You were awoken by the ear-splitting sound of your ringtone right into your right ear. You fell asleep instantly last night, forgetting to put your phone on your bedside table.

Who the is calling you at this hour? Since your suspension you have been sleeping late, ergo you wake up late.

Not looking whoever the hell is calling, “Hello,” you answered groggily.

“I need you to come to the office.”

You shoot right up. Eyes suddenly the size of plates wide. 

That was your manager. No, not your immediate boss, but the department manager, Mr. Lee. He never, ever calls you… 

Well he called you once last year, to ask you to pick up his three ugly pugs from the groomers because apparently everyone in his household was too busy to do so. He did give you a crisp ₩50,000 that day, to silence you about running him a personal errand, which is prohibited in your company. 

You’re so used to doing things for everyone because before there were newbies, before Taeyong, you were once the “Errand Girl”. When it was Taeyong’s turn to be the errand boy when he started, you felt bad for him and you helped him. That’s how you became good friends.

“Are you there? Did you hear me?” your Manager slightly raised his voice.

You shook your head to fully wake yourself at once, “Yes, sir. I’m sorry, I just woke up,” you scramble to your feet and grab your bath towel.

“Be there on time,” he said before abruptly ending the call.

—

It’s still too early, considering your manager called you an hour and a half before the actual work time, EVERYONE seems to be here already, even the usually tardy people are around, scrambling to their feet like crazy as if a disaster is about to happen. A lot of your coworkers come in literally five minutes before nine and it’s not even eight-forty-five and here they are.

You made a beeline to your desk, making sure to dodge your busy coworkers when nobody even noticed your presence. The moment you put your purse down the table, you and Taeyong made eye contact. ( your tables are parallel to each other)

“What’s happening?” “What are you doing here?”

The both of you exclaimed at the same time and then laughed immediately right after.

“I’ll go first,” Taeyong started with a giggle, “apparently our CEO will have an early retirement and wants his son to take over asap. So the old man is gonna show his son around the whole company today,” he said as he placed down his phone on his table. 

You see that he was just messing around with his mobile phone with just the right amount of paper stack he does every day. He is pretty efficient at his job, he makes sure to finish the right workload so that he will never have backlogs or bring home any work with him. (unless it’s new season projects, taking home work can’t be helped)

“I see,” you nod your head up and down in understanding. 

Your coworkers are pacing around the office to make their workspace look busy, adding unnecessary papers and old logs from previous weeks ago. Pffft, wouldn’t that only show the company owners that their employees are lazy? That they don’t do their work???

“So what are you doing here?” h