Life wasn’t fair for Saehyun. When the familiar scent of McDonald’s reached upon her nostrils and the cold wheeze of air came from the entrance’s noisy air-conditioner hit her skin, Saehyun had spotted Kris, eating alone like an outcast kid at the table near the kids’ playground. Thank God, fortunately Kris didn’t notice her as he was too busy focusing on eating his Big Mac.

“Saehyun?”

Baekhyun got Saehyun out of her thoughts and pointed offhandedly to a vacant table at the centre of the restaurant where Hyemi and Yuhan (in the baby’s chair) had already seated. The man didn’t wait for Saehyun to say anything and rushed to the counter later. With her eyes still staring at Kris, Saehyun moved and sat next to Hyemi at the place Baekhyun pinpointed earlier.

Saehyun decided to stop her one-sided staring game at Kris once she induced that Kris most likely would not see her anyway, besides the way he ate the burger was rather gore and scary, so she exhaled in relief and altered her attention towards Hyemi instead. The petite little girl smiled at her and Saehyun, of course, smiled back and they started to chat about random things. And one of those random things was, certainly, the incident earlier. The lady guffawed at the stupid things she had done. Well, it was more to the way it was done from the little girl’s point of view.

“Mama Saehyun, you chased over Sehun oppa like Blossom!”

“Blossom? The one from Powerpuff Girls?” Saehyun laughed.

“Yes! You’re pretty like Blossom too! And mama, you know what, Daddy once told me he likes Blossom the most when he watched Powerpuff Girls with me the other day.”

“Hey, that’s not true,” Baekhyun piped in with a tray of foods in his hold. “I never watched Powerpuff Girls. Saehyun, don’t believe whatever this kid said,” he grinned, “Please. For the sake of my pride.”

Saehyun only managed to cackle at Baekhyun’s statement and slightly raised her eyebrow as if doubting him. Baekhyun had already lounged on the seat in front of her, passing out the foods while his eyes were fixed on Saehyun, looking as if he was trying to plead mercy out of her to ignore whatever embarrassing things he had done that was leaked from Hyemi’s mouth.

“He’s lying!” Hyemi pouted and looked at Saehyun innocently. Baekhyun who had already chewing the first bite of his Big Mac (what a coincidence) stared at his daughter and feigned a grimace. And, well, Saehyun did think it was cute. “Okay okay baby, I believe you. Now let’s eat, shall we?” She chuckled before she began to unwrap her Spicy Chicken McDeluxe.

Then it dawned upon Saehyun that Baekhyun actually bought her favourite burger without asking her beforehand. “Baek oppa, how do you know I like chicken burger?” The question was as nonchalant as it could be but Baekhyun took quite a while to answer it.

“Oh, that…uh, well, lucky guess?” And apparently it wasn’t a lucky guess. Baekhyun forgot to ask her what she would like for dinner until it was his turn at the counter. He bought Saerom’s favourite burger in haste and it was just a fluke that it was Saehyun’s favourite burger as well. But Baekhyun ought to keep the extra informations from Saehyun just because, he didn’t feel like it.

The dinner passed by as ordinary as it could be. Yuhan showed a good manner that night, sitting in his baby chair while eating his Sundae ice cream and Hyemi enjoyed her dinner slowly and not whining about small things like what she would always did. When the clock hit 10.24 at night, Baekhyun asked Saehyun to clean up the trash and told Hyemi to clean her dirty hands to get back home.

“Daddy, look! My fingers are red like they are bleeding!” Little kids would get fascinated over little things and Hyemi was nothing but adorable doing that; showing off her ‘bloody’ fingers at both Baekhyun and Saehyun instead of washing her hands as she was told to. They laughed at her childish action.

“Go wash your hands now or you have to the tomato sauce off your fingers, Hyemi, because we’re going home now,” Baekhyun said later as he took Yuhan out of the baby’s chair. Saehyun came to help Baekhyun wiping Yuhan’s mouth while the former holding him. But, suddenly Saehyun remembered something upon Baekhyun’s words. The latter appeared seemed so, too. F-finger?

They simultaneously looked at each other and looked away mere second after. It was awkward as hell and when Baekhyun suddenly cleared his throat in a gawky manner, Saehyun immediately dropped the hand she was using to wipe Yuhan’s mouth and stuttered, “Well, Hyemi, let’s..let’s go wash your hands, baby,” on instant and practically dragged Hyemi away to wash her hands. Yes, only because Hyemi’s hands need to be washed.

They left the restaurant on approximately 11 o’clock.

∆

The morning was cold and wheezy, but even so, the sun still rose up and shone bright, sparking the good moods for almost everyone. Almost everyone.

When Saehyun woke up on her comfy bed, her lower region felt like it was twisted and the pain zapped uncontrollably causing her to groan in despair. The scenery was rarely happened, and when it did, it only meant one thing; menstrual period.

And yes, she was right. The comforter she used the whole night was sullied with red. An ocean of red. The day was also where her job interview would take place. Great, Saehyun could only hope and pray that things would go smoothly even though the beginning had already been ruined. 

She begrudgingly got out of her bed and grunted about how ‘nice’ her morning was as she crumbled the huge comforter in her embrace to put it off for cleaning in the washing machine. She didn’t even bother to change her pants first, thinking that it was most likely no one had woken up yet.

Upon arrived at the laundry room, she inserted the comforter inside the washing machine, poured a few cups of floral-scented detergent and smack the button to do the chore. She went to the kitchen later to get herself a glass of mineral water from the fridge.

“Uh, Saehyun?” The woman startled when someone called her name, causing drops of water dripped from the corner of as she was still drinking in front of the opened fridge. She immediately placed the glass in the sink and shut the fridge to see Baekhyun standing near her with a flushed look.

“Your…pants…your pants has blood on it,”

Oh my God, Saehyun felt extremely embarrassed because Baekhyun had seen it all. She managed a faint, ‘Oh, yeah…right’ before she ran straight upstairs leaving the dumbfounded Baekhyun in the kitchen who chuckled after her disappearance.  

Even through all the bad things happened to her that morning, at least Baaekhyun was being nice that day as he offered her a ride to go to her soon-to-be-workplace once they had dropped Hyemi safely at her school. He said he knew the place and it wasn’t that far from his office, even when Saehyun only asked his favour to send her to the subway station only. So, why not? Saehyun wouldn’t have to be trapped inside the subway train with sweaty bodies and all.

The building appeared to be mundane if it was compared with the other buildings in the area. It was probably had more than 25 floors and the silver paints and glasses windows gave the ordinary feelings for Saehyun as it was pretty much similar to what her previous workplace looked like.

And something added the similarity between the Wu Corporation (the past company where she worked at) with the new one, the Ace Corporation— the logo. The logo which was actually a complicated composition of awkward lines in red for Wu Corporation, it was painted in yellow for the Ace Corporation. But other than the colour, they looked completely the same.

Saehyun had a lot of questions in her head but the honks from Baekhyun’s car interrupted her out of it.

“Call me when you’re done, I’ll pick you up,” Baekhyun shouted from the car and Saehyun replied back with a nod and a small smile. She told the man to pray for her luck, threw a flying kiss towards Yuhan in the car and Baekhyun nodded slightly before departing. He was in rush because he needed to drop Yuhan off at the day care.

The interior design of the building from what Saehyun took notes off, was rather interesting. The splashes of colours despite the exterior boring silver paints and glasses made it looked more cheerful than any other companies building.

“Hello, miss. May I help you?” A fine looking woman greeted her from behind the information counter. Saehyun smiled and quickly took out the printed version of the email she received weeks ago for the job interview from her handbag and handed it to the lady. The latter smiled upon reading the paper and proceeded to tell her to go to the seventh floor and into the room with the labelled 09-A on it.

Saehyun followed the direction shown by the lady’s thumb towards the elevators. She doubted whether to ask her more about how the door to the room would look like or, how many hallways she should go through to find the 09-A room and so much more but shrugged it off at the last minutes as someone else had piped in between their conversation to ask about something she shouldn’t bother knowing.

The steps she took towards the elevator were slow and full with doubts. Saehyun wasn’t usually nervous but the thought of her getting lost in this huge building made it worse. She waited in front of the elevators after smacking the ‘up’ button more than once. Since it was 10 in the morning, the employees were currently busy with their respective works in their respective offices, so Saehyun felt grateful because she probably wouldn’t be stuck in a full elevator like in the early morning.

She was waiting forlornly until a dark shadow loomed over her from her right. Lots of ‘good mornings, sir’ were heard from the passer-by and Saehyun felt even more nervous. Her head yelled at her to turn towards the figure next to her and say ‘good morning’ too because the latter was probably someone big in the company as the other employees respected him or her, very much. Besides, only big bosses would come to work at 10.

The elevator abruptly dinged causing Saehyun to quickly alight it without a glance towards the figure, who was entering the elevator as well. Once the door closed leaving only Saehyun and the stranger in lift, she eventually raised her gaze towards the stranger.

“Kris?!”

“Uh, hello Saehyun. Good morning.” Kris looked at her with his trademark gummy smile as if it was nothing. Saehyun swore she probably looked like she had just witnessed a murder—eyes bulging out and jaws cracked wide, apparently opposite from Kris.

“What are you doing here?” She managed to say after a gap of silence as she stared at Kris’ side fringe up blonde hair, immaculate black suits and brown tie. He was holding a leather briefcase even.

“I thought I’ve told you to call me Wufan,” he responded, “And I think I work here.” Saehyun did a quick groom at her hair and high-waist black skirt before staring back at Kris. “But, Kr-Wufan, you said you’re taking over your father’s sub-comp-, oh my God…this is the sub company?” Saehyun should have knew, the logo and all. It obviously meant a thing. She took a minute to digest everything before she heard Kris voiced out something.

“What are you doing here?”

“I’ve got a job interview today.”

“Oh…which department?”

“Marketing department.”

“Oh, I see. But I think that department is on the seventh floor.”

“Yes, that was the receptionist told me…wait a second,” Saehyun almost had a heart attack upon realising she hadn’t press the button to the seventh floor and the lift had long gone passed the said floor. She groaned and covered her face with her hands.

“It’s okay,” Kris spoke, “You can follow me to my department, there’s also a vacancy in my department. I’ll call Mr Hwang and tell your job interview will change.”

Saehyun dropped the hands off her face and looked at Kris in disbelief. “How can you just change where my job department should be? You don’t even know my qualification and what sort of job I can do,” she retorted rather annoyed. The lady knew Kris was the CEO of the company or whatever but he couldn’t just throw Saehyun to work anywhere without knowing what she could and couldn’t do.

“I think being a personal assistant is something everyone can handle,” he said with a blank expression. “But, I don’t want to be a personal assistant. I don’t even know who would be my boss?” Saehyun emphasised with a louder voice.

“I would be your boss. I think you know me, right?”