said ‘below average’ instead of ‘.’

He wanted to walk over to Sarang’s office space right at that instant and dive into her recycling bin to find that BCR, and make her read it. But no, it was broad daylight at the time; which meant that it was working hours, which meant that people were in the office, which meant that his almost non-existent reputation—caused by his coworkers not paying much attention to him before—might possibly be ruined through the action of rummaging through and picking out pieces of paper from someone else’s recycle bin.

So that was why he decided not to do it, even though he really wanted to. But maybe he could do it later on, when no one else was watching. That probably meant that he had to stay in the office until really late and go home really late, but it was worth it. It was a BCR that he poured his heart into after all, so he would definitely do it. Now all he had to do was to plan out how he would occupy himself—in a way that looked like he was doing work—while he waited until everyone left.

But that was Myungsoo’s problem. Sarang on the other hand, didn’t have a problem at the time. In fact, a previous problem of hers from before seemed to be resolved already.

Currently, she was smiling ecstatically to herself and almost let out a squeal of delight. 5% already?! she thought with excitement. Usually, a 5% on a love bar didn’t mean that much and most people start off around that amount—unless they never interacted with the person of interest or didn’t interact with them enough to make the latter take notice of them—but for Myungsoo’s case, it was completely different. And that was why she was so happy that it went up to 5%.

Yes! Finally! It’s a positive number! It’s not below 0 anymore! She had a mental celebration to herself and almost kissed her love planner, but stopped herself from doing so when she remembered that she was in a public place. She still continued her mental celebration though, thinking that the mission was taking a turn for the better, despite the fact that they were nowhere near to even completing 1/4 of the attraction/infatuation stage.

Her little celebration was then interrupted when a coworker of hers came up. “Choi Sarang-ssi, please get me a caramel macchiato,” her coworker said and gave her some money to buy it.

Sarang looked at the money and frowned, but took it anyway. She then replaced the frown with a polite smile instead. “Ne Sunbaenim, I’ll go get it for you,” she said.

Myungsoo saw this and immediately furrowed his eyebrows. He remembered that not too long ago, their boss had clearly stated that no one should order her to run unnecessary errands for them, but why did this female coworker of theirs still order her to do it anyway?

“Um, I’m sorry for intruding your conversation, but Sunbaenim…” he started. “Sajangnim told us that we shouldn’t make Sarang run unnecessary orders.”

Their coworker looked over at him in surprise before putting on her best smile, the complete opposite expression that she was giving Sarang just a minute before. “Oh, I know, Myungsoo,” she said. “But this isn’t unnecessary. I’m really tired right now after waking up late, so I absolutely need a caramel macchiato to boost my energy. I need to work after all.” She turned towards Sarang after finishing her sentence and waved her arms at her. “Now go, new worker. I need the coffee right now.”

Sarang badly wanted to scoff, but it took all of her willpower to not let out that sound that would make her seem rude. But who could blame her for wanting to scoff when someone just comes up to you like that, order you to get coffee for them, and then smile that sweetly at another coworker when in contrast, smiling an annoyed one at you instead.

“Ne, Sunbaenim,” she said. It wasn’t like she had a choice when it came to this, but the good news was that she had a plan. A plan that she knew would be beneficial in the long run, and the only way to execute this plan was to submit to this order.

Myungsoo saw the scene before him, not knowing that Sarang had a plan, with a look of sadness in his eyes. He was usually the one that was told to do the errands, but now it seemed like Sarang was now targeted since she’s new.

He felt like he could now sympathize with her since when he was an intern, he was always forced to do these errands–especially the coffee ones, since people love coffee these days—and he hated it. He hated how he couldn’t talk back to them, couldn’t refuse, and couldn’t even show even a tiny frown since he knew what would happen if he ticks off a sunbaenim of his.

Now that he remembered it, Seolhyun was also an intern at the same time as him, but luckily for her she was never targeted. It was mostly due to the fact that Myungsoo was the one that looked ‘the worse’ according to the sunbaenims. It was cruel and completely unfair, but that was reality. The reality was that it would either be you or someone else who would be targeted, maybe even both.

Sarang, unfortunately, didn’t have such a chance. She didn’t have the chance of it being somebody else that would be targeted since there was nobody else. There weren’t any new workers that just came in besides from her nor were there any new interns either. Even if the boss, Mr. Kang, told the others not to give her errands, of course there would still be some who wouldn’t listen.

That’s why Myungsoo had a sudden urge to help her. The only reason that she came here in the first place was to help him, so this would be a small way to return the favor. After deciding what to do, Myungsoo stood up and looked at the senior with a smile. “Sunbae, I’m usually the one who run these types of errands, so let me do it today also,” he said as he took the money from Sarang.

Both Sarang and the senior looked at Myungsoo in surprise.

“Myungsoo, you don’t have to do it today,” their senior said. She flashed Myungsoo a smile, and he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. It shocked him so much that this senior of his who was showing him a stern and tired expression the other day, telling him to fetch her coffee, was now smiling sweetly at him and doing it like it was something that she did every day.

Myungsoo then quickly shook that thought away. It wasn’t the first time that something like this happened—he had already witnessed his other coworkers, especially the female ones, act differently towards him after all—and it wouldn’t be the last. The most important thing at that time was to save Sarang, and by saving he meant helping her get away from doing the coffee errand.

It wasn’t much at the moment, but hey, it was a start.

“No, it’s okay,” he replied, his smile unfaltering. “I want to do it.”

His senior furrowed her eyebrows at him. “Why would you want to do it? Sarang can get it instead,” she said. Clearly, she was confused that somebody was actually offering to do coffee errands. People would usually try to do everything that they could to avoid it since they knew that if they did it once, then they would most likely have to keep doing it again and again until someone else gets targeted.

Not only was their senior confused by what he said, but Sarang was also very confused as she looked at him with a puzzled expression on her face. “Yeah,” she agreed. “Why would you want to do it when I can do it instead?”

Myungsoo lowered his voice and leaned closer to her so that only she could hear what he was about to say. “I’m helping you get out of your errands,” he whispered as he flashed her a smile. “You can thank me later.”

Sarang furrowed her eyebrows as she processed what he said. She then mentally face palmed herself when she finally understood what he was trying to do. “Myungsoo, you’re not helping me by what you’re doing,” she replied. “You’re actually ruining my plan.”

Myungsoo looked at her with a confused expression. “What do you mean?” he asked.

Sarang sighed in response. “You’ll find out later,” she said as she stood up and took back the money. “No Sunbaenim, I’ll do it. Just ignore this person over here.”

She pointed over at Myungsoo, indicating that he should be ignored, which caused for him to scoff at her in disbelief. And to think that I’m actually trying to help her, he thought.

“Oh, and if anyone else wants me to get them coffee then I’ll gladly do it!” She looked at everyone in the room and showed them a friendly smile while waiting for the next person to place an order for coffee.

Somebody finally spoke up and asked for an Americano. Next, somebody asked for a latte. Like a chain reaction, everybody else in the room started placing their orders—except for Myungsoo—and Sarang quickly wrote them all down in the love planner that everybody thought was a phone.

After she finished writing, she looked up at everyone with the same smile on her face. “Okay, I’ll try to be quick!” she said as she started towards the door.

Myungsoo watched her as she left. He couldn’t believe that not only did she refuse his help to avoid one errand, but she actually refused it and asked for multiple errands. He of course, still didn’t understand what she meant by him ruining her ‘plan’ since it seemed like he was helping her avoid something that she would be more than happy to avoid. Or, pretty much, any person would be more than happy to avoid.

As he sat there and thought about what just happened, he decided that he couldn’t leave her doing all of those orders alone. More than 20 people placed orders; that meant that she had to bring back over 20 cups of coffee. That was way more than anyone can handle, and he couldn’t even imagine how she would be able to bring them all back by herself.

Actually, he imagined her stacking a few trays—that allowed a person to hold multiple coffee cups at once—onto her head as she stacked a few more onto her hands, but then he remembered that she wasn’t Cinderella and that she most likely did not have Cinderella’s amazing balancing skill.

Without hesitating—well truthfully, he did hesitate for around 5 minutes, but that didn’t make that much of a difference in his opinion—he quickly got up from his chair and started towards the door. He did it in the most subtle and unnoticeable way as possible, causing for nobody to even notice him missing… except for Seolhyun.

Seolhyun sat there, curious as to where he was going. She didn’t know why, but she disliked it when he tried to help Sarang a few minutes ago by offering to do the errands in place of her. She even frowned and felt a weird, unsettling feeling in her when she saw their interaction before. She admitted that she started to feel somewhat attracted to Myungsoo; not by a lot though, just a tiny smidgen.

As she thought that, she quickly reminded herself that he was only handsome and that that was the only reason that she felt slightly attracted. It wasn’t like she had any deep feelings for the guy or anything, and it comforted her to think that and not feel like she was lying to herself since it was completely true at the moment.

But she still ended up watching him as he left the room. She wanted to know where he was going, and felt uneasy when she thought of him going to where Sarang was. “Psh, who cares where he goes. It doesn’t matter to me anyway,” she muttered to herself as she went back to work, blocking out any thoughts that involved Myungsoo.

---

 

“Why did you refuse my help?” Myungsoo asked as he stood next to Sarang, who was waiting in line at a coffee shop.

“It was because you were ruining my plan by offering to help me,” she replied. “Like seriously, who would offer to do the coffee errand when they aren’t the one targeted at the time?”

“Me,” he bluntly answered. “I know what it’s like to be targeted, and I was targeted just until today. But I’m not going to let you be targeted either.”

Sarang felt a little touched by his words, but didn’t let it get to her. At that time, the plan was more important, but she still felt thankful on the inside. “Well, after I successfully execute my plan, neither of us nor anyone else would ever have to go through the dreaded coffee errands ever again… until our mission is over that is.”

Myungsoo furrowed his eyebrows. “What do you mean?”

Sarang was about to answer, but it was her turn next in line so she told him to wait as she went up to order. Myungsoo watched her as she read off of her love planner. He was curious as to what her plan was, and was completely clueless as to what she was trying to do.

After Sarang finished reading off her order, she turned back around to see Myungsoo nowhere in sight. She looked around for him for a moment, but then shrugged it off when she couldn’t find him and sat at a table while waiting for her orders to be finished. It took quite some time for all of her orders to be completely made, but it was expected to be that long since anyone would think that making over 20 different cups of coffee would take a lot of time.

Then, when the coffees were done and her number was called, she went up and was able to bring all of the coffee over to her table—not so sure how, but she did it—and started executing her plan right away. Myungsoo finally came back and saw her rummaging through her bag that could hold an infinite amount of random items. He then went up to her and asked, “What are you doing?”

Sarang finally noticed his presence next to her and looked up at him. “Where did you go?” she asked back. “I thought you were bailing out on helping me or something.”

“I was just going to the bathroom,” he replied. “But truthfully, you refused my help anyway. So it would totally make sense if I did end up going back to the office without trying to help you.” He then crossed his arms. “Actually, now that I think about it, I should just go back to the office since you did refuse my help after all.”

Myungsoo was about to leave, but Sarang immediately stopped him. “Wait, I really do need your help,” she said. She then eyed the endless amount of coffee cups sitting on the table. “I can’t bring all of this back to the office by myself. It was hard enough for me to bring it over here, and I don’t have a single clue as to how I even did it.”

Myungsoo saw her look at him with puppy dog eyes. Truthfully, he was just saying that to since he felt a little hurt when she refused his help when he offered it to her. But now it seemed like this whole time she really did need his help, considering how desperate she looked as she was staring at him with the puppy dog eyes while glancing at the coffee cups on the table.

He then cleared his throat and pretended like helping her was just a small favor that he was willing to do and that it wasn’t something that should be a big deal. “Alright, I guess that I’ll continue to help you then,” he said.

Sarang smile happily as she looked at him with a thankful expression. “Thank you, Myungsoo!” she said genuinely. “Oh, and also…” She pointed at the counter at the front of the entrance. “…you can first help me by paying for these since I’m broke, and my bag can only provide me with objects but not money—unless I add some in of course.”

Myungsoo widened his eyes as he looked at her in disbelief. “I have to pay for all of this?!” he questioned as he pointed at the coffee on the table.

He wasn’t a rich person, and did not have much in his bank account. He only had enough for him to survive for the meantime—he was hoping to get promoted—and was saving up as much as he could. He also needed to send money home to his parents, and using his money to pay for the coffee wasn’t something that he would be very proud of doing.

Sarang shrugged in response. “Well, you don’t have to, but you were insisting on helping me. So by saying that, it also means that you’re willing to help me pay for these,” she explained. “Seriously Myungsoo, you don’t have to do it. But you did say that you would help me.”

Myungsoo let out a weak laugh. It seemed like he was just played by his very own cat, Sarang. “Alright fine… I’ll pay.”

He then slowly walked towards the counter and reluctantly paid for the coffee. His expression was full of sorrow as he saw his money being placed onto the counter. *Bye money, I promise that I’ll do a better job of saving you next time,* he thought as he sadly waved goodbye to his money, which caused the employee at the counter to look at him weirdly in response.

He then walked back towards Sarang while dragging his feet and hanging his head low. Sarang, seeing him in a miserable state, could not hold it in any longer as she started laughing at him. Myungsoo looked up in bewilderment as he saw the person that made him give up his money for coffee, laughing at him like a crazy person.

“Myungsoo, I’m sorry. I can’t do it anymore,” she said as she held her hand to her stomach while trying to stop herself from laughing. As she was doing that, she took his hand and placed quite a lot of money onto it.

Myungsoo stared at the money with wide eyes as he looked up at Sarang with a confused look on his face. “What? Where did you-“

“The people placing the orders already gave me money to buy it,” she explained as she smiled at him in an apologetic, but also slightly amused way. “Sorry that I didn’t tell you sooner, but I thought that you already knew since you saw them giving me the money. Oh, and also…” She continued laughing. “Very funny reaction. You could be a hit on a variety show someday.”

Myungsoo didn’t say anything at first. He admitted that he was completely stupid for forgetting the fact that she had already gotten the money to pay for the coffee and that at the moment, it seemed like he had the brain of a goldfish, but for some strange reason, he wasn’t frowning.

In fact, he didn’t even feel the least bit mad when he saw her laughing at him. He actually wanted to laugh with her instead and even enjoyed hearing her laughter. He then reached over and ruffled her hair in revenge. “Yah, you prankster,” he said. “You almost gave me a heart attack.”

Sarang pouted and started fixing her hair. “I already apologized, so why did you have to ruin my hair? Now I really do look like a crazy woman that came out from a mental asylum.”

“Well, you did trick me into thinking that I was losing a huge sum of money when you know that I don’t have much,” he said.

Sarang continued pouting, but decided to apologize again. “Sorry,” she muttered.

Myungsoo finally smiled, and gave her another hair ruffle. “It’s okay, I forgive you.”

Sarang looked up and saw some of her hair strands sticking in places where even she could clearly see as she huffed to blow the strands out of her face. Myungsoo saw her actions and couldn’t help but to chuckle a bit. He thought it was really cute how she was trying to fix her hair and trying to blow it back up when he had already messed it up. He then reached over and started to help fix her hair.

“So tell me, why are you working at the same company as me?” he asked, even though she had already answered before. But the thing was that her answer from before wasn’t clear enough, so he decided to ask again.

Sarang was a little taken aback by his actions, but quickly waved it away. “Well, I thought that working with you at the same company would be beneficial to our mission since Seolhyun also works here.”

Myungsoo nodded as he lightly ran his fingers through her hair as an attempt to smooth out the strands that he caused to stick up after he ruffled it. “So, did you really go to Harvard University?” he asked.

“Of course not,” she replied. “My profile and personal information always changes when I’m working with a new person so that it would be beneficial to the mission, and saying that I went to Harvard University and showing the degrees that I got from graduating there was the quickest way for me to work here with you.”

He nodded in understanding as he finished fixing her hair before taking a step back. “And you’re welcome.”

Sarang looked at him with furrowed eyebrows. “For what?” she asked.

“For fixing your hair for you,” he answered. “And also for lending you a hand by helping you transfer all of these cups of coffee to the office.” He smiled at her and then turned to the coffee cups, which were sitting in trays, to get ready to pick them up.

“Wait!” Sarang said, stopping him from trying to pick up the coffee trays. She then rummaged through her bag and took something that looked like a salt shaker with salt in it. “We have to put this in first.”

She started opening all of the lids and shook the item above it, causing for the white salt-like grains to fall into the drinks.

 “What is that?” Myungsoo asked as he watched what she was doing. His eyes then widened in realization when he thought that he understood what she was doing. “Don’t tell me that you’re going to poison our coworkers?!”

Sarang looked up in surprise at Myungsoo, who was looking at her with his mouth hanging open and a shocked expression after coming up with his own revelation of her. “I didn’t know that you were…” He warily looked around before leaning closer to her to make sure that no one could hear what he was about to say. “…evil.” He said in a low voice.

“No, I am not,” Sarang said, quick to defend herself. “What made you think that?”

“Well, you did say that neither of us nor anyone else would ever have to go through the coffee errands ever again if you successfully execute your plan, so that points to you trying to poison them,” he explained. He then crossed his arms and looked at her judgingly. “Sarang, just because you’re trying to end the dreaded coffee errand, it doesn’t mean that you can poison our coworkers.”

He then narrowed his eyes at her. “Now tell me…” His head slightly tilted and he looked at her curiously. “…are those laxatives? I’m pretty sure that the white things that you’re sprinkling on top of the drinks are laxatives, but I just want to make sure.”

Sarang was about to tell him that it wasn’t laxatives, but then another idea came into her head. “What if I tell you that they are?” she asked, a mischievous smile forming on her face. “Would you still stop me from giving them the drinks?”

Myungsoo stood there for a moment, probably thinking about what she said. He stayed still for a whole minute, maybe even two, before suddenly asking, “Can laxatives kill?”

It took a few seconds for her to think, but she eventually shrugged. “Maybe, if they have an overdose,” she answered. “But I doubt that a tiny sprinkle of laxatives would kill anybody. It would just give them a horrible trip to the bathroom.”

Myungsoo nodded, and continued contemplating. As he was doing that, Sarang started finishing up with sprinkling the small, white grains into all of the drinks. Finally, he finished with his contemplation and was ready to tell her his decision. “I’m done thinking,” he said.

Sarang looked up at him. “Then you’re ready to answer my question?” she asked.

Myungsoo nodded. “Yup,” he answered. “My answer is that I won’t stop you. Go ahead and give them the laxatives.”

Myungsoo waved his hands at her to indicate that he was approving the action of her giving their coworkers the drinks. From the way it looked, it seemed like he was quite eager for the drinks to reach the coworkers.

Sarang smiled amusedly as she told him to help her hold some of the coffee. As they were walking towards the office, she finally thought that it was the right time to tell him the truth. “Myungsoo…” she started.

Myungsoo looked over at her. “What is it?” he asked

“I was lying. The white stuff isn’t laxatives,” she said. She saw the disappointment in his face, and had to hold back a laugh.

“Then what are they?” he asked.

“You’ll see when we get there,” she replied.

After some walking, they finally arrived back at the office. Myungsoo quickly laid the coffee trays down onto a table before quietly slipping back into his cubicle so as to not let anyone know that he was gone the whole time. It was fortunate that everyone’s eyes were glued onto their computer screens, too busy to notice one of their coworkers tiptoeing pass them to get back to his desk.

But unfortunately—or also fortunately, depending on whose point of view you’re looking at—Seolhyun was able to spot him coming back into the office with Sarang despite trying her best to only focus on her work.

Sarang then distributed the drinks to everyone before going back to her cubicle. Myungsoo leaned over to her when she sat down, and—much to Seolhyun’s dismay when she saw it—whispered into her ear. “Alright, now tell me. What were the white things that you put in there?” he asked.

“Just watch,” she replied.

All of a sudden, a coworker of theirs stood up while angrily holding his cup of coffee in hand. “I say we stop making the newbies run silly errands for us. It’s all too much for them!”

Someone else stood up, with an equally angry expression on their face. “I agree! Who cares if we want coffee, we can just get it ourselves!”

There seemed to be a chain reaction as everyone else, including Seolhyun who also drank the coffee she ordered from Sarang, stood up and started to make a riot about newcomers’ rights and how they shouldn’t be forced into running useless errands of getting coffee, shining shoes, etc.

Myungsoo watched the scene in front of him with his mouth agape. “What did… you do?” he asked. He couldn’t believe that his usually tired and cranky coworkers were all of a sudden shouting about the topic and frantically agreeing with each other, but at the same time looking angry, yet passionate and energetic while doing so.

Sarang shrugged. “The white thing is just something that will prevent them from making newbies run errands for them,” she explained. “I use it every time my mission involves working at an office or something relating to that. And it’s very useful, except the side effect is…”

She looked at the people in the room shouting at each other—who were, for some reason, crying at the same time—about how they understood what it’s like to have to wash a senior’s car, just because they were new when they first came.

“Well, as you can see, some side effects are overreaction, being overly passionate about what they believe in, and the excessive need to speak about newcomers’/workers’ rights.”

Myungsoo watched as Seolhyun, who was usually kind and soft-spoken, yelling about how newbies shouldn’t be forced to fetch coffee. He could see her face glowing red, and her veins were popping out of her neck as she shouted nonstop. This wasn’t the Park Seolhyun that he knew, and it was kind of freaking him out. “When will the side effects go away?” he asked Sarang.

Sarang looked up at the ceiling as she thought. “Um… I don’t really know. The amount of time it takes to go away is different each time,” she replied. She then looked at him optimistically. “But the good news is that now they won’t make you, me, or anyone else go fetch them coffee or run errands for them, but on the other hand, bad news is…”

She looked over at the others who were going through the ‘side effects’ of drinking the coffee. “…that it’s unpredictable as to when they will stop experiencing the side effects. Hopefully, they will be back to normal in a few days.”

“Yeah…” Myungsoo watched Seolhyun as she screamed out at the top of her lungs like there was no tomorrow. For a second, she looked like a Spartan going to war. “…I hope so too.”

---

 

I'm not so sure if it's true that new workers in an office in Korea have to listen to their sunbaes like Myungsoo had to listen to his, but I only wrote that part because of what I saw in dramas with an office setting. Please excuse me if I'm wrong since I do not have first hand experience of offices or Korea's culture that much.^^