Chapter Text
It was just any ordinary day: I commuted to my office by subway, got to my desk at 9 sharp, worked through what seemed like an endless amount of code for a new game Mino Soft was releasing, and was on my way to the first floor, ready to go home. That was precisely the moment my day became UNordinary.
It was 5:30 pm and the side walks were filled with other office workers who worked a 9 to 5. Normally in Korea, people never gave a shit about anything that didn’t directly concern them. I’ve seen people ignore literal buildings on fire, instead choosing to cross the sidewalk, only looking up from their phone long enough to glare at the fire like it was the most annoying thing they’ve seen all day. Yet today, they were whispering and shrieking, looking over their shoulders to get another glance at something.
Honestly, I couldn’t care less. It was likely some celeb walking in or out of the entertainment company building next door. I swiped my work ID against the barricade and it clicked open with the usual automated voice message “Thank you for another hard day of work, Mr. Kim Dokja.” As I walked to the front exit, I realized that my phone was buzzing. The screen displayed the message I least wanted to see in the world: Incoming Call from Deputy Han Myungoh.
“Hello?” I asked, picking up the call.
“Dokja-ssi!” Came the deputy’s sleazy voice. “You haven’t left work yet, have you?” The distinct sounds of tinny club music came from his end of the call. I rolled my eyes but kept my voice nice and civil.
“No, sir, I was just on my wa-”
“Good, good, so I’m sure you can do one more favor for me, yes?” He cuts in. Without giving me time to speak, he keeps going. “I have a meeting with a pro gamer today in 30 minutes, but I left work at 5 today, so please cover for me. Everything you need to know and get him to do is on my desk. I’m sure you’ll do amazing. I’ll expect a detailed report on the meeting tomorrow at 10 sharp so I can hand it to the CEO immediately. Good luck.”
And with that the man hangs up. “Fuckkkk” I mutter. I spin on my heels and march back to the barricade, logging in for an overtime session. Again. I run to the elevator, spamming the up button. I have to get to the 20th floor where Deputy Pain-In-My-Ass’ office is, then get to the conference room on the 28th floor and somehow review what I’m sure is going to be pages and pages of disorganized notes for the meeting in… I checked my pocket watch, 28 minutes.
Finally a ding announced the arrival of an elevator and I raced on, hitting the button for 20th floor and spamming the CLOSE button. I didn’t notice the tall, stunningly handsome man dressed in dark clothes looking at me, his gaze predatorial with just a hint of amusement.
As the elevator took me up, I toyed with my pocket watch. It was an old, silver pocket watch designed with a small, circular opening at the center on the lid which flipped open with a satisfying click to reveal a beautiful, intricate watch face. The lid itself was pure silver with mesmerizing swirls and sharp angles coming together to form a work of art.
The elevator stopped on the 20th floor and I pocketed the watch, running off the elevator to Deputy Han’s desk. I searched his desk for a minute and found the papers with ease, his desk rather familiar to me with the amount of time I’d spent doing favors for him. I was hurriedly reading through the documents as I ran back to the elevators. Just as I arrived, the doors started to close on an elevator heading up. “Wait! Please stop!” I shouted desperately.
Thankfully someone inside opened the doors again. “Thank you so much,” I panted, pressing “28” on the elevator.
“No problem,” said a familiar, warm, feminine voice.
“Deputy Yoo,” I said, surprised. Sangah-ssi smiled warmly at me.
“There’s no need for such formalities.” She said. “We used to both be contract employees, remember?”
“Yes, but it’s been a year since you became a full-time employee and 4 months since you became a deputy.” I argued. It’s also been exactly a year since that day.
“You talk like you’re still a contract employee,” Sangah-ssi says sternly. “It’s been 8 months since you became a full-timer yourself you know.”
“Yet Deputy Han is still asking me for these ridiculous favors.” I say, gesturing to the stack of papers in my hand. The elevator dings. 28th floor. “Speaking of which, I have to run.” I tell Sangah-ssi without waiting for her reply. “I’ll see you around, Sangah-ssi.”
I run off the elevator to the conference room. It’s a long, long hallway, which gives me enough time to reminisce about this day a year ago. It was the day the love of my life, my reason for living died.
So to speak. It was the day the last chapter of TWSA was uploaded. The author uploaded a public notification saying that they’d add an epilouge soon, but they never did. The novel is still available online, but the epilouge was never published, and TWSA is still marked as a WIP. I tried contacting the author through their email, the comment section, and even their homepage on the webnovel site, but nothing worked. It was almost like they never existed at all.
I shook my head a little to clear the thoughts of TWSA from my head. ‘Focus,’ I scolded myself. ‘Put those reading skills to good use and get through these documents already.’
I practically slid into the meeting room chair and continued reading through the material. 17 minutes until the gamer was due to arrive. Unless…
A sharp knock sounded on the door. An employee who I didn’t know poked their head in and said hurriedly “Deputy Han, Yoo Joonghyuk-ssi is a bit early, but I’ll send him in now. Thank you so much, sir! I apologize sir!” Then he left in a hurry. I was extremely confused until I realized that his employee ID had been orange. The ID color of new interns.
I sighed and organized my papers as best as I could. Thankfully I’d been able to read through all of them thanks to my fast reading speed, but I didn’t have a chance to look at them in detail. Oh well. Nothing to do about that now.
I rose, straightened my tie and opened the door only to face a wall of taut muscles hidden under the thin fabric of a black dress shirt. I had to tilt my head slightly upward to make eye contact. This was a pro-gamer? I would have guessed he was an athlete by his height and build. I schooled my features into neutrality and pasted a smile on my face.
“Good evening, Yoo Joonghyuk-ssi, my name is Kim Dokja. I’ll be filling in for Deputy Han for our meeting today on account of him having an urgent situation to attend to. But I assure you-that will not, in any way, affect the quality or contents of your meeting today.” Yoo Joonghyuk’s face remained stoic and cold throughout my little spiel. He gave the tiniest inclination of his head, as if giving me permission to proceed.
Instantly, my smile went from customer-service to you’re-a-prick-but-I-still-have-to-deal-with-you. “Please, have a seat.” I said through gritted teeth. “Would you like something to drink? Water? Coffee? Tea?” He strode into the room on his long legs, taking the seat across from mine.
“I don’t eat anything made by other people.” he said—no—stated flatly.
I gave him my best smile. “No problem,” I turned slightly to the nervous intern from earlier. “Intern-ssi? Hi, yes, could you send up one coffee please? Iced and black. Thank you.” I strode in, taking my sweet-ass time because frankly, the guy was a prick and he deserved it. I sat and crossed my legs and arms, leaning back slightly.
I took a moment to catalouge everything about him based on the files from earlier and my short interaction with him. He was currently sitting on the chair with perfect posture with his elbows resting on the table and his long, white fingers lightly interlaced with each other.
He seemed to have eyebrows seemingly drawn by a single, uninterrupted stroke of a famed artist’s brush, a nose and a chin shaped in perfect angles that defied attempts to measure them through mere devices of men. He had a pair of deep eyes seemingly carved out of a beautiful jewel containing all the misfortunes found in this world. I dimly registered in the back of my mind that if someone saw those features and did not get immediately drawn in by them, then there must be something wrong with that person.
The intern practically ran in with the iced coffee before scurrying back out. “So, Joonghyuk-ssi, as you already know, we at Mino Soft are extremely interested in you as a gamer and streamer. We would love to have you as an official ambassador for L■■■■■ of Legends for the next 9 years. We’d be willing to offer you ■■■■■■■■ won for endorsing the game and an additional ■■■■■■■■ won per ad. We’d also assign you a manager from Mino Soft to make finances and future contracting and the like easier for you.”
“Give me the contract.” He said coldly.
“Of course,” I smiled, sliding it across the table to him. ‘Please sign it and leave.’ I prayed in my head. I handed him a company-issued ball point pen and let him leaf through the contract. His eyes ran furiously over the lines and I could see his gaze sparkle and shift from time to time and I couldn’t help but wonder which clauses made him look like that.
I recalled seeing a line in the documents from Deputy Han that the higher ups at Mino Soft were desperate to get this guy contracted. Which made sense, because he was world ranked #1 for our game, L■■■■■ of Legends, and his streams were what brought the game into main stream media and made it the top PC game in Asia since a year ago. He was infamous amongst game companies for not taking any sponsorships or endorsing any brands at all.
Even his Y■■tube videos didn’t have ads or sponsors. Yet various companies kept trying to get him to accept them as his sponsor and he didn’t even dignify them with a response until 2 days ago, when he replied to Mino Soft’s email with a simple “6 pm on Thursday, Mino Soft building. 30 minutes.”
There was a huge buzz about it in the company and they made all of us sign NDAs to make sure the news didn’t hear of it until we got a yes. If we got rejected and no one found out, no harm no foul. The higher ups were desperate to keep it under wraps in case it failed to make sure our media wouldn’t destroy our reputation. They were equally desperate to get him to sign.
I distinctly remembered seeing 2 pages of things I was able to add to the contract to try and get him to sign with us, the last of which was “Give him anything he asks for as long as you’re 1000% sure it’s within the budget mentioned above.”
I heard the tell tale scratching of the cheap pen on paper and glanced at him. “I have two conditions.” he said, voice deep and demanding. “First,” he slid the paper across the desk at me. “Match that price.” Without moving a finger from my position, I glanced at the paper. Just within the budget.
“Done.” I said coolly. “Your second condition?”
He gave me a smile that was so predatorial it almost made me bolt right then. I calmed myself and met his gaze, maintaining my bravado. His smile shifted into a smirk as I held his gaze for a few beats.
“You,” he said—no, growled—“You have to be my manager for the entirety of the contract.”