Sports Event and the Blue Gummy Bear

“Sunwoong! I made an extra cup of tea for you.” Sarang placed a Styrofoam cup down on Sunwoong’s table with a sweet smile on her face.

“Wow, thank you,” Sunwoong said at her kind gesture. “But sorry, I don’t really like tea that much.”

“But tea is good for you. I see that you’re always drinking coffee. Drinking coffee all of the time isn’t good, you know?”

He thought about it before nodding. “That’s true,” he agreed. “Thanks for the tea then. I’ll drink it well.”

He smiled at her and she smiled back. She then went back to her cubicle across from his and secretly watched him to see if he would drink it or not.

Yes, yes, drink it. Drink it up and have a nice, fun trip to the bathroom… she thought when he started to bring the cup up to his lips.

She watched in anticipation as the cup came closer and closer to his mouth, and she could almost taste the victory of getting rid of Sunwoong for a day. She had used the Water of Doom, which was the name that Myungsoo had given the item, to make the tea for him. Now all he had to do was to just take a sip out of it, and the drink would take its effect.

No more Sunwoong clinging onto Seolhyun for a day, and while he wasn’t there, Myungsoo will swoop in and woo the girl off her feet. Okay, so the latter might not actually happen judging from Myungsoo’s shyness and the way he practically freezes up and become awkward around his crush, but that was okay.

Even if he couldn’t instantly make her fall in love with him, he could do it a little bit at a time. And a good start would be to get rid of Sunwoong, so that the two soon-to-be lovebirds will be able to spend some time together without Sunwoong in the picture.

Suddenly, the sound of loud coughing caught her attention. A male coworker, who was sitting in the cubicle next to Sunwoong, was coughing harshly.

“Are you okay?” Sunwoong asked him while the other shook his head and continued to cough. “Here, quickly drink this.”

Sunwoong brought the tea that Sarang had given him to the man, and the man immediately drank out of it.

“No!” Sarang shouted and stood from her seat when she saw the other man drink it. Everyone turned to look at her, even the man who had just been coughing his life out. “Um… I mean… it’s hot. Don’t drink it too rapidly or you’ll scald your tongue.”

She laughed nervously and slowly sat back down in her seat. “Continue on,” she said while trying to play it off coolly.

Sunwoong then continued to let the man drink it as he patted his back. “Are you feeling okay now?” he asked him.

The other man nodded and sat back down. “Yeah, thank you for helping me.”

Sunwoong smiled back at him. “No problem.”

“You won’t be thanking him for long,” Sarang muttered quietly to herself, not feeling so happy that someone else had once again drank the Water of doom in place of him.

She then waited until he was sitting down before she proceeded to ask him a question. “So… are you still going to drink that?”

He looked at her questionably and she pointed at his cup to show him what she was talking about. “Oh, you’re talking about this?” he finally said when he understood her. “I don’t think that I’m going to drink it anymore now that someone else drank from it. Sorry about that.”

“But can’t you take at least one sip?” she asked desperately.

“Sorry... but someone already drank from it, so…”

She sighed and shook her head. “It’s okay, just throw it away or something. You’re not going to drink it anyway,” she weakly said and laid her head onto her table in defeat.

“Sorry again,” Sunwoong apologized. He then got up, took the mug with him, and went over to the lounge where the sink was to pour the beverage into it.

“Everyone! We have good news!” Mr. Kang came from his office and stood in front of the room. “We are going to have another sporting event next week.”

Everyone was quiet, which caused for him to frown. “Where is the enthusiasm? We’re going to go and bond with each other, work with each other, and have fun with each other! Aren’t you excited about this?”

“Yeah, right. All we do is slowly burn to death under the sun while being forced to play a sport,” Sunwoong mumbled quietly to himself when he got back to his seat.

Myungsoo heard it, though, and he couldn’t help but to let out a small laugh. What Sunwoong said was true, so he ended up laughing, but he soon regretted showing any reaction when he caught the attention of their boss.

“Myungsoo-ssi, do you think that this is amusing or something?” Mr. Kang questioned with a raised eyebrow.

Myungsoo widened his eyes. “N-No sir! I-I’m really looking forward to this, sir!” He stood up and nervously bowed to the man before sitting down again.

“Smooth,” Sarang teased on the side.

Myungsoo blushed at her comment as he pouted. Why was it always him who got caught laughing at the wrong time? He was just too unfortunate for his own good.

“Okay then, back to the sports event,” Mr. Kang said, going back to what he was talking about. “It will be hosted for the entire day next week, and I really do hope that you will all sign up for at least one sport. The signup sheets are on the board over there, and I’m pretty much done for today. Carry on with your work.”

Mr. Kang left and Sarang immediately turned towards Myungsoo. “Are you going to sign up for anything?” she asked him.

“No,” he replied without hesitation. “I don’t have a single athletic gene in my body. I’m just going to embarrass myself like last year.”

“Oh, c’mon. You can’t be that bad,” she said in return.

“Can’t be that bad?” Sunwoong laughed at her statement. “No offense, but he was horrible last year. Like seriously, he was horrible. We were on the same soccer team for the soccer match, and he actually scored a goal for the opposing team, twice.”

Sunwoong continued laughing at him until he earned a smack on his arm from Seolhyun. “Don’t say that about him. You’re being mean,” she scolded.

If Myungsoo wasn’t feeling so embarrassed from what Sunwoong said, then he would’ve felt extremely elated that Seolhyun had stood up for him. But he was feeling embarrass, and he couldn’t fully stare at Seolhyun dreamily while admiring her kindness since she didn’t disagree with Sunwoong. Sure, she scolded Sunwoong for saying it, but she didn’t disagree with him.

“I’m not being mean. I’m just telling the truth,” Sunwoong said with a shrug. “Oh, and don’t even start with how many times he got hit by a ball. He even got hit by a volleyball even though he was nowhere near the cour—“

“Sunwoong!” Seolhyun shouted at him to make him stop.

Myungsoo nearly wanted to cry, but he swallowed it down and stood up. “I-I have to go to the bathroom.” He then quickly walked out of the room and disappeared around the corner.

“Look at what you did!” Seolhyun said. “You just hurt his feelings!”

“It wasn’t my fault! I was only telling the truth! It’s his fault for being so sensitive.”

“It’s not his fault,” Sarang interrupted their conversation. “It’s yours for not thinking about how your words could’ve hurt him.”

“I was only telling the truth, and I was only playing around with him. I don’t think that it’s something to feel hurt about.”

“I didn’t know that ‘playing around’ could sound this insulting,” Sarang commented.

“It didn’t sound insulting,” Sunwoong disagreed. “It sounded lik—“

“Hey, remember when you got chased by that dog when you wanted to pet it? Man, that was so stupid of you to do that. Like seriously, it was so stupid,” Sarang said, imitating Sunwoong’s tone and laugh when he had talked about Myungsoo.

Sunwoong frowned at her. “Why are you saying that? I bet that if it were you, you would’ve wanted to pet a cute dog, too.” His expression showed that he was offended by what she said, which proved the point that she was trying to make.

“Really? I was only playing around, though,” she continued. He was about to say something about how condescending it sounded, but stopped when he realized what she did.

“You didn’t feel so great when I said that, did you?”

He closed his mouth and didn’t know what to say. He finally understood what she was trying to point out to him, and wasn’t able to continue defending his stance after that.

“Seolhyun,” Sarang called to catch her attention. “Can you go after him?”

Seolhyun stared at her in surprise. “But he said that he was going to the bathroom.”

“He lied. He didn’t go there. I bet that he’s on the rooftop, so can you go up there and cheer him up?”

“But I don’t know how to cheer him up.”

“It’s not that hard to cheer him up. I promise.”

Seolhyun hesitated, but showed no signs of standing up. Sarang sighed, stood up herself, and said, “I’ll go after him then.”

She then left for the rooftop where she was 100% sure he had went to after leaving the office. And sure enough, he was there.

“How did you know that I was here?” he asked, staring at her in surprise when she had found him.

“Because I know that you don’t like the smell of public bathrooms and that you have nowhere else to go besides from the rooftop.” She sat down next to him on a bench and grinned.

“I have other places to go,” he retorted.

“Like where?”

“Like… the bathroom.”

“Oh please, Myungsoo. I already said that I know how you hate the smell of public bathrooms,” she said. “Are you actually saying that you would go there to, I don’t know, ‘hang out’ like you’re doing right now on the rooftop?”

He paused for a second. “…no,” he finally admitted. “But there’s also the company cafeteria downstairs. I could go ‘hang out’ down there.”

“But clearly you’re not in the mood to be around a lot of people,” she said. “And the cafeteria is almost always crowded whether it’s lunchtime or not.”

He thought about it before nodding. “That’s true,” he said.

He looked up at the sky and she glanced at him. “Are you feeling okay?” she asked him.

“Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You’re not mad by what Sunwoong said about you? Not to mention that he said that in front of Seolhyun?” she continued questioning him.

He hesitated before shaking his head. “No, not at all.”

“Really? Wow…” Her expression was that of amazement as she stared at him. “I guess words don’t hurt you easily then. If it were me, I would’ve been quite mad at him. I might even turn back into a cat and maul Sunwoong’s face off if he said something like that about me, especially if he said that in front of my crush.”

He couldn’t help but to let out a laugh after imagining Sunwoong getting his face mauled off by Sarang the cat. “I kind of wished that you did that though,” he admitted, his mood now a little lighter.

“Aha! You are mad at him!” She pointed a finger at him, making him widen his eyes at her accusation.

“N-No I’m not! I-I’m not at all!”

“Don’t lie to me, Myungsoo. If you’re upset about it then say you’re upset. You don’t have to keep your feelings all bottled up to yourself.”

“But I’m…” He didn’t finish his sentence and let out a sigh. “Yeah, I’m upset,” he finally admitted.

“Then scream.”

He furrowed his eyebrows at her in confusion. “What?”

“Scream. We’re on the rooftop after all. Scream at the top of your lungs about how upset you are at him.”

“Are you crazy? What if someone hears me?”

“Then I’ll say that it was me who was screaming.” She smiled as she stood up. “C’mon, it’ll be fun. Whenever I see it in a drama, it seems like the person feels a lot better after screaming out all of their frustrations.”

“But that’s just a drama. This is real life. What if I don’t feel any better and only end up with a sore throat?”

“Well, we’ll only know after doing it,” she said before holding out her hand. “Do you trust me, Princess Myungsoo?”

“Wait… princess? What in the world are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about the whole new world I will show you on my magic flying carpet.” She laughed before starting to sing. “Now come with me and I will show you the world~ Shining, shimmering, splend—“

“Please stop, you’re a horrible singer.”

She stopped and pouted. “For your information, I think that I’m quite okay at singing,” she defended herself.

He shrugged after laughing a bit. “Okay, whatever you say.”

“So are you going to take my hand or not, Princess Myungsoo?” She plastered a charming smile on her face with her hand in front of him.

“Don’t call me a princess,” he said before taking her hand.

She smiled once more and led him towards the edge of the rooftop and stopped in front of the glass railings. She then gestured with one arm for him to start yelling.

He took a moment to prepare himself while taking in a deep breath before letting everything out. “Sunwoong you insensitive jerk! You barely talked to me before, but when you do talk to me you’re just saying things about me without caring about how I feel! And yeah, sure, I did end up kicking the ball into the wrong goal twice, but it was an accident! I didn’t mean to kick it in there, you jerk! Why did you even pass it to me in the first place if you thought that I played that bad!”

He let out another deep breath and dropped his shoulders. “Feel better?” she asked him after he didn’t say anything else.

“Yeah, it worked. I do feel better.”

“See, I told you that it would work,” she said proudly.

“But my throat kind of hurts, though.”

“Oh, here.”

She handed him a water bottle, and he took it after saying a thanks. He was in the middle of drinking the liquid when realization suddenly smacked him across the face and he spat it out, nearly choking himself in the process.

“D-Did you just give me the Water of Doom?!” he said while madly coughing.

“What? No! It’s not the Water of Doom. It’s just a regular water bottle with regular water in it.”

“R-Really?” He was slightly hunched over with a hand on his chest, hitting himself there in hopes that his esophagus would successfully eject the water stuck in there.

She reached a hand out towards him and patted him on the back to help him. “Yes, it was just regular water,” she said. “I think you should drink some more. It will help after your near death experience.”

“No, no, I’m good,” he refused as he waved his hands at her. “I don’t feel like drinking anymore.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.” He let out one last cough. “I’m sure.”

“Okay then.” She closed the cap over the water bottle and dropped it back into her bag. “Oh, by the way, I was lying. It was the Water of Doom.”

“What?!”

“Just kidding~,” she sang before waltzing towards the exit of the rooftop. “I’m heading back first. Oh, and if you suddenly start feeling your intestines twist and turn, well…” She grinned at him before shaking her head. “Never mind.”

She gave him a wave and completely disappeared behind the door a moment later, leaving him standing there with one thought going around his head. “She has to be kidding, right? She has to be…”

He remembered how he had swallowed around 1/3 of the water, which was more than enough for the after effect from drinking it to kick in. Sarang may have helped him when he had felt upset about Sunwoong, but now he might be having an upset stomach in the near future because of her.

Now all he could do was to just wait to see what happens and hope with all of his might that she was only messing around with him.

So it turned out that she was telling the truth the other day. He had felt his intestines twisting a little as he anxiously waited to see if he would end up sprinting towards the bathroom at any time, but that was only his anxiety causing that and he wasn’t going to sprint towards the bathroom anytime soon.

But then the next day came and he kind of wished that she would give him the real Water of Doom, so that he could skip out on what she had planned for them to do. They were up on the rooftop again, with him sitting on the table and her standing in front of him.

“Attention!” Sarang said in a loud voice.

“What are you doing?” he asked her.

She blew her blue whistle at him after hearing his question. The whistle was hanging around her neck like some sort of necklace, and there was also a red baseball cap resting on the top of her head. Not only that, she was even equipped with sunglasses that were dark enough to hide her eyes behind them. With what she was wearing, she looked like the strict P.E teacher he had throughout his schooldays.

“Don’t question your counselor, Kim Myungsoo-ssi!” she said while waving a stick at him. “Now drop and give me 20!”

For some reason, Myungsoo immediately did as he was told. It wasn’t like he was scared of her or anything. Actually, who was he kidding, he was scared of her at the moment, but who wouldn’t be when someone was wearing those cool looking sunglasses and shouting at you that loudly? C’mon, that has to be at least a little scary.

“20 of what, ma’am?”

“Pushups! Give me 20 pushups, now!”

“Yes ma’am!”

He started doing the pushups that she ordered him to do, but was already slowing down at around 9.

“C’mon! Keep going! You can do it faster than that!”

“I can’t ma’am! The maximum amount that I can do at a time is only 13!”

“Then because of the new information that you gave me, give me 20 more!”

“But—“

“Now!”

“Yes ma’am!”

He continued doing the pushups—nearly crying while doing so—but when he got to the 13^th one, his arms were shaking like there was no tomorrow, his face became bright red from the effort, and his muscles were burning like a fire had erupted under his skin. His upper body then gave up on him and he collapsed to the ground with a small ‘oof’ coming out of his mouth.

“Ma’am, I’m sorry… I failed you.”

He was lying on the ground, panting heavily, while thoughts of horrible school punishments played in his head with him as the main character of all of them. He also thought of all of the P.E punishments that he had went through as a student.

Like the time the teacher had caught him playing around with his best friend, Sungyeol, during a lesson where the teacher was teaching them how to play dodge ball for the first time. They were in middle school, and the both of them got the punishment of having to run laps around the field while the others played the game.

But truthfully, he remembered being extremely happy to get the punishment since it seemed way better to run laps around the field than to play the brutal game, even if he nearly died after a lap and a half and Sungyeol literally had to drag him the rest of the way. Though he did have to play the game the day after that, only to get a bloody nose and sent to the nurse in the first five minutes of the game.

Luckily his nose wasn’t broken, and there was even more luck on his side when his mom finally agreed to write him a note to the teacher, stating that he couldn’t play dodge ball for the rest of the year because of some health issue he had. But he was only able to convince her to do that for him after countless amounts of begging for 5 days straight.

There was also—

“Myungsoo!” Sarang crouched down next to his collapsed, frozen figure on the floor. “Are you dead?”

She had interrupted his thoughts, causing for him to blink before sitting up. “Am I?” he questioned, still in a daze.

“I guess not since you’re moving again.” She took her sunglasses off and placed it on top of her hat. “So first physical test of the day… not so great. Judging from the amount of pushups you can do, we have a lot to work on.”

“What kind of work are you talking about?”

“Work as in ‘working out.’”

His eyes widened at the two words. “No! I hate exercise! I’d much rather prefer sitting on my couch, eating fried chicken while watching some shows.”

“But I signed you up for the basketball and soccer match,” she stated.

“You what?!”

“I signed you up for it,” she repeated. “I know that you want to impress Seolhyun, and what’s better to impress her than your hidden athletic skills.”

“I don’t have hidden athletic skills.”

“Oh, but you do.” She smiled and held out something in her hand. A blue gummy in the shape of a bear was settled on her palm, and it looked like any other gummy bear out there that were sold in stores. “This increases your improvement in skills and physical shape over 10x as fast as it usually takes a person to, which is pretty much forever and we simply don’t have time for that.”

“What do you mean by improving skills and physical shape over 10x faster?”

“I mean that if you eat this and run for 10 minutes straight, your cardiovascular system and your running speed will improve like you had ran for over 100 minutes!” she said enthusiastically. “But it only lasts for 3 days, so you really have to work out hard to get the results we want.”

While she was excited about the whole work out and gummy thing, he was horrified. “Is this a drug?” he asked with a pale face.

“No, it’s a CAIL item,” she answered. “This thing won’t hurt your body except…”

“Except what? Don’t tell me that I will end up sprouting 3 arms or something.”

“No, you’ll just be super unfortunate for a day. It’s not that bad.”

“Super unfortunate?”

“Yup, super unfortunate,” she replied while nodding.

“Like how unfortunate?”

“From a lesser extent it could be that a bird poops on you, but to a larger extent it could be that you get hit by a car… or maybe even a plane.”

His jaw dropped at her statement. “Nope. No way. I’m not eating that thing.”

“Oh c’mon, it’ll be fine. I’ll watch over you. I’ll make sure the larger extent won’t happen,” she assured. “So how about it?” She picked up the gummy with her fingers and held it in front of her with an encouraging smile.

He thought about it before finally making a decision. “Okay, I’ll…” She waited in anticipation for his answer. “…think about this later. There’s a new episode out right now for this show I’m watching, and I don’t want to miss it.”

He quickly got up and was ready to bolt towards the door, but she grabbed onto the back of his collar and prevented him from escaping. “Myungsoo, we don’t have time left. The sport event is next week!”

He sighed and turned around to face her. “Do you think that it’s worth it? Me, eating that and all, just to impress Seolhyun?”

“I don’t know. I’m not 100% sure. It’s like yesterday on the rooftop. You didn’t know if screaming at the top of your lungs would make you feel better or not, but you did it anyway and you did feel better in the end.”

She took his hand and placed the gummy onto it. “It’s your decision, whether you want to proceed with this plan or not. Neither of us knows if it’ll go smoothly, but we won’t know if it’ll work or not without trying.”

He stared at the gummy for a long time in contemplation. “Okay…” He let out another breath and nodded.

She was happy for a moment, thinking that he had finally agreed with her. But she soon found out that her happiness was going to be short-lived.

“I’ll think about this later. Let’s just go watch the show first and enjoy the new episode,” he said, rapidly shooting the words out of his mouth.

He then grabbed her arm before she could protest and pulled her along with him towards their apartment downstairs, making her groan since she knew that it would take forever to convince him to proceed with their plan.

So the sport event idea came from Producer, but there will most likely be chapters in between this one and the one that will actually have the sport event take place. I hope that you guys will look forward to it!^^

And here's one of my favorite scenes from that particular episode. XD