Jihyo heard, before she saw, Tzuyu heading back into the office with Nayeon, by the sound of her manager’s heels clicking against the tiled floor. It was not distinct by any means, but either Jihyo was just that good at her job, or she’d been spending a lot more time in the office than the average employee. 

Or maybe, her mind taunted, the actual reason she could immediately tell it was Tzuyu might have been… well, an altogether different one she had neither the time nor the energy to dwell on at the moment.

But for a quick second, when she looked up from her computer, she could’ve sworn she saw a flash of the rookie assistant Tzuyu from a few years ago staring at her, a twinkle of admiration in her eyes and a slightly embarrassed, dimpled smile present whenever Jihyo would catch her eye. 

What a shame, she found herself following a stray thought. She's kind of cute like that, when she looks at me like she needs me—

Yah, cut it out, Park Jihyo, you’re at work! her rationality scolded her, bringing her back to reality where, oh, right, Chou Tzuyu was her boss, not her junior, and where there was absolutely no way she could actually find her slacker of a boss cute—although, truth be told, anyone with eyes (Jihyo included) could easily see the way she always looked so effortlessly drop-dead gorgeous even if she was just standing there…

“Umm,” Jihyo hesitated, before quickly recovering and mentally shaking her previous musings away. “Do you need something, Manager?” 

Tzuyu followed suit as she stood, a careful, blank expression gradually taking over her features, a slight stutter in her words the only sign she was still finding her footing.

“O-Oh, Jihyo-ssi. The assistant managers and I are meeting the director in a few minutes. It—We’re probably going to be there for a while, so please tell everyone else they don’t have to wait for us.”

“Okay. Got it.” Turning to Nayeon, who looked a lot more uptight right then compared to before she and Tzuyu had left minutes earlier, Jihyo said, “You wanna go home together later, Nayeon unnie—”

“Actually,” the manager curtly cut in before either Jihyo or Nayeon could comment, “The intern is joining us today. I'm very… interested—” she paused, giving the new hire what looked very much like a glare, “in the valuable input she can provide to our agenda.”

Jihyo’s widened eyes met Nayeon’s—she definitely did not miss the unusual coldness in Tzuyu’s gaze—in a disbelieving look that translated to, You’re in trouble already?, to which the older girl answered only with a small shrug and a guilty grimace.

“Well, Nayeon-ssi,” Tzuyu continued, already beginning to walk away, “I’ll be waiting in the conference room, so please call Assistant Manager Kim and Team Leader Son. I’ll get Director Myoui.”

“Yes, Manager,” Nayeon mumbled begrudgingly before trudging towards the rows of tables belonging to the A&R and marketing departments, only managing to whisper a low, “I’ll talk to you later, Jihyo-yah,” as she passed.

“Okay, that was weird,” Jihyo said to herself, her eyes staring after Tzuyu’s retreating back and following the side-to-side swish of her long brown hair on their own accord.

“What was weird?” a cheerful, girlish voice piped up right behind her, both the closeness and suddenness of it causing Jihyo to nearly fall out of her seat if not for one hand securely gripping the armrest.

“Oh , Sana-nim!” she yelped, her other hand going to her chest. “You scared me!”

“Oops! Sorry?” a colleague from the marketing department, Minatozaki Sana, replied, the slightly playful tone in her words and the even more playful smile on her lips implying she wasn’t the least bit apologetic. “Anyway,” she leaned even closer than she already was (Jihyo had no idea how she even managed to make this possible.) raising her eyebrows in curiosity, “What was that all about, huh?”

“I don’t know.” Jihyo turned back towards her computer, giving a noncommittal shrug in response. “Some emergency meeting or something. Manager told us not to wait up.”

“Oh, okay. I guess Dahyunnie is going too, then?”

“You do mean, ‘Assistant Manager Kim’, don’t you?”

“Mmm, sure, Jihyo-nim,” Sana said easily, leaning back on the seat that she’d taken the trouble of dragging with her from her office corner all the way to Jihyo’s on the opposite end of the floor (the hows of which were another thing Jihyo couldn’t wrap her head around, either). “It’s such a mouthful to say though. If it were up to me, I’d just call her…” 

Jihyo braced herself, knowing from experience that every time the other woman paused the way she did right then, with that strange glint in her eyes, it was always to gather some sort of momentum for— 

“...Mine!”

And there it is.  

Apparently, no amount of mental preparation could stop the cringe from appearing on Jihyo’s face every single time her coworker said something greasy. Judging from the creases above her brows and the disapproving crinkle on her nose, right then was no different. “Ugh, that’s so gross and—You know what, never mind, I don’t even want to say any more.”

“And you know what,” Sana shot back, undeterred, already jumping on to a whole different subject, lowering her voice into her version of a conspiratorial whisper (which, if Jihyo was being honest, was not all that discreet), “I’m still sticking to my working theory that Manager Chou has a crush on you.”

“I seriously think your ‘working’ theory could use some more work. How could someone with a ‘crush’—” Jihyo said, punctuating the last word by using two fingers on each hand to make air quotes before continuing, “dodge most of her tasks and then pile them on the person she supposedly has a crush on? And she does it so shamelessly, too, that little—”

“Just think about it! Maybe she does that to get your attention or something?”

“That’s some way of getting attention, all right,” Jihyo grumbled, giving up on pretending to read the open document on her computer screen, and resting her chin on her palm in thought instead. “And not a very good one.”

“The way I see it,” Sana speculated, “There are two types of people in the world. People like us, who can communicate our feelings pretty normally—”

“Um, I’d hardly call throwing yourself all over Assistant Manager Kim every single time ‘normal’, Sana,” Jihyo commented with a raised eyebrow.

“Aww, come on, she likes it, anyway! But as I was saying, there’s one other type you need to look out for. Go on,” Sana urged, giving Jihyo’s arm a little teasing nudge with her elbow. “Ask me what it is!”

The contents planning staff sighed, tilting her head to look at her colleague and deciding to humor her for the time being. “Alright, fine. What’s the other type, then? And don't you dare give me a cheesy line or I swear I will smack you in the face, even if we're friends.”

The other woman’s lips immediately jutted out into a pout. “Meanie. I was gonna say ‘my type’, but my face is too precious to be smacked right now. What if Dahyun finally says yes to a date with me…”

“Seriously though!” she went on, the confidence building in her voice making her next words sound like a world-changing revelation. “The other type is the one that at coming out in the open and telling you how they feel! Sooo, they end up saying and doing weird things to get you to notice them instead. I think Manager Chou fits the description. Come to think of it,” Sana added with a sticky-sweet, affectionate grin which was obviously directed towards the topic of discussion rather than the woman she was actually talking with right then, “she and Dahyun might be pretty similar like that.”

“I mean, I can agree that Manager Chou doesn’t really tell me what’s on her mind most of the time. She just leaves these little lists and documents on my desk and assumes I’ll take care of it all…” Jihyo trailed off, before reminding herself to stop stressing over the specifics of tasks she’d already finished. “But still,” she said, more to herself than Sana. “Don’t you think her having a crush on me is, well, a little bit of a stretch?”

Even then, as she tried to convince herself with her words, her mind was all too eager to drift back towards the adorable dimples she’d seen a glimpse of on her boss’s cheeks less than ten minutes ago, allowing herself to wonder just a tiny bit if Tzuyu’s bashful smiles were maybe, just maybe, only for her to see.

Her gaze strayed towards the expensive bouquet safely tucked in a corner of her office space, and she asked herself if it would be so bad to find out whether or not her oft-standoffish manager really did feel some sort of attraction towards her…

“I don’t know, but don’t write it off just yet,” she could vaguely register Sana’s voice meshing with the telltale tangles in her own thoughts. “For all we know, their meeting agenda right now could be ‘How Chou Tzuyu finally asks Park Jihyo out’!”

-----

“So this emergency meeting is about how Chou Tzuyu finally asks Park Jihyo out, right?” A&R Team Leader Son Chaeyoung asked the moment she entered the conference room, a black stuffed animal seemingly perched permanently on one shoulder. “Because believe me, I am so close to tearing my hair out at this point.”

“I’d pay a hundred thousand won to see that,” Marketing Assistant Manager Kim Dahyun said, just barely covering a snicker with one hand in front of as she trailed behind Chaeyoung.

“Everyone, please,” Tzuyu said—whined, almost—from the front of the room with a barely-concealed frown, arms crossed in front of her, demeanor still tense but a lot less stiff than the way she was by the office cubicles outside. “This is important.”

“You people hold emergency meetings for this?” Nayeon said flatly, shooting an incredulous look at Tzuyu, who she was seated across from. “Really?”

“Oh, is the intern joining us?” Chaeyoung brushed the question off completely, taking her own seat next to the director’s. “That’s new.”

“Yes, she is,” Tzuyu said, pursing her lips tersely. “She’s here today because she knows about me.” 

Her words drew out a few hums and “oh”s from Dahyun, Chaeyoung, and Director Myoui Mina, but none of them sounded all that surprised, which was more than a little alarming to Nayeon.

“Wait,” the new hire started, her eyes rapidly darting at them one by one in question. “All of you know, too?”

“Of course we know,” Dahyun said testily, annoyed at how slow Nayeon seemed to be on the uptake. “How do you think we've been keeping it a secret from everyone else?”

“Besides, if Assistant Manager Kim here found out about it from someone else,” Chaeyoung quipped, “she'd probably try to punch Manager Chou in the face and tell her she's got unfair privileges as the CEO’s daughter.”

“I—I would not! I couldn't possibly do anything to