A/N: Hello Everyone!! Omg, I just realized that it’s been so long since I posted, so thank you so much for being so patient and enjoying this story. A huge thank you also for subscribing and upvoting!! If you have your wall messaging turned off and I haven’t been able to tell you personally, here’s my thanks for subscribing as well 😊 I especially love reading all your lovely comments everybody. I hope you like this installment!!

Song: KARD - Dimelo

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Chapter – 6: Dimelo

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Mission: Get Wonho’s in Gear – 2

Chaeturtle: You know he’s going to be even more mad if he finds this one, right?

Mincorgi: Which is why he won’t.

Chaeturtle: Right.

Joojoobee: You guys can’t be serious about this. Wonho hyung and Ji Hyun noona? Seriously?

Kihyunster: Just because it’s unlikely doesn’t mean it’s totally out of the question.

Mincorgi: Anyway, let’s look at the facts.

Joojoobee: Oh, for ’s sake.

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‘What the hell is this?’ Jooyoung hissed acerbically.

Ji Hyun wanted to sink into the floor.

‘Why have the two supposedly most competent people in this office given me half a report?’

She could feel Wonho side-eyeing her questioningly, and her face burnt with embarrassment. She was never so careless, but she was human, and she slipped up. Not that that was the excuse she would ever give no matter what.

. . Double .

It would seem that after Chief Shin had surrendered her own notes back to her and she’d added her portion to the material he’d given her, Ji Hyun had forgotten about the system update due to run that night. Which meant that the report was never sent, resulting in a very unhappy Jooyoung.

And it was all her fault.

She swallowed heavily, feeling the uneasiness trickle over her skin as she prepared to confess and take responsibility.

‘I – ‘

‘We wanted to discuss that part with you in person.’ A husky voice interrupted.

Wonho had just cut her off. And saved her from Jooyoung’s disappointment.

Ji Hyun stared at him in shock as he smoothly plucked her iPad from between her still hands, shot her a quick wink, and stepped towards their cranky director.

‘See, this part looks so much better like this, and it’ll make more sense if I explain it myself. . .’

Jooyoung raised a disbelieving eyebrow.

‘Don’t try to schmooze me.’ He said flippantly, but despite his statement, Ji Hyun saw the man gradually getting drawn into Wonho’s words. With his natural, unpracticed ease and charming personality, Wonho was just so damn persuasive that eventually, everyone around him always succumbed to him.

As she observed his bright eyes and easy smile, Ji Hyun was having a hard time convincing herself that all these years later, she wasn’t going to be the next casualty.

After concluding their meeting, Ji Hyun and Wonho walked out of the office, and the door wasn’t even all the way shut yet when she let out a loud sigh of relief.

‘Thank you.’ She told him sincerely, mentally steadying herself for the self-satisfied attitude that was sure to follow a favor like that.

So the heart-stopping playful grin that adorned his beautiful face, a flat, dark eyebrow arched over shining obsidian eyes was not what she had expected.

‘Impressed?’

And there was the smugness, but it was so endearing, and so him, that she almost laughed.

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‘Maybe a little bit.’

Chief Choi’s answer was delivered in a light, teasing voice with her perfect, pouty lips curving into an enigmatic smile that was so blatantly flirtatious that Wonho stared after her attractive profile, her high ponytail swishing as she walked away, hardly realizing that he was stunned in place.

Wow.

She was simply magnificent.

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‘Wait, you slept together?’

The man’s dimples disappeared as his mouth fell open. Try as he might, he was having a hard time reconciling the fresh-faced fourteen-year-old high schooler Yeojoo who had confessed her longtime crush on Shownu to him when she was in ninth grade with the blushing woman who wouldn’t meet his eyes.

‘Technically!’ Yeojoo cried, as Jooheon straightened out his flabbergasted expression. She could feel the owner ajhumma of the convenience store they were seated outside silently judging their conversation, but Yeojoo could hardly be bothered about that right then.

‘Explain.’ Jooheon demanded. His lunch break was turning out way more confusing than he’d expected.

‘We slept together, as in literally just sleeping on the same bed.’

‘How?’

‘Kihyun Oppa had told me to take his room, and since mine was being fumigated because of a slight cockroach issue, we were all switching around. It was too late when I got back, and I was too sleepy and so I didn’t realize I had the wrong room. You know how Hyunwoo Oppa gets when he’s tired . . . he had a couple drinks and he probably didn’t even turn on the lights when he got home, much less notice anything else.’

‘And then in the morning . . .?’

‘I woke up, and he kissed me.’ She whispered abashedly, her voice an almost inaudible whisper.

Jooheon let out a low whistle and ran a hand over his face.

Yeojoo bit her lip.

‘I mean, I kissed him back, but then I guess he suddenly realized what was happening, so he stopped.’

‘Okay, and?’

‘And then he said he was sorry.’

‘What?!’

The young woman nodded miserably as she worried her poor lip further, and Jooheon couldn’t hold back his wince.

Damn.

‘He’s pretty much been avoiding me ever since. He just thinks that it was such a huge mistake. I don’t even know what to do.’

‘Jump his bones.’

Banana milk spurted out of Jooheon’s mouth as he turned to a contemplative Dodo. Or as contemplative as Dodo could get anyway.

‘What?’ Yeojoo cried.

‘You heard me, jump his bones, and if he still doesn’t have any romantic feelings then that’s that, at least you tried, and got him out of your system.’

‘That is the most bull thing I ever heard.’ Jooheon said.

‘Which is insulting, considering half the things you come up with.’ Dodo snapped as Jooheon fumed.

As the two devolved into yet another bickering session, Yeojoo sighed.

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He’d been wholly reluctant to even sit here for this discussion given that it wasn’t even part of his job, but Ji Hyun had convinced him to stay for an unbiased opinion. However, the afternoon had immediately picked up in entertainment value. Minhyuk watched with barely hidden excitement as Wonho’s fixated gaze settled on Ji Hyun once again. The mischievous man’s eyes danced between the two as he carefully observed the phenomenon that had been repeating itself for the last two hours of this tedious meeting. An oblivious Chief Choi introduced her latest brainchild as she liberally covered the whiteboard before them in her neat scrawl, and every so often, she would look over at Wonho as she explained. Wonho would pause from not-so-idly nibbling on the pencil between his lips, and his eyes would dart away, only to immediately return to her as she focused her attention away.

Can he be any more obvious?

A lock of her glossy chestnut hair fell out of her perfect ponytail, and Wonho’s hand twitched, as if to reach for it as Ji Hyun impatiently pulled it back behind her ear.

‘So guys, what do you think? Chief Shin?’

‘Hmm, what?’

She narrowed her eyes at him, finally realizing that he hadn’t been concentrating at all.

‘About the concept.’

He answered her with a blank stare, and Minhyuk decided to rescue him – for now, at least.

‘So something like an everyday y look?’

‘Yes, exactly. Since Hyuna’s focus is a lipstick for everyone, but also something that’s luxurious and sophisticated,’ Ji Hyun replied, ‘so instead of overtly ual open-mouth close-ups, we’d have something a little more subtle like kissable lips.’

‘Like yours.’

There was a stunned silence as Ji Hyun registered Wonho’s words.

‘Y-your shade, I meant. Deep, yet bright colors.’

‘Yeah.’ She muttered.

As he basked in the tension in the room, Minhyuk decided that Christmas had come early.

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Ji Hyun idly poked at her bibimbap as the lively conversation around her picked up. Once more, she’d ended up seated with a familiar crowd of people at lunch. Since she was at the last but one chair from the corner of the large table, to her right Minhyuk was regaling Jooheon and Kihyun with an outrageous story while a seemingly uninterested I.M. periodi