By Zephyria 
“Song-i.”
“…….”
“Are you sulking?”
“…….”
“Song-i Song-i-ho.”
“Hey.”
Yi-ho, who had been scowling with a feigned look of terror, whipped around.
“Stop clinging to me.”
It was true that he was angry. But there was a bigger reason.
‘Is this the place to be getting an erection… at work?’
At home, he could use the excuse of morning wood, and it was a relief that the only witness was the oblivious Cha Min-gyu. But if that happened at the office, it would be social suicide. Absolute suicide.
The tingling sensation had faded, but the area around his backside still felt strange. Why touch someone else’s butt? He really didn’t know how terrifying a one-sided crush could be.
Yi-ho, who had arrived at work with a heart that wouldn’t calm down and nerves on edge, growled. Min-gyu looked like he wanted to tease him a few more times, but he wore an expression of restraint, as if he knew he had sinned this morning.
The two of them rode the elevator up from the parking lot without exchanging a single word. The sight of the two team leaders, colder than usual today, was witnessed by the employees, leading to the usual misunderstandings.
“Sigh, they’re still at it.”
“It’s about time they grew fond of each other…”
When superiors are enemies, the employees beneath them have to walk on eggshells. As they rolled their troubled eyes, they happened to spot someone in a similar predicament from the neighboring team, and their emotional distance closed rapidly.
Cha Min-gyu’s marketing team members and Song Yi-ho’s development team members boasted an unprecedented intimacy, considering their work often clashed. In stark contrast to their silent team leaders, the members of both teams murmured to each other as they headed toward the office, splitting into two directions only when they reached their respective desks.
∗ ∗ ∗
“Yes, then let’s do the code review on Friday morning, and, um….”
As always with company work, as soon as one task was handled, another quickly took its place. Moreover, perhaps because it was March, a steady stream of tedious chores with little relevance to actual core work kept arriving. They were annoying tasks, but the kind that would become even more bothersome if not handled now…. And Yi-ho was the person responsible for distributing such work.
Paid tool payment reports, simple Excel sheet work, test case organization.
His gaze, which had been wandering through the air to suppress his awkwardness, finally made a decision and landed on one person.
“Could you… handle these three items, Tae-gyung?”
“…Yes.”
There were two people in their twenties on Yi-ho’s development team. One was Assistant Manager Kim Mi-so, the only woman on the team, who had been with the company for five years. The other was Kwon Tae-kyung, an employee in his second year. Tae-gyung, who sat at the very end of the team, had his face cloud over, just as it had the other day when he was brutally criticized anonymously by Min-gyu. However, he soon sat down without a word and accepted the assigned work.
An office worker’s day rolled along with the creak of a machine part. The monitors in front of everyone were gray, the partitions were gray, the chairs were gray, and the team members’ attire was gray—surprisingly, they had only worn black all winter and had merely raised the brightness now that spring had arrived.
The only bit of color was the sky-blue sweatshirt worn by the young youngest member, Kwon Tae-kyung. But today, a thick dark cloud hung over his face… it looked as if he might be dyed into the surrounding colors at any moment.
That sight lingered in Yi-ho’s mind.
About ten minutes after lunch break ended, Yi-ho sent a message via the company messenger.
[Tae-gyung]
[Are you busy?]
[If you’re okay with it, shall we grab a coffee?]
A forehead popped up over the partition at the far end and then disappeared again before a reply arrived.
Kwon Tae-kyung (Employee)
[Heh]
[Yes! I’d love to, Team Leader!]
Yi-ho took Tae-gyung out, grabbed drinks from a cafe, and entered a meeting room. Inside the quiet room, Yi-ho took a seat next to Tae-gyung and turned his chair to face him.
Even for someone like him, who had started with ‘Hello, World!’ and found programming languages more comfortable than Korean, this was a time when he had to refine and use Korean beautifully. Yi-ho softened his voice as much as possible.
“Tae-gyung, it’s been tough lately, hasn’t it?”
“Huh? Oh… no. It’s fine.”
“Who isn’t struggling with company life? Listening to the team members is part of my job, which is why I called you. You can just speak freely about whatever comes to mind.”
“…….”
Perhaps not expecting such a question, the pupils behind the glasses shook busily. After giving him a moment to organize his thoughts, an answer came.
“The other team members are all so nice to me, so it’s definitely not to the point where I’d say it’s hard…. It’s just a bit frustrating that I keep touching SQL instead of actually developing….”
That was a very serious problem. Yi-ho had also been surprised when he first joined the company because there were fewer opportunities to touch code than he expected. In reality, most development teams outsource a large portion of the work and act as project managers who manage or add to it. Yi-ho’s team did more developer-like work than most, but the core parts were generally handled by those with the rank of Head of section or higher.
And there was one more specific problem unique to Kwon Tae-kyung in Yi-ho’s team….
“I feel bad that, as it happened, new hires were only added above you. …It wasn’t intentional.”
Kwon Tae-kyung had been the youngest in the development team for several years. Perhaps because the team leader was a special hire, Yi-ho’s team strangely had more experienced hires than new recruits from open recruitment. Twenty-eight-year-old Kwon Tae-kyung remained the youngest and least experienced person on the team year after year. It was inevitable that various chores would pile up on him.
It was a situation that could be stressful. Yi-ho awkwardly patted Tae-gyung’s arm.
“I’ll… somehow make sure to bring one person under you from this batch of new hires.”
“What? That would be great, but you don’t have to push yourself.”
“No. It’s something I should have paid attention to first. And once this urgent matter that Cha Min-gyu—no, the marketing team—triggered is over, let’s discuss your work duties. Have you used AWS much?”
“I did a project at the academy I attended while preparing for the job. Not a lot, though…!”
After exchanging a few more words, Yi-ho pointed out areas he hoped Tae-gyung would study further in his spare time.
“…Th-thank you.”
Tae-gyung’s expression as he bowed and looked up seemed dazed. Perhaps emboldened by Yi-ho’s gentle attitude, Tae-gyung’s voice relaxed a bit more.
“For some reason, I thought you’d be the type to just tell me to ‘do it because I said so’… I didn’t know you’d comfort me….”
“Me? Was I authoritarian?”
“Oh, no. It’s not that, but you have this… engineering vibe, like you wouldn’t understand something unless it was the most efficient way to derive a result.”
“Ah….”
What on earth did that mean? Tae-gyung scratched his cheek as if he didn’t know what he had just said either. A blinking silence passed between the two.
As expected, engineering courses should include a lecture on ‘Speaking Skills for Smooth Social Life.’ And he should enroll himself and take that lecture until the day he resigns.
If Cha Min-gyu were to have a consultation with another team member, it would probably be a hundred times more harmonious. He might have even prevented such worries from arising in the first place…. Thinking of an admiration separate from his one-sided crush, Yi-ho suddenly felt dissatisfied and stopped his thoughts. He became annoyed again as he remembered the morning’s events.
Anyway, fortunately, it seemed the upset heart of the precious youngest employee had been fully healed. Yi-ho squeezed out the final words he had to say as a team leader.
“Um, is there anything else you’ve thought of that you want to say?”
“Uh… ah. Yi-ho, this might be overstepping, but there’s something I’ve really wanted to tell you if I got the chance.”
What, what is it? Why give a warning before saying something? Yi-ho nodded solemnly.
“Feel… free….”
“I think you drink too much coffee. I mean, it’s better if you’re healthy.”
Oh?
Ah, that was kind of cute. Though he didn’t know how to react.
“Uh, haha… isn’t it a festival when the boss is sick? You have a sweet side, Tae-gyung.”
“You have to be healthy. I want to work under you for a long, long time. You can’t get sick, and you can’t leave me and change jobs elsewhere.”
…What is this. How do people say things like that? Why is he suddenly so good at talking? The pupils behind the glasses, which had seemed blurry, now seemed vivid. It seemed Tae-gyung didn’t need a ‘Speaking Skills for Smooth Social Life’ class. The only one who needed it was Song Yi-ho, who could only awkwardly nod and say, “Is that sooo…?”
Yi-ho left the meeting room feeling dazed, while Tae-gyung sent him a shy smile. Perhaps because he was in a very good mood, Tae-gyung stayed quite close to Yi-ho all the way back. He was practically stuck to Yi-ho’s back, like they were playing leapfrog.
Rather than being rude, it felt like he was openly displaying the affection he had just expressed in words.
Kids these days, really…. No, is it not just kids these days? Cha Min-gyu clings to me every time, too. But shouldn’t clinging to one’s direct team leader be treated as a different case? Compared to Tae-gyung’s light footsteps, Yi-ho’s steps were stiff, as he was unfamiliar with contact with anyone other than Min-gyu.
‘Should I really look into a speech academy? I’m always getting verbally demolished by Cha Min-gyu, and today I even got played by a kid who was probably a middle schooler when I was mixing somaek in the student lounge….’
When the agonizing Yi-ho returned to his seat, a strange color was placed there, like a blade of grass growing through a gray brick. It was a light green cafe drink that Yi-ho would never, in his life, order for himself.
“I think someone left this here. Does it have an owner?”
Yi-ho picked up the plastic cup, which had droplets of condensation forming on the surface. The team members looked at Yi-ho and each shook their heads.
He examined the plastic cup and found the customer’s name on the white sticker attached to it.
[charming ggyu ┃ Chocolate Green Tea Latte]
“…?”
Looking to the side, Charming Ggyu—no, Cha Min-gyu—was sipping an iced americano.
The pitch-black americano Min-gyu was sipping was Yi-ho’s taste, and the chocolate green tea latte left here was Min-gyu’s taste. It looked like he bought two drinks, one of each, so why did he leave this one and take my coffee(?)?
“…Is there really no owner?”
Yi-ho asked while intentionally looking at Min-gyu, but the lack of response remained the same. Eventually, he took a sip through the straw. A sweetness that felt like it was tearing through his tongue rushed in. More than three sips would be impossible. He wanted to ask what this was, but Min-gyu didn’t even look his way.
And while he was away, a KakaoTalk message had arrived.
ﾠ
Cha Min-gyu
[Song-i Song-i] 13:10
[(Emoticon walking on eggshells)]
[How about a coffee time using Cha Min-gyu’s card?] 13:11
[(Urgent) Team Leader Song Yi-ho, please check this matter quickly.] 13:15
[What, where did you go?] 13:34
[Why aren’t you coming?] 13:41