By Zephyria 
“Ah, I just… he always seems so busy, so I wondered if he even has the time to care about that.”
The two team leaders exchanged glances for a moment and shrugged.
“True, he might just be picking a fight. He’s the type to work incredibly strictly.”
“If it’s code the Department Head can read, it must be the company mall side, right? That was forced onto Team Leader Song. He really went through it.”
Since the DL Business Division was a newly formed department, some parts of it were operated haphazardly. For example, the task of managing the company’s own sales site server was passed over to the software development team…. There was a story where Department Head Gye simply dumped it on him, saying, “Oh, I heard Team Leader Song participated in that when he was in the Research Division? Code is all pretty much the same, right?”
“Comments don’t have any effect on the code. Does Department Head Gye not know that?”
“No way. He probably just got slapped somewhere today and is taking his anger out on us.”
“He might actually not know. There are more people than you’d think who can’t read a single line of code….”
The three men, who were now more familiar with Java than Korean, wore expressions of profound bewilderment. Through Min-gyu, Yi-ho had also come to realize that there are many people in this world who cannot read a single line of code. Most of his other acquaintances were people similar to himself.
“And that’s why this came down to us, I suppose.”
Team Leader Kim pointed to the inbox on the screen. The other two had received the same email with the same content on the same day.
Taejang Electronics provides various programs in the name of employee welfare. The gym on the 15th floor of this building was one such example, as were support for in-house club activities and the hosting of in-house lectures.
Behind the welfare benefits that new employees look at with wide-eyed wonder… they too would realize ten years later that someone’s peaceful corporate life is being chipped away to make them possible.
[FW: Regarding the Opening of Basic Coding Classes]
In this day and age, it wouldn’t hurt for non-majors to know the basics of coding. The intent was wonderful. If only it hadn’t been a request to pick one person to lead the lectures from among development team leaders who didn’t have enough hands even if they had ten bodies.
Silence lingered between the three men standing side-by-side on the edge of a cliff. The situation was such that one of them had to be pushed down into the path of hardship below. Team Leader Kim quietly asked Team Leader Nam.
“Jin-young Hyung, isn’t your side a bit relaxed lately after finishing the project?”
“What are you talking about? I’ve been running two projects in parallel since that one was handed over. I’m still crazy busy.”
Team Leader Nam countered with a stern face. While a somewhat informal back-and-forth took place between the two, Yi-ho quietly sipped the Americano he had brought.
“Didn’t Team Leader Song do a lot of teaching assistant work while attending graduate school?”
Unknowingly, Team Leader Nam tripped Yi-ho. Just as the gazes of Team Leader Kim and Team Leader Nam were about to meet in an ominous direction, Yi-ho hurriedly spoke up.
“My advising professor mostly taught 3rd and 4th year students, so it’s a bit far from the basics….”
“Eh, what does that matter? A lecture by a PhD from Korea University. Wow, this is practically a free major course. There will be so many applicants.”
“And isn’t Team Leader Song exactly the Executive Director’s taste? He loves young experts, innovation, and things like that. This is a great chance for Team Leader Song to leave a proper mark.”
“No….”
We’re all dying of exhaustion in front of our monitors together, yet you guys are really something.
However, to the two of them, Yi-ho was not strictly someone in the same situation.
“Actually, even if it’s just an event, I think it would be embarrassing to teach colleagues or sunbaes I met at the training center. Wouldn’t Team Leader Song, who joined from the outside, be the best fit? Honestly, I don’t know the details, but isn’t your salary really high?”
“…….”
Among the gathered team leaders, thirty-three-year-old Yi-ho was the youngest. The other two were in their mid-to-late thirties.
Team Leader Song Yi-ho had completed an integrated master’s and doctoral program at Korea University and was specially recruited as a Head of Section. Because of this, his salary table was slightly different from others. In short, he wasn’t a traditional hire who started as an entry-level employee through open recruitment, and he had no training center peers or direct senior/junior colleagues in the company.
Of course, he also had no one to align with and voice opinions together, like Team Leader Kim and Team Leader Nam.
Is this the misery of being a special recruit?
“Yes… I understand.”
On top of something completely useless for his performance review, another worst-case task that would eat up his time after work had been added.
From the morning until now. It seemed today was just a day where nothing went right.
His energy had been drained all day, to the point where even pressing the elevator button felt taxing. Yi-ho leaned against the elevator wall as if collapsing, then trudged off at the 18th floor. Arriving in front of unit 1802 among the facing units 1801 and 1802, he pressed the door lock password at a speed slower than a turtle’s walk.
Inside the house, the messy traces left before leaving for work remained. Yi-ho collected the receipts he had tossed out of his pockets in the morning and put them in the trash can. He roughly threw the clothes he wore to the office in front of the bathroom and came out to the living room wearing a loose short-sleeved shirt and training pants. His body flopped face-down onto the sofa.
“Haa….”
He must have gotten older. Being nitpicked over trivial things and getting dumped with extra work had happened countless times, both in the lab and at the company. But now, the amount of physical stamina consumed when those situations occurred was different.
Of course, instead of sobbing or fuming.
“I have to do it, what else can I do….”
…his skill in minimizing mental exhaustion had at least increased.
He was hungry, but he was too lazy to even think about what to eat. Yi-ho clung to the sofa like a phone attached to a wireless charger, recharging his depleted energy. Even so, the speed was slow, as if he were plugged into a mismatched outlet.
In the quiet house where he lived alone, even the sounds from the hallway outside the steel door were absorbed. For example, the sound of the elevator stopping on this floor, and the ding-dong of the doorbell from the house next door.
The subsequent rustling sound of plastic was the same. Judging by the crisp, paper-like sound of the plastic, it was definitely delivery food.
Rustle, rustle, rustle.
The time spent in the hallway was long, as if the person were checking the receipt to see if the delivery arrived correctly. The neighbor still hadn’t entered their own home. Yi-ho opened his closed eyes and bolted upright.
If I don’t have the energy to order something right now and I’m too lazy to pick a menu, let’s plunder what someone else ordered!
Yi-ho walked to the entrance and flung the door open.
“Hey, I’ll order one more thing you want with my phone and we can eat it together—”
…and if another delivery comes, let’s eat the rest together…. Yi-ho’s words were cut off. The owner of unit 1801, the house next to Yi-ho’s, Cha Min-gyu, curled his lips into a smirk and stopped rubbing the empty plastic bag in his hands.
“Hurry over, Song-i Song-i.”
He had been completely baited.
“Haa….”
Yi-ho strode across the hallway in front of the elevator, a distance of less than three steps, and reached the house next door. The motion of kicking off his worn-out slippers at the entrance and entering the house was filled with familiarity rather than awkwardness.
Min-gyu, grinning with an expression completely different from the one he wore at the company, performed an even smoother moonwalk on the living room floor.
“Agh, agh!”
This was not the company, and the two of them were not Team Leader Song and Team Leader Cha. Therefore, an unrestrained straight punch flew toward Cha Min-gyu’s back. The stamina he thought was depleted was surged back up by fighting spirit. Regardless, Min-gyu escaped, showing off moonwalk skills that looked like he could stand on a pop stage right now.
“You know how Department Head Gye is, so don’t joke around at the company… …Wait, what is this?”
Following the fleeing Min-gyu to the kitchen table, a meal had been prepared in advance. And two sets of utensils were placed in facing seats.
“Sit. Eat.”
“…….”
Min-gyu’s two hands wrapped around Yi-ho’s lower back and led him toward the table. Feeling the warmth of the large hands through his t-shirt, Yi-ho bit his lip.
Cha Min-gyu, this bastard. I’m only putting up with this because it’s me right now….
“…….”
If it were anyone else, you’d have been packed in a container and shipped to the Netherlands to be forced into marriage long ago…!
A bright red spicy braised chicken (dak-bokkeum-tang) that could melt away the day’s stress occupied the center of the table. Having been together for 15 years, Yi-ho knew that Min-gyu’s preference was not spicy braised chicken, but rather the sweet braised chicken (jjim-dak) style.
Before taking his seat, Min-gyu also brought out two cans of beer from the beer fridge he kept at home. Yi-ho looked at the person sitting opposite him.
A sigh, which he had swallowed thousands of times over 15 years, was pushed back inside once again. Today, the temperature was hotter than usual.
He didn’t feel cheated by his unrequited love. That was the case for people who fell in love in a single moment—people who would avoid that moment if they could turn back time.
But Yi-ho’s unrequited love was like an accident caused by a speed bump. Even if he had avoided one thing, it was something that would have inevitably happened later anyway. Even if Min-gyu hadn’t subtly shielded him from the Department Head today, he would have fallen for him seeing the comforting meal prepared at home, and even if not this, he would have fallen for some other side of him tomorrow, so there was no reason to feel cheated.
Cha Min-gyu was a kindness that was impossible to predict or avoid. Today, it was a bit warmer than usual, and because of that, his heart fluttered quite a bit.
“Cha Min-gyu.”
“Yeah?”
Yi-ho mumbled while scooping up the spicy seasoned meat.
“…If you don’t have outside work tomorrow, dinner is on me….”
“I want to eat something expensive.”
“Whatever.”
“Ooh. Now I’m really curious about your salary table.”
“Haa…. It’s not even that great. Rumors just spread weirdly for no reason.”
“Hmm? Why, who said something again?”
Min-gyu tossed out the question while chewing his smooth cheek. Yi-ho slowly recounted what had happened today. While Min-gyu didn’t take his eyes off Yi-ho during the story, Yi-ho’s gaze floated between the side dishes and the rice.
“So, the next time I work with someone, it’ll be another development team, not yours?”
“Yeah. …For now.”
With the coding class or whatever added, he was already at saturation point with his current workload. He had no capacity to take on a new project.
“Mmm, that’s great. I was worried Song-i Song-i would suffer too much, so I’ve been handing out empty promises moderately, but I can just keep spamming them for a while.”
“…Huh?”
“The marketing team gets praised if they sell it, but the development team is the one that gets chewed out if it’s not completed. As long as it’s not Song-i Song-i, I don’t care.”
“You… Team Leader Nam and Team Leader Kim will say something.”
“Let them. I’ll get revenge for Song-i Song-i’s frustrated eloquence.”
Min-gyu interlaced his fingers and rested his chin on them.
“Do you think a profession that makes a living by talking would lose a verbal fight to a nerd? Just watch. You’ll realize that I actually let Song-i win a lot.”
…No. He just seemed like he wouldn’t lose to anyone. One of the knots tied in his heart was completely washed away along with the carbonation of the beer.
Trivial conversations, topics they were naturally familiar with.
A few more of those were exchanged while eating.
“Ah, Song-i. By any chance, did the landlady grandmother contact you?”
“No. Why?”
“We’re filling the contract extension for the winter. I was wondering what to do.”
“…There’s almost a year left, isn’t it too early to decide?”
“It’s better than doing it at the last minute.”
An old apartment a 15-minute drive from Taejang Electronics. The two facing houses on the 18th floor of Building 104 are owned by a wealthy grandmother. When Yi-ho was looking for a house near the company, Min-gyu, who had tagged along, visited real estate agencies with him, and that’s where they met the grandmother.
‘Are you two friends?’
‘Ah, yes.’
‘You don’t keep pets, right?’
‘No.’
‘If you move in together, I’ll give you a big discount.’
Min-gyu and Yi-ho jumped at the conditions the grandmother offered. Thus, the two have maintained their relationship as neighbors three steps apart for four years.