It’s D-day.

Jaera’s hand trembles as it hovers over the ‘send’ button. She has only done about two more corrections to her sketch, and she has already attached the file to the email she is supposed to send to her team leader.

“You’ve been staring at your screen for five minutes.” Sehun interrupts her thoughts. “Here, I’ll do it.”

It takes only a second for him to reach down and click the button. The email is successfully sent about two seconds later, and it feels like a weight has lifted over Jaera’s shoulders. She realises that she’s not the only one nervous about the project when she observes the expressions of her colleagues.

A few minutes later, Mr Lee arrives. “Good morning, I’ve received all your files and will be sending them to the committee for this project. We’ll announce the chosen designs later today.”

Jaera hopes her design gets picked. It’s for her old school and she spent a lot of time working on her sketch. However, she has to admit that her teammates, especially Sooyoung with her deep eyebags, have put in a lot of effort as well.

“You think she’ll get it?” Sooyoung whispers from her right, referring to Yerim. The memory of Mr Lee practically redoing Yerim’s design is still fresh in her mind.

Jaera’s shoulders slump at the mere thought. “That’d be unfair.”

“You know,” Mr Lee says from his chair, interrupting their secret conversation. He scrolls through his tablet. “I have a feeling our team will do really well.”

Sooyoung rolls her eyes as she mutters under her breath. “Yay for Yerim.”

He continues. “But for now, the company has a lot of drafts to complete and all of you will be tasked with some 3D modelling.”

In other words, it means sitting in front of the computer for long hours. It is to be expected, since they are interns after all. Yerim grumbles to herself as everyone shuffles towards their laptops.

It is kind of fun at first, but the excitement of working slowly dies down when she draws the same block of wood for the fiftieth time. It’s not too difficult since the designs are already drafted, but it’s just so tedious. At one point, she is just doing the same thing over and over again.

Insert. Undo. Insert. Undo.

“Lunch time,” Mr Lee announces. There is a collective sigh of relief at his words.

Jaera stands up slowly with the rest of her teammates, letting out a small groan in the process. She shuts her eyes for a few moments to give them a well-deserved rest after staring at a computer screen for hours.

“My neck hurts so bad,” Yerim complains.

It makes Jaera glance over to see if their team leader heard what she said. “Maybe you shouldn’t say that in front of Mr Lee.”

“Yeah, okay. I’m hungry.”

Sooyoung sighs loudly, brushing past them to head downstairs for lunch. It doesn’t go unnoticed by Yerim, who strangely doesn’t take much offence. She mouths the words ‘PMS’ to Jaera, walking towards the elevator as well.

The elevator becomes quite packed with her entrance, so Jaera and Sehun opt to use the stairs instead. It’s only a floor down anyway.

“You okay?” Sehun asks quietly. His voice echoes off the walls.

“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?”

“Y’know, the whole Yerim thing, all that tedious computer work, and the fact that they’re going to announce the chosen designs later. All that jazz.”

Jaera sighs. “Working life is stressful.”

“Tell me about it.”

The conversation ends there when they reach the bottom of the stairs. Sehun holds the door open for them, and they try to look for the two girls among the crowd of people in the lobby, when Jaera spots Junmyeon and his colleague from the corner of her eyes.

“Hey,” he greets them before she can even bow properly towards him. “Got a look at the sketches and there were amazing designs from your team.”

His friend nods. “The committee had a hard time making a decision.”

Jaera’s face immediately lights up, but she manages to catch herself before it looks too unprofessional. She holds herself back from smiling too widely, though she can’t hide the spark in her eyes. “I’m really glad to hear that. Thank you, Mr Kim, and… Mr Byun.”

“No problem.” Junmyeon smiles, his eyes turning into crescents. “It’s quality work, even though you all had two days to do it all. It must’ve been hard on you guys.”

Sehun’s face visibly darkens, and she knows it’s because of Yerim. The girl couldn’t have had a hard time at all.

His change in mood is so obvious that the two superiors look confused. However, before they can say anything about it, Jaera bows hastily. She hurries Sehun away. “Thank you again! See you later, sunbae!”

When they are out of earshot, Jaera hisses towards Sehun, “Could you have been more obvious? Our superiors are going to have a bad impression on us, and we might get cut off from the company even as interns, and-“

“So what if I was being obvious?”

The tone of his voice makes her flinch. Now she feels bad for berating him, and maybe she was just being too harsh. She’s pretty sure he hates her now.

He continues. “I mean, an intern is obviously getting help on an assignment, not to mention coming in late and complaining about mediocre tasks. If we don’t tell anyone, we’d suffer in silence. Everyone deserves a fair chance, don’t you think?”

Jaera nods slowly, frowning. It’s barely been a week but things are already so messy.

From the corner of her eye, she notices someone staring at her. It’s Junmyeon, standing near the entrance of the building with Mr Byun on the phone.

They lock eyes, but he doesn’t turn away in the slightest. Instead, he raises his eyebrows in question, silently asking her what’s up. Shoot. The frown lines on her face are a dead giveaway to the situation at hand.

Eyes widening, Jaera shakes her head. The action is small, but he manages to understand. Sehun notices the entire exchange.

“Let’s go eat,” she mumbles, tearing her gaze away from the man still looking at her. Without waiting for a reply from Sehun, she moves towards the cafeteria.

Yerim joins them for lunch this time, and they occupy one of the smaller tables so they have to huddle together. Sooyoung looks quite disgruntled to have Yerim as company, and she lights up brightly when Jaera arrives.

“What took you so long?” Sooyoung laments. “We were waiting here for ages.”

“Sorry, we bumped into Mr Kim and Mr Byun on the way here,” Jaera says. She doesn’t miss the scrutinising look Sehun throws her way. What is it supposed to mean? “He said that our team had one of the best designs.”

Yerim doesn’t look too interested actually, which is strange. First, she didn’t bother to put in much effort in completing the task, and now she looks like she couldn’t care less. It is as if she doesn’t want to work in this company at all.

“The older Mr Kim or the younger one?” Sooyoung asks. “Did they say anything else?”

“The younger. They had a diff