In the office, it wasn’t exactly hustle and bustle. All the workers had retracted into their cubicles like a turtle into their shell. In there, it was their little fortress, where they would divide work and conquer alongside their allies down aisle 22.

Unfortunately, Yunho’s fortress was made of pillows and his only ammo was the intern experience, which mostly consisted of the fine-tuned perfection of mass morning coffee. When his work was shot through the fine feathery cushioning attached to an arrow every morning, it usually got him right between the eyes, causing them to go completely crossed sitting in front of his computer for the rest of the day. Squinting through his glasses, he knew the sleep deprivation wasn’t helping the squareness of his desaturated eyes. And could it get any colder? Not only was the air con drying him out, it was blowing the arctic directly down on his head. He could feel the icy fingers ruffling his hair like an obnoxious aunty at a family gathering. The boss had the remote, and he was loath to ask for even a thimble from that rotten woman. He’d rather wear a blanket at his desk.

It was bad enough that he had to do his work dying of pneumonia. He didn’t have a clue what he was doing. Sometimes it worked out, and he wasn’t sure why. Sometimes it didn’t work out, and he wasn’t sure why. He’d put it down to fate by now rather than his lack of training and mountain of paperwork to wade through. He couldn’t use wellies anymore, he would need a full-body suit for this one.

He needed to turn his working world into a fantasy like this. Otherwise, if he took it for the jungle it truly was, the vipers would have poisoned him far sooner, and at least the venom had made him numb for now. In truth, he hated his co-workers; especially that guy who kept stealing his lunch. Sometimes he wondered if he should bother taking any at all. That scrounger even left notes thanking him for it. Soon enough he recognised the handwriting as the guy from human resources, so he scratched complaining out, defeated.

With no-one to report his misery to, not even other workers (like they would ever listen), he had to deal with his horrendous boss who was never satisfied, an empty stomach, and quite frankly, not much to look forward to going home.

It was one day, while Yunho was walking home from work with his suit jacket slung over his shoulder and tie billowing in the wind, he looked unusually chipper. He had a little more bounce to his step, a slight slant to his lips. Was he smiling? He wasn’t really sure. He hadn’t for a while, after all.

“Yunho?” Ugh, Tiffany. Did he have to turn around?

He caved. “Tiffany!” He wondered if she could tell he wasn’t at all pleased to see her. Her heels clicked vigorously as she approached the short distance of the street left between them.

“Why didn’t you wait for me?” Yunho guessed Tiffany was pretty built under that dress and didn’t realise how heavy her bag was, because the sharp blow to his head nearly knocked him out.

“Ow! What was that for?” He whined, trying to play off the abuse as people eyed them weirdly as they shuffled past on their ways.

“I was gonna play nice, but the rumour mill’s been spinning, Yunho, and I think you know what’s coming.” Oh yeah- one other thing about his office was that it liked to gossip, despite the distinct lack of things to gossip about. So, rumours spread around instead at the tiniest things.

Yunho knew, alright. It must be that one time Tiffany had nearly bulldozed him down at a corner in the corridor, and he had been forced into some kind of human interaction there. “Hi,” he’d coughed out gruffly, and hurried off clutching to his stack of folders in his arms. Someone must have seen and set the sirens off, because Yunho never talked. Never. They all assumed he was mute.

“How could you spread around the office that I am sleeping with you so that I’ll do your work?!” She screamed with the ferocity of several bears into his eardrums. “Just because you don’t know what the you’re doing! God!” He tuned out some of her rant as the blood left his face. Great, so after all his hard work of avoiding all the twats in the block, he still managed to get slung under the bus. He never talked because he felt like he couldn’t there. It wasn’t his crowd, just like every other crowd he’d been surrounded by, really. Maybe he was awkward; maybe he outcast himself. When it boiled down to it, really he just felt alone.

“If the boss hears I’ll probably get all your work, seeing as they think I do it all anyway. Are you that useless?” Yunho dialed out again. If he just endured her venting, maybe she would calm down by herself and go away.

It seemed to work, but not quite as smoothly as Yunho would have liked. Her lips moved but not a word passed his ears, and she took that as confirmation of his ‘recently revealed deviancy’ and she stormed off after giving him the dirtiest look he’d ever seen in his life. He was left standing there in a daze, shock evident in his glazed-over expression. Even strangers were looking at him funny. Did they believe her? Someone who had clearly heard the whole thing spat a gob at him. Clearly, they did.

Mood ruined.

Strike… back to one, because he’d lost count by now.

-----

It’s not like he’d never ‘put himself out there’. He had friends. Only one or two turned out to be sincere, however, and he treasured the ones who kept his sanity.

“So good to see you, Jiyong,” He smiled over his steaming mocha, relieved to see his childhood friend again rather than small talk over social media.

The young man smirked into his nod as he took a sip of his own white hot chocolate, smile glistening in his eyes. Yunho felt a small pang.

“Tiffany still a ?”

“How do you know about that? I mean…” Yunho wondered if Jiyong has spies in his work place. A small speck of worry struck inside him, wondering if Jiyong bought what everyone else was feeding out from that dreadful place.

“Hey, they probably assumed you were sleeping together because she sleeps with everyone else,” the blond’s smirk widened to reveal pearly whites. Yunho’s shoulders loosened, alerting him to the fact he was still tense around his best friend. He needed to work on that.

“Very funny,” he slouched into the wooden chair, knees knocking into the trunk of their small round table in the corner of the coffee house. He would bet money Jiyong had no basis for his argument, but for now, he’d take it. Often his time with Jiyong was some beautiful comic relief.

In amongst their idle chatter, Yunho knew Jiyong was on to him. Jiyong could tell all that was missing- the chime to his laughter, the smile to his eyes, the conviction to his speech. Yunho wasn’t just off, he was shutting down and away. Jiyong knew, and he steered the conversation that way.

“Look mate, I know something’s up. You’re looking a bit off again. Remember what I told you last time?” Jiyong reached over and placed his hand over Yunho’s reassuringly.

A couple behind the two giggled and poked fun at Yunho’s flat-looking girlfriend comforting their pansy boyfriend. Yunho pursed his lips. Sure, Jiyong was androgynous, but snide comments like this made it even harder to listen to his friend when he needed to. He could feel their looks burn into the back of his head when Jiyong leaned closer, making his face burn. “You haven’t… had those thoughts again, have you?”

Yunho rolled his eyes, even though Jiyong had caught him right out. He awkwardly slipped his hand away, shaking his head and clearing his throat. “Don’t be silly. That was highschool, I’m over it now.”

“Seriously man, if you hurt yourself like that again, I’ll patch you up with my own two hands so that I can save enough of you to throttle myself.” Jiyong was always one for tough love. Yunho pulled his crumpled sleeves down over the backs of his hands.

Jiyong forced Yunho to meet his gaze. Uneasy, he heaved a heavy sigh and conceded to the concern of his friend.

“Okay, look, I have thought about the possibility again. Sometimes I don’t feel like anything’s going my way, you know? I have no motivation to do anything. When I’m out the house, I never want to even pass through the door back inside, and when I’m at home, I can’t drag myself out of bed. You know how long I’ve hibernated in that thing before?”

“I know, I’ve hauled your out of it a few times,” He inserted, although the softness of his tone showed he was listening.

Yunho’s tensed expression also calmed a little at the shifting notch. “You’re good for that,” he mumbled.

Somehow, Yunho managed to make Jiyong drop the topic, and they went back to their idle chatter. However, Yunho couldn’t shake that constant feeling at the back of his mind. A restlessness. A frustration. A daemon dancing on the grave of his self worth; something which had passed on a long time ago.

While Jiyong was good at reality checks, there was some things he just couldn’t fix. Maybe it was time Yunho upped his prescription dosage with the Doctor again.

-----

“What? Again? Holy , Yunho, there’s only so many pills you can pop! !” His understanding and endlessly sympathetic mother fouled his ears. “I knew you were crazy, but I didn’t know you were this ing crazy! You really do take after your father,” snide, she left it at that and left in a huff, recent perm bouncing to the harsh footsteps, as if it was somehow Yunho’s fault he needed medication for how he felt. And no wonder he left you, he thought to himself, sneering at her back as she stomped up the stairs. She was the only reason he worked the way he did. With no financial support from her (she considered him lucky she let him stay under her roof, especially as a ‘ing mental case’) he was having to save until he could get out, which certainly wasn’t easy in such a high-priced world. Paying through his for a doctor who at least pretended to give two s, he was struggling to become financially independent.

Yunho spent the rest of the evening in the bathroom. He was oddly quiet, because even his mother stood in front of the door for a moment, irked. She shook it off, leaving him to whatever he was doing.

What he was doing was taking his problems into his own hands once again, wondering whether if he took his pain and controlled it, he would have even a strand of leverage over his own life.