Archive of Our Own

The Seoul sky hangs low and pearlescent, the kind of overcast that muffles sound and softens edges — perfect weather for pretending one is still asleep. It’s that kind of grey that promises rain or snow but can’t quite be bothered to deliver it yet.

The SKZOO LAB marketing office wakes like a cat reluctant to leave a sunbeam — slow, grumpy, and only half-believing it wants to be awake at all, yet utterly convinced of its own brilliance.

The weekend’s inertia hangs heavy over the open-plan office, a space that strives for Silicon Valley chic but has settled into the soft, dreamy chaos of a place that builds worlds for children yet is staffed entirely by adults who should not be allowed near scissors unsupervised. Posters of the SKZOO mascots — bright splashes of colour in an otherwise beige corporate morning — peer down from the walls like benevolent gods of productivity.

Lights flicker awake one by one, computers hum as though resentful of their own existence, keyboards clatter with the fragile optimism of people who still believe they might finish this quarter alive.

At the heart of it all — of course — is the printer.

Not just any printer.

This is the Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-1000, a machine that has seen more conflict than some historical battlefields and jams if you so much as think about deadlines.

Currently, it sits between Hwang Hyunjin and Kim Seungmin like a referee in a duel.

They stand toe-to-toe, shoulder-to-shoulder, not quite touching, though it feels as if the air between them has been charged with static. It is not a loud battle, but a precise one, fought with the clipped, polite venom that can only be cultivated between two people who have studied every single one of each other’s tells.

It is only 9:14 AM.

It is tradition.

Hwang Hyunjin stands before the printer like a maestro before a temperamental orchestra. He wears his usual uniform: black trousers that cost more than sensible, a cream knit jumper that drapes just so, and an expression of wounded artistry.

“This,” he says, holding up a freshly printed mock-ups for the upcoming “Winter WonderLearn” campaign — a series of seasonal updates across SKZOO LAB’s apps, “is an atrocity.”

Kim Seungmin, holding a tablet, eyebrow arched, does not even glance at the offending document. “It’s Helvetica. It’s legible. It’s on-brand. It’s fine.”

A beat. Hyunjin gapes at him with the horror of a man personally insulted on a molecular level. From his desk by the window, Han Jisung lets out a soft groan and buries his face in his hands. “Here we go again.”

“Fine?” his voice cracks on the word as though it’s personally insulted him. “Seungmin, darling, if your idea of festive cheer is something that looks like it was typeset by a spreadsheet, perhaps you should hand over creative direction to, I don’t know, Excel.”

“It’s not Excel’s fault you think visual hierarchy is a suggestion.”

“But Helvetica lacks soul,” Hyunjin declares, one long, elegant finger stabbing at a printed mock-up. “It’s the typographical equivalent of beige. We’re trying to inspire creativity, not lull them into a coma. We should absolutely choose Didot. Elegant. Airy. Like snow falling in slow motion over a library window.”

Seungmin doesn’t look up from his tablet, though his knuckles whiten slightly around the stylus. “Didot is fragile. It looks like it’s about to dissolve if a child sneezes near the screen. We’re selling study tools, not wedding invitations.”

“But it’s beautiful,” Hyunjin insists, voice dipping just enough to brush the line between professional and intimate. He angles his body so the morning light catches the gold flecks in his eyes — just in case Seungmin happens to glance up, which he never does, except when he does, always too quickly to catch.

Seungmin finally lifts his gaze. His expression is cool, unreadable. But the corner of his mouth twitches — almost. “Beauty doesn’t pass usability tests.”

Ah, but Hyunjin knows that twitch. He’s catalogued it like a rare bird sighting: post-lunch meeting, Tuesday last month; during the team karaoke disaster (Felix, bless him, attempted “Bohemian Rhapsody”); and once, just once, when Hyunjin tripped over a charging cable and Seungmin reached out — instinctively — to steady him, then pretended it never happened.

To the untrained eye, it is simply a disagreement about typography. To everyone else, it is page one of the longest, stupidest romance novel ever written without the protagonists’ consent.

This is, for SKZOO LAB, a normal Monday.

SKZOO LAB itself is not your average tech firm. Nestled in a sleek glass tower in Gangnam, it peddles not software, but childhood: a suite of eight interconnected apps, each guarded by a mascot as beloved as they are absurdly specific. There’s Wolf Chan crooning lullabies in the music app, Dwaekki leading toddlers through interpretive star jumps, and PuppyM — loyal, studious, yet a bit mischievous — shepherding primary schoolers through fractions and folk tales. The company doesn’t just sell screen time; it sells curated wonder, and the marketing team is its high priesthood.

And like any priesthood, it has its saints, its sinners, and its holy fools.

Bang Chan, team lead and de facto office dad, watches the printer skirmish from behind his third cup of black tea, his expression a masterpiece of weary neutrality. He doesn’t intervene. He never does. Not unless blood is drawn. Or unless someone uses Comic Sans unironically. (That was a dark Tuesday.)

Lee Minho, perched at his desk, peels a tangerine with surgical care. “Honestly,” he mutters, not looking up, “if these two spent half this energy actually working, we’d have launched globally by now.”

Lee Felix, all sunshine and oversized knitwear, clutches a cup of hot chocolate that seems too whimsical for the corporate world. He watches the two men with warm hope, like a child observing migrating penguins and rooting for them to fall in love.

Seo Changbin, already vibrating with Monday enthusiasm, nudges Jisung. “Twenty thousand won says Hyunjin ‘accidentally’ knocks over Seungmin’s coffee within the hour.”

Jisung, eyes wide behind his frames, nods. “I’ll take that bet. But only because Hyunjin hasn’t done his thing yet.”

His thing, of course, being the delicate art of flirtation disguised as sabotage.

Back at the printer, Hyunjin leans in — just slightly — close enough that Seungmin might catch the faint bergamot of his cologne, or the way his jumper sleeve rides up. “Fine,” Hyunjin concedes, voice dropping to something softer, almost warm. “But if we’re using Helvetica, I’m adding drop shadows. For drama. Though, I still think my version is perfect.”

Seungmin’s throat bobs. He looks away. “Your ‘perfection’ uses a font that costs extra licensing for mobile rendering.”

“Your logic is so sexy, Seungmin,” Hyunjin drawls, deadpan. “Really gets the blood pumping.”

From his desk, Minho snorts. “If blood’s pumping, it’s from stress-induced hypertension. Honestly, you two are worse than my aunties arguing over kimchi recipes.”

The scene is interrupted by Jeongin’s return, a harbinger of caffeine bearing a cardboard caddy of drinks. He deposits it on a central desk with a cheerful, “Order up!” and melts back into his lair.

The ceasefire is immediate and temporary. Both men glide towards the coffees. Hyunjin’s eyes, sharp and observant, scan the cups. He sees the one marked with a delicate ‘S.M’ and the scrawl ‘DECAF.’ Without a flicker of hesitation, his long fingers close around it.

“Ah, my Americano,” he says, the lie delivered with the smooth, brazen confidence of a born performer.

Seungmin freezes for a fraction of a second. His jaw tightens. He watches Hyunjin take a tentative sip, a slight, unreadable flicker in his gaze. It is a challenge, plain and simple. A test of wills in a paper cup. To back down would be to admit defeat, to acknowledge that he has been thrown off balance by the theft of a drink he doesn’t even particularly want.

A lesser man would even protest. Kim Seungmin is not a lesser man. His eyes narrow, then drop to the remaining cup. It is marked ‘H.J’ and, ominously, ‘3x SHOT.’

He lifts it with regal poise. “Fine.”

Chan’s head jerks up. “Seungmin, don’t—”

Seungmin takes a long, deliberate sip, his gaze locked with Hyunjin’s over the rim of the cup. He does not flinch. But his eyelids twitch. Subtly. Like a man discovering transcendence or imminent cardiac arrest.

“Oh dear,” Minho murmurs.

“Is he vibrating?” Felix asks softly.

“Not yet,” Changbin says. “But soon.”

Seungmin is standing with perfect posture and the subtle tremor of a man who has accidentally astral-projected into several alternate realities.

Hyunjin steps closer — too close — invading Seungmin’s personal space with a casualness that fools no one, least of all himself.

“You know,” he says lightly, “that much caffeine isn’t healthy.”

Seungmin swallows, heartbeat clearly visible through sheer force of will. “Neither,” he replies, “is theft.”

The effect is not immediate, but it is inevitable. First, a slight tremor in the hand that places the cup back on his desk, rattling it against the polished wood. Then, a faint, high-frequency tension that seems to wire itself directly into his spine, straightening it to an almost painful rigidity. A subtle, almost imperceptible vibration begins to emanate from his person, as if a tiny, frantic engine has been activated deep within his core.

Within minutes, Seungmin is tapping his foot at double-time, his knee bouncing like a metronome set to allegro furioso.

Hyunjin watches him from across the room, ostensibly reviewing campaign metrics, but really cataloguing the way Seungmin’s collar has slipped slightly askew, the faint sheen of sweat at his temple, the relentless, endearing drive of him. It’s infuriating. It’s magnetic. A strange, complicated emotion twists in his chest — a blend of victory, guilt, and a profound, terrifying urge to walk over and still the tremor with his own hand.

Seungmin, for his part, feels the caffeine singing a frantic, jangling tune in his veins. His vision is sharpening to a painful clarity, every detail of Hyunjin’s infuriatingly perfect face etched into his mind. He will ride this artificial lightning, he decides. He will outlast him. He will prove that even unhinged, he is more composed than Hwang Hyunjin could ever hope to be. It is, he thinks, as his heart hammers a frantic rhythm against his ribs, a perfectly logical hill to die on.

“Seungmin-ah,” Felix calls cheerfully from his desk, “you look sparkly!”

Seungmin blinks rapidly. “I am optimized,” he corrects, voice two octaves higher than usual.

Hyunjin raises an eyebrow. “You look like you’ve just mainlined a squirrel.”

“I feel… clarity,” Seungmin insists.

From his desk, Chan lets out a long, slow sigh. Minho, catching his eye, gives a tiny, knowing shake of his head.

“Well?” Changbin whispers, sidling up to Jeongin and tapping his phone screen, which displays a sophisticated digital ledger. “Any movement? Odds are shortening for a Christmas confession.”

Jeongin smirks. “I’ve just adjusted the algorithm. Hyunjin’s passive-aggressive coffee theft has increased the probability of a pre-New Year’s kiss by seven percent.”

Because, of course, there is a betting pool.

It lives in a shared Google Sheet titled “The Great Pining Pool”, meticulously maintained by Yang Jeongin. The current standings: Lee Minho and Seo Changbin: “Before NYE” — ₩380,000; Han Jisung & Lee Felix: “Valentine’s Day (they’re dramatic)” — ₩210,000; Bang Chan: “Never (I’m an optimist)” — ₩50,000.

They’ve been watching the two of them for a long, long time.

Hyunjin has been trying to one-up Seungmin for months, a campaign waged partly for professional glory, but mostly because he possesses no other vocabulary to engage the infuriatingly competent man who haunts his every waking thought.

Seungmin, for his part, presents a cool, unflappable exterior, a fortress of logic built to withstand Hyunjin’s theatrical storms. He has been pining for the dramatic whirlwind that is Hwang Hyunjin since he first saw him passionately defend a Pantone shade with the fervour of a man defending his honour. But to believe that intensity could ever be directed at him, Kim Seungmin, the ‘Numbers and Logic’ guy, feels like a logical fallacy. So, he armour-plates himself in sarcasm and cool reason.

From the corner, Felix — sweet, oblivious Felix — whispers to Jisung, “Do you think they know they’re in love?”

Jisung sighs. “They know. They’re just waiting for the other to admit it first.”

Mid-November sighs against the windows, and in this sleepy, ridiculous, well-loved office, the first spark of the season’s magic glimmers — messy, tender, and inconvenient.

The air hums with the promise that, soon, something will give.

And when it does, the whole office will groan, cheer, and collect their winnings — all while pretending they didn’t see it coming.

(They saw it coming back in 2024.)

✦✦✦

The marketing department, so recently a haven of low-grade, simmering antagonism, is summoned to order by the simple, unwavering presence of Bang Chan at the head of the room. He has returned from a meeting with the other department heads, and the air about him has shifted from mild paternal concern to focused intent. He does not need to clap his hands; the quiet clearing of his throat is enough to still the gentle clatter of keyboards and the soft rustle of Monday morning ennui.

“Right, team. Gather round,” he says, his voice a calm, steady bassline beneath the office’s ambient hum. He waits as they drift towards the central cluster of sofas and beanbags — a concession to creativity that currently hosts Felix, who is curled up like a contented cat, and Changbin, who is attempting to use a stress ball as a makeshift dumbbell.

“I’ve just come from upstairs,” Chan begins, lacing his fingers together on the table in front of him. “And it’s been decided. This year, the company’s Christmas Family Day… is ours to organise.”

A ripple of mixed anticipation and dread moves through the team. This is no small task. The Family Day is SKZOO LAB’s flagship internal event, a sprawling, chaotic, and deeply sentimental affair where the lines between corporate entity and actual family blur into a cheerful, tinsel-strewn mess.

“Oh, come on,” Felix chirps, cheerful despite the general despair. “Christmas is lovely!”

“Christmas is expensive,” Minho corrects him.

“Christmas is chaos,” Jisung adds, pulling his hood up over his head.

“It has to be perfect,” Chan continues, a glint of quiet steel in his eyes. “This isn’t just about putting on a good show. It’s about our pride as the marketing team. We are the custodians of the SKZOO brand. This event should feel like stepping inside one of our apps. So. Initial thoughts? Any ideas?”

He opens the floor with a generous sweep of his hand. The silence that follows is brief, but potent — the calm before the storm.

It is, of course, Hyunjin, who has been draped elegantly across his chair like a Renaissance painting titled Youthful Genius Suffering Mild Boredom, lifts his head. He rises then, not fully, but just enough to command the space, his expression alight with a visionary fire. “I’m thinking enchanted forest,” he says, voice dropping to a conspiratorial hush, as though he’s revealing state secrets rather than event planning. “A living fairytale. We transform the venue into an enchanted forest. I’m talking fake snow, tastefully done. Twinkling lights woven through trees. We have live musicians — a cellist, perhaps — playing gentle, festive melodies. We could have a professional photographer for family portraits, with an aesthetic, minimalist backdrop. It would be elegant. Memorable. Something beautiful they’ll remember.”

He finishes, his eyes shining with the sheer, unadulterated passion of it all. For a fleeting moment, it is impossible not to be swept up in his grand, beautiful, and astronomically expensive daydream.

His gaze, almost involuntarily, flicks towards Kim Seungmin. It is a gauntlet, thrown down with the delicacy of a silk glove.

Seungmin does not sigh. He refuses to sigh. But his pen clicks three times in rapid succession — a tell everyone in the room recognises as code red.

Then, his voice cuts through the enchantment with the efficiency of a paper guillotine.

“It’s Family Day, Hyunjin. Heavy on the ‘family’,” he says, the repetition a gentle, precise demolition of the proposed enchanted forest. “My data suggests that seventy-eight percent of employees have children under ten. Do you know what children under ten want?”

“Aesthetic harmony?” Hyunjin offers, deadpan.

“A bouncy castle. Preferably one with a slide. They also want activities that don’t require them to sit still for longer than seven minutes. We need structured zones: under-fives, six-to-nines, ten-plus. Each with age-appropriate engagement, first-aid coverage, and a high-efficiency snack distribution.”

Hyunjin stares at him.

The team stares at Hyunjin.

Hyunjin’s jaw tightens. “A bouncy castle? You want to celebrate the season of wonder with an inflatable plastic rectangle?”

“I want to celebrate it without a queue of crying children and stressed-out parents,” Seungmin counters, his voice remaining infuriatingly level. “Wonder is subjective. A smoothly run event where everyone gets a hot drink and their child is safely entertained is a modern miracle.”

“It’s soulless!”

“It’s strategic.”

Hyunjin rolls his eyes, but there’s no real heat in it. “You want to run Christmas like a military operation.”

“I want it to work,” Seungmin counters. “Not just look like one of your Pinterest boards.”

“Says the man who colour-coordinates his sock drawer by emotional valence.”

“Better than someone who cried because we used Georgia instead of Futura in a back-end error message.”

“It lacked soul!”

“It loaded in 0.3 seconds!”

Their bickering spirals like clockwork: effortless, ridiculous, somehow intimate. The room watches as if observing a tennis match where both players are secretly in love and publicly incompetent at recognising it.

The air between them crackles — not with hostility, but with something far more complicated. A current of mutual frustration, yes, but beneath it, a current of something else: I see you. And you see me. And neither of us knows what to do about it.

Minho leans toward Changbin. “Ten thousand says they forget we’re even here.”

Bang Chan watches them both, his head tilted slightly. He does not look exasperated. He looks, instead, like a chess master who has just seen a path to checkmate open up before him. A slow, thoughtful smile spreads across his face.

“Right,” he says, his single word cutting through the tension like a knife. He leans forward, his gaze settling first on Hyunjin, then on Seungmin. “You’ve both made excellent points. Compelling arguments. So, here’s what we’re going to do.”

He pauses, letting the anticipation build for a delicious, torturous second.

“You two. Co-leads.”

The synchronised reaction is nothing short of theatrical.

A beat.

Hyunjin: “What?”

Seungmin: “Absolutely not.”

Chan ignores them. “Hyunjin — you handle aesthetics, entertainment, and all things that require a mood board. Seungmin — you manage logistics, budget, safety protocols, and anything that requires a spreadsheet with conditional formatting.” He leans back, almost smiling. “Consider it… team-building.”

Their eyes lock. Not in anger. Not even in exasperation. But in the dawning, stomach-lurching realisation that they are now legally obligated to spend the next four to five weeks in each other’s orbit, negotiating not just font choices and snack distribution, but proximity. Collaboration. Shared Google Docs with edit permissions.

Changbin mouths “I’m rich” to Jisung, who gives him a thumbs-up.

Felix, ever hopeful, beams. “This is amazing! You two are going to be so good together!”

Minho sips his coffee. “Oh, they’re going to destroy each other. But the event will be immaculate. Anyway, God help us all.”

Jeongin, already inputting the new parameters into the pool, types: “Co-leads = Forced Proximity. Odds of confession by Dec 31: 82% (up from 67%).”

Christmas, it seems, will be very interesting this year.

✦✦✦

The meeting room is far too small for the amount of hope their colleagues have invested in this partnership. Its’s quiet in the way only a room full of suppressed feelings can be — hushed, expectant, thick with the kind of tension that could be cut with a letter opener and served on a plate. The Seoul sky has turned the soft pewter of late afternoon, casting long, polite shadows across the whiteboard that now stands between Hwang Hyunjin and Kim Seungmin like a demilitarised zone drawn in dry-erase marker.

Outside the glass walls, the rest of the marketing team has gathered — not for work, but for sport. Minho has produced a bag of actual popcorn, which he passes to Changbin with a solemn nod. Jeongin watches, fingers poised over his phone to update the betting pool’s ‘Passive-Aggressiveness’ metric. Felix watches with the wide-eyed concern of someone who genuinely believes love should be simple.

For the fragile few hours, they manage to function. The hard facts — dates, invites with RSVP tracking, venue booking — are agreed upon with eerie efficiency. This part of the preparation is safe. Neutral. Devoid of feeling.

But then comes the pivot.

The moment they turn from what to how.

From logistics to magic.

For a long moment, there is only the hum of the air conditioning and the sound of Seungmin clicking his pen. Click. Click. Click.

Hyunjin breaks first. He rises, a study in casual elegance against the corporate grey of the room, and plucks a vibrant cerulean blue marker from the pack. He approaches the whiteboard with the reverence of a street artist approaching a fresh wall.

“What we need,” he declares, his voice a low, resonant hum, “is a narrative.” He begins to draw, great, sweeping arcs of colour. “A through-line. A journey. We don’t just have activities; we have experiences.”

On his side of the board, a whirlwind of colour erupts. ‘Winter Wonderland Gala!’ is scrawled in a flamboyant script, underlined with what might be a frozen river or a particularly ambitious snake. ‘Sparkle & Awe!’ follows, dotted with stars.

Hyunjin is a flurry of motion, his hands painting the air as much as the board. Seungmin, from his end of the table, finds his gaze snagging on the elegant line of Hyunjin’s wrist, the way his jumper sleeves are pushed up to his elbows, the fluid grace of his fingers as they conjure a world of whimsy. Seungmin’s logical argument about fire safety regulations dissolves on his tongue, replaced by the utterly illogical thought that those hands would probably be very warm. He watches, mesmerised, for a beat too long, then forcibly redirects his attention to his tablet, where a spreadsheet glows with serene, ordered cells.

“That’s a… very creative thought, Hyunjin-ssi,” Seungmin says, adjusting his glasses, just slightly, as he eyes the phrase “Snow Globe Photo Booth”.

Hyunjin pauses, the blue marker poised mid-swoop. He turns, a slow, deliberate pivot.

His eyes sweep over Seungmin, taking in the perfectly aligned stationery, the tablet at a perfect angle to the table’s edge; he watches the faint crease form between Seungmin’s brows, the way his thumb rubs absently against the edge of his pen. He notices the way his glasses have slid a precise centimetre down the bridge of his nose — a tell-tale sign of simmering frustration. It’s maddening. It’s endearing. It’s Seungmin. A strange, tender impulse to reach out and push the glasses back up flickers through Hyunjin, so disconcerting he smothers it with sarcasm.

“And your spreadsheet,” Hyunjin replies, a ghost of a smile playing on his lips, “is, as always, impeccably organized, Seungmin-ssi. A monument to logic. It must be so… comforting.”

Seungmin’s jaw tightens almost imperceptibly. He stands, selects a sober black marker, and approaches the board. He draws a single, straight line down the centre, neatly bifurcating Hyunjin’s colourful chaos. On his side, in block capitals, he writes: ‘BUDGET ALLOCATION’. Beneath it, ‘VENDOR CONTACT SHEET’. And then, with a chilling finality, ‘RISK ASSESSMENT’.

“What we need,” Seungmin counters, his tone as dry as the printer toner, “is a plan. A structure. A bouncy castle. Inflatable, safe, contained chaos. A designated craft zone with non-toxic materials. A beverage and snacks station with a one-way flow system to prevent congestion.”

“Congestion?” Hyunjin breathes, looking genuinely wounded. “You’re planning for congestion? This is a celebration, not a motorway.”

“Spontaneous joy is a logistical nightmare waiting to happen,” Seungmin states, as if reading from a manual. “Planned joy, however, has a high success rate and a clear budget.”

Their eyes meet over the divide of the whiteboard. The air crackles, not with the promised creative energy, but with the static of two opposing magnetic fields, pushing and pulling in equal, maddening measure.

“Some of us believe childhood deserves beauty.”

“Some of us believe parents deserve to spend at least one afternoon peacefully.”

“Fine,” Hyunjin sighs. “Let’s start with something simple: SKZOO mascots. We can hire professional actors to entertain the kids.”

Seungmin blinks. “That… actually works. Like, SKZOO Carnival with thematic stations.”

Hyunjin’s chest swells. Not with triumph, but with something softer, warmer. He liked it. He really liked it.

They work on the idea for the rest of the day.

The truce, however, is temporary.

Hyunjin just forgets his notebook on the table in the meeting room when he heads out home. He is halfway to the lobby when the memory strikes him with the force of a physical blow.

The notebook.

His feet stop dead. It isn’t the meeting notes he cares about; it is the secret life that lives in the margins. The pages are a minefield of half-finished sketches: the intense line of Seungmin’s brow as he concentrates, the soft curve of his profile when he looks down at his phone. And scribbled everywhere, as if his subconscious has taken over his hand, the initials ‘KSM’ woven into intricate, pointless patterns.

A hot flush of panic crawls up his neck. He can’t leave it. Anyone could find it. Seungmin could find it.

He spins on his heel, the quiet ding of the returning elevator sounding like an alarm in the deserted lobby. The office floor is dark and hollow, the only light spilling from the breakroom at the end of the long corridor. Hyunjin moves on autopilot, his focus narrowed to the meeting room door, until he is halfway down the corridor.

That’s when he hears them. Voices from the breakroom. Seungmin’s, low, unguarded, stripped of its usual crisp efficiency, and Felix’s, soft as marshmallow fluff.

Hyunjin freezes. He presses himself against the cool wall, his heart performing a sudden, frantic rhythm against his ribs. He knows he shouldn’t. It’s beneath him. It’s… it’s absolutely necessary.

“…just no chance, is there?” Seungmin says. The weariness in his voice is a tangible thing. “There’s no chance he likes me too.”

A pause. Then, quieter, a confession meant for the dark: “He doesn’t see me like that. Why would he?”

Felix’s reply is gentle. “Have you told him?”

A bitter, hollow laugh that makes Hyunjin’s chest ache. “Tell him what? That I’ve memorised the exact shade of his jumper from Tuesday last month? That I replay his voice in my head when I can’t sleep?”

“You should. Christmas Day! It’s perfect. Everyone’s happy, there’s—”

“I can’t.”

The words are final, a door slamming shut.

Hyunjin’s world tilts. The air leaves his lungs in a silent rush. He likes someone. The realisation is a cold stone in his gut, sinking fast. Of course he does. Someone sensible. Someone who appreciates spreadsheets and risk assessments. Someone who has never, would never, doodle his initials in a notebook like a lovesick teenager.

The warmth from their collaboration earlier, that fragile, glowing thing, shatters and turns to ice. He feels like a fool. All his posturing, his carefully calibrated teasing, his secret, desperate hope that one of his barbs would finally pierce Seungmin’s armour and reveal something soft beneath… it was all for nothing. Seungmin is liking someone else.

The urge to retrieve his notebook vanishes, replaced by a desperate need to escape. He can’t face them. He can’t let Seungmin see the dawning understanding, the pathetic hurt that is surely written all over his face.

He takes a step back, then another, his movements careful and silent. He abandons the notebook, abandons the hope, and retreats back down the dark corridor, the ghost of Seungmin’s unguarded confession echoing in the emptiness he leaves behind.

The next morning, the air in the meeting room is frozen solid.

Hyunjin enters, his face a carefully constructed mask of nonchalance, but a new, sharp tension wires his frame. He doesn’t look at Seungmin. He doesn’t offer a greeting. He simply takes his seat, his movements stiff, and focuses on the whiteboard as if it holds the secrets of the universe.

Seungmin, for his part, looks up from his tablet, a question flickering in his eyes at Hyunjin’s altered demeanour. The easy, if competitive, rhythm of yesterday is gone, replaced by a silence that feels like a physical wall. He opens his mouth, then closes it, thinking better of it. He says nothing.

The brainstorming for the creative events is meant to recommence. It doesn’t. No more spoken words. No more thinly veiled compliments dressed as critiques. Instead, the whiteboard becomes their only channel.

Hyunjin picks up a pad of neon sticky notes. He writes, ‘Snow Machine?’, peels it off with a precise rip, and slaps it onto the whiteboard on his colourful side.

Seungmin watches him for a moment, his brow furrowed. Then, with a sigh of resignation, he picks up a pad of pastel coloured post-its. He writes, ‘Budget limitations’ and places it directly opposite Hyunjin’s note.

A beat of silence.

Hyunjin scribbles on a green note: ‘FAIRY LIGHTS! Magic! For the kids.’

Seungmin counters with a blue one: ‘Only battery-powered. Energy-efficient.’

Hyunjin’s next note is written with such force the pen nearly tears through the paper. ‘Can we at least have one moment that isn’t governed by a risk matrix?’

Seungmin reads it. His own reply is swift, precise. ‘Define “moment.”’

‘Forget it,’ Hyunjin writes, the letters slanted with frustration.

Seungmin studies the two words. He doesn’t let it go. He writes back, his script deliberate: ‘No. Clarify. I’m genuinely curious.’

Hyunjin stares at the note. The fight seems to drain out of him, replaced by something quieter, more raw. He writes, slower now: ‘A moment where someone feels wonder. Joy. Like they’re part of something magical.’

Seungmin reads it. And reads it again. The silence in the room is absolute. After a long pause, he picks up a new pastel note, his movements slower. He writes just two words: ‘Fine. One.’

A bitter, almost imperceptible smile touches Hyunjin’s lips. He writes his final note of the exchange, a single, devastating line, and places it directly in the centre of the board, a bridge between their two coloured territories. ‘You’re a romantic, Seungmin-ssi.’

Seungmin’s eyes snap up from the note, finally meeting Hyunjin’s gaze for a fractured second. There’s something unreadable and fierce in them. He picks up his pen, writes a reply, and slaps it over Hyunjin’s note, covering it completely. ‘Go to hell, Hyunjin-ssi.’

It is a dialogue of pure, unadulterated pettiness. A silent war waged with adhesive paper. The rest of the team watches, utterly captivated.

“Are they… communicating via post-its?” Jisung whispers, his eyes wide.

Minho just shakes his head disapprovingly. “They’ve moved on to the cave drawings. Odds up to 91%.”

“They’re so in love,” Felix sighs, dreamily.

“No,” Changbin corrects. “They’re in agony. It’s much more compelling.”

Inside the meeting room, Hyunjin watches Seungmin adjust his glasses again — that little push of knuckle against the bridge — and wonders, with a grief so sharp it almost amuses him, if the person Seungmin pines for even notices those tiny, perfect tells.

And Seungmin, glancing sideways at Hyunjin’s profile — the way his lashes catch the overhead light, the stubborn set of his mouth — thinks: I’ll never be brave enough to tell him.

✦✦✦

The fragile, post-it note truce lasts precisely until the following morning. The battlefield shifts from the physical realm of the meeting room to the digital no-man’s-land of the shared project drive. It is a conflict waged not with markers, but with pixels; not with words, but with formatting.

Hyunjin arrives early, a man on a mission. The memory of Seungmin’s confession to Felix is a splinter in his mind, festering. If he cannot be the object of Seungmin’s affections, he will, by God, be the object of his undivided attention. He opens the master project plan, a document so pristine and logically ordered it makes his artistic soul weep. With a few deft clicks, a flourish of vindictive creativity, he executes his opening gambit.

He changes the colour scheme.

Cell by cell, tab by tab, the sober greys, inoffensive blues, and clinical whites are annihilated, replaced by a riot of festive neon. Budget allocations now glow a violent, eye-searing lime green. The vendor contact sheet is a screaming, electric pink. The risk assessment matrix is a dizzying tapestry of tangerine orange and radioactive cerulean. It is less a spreadsheet and more a visual seizure, a crime against both data and humanity.

Seungmin, who logs on precisely at 9:00 AM with his decaf (he’d learned his lesson about triple-shot Americanos), freezes.

His screen, his sanctuary of order, has been violated. For a full ten seconds, he simply stares, his grip tightening on his mug. He takes a slow, deliberate sip, his gaze fixed on the carnage. This is not a misunderstanding. This is a declaration of war.

He types one sentence into the document’s comment thread.

Kim Seungmin: This colour scheme is a war crime under the Geneva Conventions. Please see Article 3: “Thou Shalt Not Inflict Visual Trauma on Thy Colleagues.”

Two minutes later, Hyunjin replies.

Hwang Hyunjin: Darling, if you can’t handle a little joy, perhaps stick to your spreadsheets of doom. Also, I’ve added a column for “Emotional Resonance Metrics.” You’re welcome.

Seungmin’s left eye twitches.

His retaliation is swift, surgical, and utterly devastating.

Hyunjin is in the kitchen, explaining to a captivated Felix the ‘emotional resonance’ of his new colour palette, when the notification pings on his phone. He smirks, expecting a furious message. It is a project update alert. He opens the shared drive.

His ‘Winter Wonderland Moodboard’ folder, a labour of love containing days of curated images — soft-focus children in knitwear, frosted pinecones, tastefully glittering landscapes — is gone. In its place is a new folder. Its name is a single, brutal word: ‘PROJECTIONS’. Inside, there is one file. A barebones, text-only document titled: ‘REALISTIC PROJECTIONS LOGIC GRID’. It contains a flowchart. The first box reads: ‘Proposed Activity’. The second: ‘Probability of Causing Injury/Litigation’. The third: ‘Cost-Benefit Analysis Outcome’. There are no pictures.

Hyunjin’s smirk vanishes. The air leaves his lungs. He feels, absurdly, as if he has been physically struck. It was just a mood board, but it was his mood board, a piece of his soul rendered in JPEGs. He walks back to his desk, his posture rigid.

Thus begins the Golden Age of Email Theatre.

What begins as a necessary correspondence becomes a form of performance art, a duel fought with immaculate grammar and lethally polite undertones. The entire marketing team is CC’d, a captive audience to this masterclass in corporate pettiness.

From: Kim Seungmin

To: Hwang Hyunjin ([email protected])

CC: [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

Subject: RE: RE: RE: RE: Clarification on Festive Colour Palettes (NEON IS NOT A NEUTRAL, HYUNJIN)

Hwang Hyunjin-ssi,

It has come to my attention that the latest version of the promotional poster has been updated with what you have termed a “festive pop-art aesthetic.”

While I admire the boldness of using a fuchsia background with lime green and electric orange text, I must bring several items to your attention:

1. The contrast ratio between the proposed fuchsia and lime green fails all web and print accessibility standards. We are legally, and morally, obligated to ensure our materials are legible to those with visual impairments. My attached PDF details the WCAG 2.1 guidelines we are currently violating.

2. The term “neutral” in a design context typically refers to colours like black, white, grey, or beige. Neon green, by definition, cannot be classified as such. Using it as a background for three separate text elements is, to be frank, an act of graphic design terrorism.

3. I have received four separate emails from colleagues complaining of eyestrain after viewing the draft for more than five seconds.

I am attaching the original, approved palette of burgundy, forest green, and cream. Please revert the colour scheme before I am forced to involve HR on grounds of ocular harassment.

P.S. Please refrain from using the Comic Sans font in official project documents. It undermines the credibility of your, and I use this term loosely, “data.”

Sincerely,

Kim Seungmin

From: Hwang Hyunjin

To: Kim Seungmin ([email protected])

CC: [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

Subject: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: Clarification on Festive Colour Palettes (NEON IS NOT A NEUTRAL, HYUNJIN)

Kim Seungmin-ssi,

Thank you for your detailed, and dare I say, passionate defence of beige.

I have reviewed your attached PDF on accessibility. It’s fascinating reading, truly. However, my design choices were made with a different, equally important demographic in mind: children. They, unlike our dear colleagues, have not yet had their sense of wonder surgically removed and replaced with a Pantone swatch book.

To address your points:

1. “Visual trauma” is a strong term. I prefer “visual awakening.” The children will have no trouble finding the “Fun Zone” when it’s advertised in a vibrant, eye-catching yellow. They are, in fact, drawn to colour like moths to a flame.

2. I regret to inform you that the “original, approved palette” you referenced is the same one we used for last year’s “Quiet Reflection and Fiscal Planning Seminar.” I fail to see how it evokes “festive family fun” and not “scheduled nap time.”

3. I’ve taken the liberty of creating a new column in the asset tracker: “Seungmin-ssi’s Approval Rating.” It is currently charting at a festive 0%.

The colours stay. Consider it my gift to this company’s otherwise chromatically challenged soul.

P.S. I’ve CC’d HR on your “graphic design terrorism” comment. I feel a hostile work environment training session coming on.

Vibrantly Yours,

Hwang Hyunjin

The subject lines tell their own story of decay:

09:34 AM: Family Day Activity Brainstorming

10:03 AM: RE: Festive Theming Considerations

11:47 AM: RE: RE: Clarification on Budget for “Atmospheric” Lighting

02:15 PM: RE: RE: RE: Visual Hierarchy in Communal Spaces

04:59 PM: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: Clarification on Festive Colour Palettes (NEON IS NOT A NEUTRAL, HYUNJIN).

The rest of the marketing team observes it all from their respective orbits. They are like parents watching two toddlers fight with plastic swords: occasionally wincing at a particularly loud thwack, but largely secure in the knowledge that no real damage can be done.

Minho sends screenshots of the latest thread to the group chat with the caption: “Shakespeare, but make it corporate.”

Changbin prints out the most savage lines and pins them to the breakroom fridge under the heading: “Love Letters.”

They have a running commentary, placing side-bets on the specific timing of the next digital skirmish. “I give it until 10:15 tomorrow morning,” Minho murmurs, sipping his tea. “He’s going to change all of Seungmin’s file names to Christmas carols.”

“I say he goes nuclear before end of play today,” Changbin counters, already transferring the wager to Jeongin’s digital ledger. “A festive GIF, you know these glitter things from 2010s?, in the header. It’s the only escalation left.”

Felix just sighs and leaves two large cookies on the table in the meeting room — one for Hyunjin, one for Seungmin — with a note: “You’re both good people. Please don’t die.”

And through it all, amidst the searing neons and the scorched-earth email replies, the stolen glances continue.

Hyunjin, fuming after reading Seungmin’s latest missive, looks up and sees him across the office. There, bathed in the cool glow of twin monitors, Seungmin frowns at a document, tongue caught between his teeth, fingers flying. The sight sends an absurd, treacherous warmth through Hyunjin’s chest. And Hyunjin’s anger momentarily evaporates, replaced by a strange, swooping sensation in his chest. He is, infuriatingly, magnificent in his focus. Hyunjin watches, unmoving, for longer than is strictly professional.

Later, across the room, Seungmin catches Hyunjin laughing softly into the phone — some vendor charmed again by that ridiculous, effortless magnetism. And Seungmin feels it again: that familiar twist in his gut. Pride, because he’s ours. Jealousy, because he’s not mine. Because of the ease with which Hyunjin gives that laugh to strangers, while Seungmin has to earn every flicker of it through combat.

Bang Chan observes it all from his glass-walled office. He doesn’t intervene. He simply watches them pass each other without a word, the air between them crackling with a force that could power the building’s Christmas lights, and he sighs a long, slow, paternal sigh. They are like toddlers fighting with plastic swords, indeed, he thinks, each blow accompanied by a gale of giggles and the absolute, unshakeable conviction that they are engaged in a duel to the death. All the while, everyone else can see they’re just trying to find a way to hold hands.

Outside, the first proper snow of the season begins to fall — soft, silent, and full of promise.

Inside, Hyunjin changes the spreadsheet’s font to Comic Sans.

Seungmin’s scream is entirely internal.

But his lips twitch.

Just once.

Just for him.

✦✦✦

The air in the SKZOO LAB office in the week before the event acquires a new, almost metallic quality. It is the taste of pure, distilled stress, a high-frequency hum of last-minute confirmations, printing name tags, and the silent, desperate prayer that no one contracts bubonic plague before Saturday. The frantic energy of petty warfare has been burned away, replaced by the grim, exhausted focus of soldiers preparing for a final push.

Against all odds, and largely through the Herculean efforts of their long-suffering colleagues, the ‘Winter Carnival’ has taken shape. It is a bizarre, beautiful chimera of their two warring visions. Hyunjin’s ‘narrative’ is there in the twinkling lights woven through the railings and the live cellist booked for the main stage. Seungmin’s ‘logistical framework’ is evident in the colour-coded zone maps and the meticulously timed schedule for the eight hired mascots. It should feel like a compromise. Instead, it feels… complete.

The main event, the grand finale where the SKZOO mascots will distribute gifts, is a scripted marvel. Hyunjin had written the dialogue, full of whimsy and gentle humour. Seungmin had then annotated the script with precise timings, stage directions, and contingency plans for stage-fright or faulty props. The document, saved as ‘Mascot Script FINAL v7 APPROVED’, is a perfect, if unacknowledged, collaboration.

With the final vendor confirmation email sent at 6:03 PM on a Thursday, a strange, heavy silence falls over the marketing department. The desks are littered with the detritus of their campaign: empty coffee cups, scrunched-up sticky notes, and the faint, ghostly shimmer of Hyunjin’s long-banished neon highlighter on one forgotten notepad.

The mascots are hired. The scripts are printed. The playlist is finalised (after three brutal rounds of vetoing Hyunjin’s 14-minute orchestral cover of All I Want for Christmas Is You). All that remains is to not collapse before Saturday.

And yet, by Thursday evening, collapse is precisely what threatens.

The office empties out in dribs and drabs — Minho with a basket of leftover tangerines, Felix humming carols as he shrugs on his puffer jacket, Jisung muttering about “emotional sustainability” as he powers down his monitor.

Only two figures remain: silhouettes slumped in the beanbag nook beneath the glow of the emergency exit sign, surrounded by half-empty coffee cups and crumpled sticky notes that once bore the weight of critical decisions like “Red or green napkins?”

No one notices at first. It is Jeongin, doubling back from the tech lab to retrieve a charger, who stumbles upon the scene. He freezes in the doorway, his hand flying to his phone not out of malice, but instinct. For a moment, he just watches; the fierce competitors, the bickering titans of typography and logistics, reduced to this: two exhausted men, softened by darkness and duty, sharing silence like a secret.

They are asleep.

A single laptop, its screen long since gone dark, is balanced precariously on Hyunjin’s thighs. Seungmin is slumped beside him, his head tilted back against the puffy fabric of the beanbag, his glasses sitting slightly askew on his nose. The distance between them is a matter of centimetres, a gap that seems both vast and infinitesimally small. Hyunjin’s long, artist’s fingers rest mere inches from Seungmin’s sleeve, as if they had been moving towards each other before exhaustion claimed them both.

This is not the sharp, polished Hyunjin from the presentations, nor the impeccably composed Seungmin from the budget meetings. This is something else entirely. Hyunjin’s usually perfect hair is a soft, messy cascade over his forehead. Seungmin’s mouth is slightly parted, his stern, analytical expression smoothed away by sleep into something heartbreakingly young and unguarded. The sharp lines of their professional animosity have been blurred by pure, unadulterated fatigue, leaving behind a raw, quiet vulnerability.

They are not touching.

But they are close enough that, if one were to shift in their sleep, their shoulders would meet.

Close enough that Hyunjin’s flowery cologne mingles with the clean, paper-dry scent of Seungmin’s.

Close enough that their breathing has begun, imperceptibly, to sync.

Jeongin’s first thought is, naturally, blackmail. This is prime material. The kind of photo that could be traded for a month’s worth of coffee runs or immunity from the worst chores. He creeps forward, his phone camera open. The soft click of the shutter is deafening in the silence.

He looks at the image on his screen. The city lights paint their profiles in silver and shadow. The dark laptop, a silent testament to work finally, truly finished. The way Hyunjin’s body seems to lean, ever so slightly, towards Seungmin’s. It’s not a dramatic photo. There are no grand gestures or passionate embraces. It is, instead, a picture of profound peace. A ceasefire written not in emails or sticky notes, but in the slow, steady rhythm of their breathing.

The justification of ‘blackmail’ evaporates, replaced by a softer, more sentimental impulse. This is not evidence for mockery; it is a relic. A fleeting, stolen moment of truce in their long, stupid war. He opens the team’s secret chat, the one titled ‘SKZOO Matchmaking Service (Do Not Tell Chan)’.

Jeongin doesn’t write a joke. He doesn’t set a new bet. He simply attaches the photo.

The response is immediate, a cascade of pings from phones in bags and on bedside tables across Seoul.

Changbin: !!!!!!!

Felix: OMG they’re so cute 😭

Jisung: is this… the end? it’s beautiful. and also i think changbin hyung owes me 50,000 won.

Minho: someone should save that photo for the wedding slideshow.

It is the chorus of pings that stirs them from their slumber.

Hyunjin stirs first, a soft, confused sound catching in his throat. His eyelashes flutter against his cheeks. “Wha—?” he slurs, voice thick with sleep.

Seungmin jerks upright, glasses slipping right off his nose this time. He blinks, disoriented, the city lights reflecting in his dazed eyes. “We’re not sleeping,” he says immediately, voice gravelly. “We were… reviewing contingency protocols.”

“With your eyes closed?” Jeongin asks, his voice laced with feigned innocence as he backs away, slipping his phone into his back pocket.

“Strategic visualisation,” Hyunjin mumbles, not even bothering to sit up. He waves a limp hand in the air. “It’s a technique. Very advanced.”

Jeongin’s grin is wide and knowing. “Right.” He doesn’t say ‘goodbye’, simply turns and slips out of the office like a ghost, leaving them in the sudden, profound silence he has interrupted.

Hyunjin shifts, just slightly, a deliberate, quiet movement so his shoulder brushes against the soft wool of Seungmin’s sleeve. He keeps his gaze fixed on the glowing city. “We did it,” he says, his voice low and hushed, as if speaking too loudly might shatter the completed project file on the laptop between them. “It’s actually… good.”

Seungmin doesn’t pull away. He sits still, absorbing the faint pressure. “It’s functional and festive,” he concedes, his tone striving for its usual clinical precision but landing somewhere softer. “A statistical anomaly.” A long, quiet pause. Then, so quietly it is almost lost to the hum of the central heating: “You made it beautiful.”

Hyunjin doesn’t look at him. But in the reflection of the window, Seungmin can see it: the smile that touches Hyunjin’s lips is real. Small, tired, and utterly unguarded, it is a smile meant for the dark. “You made it possible.”

✦✦✦

The morning of the Family Day dawns brittle and bright, a sharp, winter sun glinting off the frosted roofs of Seoul. Inside the vast, echoing atrium of the event space, chaos reigns with the quiet, frantic energy of a bomb disposal unit. The air is thick with the scent of fresh pine from the tastefully arranged Christmas wreaths Hyunjin had insisted upon, undercut by the faint, plasticky smell of the inflatable obstacle course Seungmin had mandated.

Hyunjin arrives impossibly early, looking, as always, as though he has been styled by a benevolent god of aesthetics. He moves through the semi-assembled carnival with a critical eye, adjusting the angle of a Wolf Chan’s Karaoke Booth sign by a precise two degrees, his brow furrowed not in stress, but in the pursuit of perfection.

Seungmin is already there, of course. He has likely been here for hours. He stands by the main power distribution unit, tablet in one hand, walkie-talkie clipped to his belt, a general surveying his battlefield. His hair is slightly mussed, and there is a smudge of dust on his cheek from where he has presumably been helping to assemble the Jiniret’s Art Station.

They don’t speak directly, but a current of shared, grim purpose hums between them.

For an hour, they move in a tense, parallel orbit. Hyunjin directs the string quartet. Seungmin does a final headcount of the pre-packaged snack boxes at LeeBit’s Kitchen, his lips moving silently as he tallies. It is a fragile, functional peace, built on the shared understanding that today, failure is not an option.

The first crack in the dam appears in the form of the mascot coordinator, a young woman with a headset and an expression of pure, undiluted panic. She scurries up to Seungmin, her voice a frantic whisper that carries in the cavernous space.

“Kim Seungmin-ssi… it’s the actor for PuppyM. A family emergency. He can’t make it.”

Seungmin goes very still. Hyunjin, who was artfully draping a garland nearby, freezes mid-reach, his hand suspended in the air. He doesn’t hear what’s exactly has been said, but he knows there’s a problem. He watches Seungmin’s face, sees the minute calculations flickering behind his eyes.

“Call the agency. Demand a replacement,” Seungmin says, his voice clipped, but a vein in his temple pulses.

“There is no one, Seungmin-ssi. Not with an hour’s notice. I’m so sorry.”

The silence that follows is profound. Hyunjin feels a strange, protective urge to step in, to fix this, whatever it might be, with a grand, theatrical gesture.

A cold dread, entirely separate from the winter chill, trickles down Seungmin’s spine. Dozens of children are expecting to meet the cheerful, cream-coloured puppy, the academic heart of the SKZOO LAB suite. Dozens of parents are expecting a photo opportunity. He looks at the clock. One hour.

His gaze sweeps the room, calculating, dismissing. Everyone has a role. Everyone is essential.

Seungmin’s gaze lands on the clear plastic garment bag hanging with the other costumes. Inside, the cream-coloured fur of the PuppyM suit looks soft and utterly daunting. He lets out a long, slow breath, a sigh of profound resignation. It is the sound of a man accepting his fate.

“Fine,” he says, the word final. He turns to Felix, who has appeared at his elbow, drawn by the tense atmosphere. “Felix. The PuppyM actor is unavailable. I’ll be taking his place.”

Felix’s eyes widen. “Seungmin-ah, are you sure? It’s… it’s a big suit. And the kids… and the routine…”

“As if I have other options, Felix,” Seungmin’s lips press into a thin line. “We have an hour. The children will smell fear. And failure. And I know the routine. I can fit the costume. I have to make it work.” He fixes Felix with a look of intense, slightly desperate seriousness. “Cover for me. If anyone asks, especially a certain dramatic someone, tell them I’m managing a vendor crisis.”

Felix nods, though his expression screams This is how horror films start.

Hyunjin, still watching from a distance, hears the excuse and feels a familiar, bitter twist in his gut. Managing a vendor crisis. Of course.

He turns away, his jaw tight. He feels a surge of petty, irrational anger. While he is here, ready to pour his soul into making this day magical, Seungmin is already disappearing, doubtless to handle some tedious, behind-the-scenes problem. He smooths down his own impeccably chosen sweater and decides, right then, that he will be so brilliant, so effortlessly charming today, that Seungmin’s absence will be a footnote. A void that he, Hwang Hyunjin, will fill with his own radiant presence.

He doesn’t see the staff door swing shut behind Seungmin. He doesn’t see Seungmin staring at the vast, headless puppy suit with a look of pure terror. He doesn’t see Felix’s worried, hopeful glance between the closing door and Hyunjin’s proud, lonely figure.

The clock ticks down. The first families will arrive in forty-five minutes. And deep in the bowels of the venue, Kim Seungmin begins the arduous process of zipping himself into a fleece-lined prison, his heart hammering a frantic, ridiculous rhythm against the plush, cream-coloured fur.

✦✦✦

The storage closet is colder than the car park outside. It is a tomb, a windowless, airless cube that smells of dust, cleaning products and the quiet desperation of someone who has made a series of increasingly questionable life choices. It is also, Kim Seungmin reflects with a surge of pure, unadulterated panic, his dressing room.

The PuppyM costume lies at his feet, a puddle of cream-coloured faux fur that seems to have quadrupled in mass since he first saw it. It is less a garment and more a topological challenge. He has his phone propped precariously against a box of A4 paper, the screen displaying a video titled ‘How to Put on a Mascot Costume Without Dying’.

A cheerful, disembodied voice advises him to “enlist a spotter.”

“A spotter,” Seungmin mutters through gritted teeth, his breath misting in the air. “Right. I’ll just ask Hyunjin. I’m sure he’d be delighted to help.”

Seungmin mutes the video.

The struggle begins.

The suit is a beast, an entity that actively resists domestication. He manages to get one foot into a cavernous leg. Emboldened, he attempts to get the other leg in, but the first is now so cumbersome it feels like it’s filled with lead. He hops, a clumsy, unbalanced movement, and his oversized paw-like foot connects squarely with a cardboard box marked ‘Jiniret’s Spares.’

The box tumbles. A cascade of colouring pencils, a hundred strong in every hue imaginable, erupts into the air and scatters across the concrete floor.

He stares at the mess, a wave of hot, stupid frustration washing over him. He is Kim Seungmin, respected professional, logistical mastermind, defender of order, and he is currently losing a battle against a mascot costume.

And losing spectacularly.

“This is all his fault,” he hisses into the stifling silence, the fur already making his skin prickle with heat. “Hwang Hyunjin, the root cause of all my worst, most idiotic life choices.”

Because, of course, this is all Hyunjin’s fault.

Not directly, of course. Hyunjin didn’t summon the actor’s family emergency. He didn’t design a mascot suit that requires the flexibility of a gymnast and the patience of a saint. But he did spend the last three weeks making this event unbearably, unnecessarily perfect — with his mood boards of frost-kissed pine and his insistence that even the paper napkins should “whisper elegance.” And somehow, in doing so, he made Seungmin want to get it right. Not just logistically. Beautifully.

“Hwang Hyunjin and his stupid, beautiful face. And his… his theatrical wrists and his completely unnecessary scented hair,” Seungmin grumbles, while wrestling the torso on. He pictures it then, Hyunjin out in the atrium, no doubt posing artfully under a spotlight, completely unburdened by the knowledge that he, Kim Seungmin, is being slowly consumed by a synthetic animal.

Hwang Hyunjin, who will absolutely complain when he notices Seungmin’s disappearance.

Hwang Hyunjin, who will blame him for every flake of glitter that falls out of place.

Hwang Hyunjin, whose stupid, unfairly beautiful face has entirely too much influence over Seungmin’s cortisol levels.

“Everything is Hyunjin’s fault. Objectively. Scientifically.”

The PuppyM head sits on a crate beside him, enormous, smiling, and obliviously cheerful.

“Especially this part,” he adds.

He grabs the mascot head and lowers it onto his own. The world becomes muffled, woolly, and faintly claustrophobic. His breath warms the inside instantly. He feels his dignity evaporate in real time.

It is in this state of sensory deprivation and rising claustrophobia that the door handle jiggles.

His blood runs cold, a feat considering the sauna-like conditions he’s currently inhabiting. He freezes, a giant, furry statue amidst the spilled pencils.

A voice, muffled but unmistakable, filters through the foam and fur. Hyunjin’s voice. “Hello? Is the spare art station supply in there?”

Panic, sharp and immediate, lances through him. He cannot be found. Not like this. The humiliation would be a nuclear event, scorching the earth between them for all eternity. His mind, usually a repository of logical solutions and contingency plans, offers only one, insane option.

He takes a sharp, nervous breath, and lets it out.

It emerges as a high-pitched, squeaky sound. A bark, that would make a real puppy look at him with profound concern.

The sound hangs in the air, absurd and pathetic. A beat of profound silence follows from the other side of the door. Seungmin can practically feel Hyunjin’s confusion, a tangible force radiating through the wood.

Then, a reply, laced with a dry, bewildered amusement that Seungmin would recognise anywhere. “…Right. Merry Christmas, I guess.”

The footsteps retreat, fading down the corridor. Seungmin slumps against the door, the heavy head knocking dully against the wood. The relief is so potent it makes his knees weak. Inside the suit, he is panting, his heart hammering a frantic tattoo against his ribs. One crisis, the most immediate and terrifying one, has been averted.

He closes his eyes. Breathes.

And then, despite everything — the sweat, the static cling, the mortifying bark — he laughs. A quiet, breathless thing, muffled by foam and fabric.

Because of course it would come to this.

Of course, after months of careful avoidance, of emails dripping with sarcasm and glances stolen like contraband, he would end up hiding in a storage closet dressed as a cartoon puppy, terrified that the man he’s been too proud to confess to might hear the truth in his voice.

✦✦✦

The SKZOO LAB Winter Carnival is, against all odds, a symphony. A living, breathing, chaotic symphony, and Hwang Hyunjin is its conductor. Resplendent in a deep burgundy knit jumper embroidered with tiny silver stars (hand-stitched by a small atelier in Itaewon, naturally), he moves through the thrumming atrium, a figure of serene control in a sea of pandemonium. He is, he feels, the calm, cool anchor of the entire affair.

And it is an affair. His affair. The lights twinkle exactly as he envisioned. The cellist from the quartet he’d fought for plays a soft, Bach suite that lends an air of refined joy to the cacophony of childish shrieks. Over by the ‘Snowfall’ obstacle course, a line of children bounces with gleeful impatience, their laughter a percussive counterpoint to the music. Parents clutch champagne flutes and steaming cups of hot chocolate, their faces relaxed, their trust in the event absolute. It is perfect. It is, in every meaningful sense, a victory.

A victory that feels curiously hollow.

His gaze, for the dozenth time, sweeps the crowd, searching for a single, precise, infuriatingly competent face. Kim Seungmin is nowhere to be seen.

Not by the Dwaekki obstacle course, where logistics would demand his hawk-eyed presence. Not near the FoxI.Ny VR station, where a minor firmware hiccup earlier required someone who speaks binary like a love language. Not even lurking by the coffee urn, arms crossed, pretending not to watch Hyunjin charm the parents with his effortless, aesthetic grace.

It’s… unsettling.

The absence is a persistent, low-level dissonance in his otherwise harmonious world. He had expected Seungmin to be here, of course. At his shoulder, tablet in hand, a constant, critical presence pointing out a potential queue bottleneck or a minor health and safety infraction. His absence feels like a snub. A rejection of their shared, hard-won triumph.

Hyunjin spots Felix, beaming as he helps a small child decorate a gingerbread man at LeeBit’s station. Hyunjin glides over, his smile fixed and pleasant.

“Felix,” he says, his voice a low murmur beneath the festive din. “Where the hell is Seungmin? This is his moment of logistical glory as much as it is mine. Is he holed up in a supply closet running a cost-benefit analysis on candy cane consumption?”

Felix’s smile doesn’t slip, but a faint, almost imperceptible flicker of panic crosses his eyes. “Vendor crisis!” he chirps, a little too brightly. “You know Seungmin. Had to go and… manage it personally. Said it was critical.”

Hyunjin narrows his eyes. “That’s the third ‘vendor crisis’ today.”

Felix beams. “Must be a crisis-prone season!”

The same excuse. Every time. Hyunjin’s jaw tightens. What vendor could possibly be more critical than this? Than them? The bitter thought from earlier returns, laced with a fresh sting of jealousy.

Perhaps it’s not a vendor at all. Perhaps it’s him. The mysterious crush. The one Seungmin had confessed to Felix about. The idea that Seungmin might be sharing this, their day, with someone else — that he might be in some quiet corner, sharing a private, soft moment — is a physical ache beneath his ribs.

He is about to press further, to demand answers with a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes, when a new presence waddles into his periphery.

It’s PuppyM. The children nearby immediately squeal with delight, swarming the fluffy creature. Hyunjin feels a flicker of relief. At least this part of the show is running smoothly.

Hyunjin returns to the Jiniret’s Art Station. A haven of glitter glue, watercolour palettes, and children’s earnest attempts at Klimt-inspired holiday cards — here he presides like a benevolent winter king.

He’s in the middle of demonstrating how to paint a snowman with emotional depth, when the beast arrives.

It waddles into his peripheral vision, a lumbering, cream-coloured omen of doom. The PuppyM’s head tilted at an angle that suggests either profound curiosity or a fundamental lack of balance. The mascot waves at a group of toddlers, who shriek with delight, then turns — slowly, deliberately — and locks eyes with Hyunjin.

Hyunjin pointedly ignores it.

He is mid-sentence, mid-flourish, the tip of the brush just touching the paper clipped to the whiteboard, when it happens.

PuppyM, apparently clumsy in its oversized feet, trips over nothing at all. Its trajectory is alarmingly direct.

With a soft, startled ‘oof!’ that is definitely not in the script, the mascot collides squarely with Hyunjin’s side.

The impact is not violent, but it is perfectly calculated to unbalance him. His graceful pose disintegrates. The brush flies from his hand, skittering across the floor. He stumbles, his arms windmilling in a most undignified manner, before landing squarely on his backside on the thankfully carpeted floor.

A beat of stunned silence, and then the children erupt. They don’t see a humiliated event co-ordinator. They see a hilarious bit of slapstick. Their laughter is a roaring, delighted wave, washing over him.

Hyunjin sits there, his perfect hair askew, his sweater probably dusted with invisible filth, his dignity in tatters. He glares up at the mascot, his eyes shooting pure, incandescent fury. PuppyM, meanwhile, has righted itself. It stands over him, its giant, blank black eyes staring down, its head tilted in a parody of canine innocence. It even has the audacity to give a little, apologetic shrug.

The rage is hot and immediate. But beneath it, something else prickles. There’s a… a sassiness to the way the mascot is standing. A defiant tilt to its head that feels unnervingly familiar. It’s the same energy Seungmin exudes when he’s just delivered a killing blow in a meeting, all cool composure and hidden triumph.

“You…” Hyunjin hisses, too low for the children to hear, “absolute menace.”

PuppyM, in response, takes a wobbly step forward and pats Hyunjin gently on the head with a giant, padded paw.

The children scream with laughter. Hyunjin’s scowl deepens. This is no longer just a perfect event marred by an annoying absence. It is now a personal war. And his opponent, it seems, is a six-foot-tall puppy with a suspiciously competent sense of comedic timing.

Before he can stand up, PuppyM is off again, waddling toward the hot chocolate station.

The event grinds on, a whirring, joyful machine, and Hwang Hyunjin is its most malfunctioning, disgruntled cog. The initial, polished sheen of his performance has been thoroughly ruffled. Literally. Every time he attempts to reclaim his dignity, the cream-coloured spectre reappears.

He spots a family gathering for a photo by the main Christmas tree, a perfect, sparkling backdrop. He smooths his hair, arranges his features into a look of benevolent, festive authority, and glides into the frame. Just as the parent raises their phone, a blur of fur enters stage left.

PuppyM envelops him from behind in a giant, suffocating bear-hug — a dog-hug? — its thick, padded arms locking around his chest, the hug that is both shockingly strong and thermally insulating to the point of torture. The children in the photo shriek with delight. Hyunjin’s face, captured for eternity, is a masterpiece of strained tolerance.

“Get off me, you mutt!” Hyunjin hisses through a clenched smile, his voice a low, venomous whisper lost in the general merriment. PuppyM tightens the hug.

Inside the suit, Seungmin is grinning maniacally, his earlier frustration and claustrophobia forgotten, replaced by a savage, gleeful triumph. He can feel the solid warmth of Hyunjin’s back through the costume, the familiar tension in his shoulders, the way his voice drops into that rough, private register when he’s annoyed.

It’s intoxicating.

It’s glorious.

Nearby, the actor in the sleek, white Jiniret costume watches PuppyM’s bizarrely targeted harassment with visible confusion. The ferret’s head tilts, its elegant paws pausing mid-air, as if trying to compute the aggressive affection the puppy is showing the flustered human. It looks from the dishevelled Hyunjin to the overly affectionate puppy, and gives a slow, confused shake of its head before turning back to a group of children, as if deciding some mysteries are best left unsolved.

Hyunjin extricates himself, shooting a death glare at the mascot, which simply waggles its paw at him in a cheerful wave. He stalks away, muttering dark poetry to himself. He is a storm cloud, a stark, brooding contrast to the cheerful, round PuppyM who now waddles off to give a group of toddlers high-fives, its movements suddenly imbued with a sassy, victorious swing.

He finds a momentarily quiet corner near the hot chocolate station, muttering under his breath as he attempts to smooth down his hair. “This is all Kim Seungmin’s fault,” he grumbles, directing his ire at the universe in general and a plate of candy canes in particular. “You know that, right?” he adds, glancing down at a small, plush PuppyM toy used as decoration. “He’s probably off somewhere, laughing. Or worse, not even thinking about this event at all.”

He doesn’t see PuppyM sneak away. But he does, moments later, catch a glimpse of him.

A flash of a familiar, sharp profile through the crowd. Kim Seungmin. There’s something… off about him. He’s near the main entrance, tablet in one hand, walkie-talkie in other. He’s a whirlwind of focused energy, but a dishevelled one. His cheeks are flushed a bright, blotchy red, his usually pristine hair is damp with sweat and sticking up in odd places, and his shirt is rumpled, as if he’s been wrestling with something far more demanding than a spreadsheet. His sleeves are rolled unevenly. His glasses are smudged. He keeps glancing over his shoulder as if he’s being chased by his own guilt.

He looks… thoroughly debauched.

Hyunjin’s blood runs cold, the heat of his anger instantly doused by a wave of something much colder, much sharper. The worst-case scenarios flood his mind, vivid and unwelcome. The confession he overheard. The constant ‘vendor crisis’ excuses. The state of him — flushed, dishevelled, distracted. It paints a damning picture.

He did it. He actually confessed. And now he’s… he’s sneaking out between his duties to… to…

Yes, Seungmin looks like he’s been thoroughly kissed.

The thought is a physical blow. The nerve! To abandon their event, their hard-won triumph, for a furtive rendezvous. To be off in some dark corner, sharing breathless, heated moments with some… some logical, spreadsheet-loving mystery man, while Hyunjin is out here being publicly assaulted by a vengeful mascot.

He watches, gut churning, as Seungmin finishes his call, runs a harried hand through his already disastrous hair, and disappears again through a staff door without so much as a glance in Hyunjin’s direction. The dismissal feels more pointed than any of their email chains ever could.

Hyunjin turns sharply, nearly colliding with Minho, who’s refilling his tea with the serene detachment of a man who’s seen it all.

“Problem?” Minho asks, one eyebrow arched.

“No,” Hyunjin lies, jaw clenched. “Just admiring how committed Seungmin is to… multitasking.”

Minho takes a slow sip. “Mm. He does look like he’s been running a marathon. Or hiding a body.”

Hyunjin doesn’t laugh.

Back at the art station, PuppyM reappears — this time offering a child a perfectly balanced cup of cocoa, steam curling from the rim. The way he holds it — careful, precise, familiar — makes Hyunjin’s chest ache for no reason he can name.

He watches as the mascot gently adjusts the child’s reindeer antlers, then gives a little wave before waddling off toward Hyunjin. Again.

“This is all Seungmin’s fault,” Hyunjin repeats, now having a public. “He probably hired you. Gave you specific instructions. ‘Find the man in the expensive sweater and ruin his life.’” He sighs, the sound heavy with self-pity.

A soft, high-pitched squeak escapes the mascot’s mouth — almost like a suppressed laugh. It’s big paw pats on Hyunjin’s shoulder.

Hyunjin swats it away.

“Stop that! Honestly! Go bother Chan-hyung or something.”

Hyunjin sighs, running a hand through his ruined hair. He’s sulking. He knows he’s sulking. But it’s hard not to when your nemesis is off somewhere, while you’re being publicly dismantled by a dog who clearly has a personal vendetta.

PuppyM chooses that exact moment to gently boop Hyunjin on the nose with a soft, padded paw before shuffling off to cause more chaos.

Hyunjin doesn’t even have the energy to hiss an insult. He just stands there, the perfect event swirling around him, feeling more alone and foolish than ever. He’s fighting a war on two fronts, and he’s losing both. One against a fluffy public menace, and the other against the ghost of a man who can’t even be bothered to witness his own victory.

It hurts to think about it.

Hyunjin begins to suspect that maybe — just maybe — being knocked off his feet isn’t the worst thing in the world.

✦✦✦

Inside the PuppyM costume, Kim Seungmin is a man transformed. The stifling heat, the limited vision, the sheer absurdity of his situation — it has all conspired to melt away his usual cool, logical exterior. He has become the squishiest menace alive, a paradox of fluffy aggression and silent, desperate affection.

He is now the version he’s never dared to show Hyunjin.

The real him.

The soft, ridiculous, yearning him.

The mask gives him permission.

No more clipped emails. No more spreadsheets as shields. No more watching Hyunjin from across the room and pretending his chest doesn’t tighten when he laughs. Here, inside PuppyM’s round, ridiculous body, he can be soft. He can be silly. He can be himself.

So he leans in. Hard.

He is a force of nature. He “accidentally” body-slams Hyunjin during yet another photo-op with the precision of a guided missile, sending him staggering into a group of giggling children. He ambush-hugs him from behind with the fervour of a golden retriever with unresolved emotional issues, his giant paws locking around Hyunjin’s torso, muffling his outraged squawks. Each impact is a message, a physical punctuation mark in their long, stupid argument.

But the warfare is laced with tenderness, a contradiction that leaves Hyunjin utterly bewildered.

After a particularly egregious stumble that ruins Hyunjin’s attempt to look cool while demonstrating a pose for the Han Quokka photo booth, PuppyM waddles over and, with a surprising delicacy, uses its padded paws to straighten Hyunjin’s scarf, which had been knocked askew. The gesture is so gentle, so at odds with the previous violence, that Hyunjin simply short-circuits, his brain whirring like a malfunctioning USB port. He stands frozen, allowing the adjustment, the soft fur of the paw brushing against his jawline.

And then — the pièce de résistance — he produces a candy cane from nowhere and presses it into Hyunjin’s palm with a flourish worthy of a tiny, furry Don Corleone.

Hyunjin stares at it. Blinks. Sighs. “You’re incorrigible,” he mutters — but he takes it.

The final straw comes when Hyunjin, shivering slightly after a trip to the storeroom, rubs his hands together for warmth. PuppyM is there in an instant. He doesn’t just pat Hyunjin's hands — he lifts them, those elegant, cold fingers that are always conducting an invisible orchestra. Then PuppyM does the impossible.

He pushes the openings of his own giant, padded paws against Hyunjin’s palms, creating a little pocket of warmth. And then, from the dark, stifling interior of the costume, Seungmin reaches out with his own, bare, impossibly warm fingers.

Hyunjin gasps, a tiny, sharp intake of breath. The cold tips of his fingers are suddenly cradled, enveloped not just by plush fabric, but by the living heat of Seungmin’s (though, he still doesn’t know it’s him) skin. It’s an electric shock of intimacy, a secret passed through layers of fleece and pretence. Seungmin’s thumbs press gently into the icy hollows of Hyunjin’s palms, a slow, deliberate massage that chases the chill away and replaces it with a spreading, liquid warmth that travels straight up Hyunjin’s arms and coils, tight and hot, in his chest.

It’s protective. It’s unmistakably tender. It’s real.

The shock of the warmth is immediate, a startling, comforting contrast to the winter air and the cold knot of jealousy in his stomach. Hyunjin doesn’t pull away. He just stares, mesmerised by the absurdity of it.

He lets the warmth seep in, until the last of the chill is gone from his fingers and replaced by something far more dangerous. When he finally, slowly, slips his hands free, the air feels shockingly cold against his newly warmed skin.

He takes a single step back, putting a sliver of space between himself and the hulking, fluffy form of PuppyM. His expression is a battlefield of awe, confusion, and a dawning, desperate curiosity. He looks at the giant, inexpressive head, searching for a clue in the dark mesh.

He leans in, his voice a low, intimate murmur meant for the stranger inside the suit, for this sudden, sweet phantom who has dismantled his defences with warm paws and candy canes.

“You know,” Hyunjin says, his tone a fragile thread of bravery over a chasm of bewildering hope. “One more of your… sweet little gestures…”

He pauses, his gaze intent, as if he could will the person inside to reveal themselves.

“…and I’m gonna have to ask what we are.”

For a long second, PuppyM is completely, utterly still. A monument to fluffy silence. Then, with a slow, deliberate pivot, the mascot turns its giant head. It doesn’t look at Hyunjin. Instead, it points a single, plush paw — not at him, but at a small child clinging to their mother’s leg nearby, looking on with wide, hopeful eyes.

PuppyM gives a little, encouraging wave to the child. The child beams. And the moment is lost.

It is this series of contradictions that finally breaks Hyunjin. He finds himself cornered near the now-deserted hot chocolate stand, the mascot standing before him, its head tilted in that now-familiar, inquisitive way. The event is winding down, the high-pitched energy softening into a contented hum, and Hyunjin’s defences are at their lowest.

He lets out a long, weary sigh, his gaze fixed on the mascot’s blank, black eyes.

“Can you believe it?” he says, the words escaping before he can stop them. He’s talking to a giant puppy. It feels no more ridiculous than anything else today. “My co-lead, Kim Seungmin, you know, the guy with the glasses and a smile that should be classified as a workplace hazard? He just vanished!”

Inside the suit, Seungmin freezes, his own breath catching in his throat.

“His idea is a success,” Hyunjin continues, gesturing vaguely at the bustling, happy crowd. “All of this. The bouncy castle, the zones… it’s a triumph of logic. But he’s not even here to see it. It’s infuriating.” He leans closer, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “And… and his stupid, cute smile is even more infuriating. It shouldn’t be allowed. It derails my entire train of thought.”

He thinks I’m cute? The thought is absurd.

Euphoric.

Catastrophic.

Seungmin’s heart hammers against his ribs, a frantic, wild drumbeat. He can’t speak. He can’t reveal himself. So he does the only thing he can think of; he brings a paw to his chest in a gesture of shock, then mimes wiping a tear from his eye, the movements broad and theatrical.

Hyunjin stares. Then, to his own surprise, he laughs — a soft, breathy sound that doesn’t belong in a warehouse full of chaos. “You’re… weirdly easy to talk to,” he admits. “Don’t tell anyone… but I just…” He trails off, cheeks tinged pink. “I just wanted to impress him. To show him my ideas had merit, too. To make him look at me like I was more than just… a font choice.”

The confession hangs in the air, simple and devastating. Inside the suit, Seungmin is drowning. The heat, the exhaustion, the sheer, overwhelming weight of Hyunjin’s unvarnished, vulnerable truth is too much. He can’t form words, can’t mime a response. The only thing he can do is feel. And the feeling is a vast, aching wave of affection.

Overwhelmed, trembling beneath the fur, Seungmin does the only thing he can.

He wraps his arms around Hyunjin again — slow this time, gentle, enveloping. A hug that says I’m here.

And Hyunjin — bless him, beautiful idiot that he is — hugs back.

His arms slip around the plush torso, tentative at first, then firmer, as if anchoring himself to something real in a world that’s suddenly too loud, too bright, too full of longing. Seungmin holds on tighter, praying the costume is thick enough to hide the frantic, joyous, terrified beating of his heart.

When they finally part, Hyunjin looks up at the oversized, unblinking eyes of the mascot and says, voice thick with something he can’t name,

“Wow. You’re a good listener, PuppyM.”

Seungmin wants to laugh. Wants to cry. Wants to rip off the head and say, It’s me. It’s always been me.

But he doesn’t.

He just nods, once, solemnly — like a dog who’s just been entrusted with the world’s most precious secret.

✦✦✦

The storage closet has become a sort of purgatorial decompression chamber. Seungmin stumbles into it for the fifth time, his body screaming for respite. The door clicks shut, muffling the carnival din to a dull, persistent throb.

The storage closet is colder this time — or perhaps it only feels that way against the feverish heat still radiating off Seungmin’s skin.

He stands — or rather, sags — in the centre of it, halfway out of the PuppyM costume, halfway into a state of heat-induced delirium. His shirt is translucent with sweat, his hair glued to his forehead in damp black strands, and his glasses — slightly fogged, slightly askew — perch on his nose like the last remnants of his dignity.

He unscrews a bottle of water with trembling fingers and tips it back, gulping like a man who has just emerged from a desert composed entirely of felt and festive obligations. The water is lukewarm and tastes faintly of plastic. It is the most glorious thing he has ever consumed.

Third quick-change in the last two hours.

Hyunjin still doesn’t know.

I am going to die in this warehouse, and my epitaph will read: “He wore the dog costume, so you didn’t have to.”

The sound of the doorknob rattling makes him freeze, the plastic bottle crinkling loudly in his hand. Panic — pure, adrenalized, secret-identity-revealed panic — lances through him.

Before he can even process the thought of hiding, he hears the voices on the other side of the door. One is Hyunjin’s voice, laced with a curious, determined edge that Seungmin knew all too well. It is his ‘I-am-not-dropping-this’ tone. The other one is Felix, bless his heart, his voice a gentle, marshmallow-soft counterpoint. A true angel of mercy. Seungmin hears something like ‘I’m just gonna check…’ from Hyunjin.

Time seems to warp, stretching into a single, heart-stopping moment of pure, undiluted terror. Seungmin’s brain, usually a well-ordered library of logic and contingency, becomes a white-hot void. There is no plan. There is only instinct.

He yelps — a strangled, inhuman sound — and dives. He abandons the water bottle, which clatters to the floor, and plunges headfirst back into the stifling embrace of the PuppyM costume. His hands, slick with sweat, fumble for the zip. It snags, he pulls, a prayer on his lips, and it closes with a final, rasping sound.

The door swings open.

Seungmin straightens up, now fully PuppyM, and turns to face Hyunjin, the empty water bottle held lamely in one furry paw. The world is once again reduced to a grainy, cross-stitched view. Hyunjin is a blur of handsome confusion.

Hyunjin blinks, his head tilting in a way that is both infuriating and endearing. “PuppyM? What are you doing in here?” His eyes dart around the small space. “Have you seen Seungmin?"

Inside the suit, Seungmin’s mind is a screaming pinball machine. Think. Think! He looks down at the water bottle in his paw. Inspiration, born of sheer, panicked genius, strikes.

He holds up the empty bottle. Then, with an exaggerated pantomime, he points the bottle at himself, pats his chest, and mimes drinking. He then shrugs his large, rounded shoulders and sweeps his paws in a wide, helpless arc, his giant head swivelling left and right as if to say, “I, a simple dog, came in here for a drink. I have seen no humans. The ways of men are a mystery to me.”

Hyunjin’s eyes narrow, just a fraction. A flicker of suspicion, like a cat spotting a twitch in the curtains.

“Right…” he drawls, voice laced with that particular brand of sarcasm Hyunjin reserves for moments when he knows something’s off but can’t quite prove it. He runs a hand through his hair — the same hair Seungmin had just mussed ten minutes ago in a dog-hug of pure, unfiltered yearning. “Well. If you see a stressed-looking guy with glasses who’s way too smart for his own good, tell him I’m looking for him.”

PuppyM, with an enthusiasm that feels manic even to Seungmin, gives a jaunty, over-the-top salute.

Hyunjin studies him for a beat longer — a beat that stretches like taffy in Seungmin’s overheated mind — then turns and walks away, muttering something about “bloody disappearing acts” and “people who vanish right when you need them most.”

The moment the door clicks shut, Seungmin yanks the head off like it’s on fire.

He gasps — a great, shuddering inhale of cold air — and presses his forehead against the door, heart pounding so hard he’s surprised the whole building doesn’t tremble with it.

“Oh god,” he whispers, voice raw. “I nearly died. I nearly died. I hate this.”

Seungmin buries his face in his hands and laughs — a quiet, breathless sound that’s equal parts terror and hysteria.

This, he decides, as spots dance in his vision, is the absolute limit. The final straw. The moment his professional composure has been irrevocably sacrificed on the altar of a cream-coloured mascot costume. As soon as his heart rate returns to something approximating normal, he is going to find Bang Chan and submit his resignation. It is the only logical course of action.

“Just get through the evening,” he whispers. “Then you can resign. Or confess. Or die. Whichever comes first.”

Outside, the atrium hums with festive chaos.

And somewhere down the corridor, Hyunjin pauses, turns back toward the storage closet, and frowns — not at the door, but at the lingering, impossible thought: Why does PuppyM smell faintly of Seungmin’s perfume?

✦✦✦

The final hour of the Winter Carnival possesses a unique, frantic energy. The initial, chaotic joy begins to soften at the edges, tempered by the gentle exhaustion of over-sugared children and the quiet, satisfied fatigue of parents. Yet for Hwang Hyunjin, the atmosphere has curdled. His earlier sense of hollow victory has been entirely consumed by a slow-burning, acidic jealousy.

It is a feeling painted in vivid, damning snapshots. Each time he catches a glimpse of Kim Seungmin, the image is the same: a fleeting figure on the periphery, a ghost in his own triumph. He sees him by the main power outlet, his face flushed a blotchy, tell-tale red. He spots him ducking out of the staff corridor, his hair a disaster, as if repeatedly raked through by anxious hands. He watches him gratefully accept a bottle of water from Felix, his hand trembling slightly with a fatigue that looks less like work and more like… something else.

Each sighting is a fresh twist of the knife. The memory of Seungmin’s confession to Felix — ‘there’s no chance he likes me too’ — echoes in his mind, now fused with this new, compelling evidence. The flustered cheeks, the dishevelled state, the constant, mysterious disappearances. It paints a picture Hyunjin cannot unsee: furtive meetings in quiet corners, stolen moments of passion while he, Hyunjin, is out here being mauled by a mascot.

He watches Seungmin slip away once more, towards the staff-only corridor, and something in him snaps. The professional veneer, the cool indifference, it all shatters under the weight of a jealousy so acute it feels like a physical ache.

He gives it a minute, then follows, his footsteps silent on the linoleum. He finds Seungmin leaning over a sink in the small staff kitchenette, splashing water on his face in a vain attempt to cool down. He looks up, startled, as Hyunjin fills the doorway, his expression unreadable. He looks, Hyunjin thinks with a surge of bitter resentment, beautifully wrecked.

“Having fun?” Hyunjin’s voice is a low, carefully controlled thing, but the edge is unmistakable, his arms crossed, expression deceptively calm — the kind of calm that precedes a Category Five emotional storm.

Seungmin straightens up, wiping a hand across his damp brow. “It’s a logistical nightmare,” he replies, his voice raspy with weariness, “but the satisfaction metrics seem high. Why?”

The clinical analysis is the final straw. Hyunjin’s fake calm begins to crack, his voice dripping with a sarcasm so thick it could frost glass. “Oh, I don’t know. Just noticed you’re gone a lot. Must be nice, sneaking off for your… breaks… while the rest of us are working our butts off out here.”

A flicker of irritation crosses Seungmin’s tired face. “I told you, I’m handling a vendor—”

“A vendor?” Hyunjin snaps, the last thread of his composure snapping. The jealousy, hot and irrational, overrides all sense, all propriety. The words are out before he can stop them, sharp and ugly in the festive air. “Is that what we’re calling it? I’m here making this event a success, and you’re what? Sneaking off to shove your tongue down someone’s throat?!”

Seungmin stares at him.

Not with anger. Not with defensiveness.

With utter, uncomprehending bafflement.

His mouth opens. Closes. His brow furrows — the familiar, endearing crease Hyunjin has spent months memorising from across meeting tables.

The confusion in his eyes is so pure, so unfeigned, that for a terrifying second, Hyunjin wonders if he has, in fact, just accused him of something entirely fictional.

“You,” Seungmin says, his voice dangerously quiet, “have no idea what you’re talking about.”

He doesn’t shout. He doesn’t offer an explanation. He simply turns on his heel, his shoulders set in a line of rigid, furious dignity, and walks away. He doesn’t look back.

✦✦✦

The great beast of the Winter Carnival is finally, truly, winding down. The last few families are bundling themselves into coats, their voices hoarse and happy, their arms laden with crafts and the soft, plush forms of the very mascots that had entertained them. The high, bright energy has mellowed into a contented, weary hum. The cellist has long since packed away her instrument, and in the quiet, the relentless, cheerful soundtrack from the photo booth feels almost poignant.

Hyunjin finds a sliver of empty wall near the deflating bouncy castle and leans against it. His burgundy jumper is creased, his hair a lost cause, his scarf hanging by one frayed thread of dignity. He watches the last families leave with a kind of weary fondness — the kind that comes not just from pride in a job well done, but from the strange, quiet realisation that he made this happen. They made this happen.

The confrontation with Seungmin sits in his gut like a stone. He feels scraped raw, all his polished charm and defensive sarcasm stripped away, leaving only a confused, aching exhaustion. He has won the day, but he feels utterly defeated.

And then, with the gentle inevitability of snowfall, PuppyM waddles over.

Not with a bounce. Not with a prank-ready wiggle. Just… slowly. Heavily. As if the costume has finally absorbed all the joy, chaos, and emotional labour of the day and is now simply too full to move with anything but solemn gravity.

He sits beside Hyunjin on the floor with a soft whump, legs splayed, head bowed.

Hyunjin looks at the forlorn-looking creature. In his own state of emotional depletion, he feels a strange kinship with it. He sighs, a long, weary sound that seems to come from the soles of his feet, and sits on the floor too, forgetting how expensive his trousers are.

“You know,” he says, his voice soft and unguarded, “you're a real pain. A genuine, fluffy nuisance. You tripped me. You ruined my jumper.” He gestures vaguely at the faint blue stain on his sleeve, then nudges the mascot’s shoulder gently. “But you’re also kind of amazing with the kids. Patient. Gentle. You remembered that little girl’s name — the one with the blue mittens — and you made sure she got the golden star sticker. That wasn’t in the script. The way you also high-fived every single one… it was annoying how much they loved you.” He shakes his head, a rueful smile tugging at his lips. “It’s annoying… You remind me of Kim Seungmin.”

Inside the suit, Seungmin’s breath hitches.

Oh no.

Oh no no no.

He doesn’t dare move. Doesn’t dare breathe too loudly. The foam walls feel suddenly thinner, his heartbeat too loud, his pulse a drumbeat of impending emotional detonation.

Hyunjin doesn’t notice. He’s looking past PuppyM now, out into the half-lit hall, as if speaking to the air itself.

“We’re always fighting,” Hyunjin continues, almost to himself now, the words spilling out into the quiet space between them. “He’s stubborn, and he’s always got something to say — usually something terrible about my font choices — and he drives me absolutely crazy.” He pauses, and his voice drops to a soft, almost inaudible murmur, meant for the puppy’s mesh ear alone. “And I think… I think I’m crazy about him.” The admission is a raw, vulnerable thing. “Why can’t he just see it? All of this… the competing, the arguing… it’s just because I’m stupid about him. This is so stupid.”

Inside the costume, Seungmin’s breath stops.

His heart doesn’t just hammer — it detonates. A supernova of panic and hope and sheer, unadulterated disbelief. His palms go slick against the suit’s lining. His vision blurs not from sweat this time, but from the sudden, hot sting behind his eyes.

Seungmin is positively dying. The heat is unbearable, a sweltering, suffocating blanket. His lungs burn, and he isn’t sure if it’s from lack of air or from the sheer, overwhelming pressure of the confession.

The irony is a physical pain.

Here is Hwang Hyunjin, the man he has pined for over a year, finally, finally speaking the words Seungmin has ached to hear, and he is saying them to… him. To the costume. To the very barrier that has, for one absurd day, allowed this truth to finally break free.

A wave of furious, ridiculous, soul-crushing jealousy washes over him. He is violently, insanely jealous of himself. He is jealous of the fluffy, anonymous entity that is receiving Hyunjin’s tender, unvarnished affection while Kim Seungmin, the man inside, only ever receives his barbs and his competitive fire.

He wants to rip the head off. He wants to grab Hyunjin by the shoulders and scream, It’s me! I’m right here! I’ve been crazy about you too! But he is paralysed, trapped in a prison of his own making and synthetic fur, listening to the most beautiful, most frustrating words of his life, utterly powerless to respond.

So he does the only thing left.

He reaches out — a slow, plush paw — and gently rests it on top of Hyunjin’s folded arms.

No theatrics. No mime. Just warmth. Just presence.

And then, impossibly, Hyunjin leans into the touch — just slightly — and whispers, “Thanks, PuppyM. You’re a good friend.”

Inside the suit, Seungmin closes his eyes.

I’m not your friend, he thinks.

I’m the idiot who’s been in love with you since you defended a Pantone shade like it was a human right.

✦✦✦

The atrium is quiet now.

Not silent — never that. The hum of distant traffic seeps through the glass doors; a bouncy castle deflates with a long, mournful sigh. But the chaos has receded, leaving behind the tender intimacy of aftermath. The last string of lights is coiled with care, the final discarded candy cane wrapper picked up from the floor.

Hyunjin volunteers to help with clean up. Not out of duty, but because he needs to move, to do, to outrun the ache in his chest that’s been growing since his conversation with PuppyM. He moves through the space in a daze, his body operating on autopilot, stacking chairs and gathering abandoned crafts, folding discarded name tags into neat little squares — as if order might quiet the storm inside him.

He carries a box of unused snowflake cut-outs toward the storage closet, the last of the décor to be packed away. The door is slightly ajar, as if someone left in a hurry. He nudges it open with his hip.

And stops.

Time doesn’t so much stop as tilt.

Inside, lit by a single strip of overhead light, stands Kim Seungmin — back turned, drenched in sweat, hair plastered to his forehead, one arm still tangled in the cream-coloured foam of the PuppyM suit. The costume is unzipped down to his waist, revealing a damp white shirt and the sharp lines of his shoulder blades. He is wrestling an arm free, his breaths coming in tired, ragged pants.

As Hyunjin steps forward, his foot connects with something soft and round. The giant, grinning head of PuppyM rolls a few inches, coming to a stop at his feet, its vacant black eyes staring blankly up at him.

Hyunjin’s voice is a whisper, disbelieving. “...Seungmin?”

Seungmin freezes. Not a muscle moves. He doesn’t turn. Doesn’t breathe. For a moment, Hyunjin wonders if he’s imagining it — some fever dream conjured by glitter fumes and emotional exhaustion.

Then Seungmin slowly, painfully, turns around.

His expression is pure, unguarded panic.

Caught.

Their eyes meet.

Hyunjin’s brain, so often a theatre of grand concepts and dramatic flourishes, becomes a silent, whirring machine, slotting the final, impossible piece into a puzzle he didn’t even know he was solving. The sass in the mascot’s tilt. The trips that were a little too precise. The warm, comforting paws. The secretly offered candy canes. The gentle, infuriating, wonderful attentiveness.

“Oh,” Hyunjin whispers.

Then, softer: “Oh.”

“Hyunjin. I can explain—"

But Hyunjin isn’t listening. A slow, dawning, wondrous smile spreads across his face, erasing the last traces of his earlier frustration. The truth doesn’t feel like a betrayal. It feels like a revelation.

“It was you,” he says, his voice soft with awe. “The whole time.”

Seungmin braces himself, his shoulders tensing. He looks away, his cheeks flushing a furious, mortified red. “Go on. Say it. It’s pathetic. I know it is.”

Hyunjin takes a step into the closet, the door swinging shut behind him, muffling the distant sounds of clean-up. The world shrinks to this dusty, poorly lit cube.

“Pathetic?” Hyunjin repeats, his voice losing all its earlier sharpness, becoming something tender and raw. He takes another step closer.

Seungmin risks a glance at him, confusion warring with his embarrassment. “It was a stupid idea,” he mutters, deflecting.

“You listened to me,” Hyunjin continues, now standing directly before him, close enough to see the individual droplets of sweat on his temple. “You heard me say... all those things.”

Seungmin watches him, wary now. Vulnerable. “Yeah… So, now you know: no secret crush making out in storage closets. Just me, slowly dying in polyester.”

The charged silence that follows is thicker than the fur of the discarded costume. It is full of every sarcastic email, every stolen glance, every backhanded compliment that was really a love letter in disguise.

Hyunjin’s gaze is unbearably soft. “Why can’t the real you just be like that with me?”

Seungmin’s own defences, the fortress of logic and cool reason he has spent a year building, finally crumbles. He looks up, meeting Hyunjin’s gaze, his own eyes wide and vulnerable. “Because the real me is terrified,” he admits, the words a hushed, painful truth. “Terrified that you’d laugh in my face. Just like you’re doing now.”

The smile vanishes from Hyunjin’s face, replaced by an expression of such utter sincerity it steals the air from Seungmin’s lungs. “I’m not laughing, Seungmin. I’ve never been more serious in my life. Why didn’t you just tell me?”

Seungmin’s lips curve — small, honest, terrified. “Same reason you didn’t.”

Hyunjin closes the final, negligible distance between them. His hand comes up, his fingers gently brushing the damp hair from Seungmin’s forehead. “You’re right. As usual. Now shut up,” he whispers, a ghost of his old smirk returning. “I owe a very specific puppy a kiss.”

The air in the closet seems to crystallize around them, a world built of dust motes and shared, ragged breaths. Seungmin doesn’t move, doesn’t breathe, his entire existence narrowed to the point where Hyunjin’s thumb is stroking a slow, impossible arc against his temple.

Hyunjin doesn’t rush. He has waited through a year of miscommunication, through spreadsheets and sticky notes and a war of petty, beautiful emails. He can wait these last few, perfect seconds. His other hand comes up to cradle Seungmin’s jaw, his touch achingly gentle against the flushed, overheated skin. He guides him, not with force, but with a silent question.

Seungmin’s eyes flutter shut, a final surrender. His own hands, still clumsy in the heavy half-suit, come to rest on Hyunjin’s waist, fingers twisting weakly into the soft fabric of his sweater, anchoring himself to the solid, real warmth of him.

The first touch of their lips is not fireworks. It’s a sigh given physical form. It’s a quiet, trembling convergence, a homecoming to a place neither had fully dared to imagine.

Hyunjin’s mouth is soft, his kiss a slow exploration — a careful mapping of a truth he’s just been handed. It tastes of salt and exhaustion and the faint, stolen sweetness of a candy cane. It’s tender. It’s an apology and an answer all at once. He kisses him like he’s something precious and long-misunderstood, like he’s trying to communicate a year’s worth of frustrated admiration into this single, perfect point of contact.

Seungmin melts into it, a quiet, shuddering release of a tension he’s carried for so long he’d forgotten its weight. A sound escapes him, a soft, broken thing against Hyunjin’s mouth, and he kisses back with a desperate, grateful certainty. This — the clumsy affection, the hidden warmth, the ridiculous, steadfast loyalty — this was the language he’d been trying to speak all along.

When they finally part, it’s only by a breath. Their foreheads rest together, noses brushing. Hyunjin’s eyes are still closed, his long lashes casting shadows on his cheeks. Seungmin keeps his own shut, afraid that if he opens them, the spell will break and he’ll find himself alone in the closet again.

“So,” Hyunjin murmurs, his voice a low, vibrating hum that Seungmin feels in his very bones. “The real Kim Seungmin is a secret romantic who communicates through tactical hugs and contraband sweets.”

Seungmin’s laugh is a shaky puff of air against Hyunjin’s lips. “The real Hwang Hyunjin is annoyingly perceptive when he stops being a drama queen.”

Hyunjin smiles, a real, unguarded smile that crinkles the corners of his eyes. He dips in to steal another brief, sweet kiss, because he can. Because he finally knows.

“And what else is the real Kim Seungmin?” he whispers, his lips moving against Seungmin’s.

Seungmin finally opens his eyes. In the stark fluorescent light, still sweaty and half-trapped in a mascot suit, he has never looked more sure. “Yours,” he says, the word simple, devastating, and utterly final. “If you’ll have him.”

Hyunjin’s answer is to kiss him again, deeper this time, pouring all the unspoken words from a hundred emails and a thousand glances into the gentle, claiming pressure.

When they emerge from the closet several minutes later, their hands are entwined. Hyunjin’s hair is more dishevelled than any mascot could have managed, and Seungmin’s glasses are slightly crooked. They are both flushed, slightly breathless, and glowing with a light that has nothing to do with the twinkling Christmas decorations.

From across the now nearly-empty atrium, Lee Minho doesn’t even look up from his phone. He simply holds out his hand, palm up, to a grumbling Changbin.

“Pay up,” Minho says, his voice flat. “I told you the combined pressure of event planning and forced proximity would break them before New Year’s.”

Changbin pulls out his wallet with a theatrical sigh. “I had my money on a dramatic office printer-related incident. Fine.” He slaps a stack of notes into Minho’s waiting hand.

A chorus of groans rises from the rest of the team as they begin digging into their own pockets, cash changing hands in a flurry of resigned amusement. Jisung, witnessing the scene, lets out a dramatic gasp and pretends to faint backwards into a laughing Felix’s arms.

Jeongin is already on his phone, officially closing the ‘Great Pining Pool’ with a flourish and calculating the distribution of winnings. “Hyungs, you’re legally required to buy us drinks.”

Hyunjin and Seungmin just look at each other and laugh, a real, unguarded sound that finally, blessedly, includes them both in the same private joke.

And Bang Chan just stands by the main doors, a stack of folded tables beside him, watching it all unfold. He doesn’t move. He just watches his two most brilliant, most stubborn kids, finally, finally, get their act together. A profound, relieved, deeply dad-like smile spreads across his face, warmer than any festive lighting, more satisfying than any perfectly executed event. It is, at long last, a victory for everyone.

Outside, snow falls in gentle spirals, blanketing the city in quiet magic.

Inside, love — ridiculous, stubborn, and finally unhidden — has just come home.

Just in time for Christmas.

✦✦✦

Monday morning arrives with the gentle cruelty of all Monday mornings. The SKZOO LAB office hums back to life, the residual magic of the Family Day stubbornly clinging to the air in the form of a half-deflated balloon tangled in the ceiling tiles and a collective, pleasant exhaustion. The frantic energy has been replaced by a contented, post-victory calm.

At 9:14 AM, Hwang Hyunjin stands before the Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-1000. He is not alone.

Kim Seungmin stands beside him, shoulder to shoulder, close enough that the sleeve of his crisp, blue shirt brushes against the soft wool of Hyunjin’s jumper. There is no duel today. Only a shared, quiet anticipation as the printer whirs to life and begins to spit out the first draft of post-event infographics.

The first page slides into the tray. They both reach for it at the same time. Their fingers brush. A month ago, it would have been a spark of conflict. A week ago, a jolt of confused electricity. Now, it is simply a point of contact, warm and familiar. Hyunjin’s fingers curl around Seungmin’s, giving them a gentle, deliberate squeeze before releasing them to pick up the paper.

“Helvetica,” Seungmin observes, a faint, knowing smile playing on his lips as he looks at the typeface. “Legible. On-brand.”

“It’s fine,” Hyunjin concedes, his voice a low, affectionate rumble. He doesn’t look at the report. His eyes are on Seungmin, tracing the line of his jaw, the way his glasses sit perfectly straight. “A bit beige, perhaps. But… fine.”

From his desk, Han Jisung watches them, but there is no groan of despair today. Only a soft, satisfied sigh as he turns back to his screen.

The peace is broken, as it always is, by the arrival of Jeongin with the coffee caddy. The ritual begins anew. Hyunjin’s eyes scan the cups. He sees the one marked ‘S.M’ and ‘DECAF’. His hand doesn’t stray towards it. Instead, he picks up his own triple-shot americano and takes a sip, his gaze never leaving Seungmin.

Seungmin, in turn, collects his decaf without a flicker of tension. He takes a sip, his expression serene.

Then, Hyunjin sets his cup down. He reaches into his bag and pulls out a single, perfect candy cane, its red stripe vibrant against the white. He places it gently on top of Seungmin’s tablet.

“For later,” Hyunjin says, his tone light, but his eyes are devastatingly sincere. “In case you need a… strategic sugar boost.”

A faint pink dusts Seungmin’s cheeks. He doesn’t offer a sarcastic retort. He doesn’t question the logic. He simply nods, a small, private smile gracing his features. “Thank you.”

Hyunjin and Seungmin walk back to their respective desks, the space between them no longer a charged demilitarized zone but a comfortable, well-worn path. Hyunjin’s hand drifts from the small of Seungmin’s back as they part, a touch so natural it is almost unconscious.

They settle into their chairs.

It is at that moment that the familiar, sharp ping of a new email cuts through the ambient office noise.

It comes from Seungmin’s computer first. A soft, single chime.

Then, like a chain reaction of digital dominoes, it echoes from every desk in the marketing department — a sudden, synchronized chorus of notifications.

Heads pop up over cubicle walls. Jisung pauses his game. Felix looks up from his colour swatches.

Hyunjin and Seungmin look at each other, a flicker of curiosity passing between them. Seungmin clicks the notification.

From: Hwang Hyunjin

To: Kim Seungmin ([email protected])

CC: [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

Subject: You

Kim Seungmin-ssi,

Following the recent project closure, I am conducting a review of persistent non-work-related variables affecting my focus. One variable in particular has shown a marked increase in frequency and intensity of recurrence.

For a detailed breakdown of said variable’s attributes, please see the aforementioned subject line.

Regards,
Hwang Hyunjin

A slow, private smile touches Seungmin’s lips. His reply is swift.

From: Kim Seungmin

To: Hwang Hyunjin ([email protected])

CC: [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

Subject: RE: You

Hwang Hyunjin-ssi,

Thank you for your inquiry. I have run a parallel diagnostic and can confirm a similar persistent variable in my own systems. The impact on operational efficiency is severe, though not unwelcome.

Further investigation is required to determine compatibility and long-term integration potential. I propose a closed-door meeting to discuss findings.

Sincerely,
Kim Seungmin

Hyunjin’s grin is unstoppable now. He leans forward, typing with theatrical precision.

From: Hwang Hyunjin

To: Kim Seungmin ([email protected])

CC: [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

Subject: RE: RE: You

Seungmin-ssi,

Your proposal for a bilateral review is approved. Preliminary scans suggest our findings are not just compatible, but redundantly aligned.

For clarity’s sake, and to preclude any misinterpretation in future audits of this correspondence, let me state plainly: I really like you. The subject line of this thread was intended as a concise summary of this fact.

Awaiting your availability for deeper collaboration.

Best,

Hyunjin

From: Kim Seungmin

To: Hwang Hyunjin ([email protected])

CC: [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

Subject: RE: RE: RE: You

My earliest availability for the proposed sync is now. The break room.

P.S. Me too.

Yours,

Seungmin

Hyunjin reads it, and a soft, breathless laugh escapes him. He finally glances over. Seungmin is looking at his screen, the picture of professional focus, but the tips of his ears are a brilliant, tell-tale pink.

From: Hwang Hyunjin

To: Kim Seungmin ([email protected])

CC: [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

Subject: RE: RE: RE: RE: You

I know.

Yours,

Hyunjin

A beat of perfect, stunned silence.

Then, from the corner of the room, Lee Minho lets out a loud, long-suffering sigh. “For God’s sake,” he mutters, though there’s no real heat in it. “Do you have to be this nauseating before I finish my coffee?”

And as the winter sun finally breaks through the Seoul clouds, casting a weak, golden light across the beige carpet, Hwang Hyunjin throws his head back and laughs, the sound rich and unburdened, while Kim Seungmin finally, properly, allows himself to smile back.