3

Tap, tap, tap.

The marker in my hand pecked the whiteboard.

"So, students," I turned to the imaginary students in 3D. "Today, we learn science."

In my defence, I was bored as hell in the room with nothing to do. Jeon hadn't even bothered to check if someone was up to train me. He had left his cabin around fifteen minutes ago.

This had to be on purpose. Just because I was five minutes late? Deliberate.

I got the feeling that he hated me long before we met and that's seriously messed up. I mean, what the hell was so bad about me clicking a link that he would have to create a phishing test to trap me? Creepy, I'd say.

I drew a horizontal line with the green marker, marking it in quick pats, "This axis," I continued for my imaginary students, tapping on the y-axis. "measures the consequences. Very high. Very scary—yet. Yet, very ambitious."

"This axis," I proceeded and tapped the x-axis. "measures how much you fucked around. Also very high. Very scary. Ambitious. Teaches us the importance of consequences, doesn't it? Pay attention, class." I hit the marker on the board, pretending that the class made just enough noise for me to raise my voice. My imaginary students found their y-axis and stopped talking.

"Therefore," I began, stretching the line of the graph diagonally upwards. "The more you fuck around, the more you...? Come on, tell me. Look at the graph. The more we fuck around, the more we..."

"Find out?" A male voice boomed.

Frack.

The marker slipped and fell to the floor and I spun around. My hands pressed backwards into the board behind me. And yes, I might have looked like a cornered mouse there.

But who the hell waltzes in like this so unannounced?

The answer would be, Jeon Jungkook and another man of similar height.

Not one but two witnesses.

What the fuck?

The second guy snorted. Then wheezed. And soon enough—he burst out laughing.

I grabbed the duster and began wiping the board, pretending like I hadn't just seen Jungkook holding his laughter behind the hand that covered his face. I saw through that, Mr Glass Wall.

The duster squeaked against the fresh marker. I erased the fuck around and find out markings. The block of duster slammed into the holder. I turned to them, arms locked behind me.

There was another beat of awkward silence between us.

Jeon cleared his throat.

"Miss Kang," he began, his voice syrupy-smooth. "This is Park Bo Gum. He will be responsible for your training sessions as per my email to you."

Right. Park Bo Gum. I took a quick look at the guy. Military haircut, charming smile and bright eyes. Seemed really confident with his toned body too. Decent. Plus, he didn't look like one of those office workers who were off from the start. But two years at Neureva had taught me that a safety net was always better.

"Hello, Mr Park." I bowed, my mouth drying up.

"Let's skip the formalities, Miss Kang. You can call me Bo Gum." He walked ahead, offering a cool corporate handshake, and I didn't deny it.

"Haerin," I said, slightly bowing when we shook our hands.

"Please sit, both of you." Jeon interrupted and I crawled back to my chair.

Bo Gum took the seat in front of me while his boss hovered around the table until he was in the centre. He put his palms on the surface, leaning down.

His eyes panned to me, "I hope the reason for your presence here is clear, Miss Kang."

I cracked a smile. "Yes. Your email was crystal."

He nodded. Crisp. God—was this man too handsome for what he was doing to me. Un-fucking-fair.

"Perfect. This training session is only your y-axis." He toned and my face caught fire. "When you clicked the fraudulent link last week, much of the data we found belonged to a vulnerable client who had been suffering from a rare cancer. Once the documents would have been uploaded there, you would have had a hard time keeping your job. The hospital responsible for stacking the data you file was supposed to keep some confidential data with them. You can imagine the loss the company would have to bear."

Okay, Dad. Go ahead and lecture me.

I could have said sorry.

I could have said I understood—that I won't repeat it again and shit.

But heck no. Not to this Jeon guy. He was scratching my nerves with his voice. So I was not backing down here.

He sighed, rubbing his forehead.

"This training will last for four weeks. Mr Park is responsible for covering the topics with you. He will make sure that you don't climb the x-axis any further."

What the hell, Jeon Jungkook?

Park Bo Gum tried to hide his laugh but this man couldn't stop snorting.

"If you do," Mr Jeon continued like he was standing in the parliament. "We will meet at the y-axis with all your imaginary students, Miss Kang."

Hah.

My jaw parted, eyes snapping up. No way. No way. He challenged me — to my face?

I drove my fingers through my hair, biting my lip.

"Each Friday, a written report from Bo Gum." This man just could not stop talking all of a sudden. "About Miss Kang's improvement, quiz reports, behavioural patterns that she may exhibit."

"Patterns?" I echoed, deadpan.

"Yes." He smiled at me. "Reports of your affinity to the whiteboard, persisting to rise ambitiously on the graphs. Leading imaginary lectures. The usual."

Was this man sent from Neureva's hell department?

Bo Gum's shoulders were shaking now.

Great. Now he thought I was a joke too. Perfect.

"I assure you," I dryly said. "My affinity to the whiteboard graphs will be kept minimal."

Jeon's lips quirked. "Perfect." His voice dropped, syrupy all over again. "We wouldn't want the consequences to spike catastrophically on the y-axis."

Wait.

The back of my neck felt warm. My vision spun red. I glowered, my nails turning white on the table.

War. This was declaring war on me.

But everything was so red in my head that I missed it. I missed the opportunity to say it quickly enough. Now it would be awkward.

"Any questions?" He raised a brow, and God, I died wanting to shave his brows off. Then you speak—fucking Jeonalisa!

"No, Mr Jeon." Bo Gum answered for the both of us. He was trying his best to hide his laughter but his eyes were red. He was failing at it.

"Great." Jeonalisa nodded. "I'll leave you two to follow the...curriculum." he eyed me again. AGAIN? "Try not to find out too much, Miss Kang."

Try not to find out too much? Try not to punch your Jeonalisa brows off to the y-axis, Jeon Jungkook.

That was it. I hated him. Hated him like a fart trapped in an elevator full of executives.

He spun around and modelled his way out of the room, leaving me in a dilemma of whether to breathe first or to curse at him.

"Those eyebrows," I muttered. "Gone. Gone if he does that one more time."

"What?" Bo Gum laughed again.

But nothing was funny anymore. Everything was war.

He was still laughing when he stood up and connected his laptop to the HDMI cable. "Mr Jeon isn't always like this, you know." He clicked a few buttons on his laptop, rechecking if it was plugged in correctly.

"I don't mean any offence but that sounds like something from an R-rated book." I sighed, leaning back in my seat. "Probably what the villain's assistant would say to show his human side."

I couldn't shake the smug image of him from my head. He was evil! He looked like he ate eyebrows and professional bullies for breakfast.

Bo Gum chuckled again. He grabbed the remote, staring at the screen that flicked to blue. "I mean, your mistake did cost him a lot. He was stuck in a five-hour meeting on a Saturday. Had to pull all-nighters over the weekend to make sure he saved the disaster from happening." He explained.

The screen popped, showing the slide — Cybersecurity Basics for Miss Kang.

My fingers stopped tapping on the table. "He worked over the weekend for this?"

"Yes." Bo Gum said, returning to his laptop to check a few more things. Probably the list of slides to slap on my face. "You clicked the link twice that day, right? The first one was a warning. The second one was a breach risk."

I didn't remember what I ate last night. Like hell, would I remember how many times I clicked that unknown link on Friday? But saying something like that wouldn't look nice. So I shut up and just stared.

"He had to manually isolate the vulnerable files. Apparently, had to spend the night in the server room to make sure he didn't waste a single second." Bo Gum sighed.

Okay. Now this was starting to look like an exaggerated story. No way a single click impacted Mr Jeon this much.

I squinted at the screen and then at him.

"So..." I tilted my head, "..you're saying that his eyebrows are shaveable because I ruined his weekend?"

"Pretty much."

The normal script to this said that I had to shrivel into a hole and not come out for days. Take a quiet moment to reflect, be sorry for my mistake and all that shit—but not me.

See, I have this thing where I only keep ten apologies in my kit—learned the hard way. You give one to the wrong person, and suddenly, you're the one who owes everyone, even if you're in the right. I'm not wasting any on people who barely know me. I'd rather save them for when it actually matters—like when someone I care about really needs it, or when I truly mess up. And this? This isn’t it.

He could have tried to understand, to reason, schedule a meeting—wait. He did that. I didn't attend it.

But still! He was being way too snarky with me!

I clicked the pen I had rescued from the pen holder in front of me. "Not my fault I'm not the wife he dreamt of taking his rage out on. We're professionals. I would have been equally screw—in trouble if things had turned into a disaster. The least I expect from someone showing me my mistakes is politeness."

Bo Gum chuckled, finally sighing once the set-up was structured. "You're something else, Miss Kang."

Something else?. That's what people say before they screw you over. That's what Jong Suk said right before his mother talked badly about my family. It stuck with me. One minute, everything was fine. But my trust apparently costed ten bucks. Because his mother showed up with her fancy words and judgment, and suddenly, I was the girl who wasn't good enough. That's when I realized: people like him will only use your mistakes to push you down, and the second you trust them, they'll stab you in the back with it. I'm not making that mistake again.

The benefit of the doubt—this was professional, and that was personal, but they were still people.

Park Bo Gum was a good teacher and we didn't have much to cover in one hour of training. Just the basics were shown. I knew most of the basic material, but Park Bo Gum, being a cybersecurity professional, brought some additional insight into it. Cool.

The rest of the day was a mess. Mr Min even called me to his office to express his disappointment again. I promised that I would cover this up with the training session. And something told me that I was going to be fine. Jeon Jungkook was not. I had to make sure of that.

•••

If my life had a subplot that was responsible for my downfall—it would be my family.

Dad messaged me around 5 in the evening: my aunties had come over, so I had to rush back to my house before it turned into a festival. My mom and dad were flute players on the corner of a street, attracting our relatives over like an eager crowd.

I hated going home because of this. My parents made the house a circus of guests and they were everything but the ringmasters.

I had barely stepped in through the door with my laptop tucked in my arm. Barely. One of the kids zoomed in between my knees. I slapped the floor, and for a moment, my life flashed before my eyes, along with the laptop.

"Mom!" I cried out, desperately, getting on my feet. "Mom get these creatures away!"

"You're home!" The kid—one of the many that my aunties had produced—jumped. He was barely of conscious age so I pretended like I hadn't seen him. It was either that or committing a crime.

I kicked my sandals off by the door and stomped my way towards the chaos in the living room.

"Here she comes!" I heard my father's pretentious laughter hunting me out. I wanted to melt into the floor.

He grabbed my arm, leading me to the living room like a security guard. But right before we could enter he turned to me, "That bank loan is supposed to get deducted tomorrow morning. Wire the money quickly, okay?"

I blinked to reboot my brain.

Inside the living room, a boisterous circus was in full swing. My aunts were sprawled on the sofa, laughing. Teacups were scattered around, dishes with half-eaten food, plastic cups and children gnawing on favourite midnight biscuits. The older cousins were farther near the window, pulled into their mobile phones, unbothered that I was there. The uncles—not in action, were probably boozing in the backyard.

"Oh Haerin!" One of the aunts yelled my name. "Did you learn to drive yet?"

"How many times have I told this child to take some time off and learn to drive." My mother stepped in to make sure the insults hit. "The car she bought is in the parking, standing uselessly."

I forced a smile. Yeah—she was right. Besides the fact that everything I earned was sucked dry, to begin with.

"Oh, she's a girl." One of the ladies spoke up again. "Had it been a boy, he would have found a way out to learn to drive, license or not."

That fucking hurt.

And my mother's face fell a bit. Well, my aunt was going to be smacked with the same car if she didn't shut up.

Apparently, my mom had complications in conceiving me. Somehow, she was never able to bear children after I was born. I was barely surviving to come out of her. How would I even have the chance to ruin her conception health? But these aunts had just returned from a sage's monastery, I guess. Whatever they said had to be gospel.

"Mom..." I pulled her closer behind Dad. "Are you seriously going to let them talk like that sitting on our couch?"

"Leave it, Haerin." She brushed it off, "And talking about the couch, don't you think ours is a bit worn out? Can you buy a new one?"

My mother looked a lot like me—or the other way around. We both have the same long coffee hair, an oval face and brown eyes. Pretty standard. In fact, most of my relatives rejoiced at how I looked exactly like my mother did when she was my age. It's a compliment, really. But I can swear that when I am her age, I'm not going to ask my daughter to buy a couch when she doesn't even have the space to sit on it.

I hated this family so much, save my parents of course.

"You're thinking of a couch right now?" I glowered at her.

"Yeah!" She nudged me. "If you're not going to learn to drive—"

That was it.

I turned and dashed upstairs to the haven of my room. I slammed the door shut.

They really drove me to the edge.

"Sis!"

What?

I turned. Another tiny tot on my bed. For goodness sake! Can I rest? In my own house? In my own room?

"Don't sis me, kid. Make sure you stay there." I warned and put my laptop on the desk.

I had promised Park Bo Gum to cover one of the training modules at home. He had to make sure that I had done it by the end of the day. Thank goodness he was lenient.

It took me around fifteen minutes to change into my pyjamas and get set to start my laptop again. The tiny cousin I couldn't even remember the name of stood beside my chair. Wide-eyed. Hopeful. Stupid. I'm not being rude but he looked like an idiot there. I looked at him like a doctor breaking bad news.

No big man. This is not in my plan. You are not in my plan.

I put my cup of coffee a little farther away from my laptop—farther away from the big man next to me too. Couldn't risk something like a tot ruining my laptop.

Well, working late was a drag. Poor Mr Jeon had to work his butt off because of me—haha! I wish I could say that. But he deserved it. For being a prick in the future.

A thought popped up. A bulb glowed.

I clicked on Cirq—the company's official messaging application—admiring my profile for a moment before changing my status from active to away. My fingers smacked the keyboard, tingling as I typed out his name. Jeon Jungkook.

Nice name, let's be honest. His name did sound cool.

He appeared among a list of other Jeon Jungkook-s in the organisation which was funny. They could be the Spiderman meme.

I clicked on his name and his chat screen flashed open. No messages between us. Deserving. On the top right below his name, his designation was signed and then marked as offline. Of course, he had logged off.

I clicked on his organisation chart. He was pretty high up there. His reporting was directly to the Chief Executive Officer? How was that possible? I mean—shouldn't there have been two to three people before he reached there. Next, someone's going to tell me he invented sliced bread and is in a Korean Pop Group.

Corruption. This man was corrupt and I knew it.

I smirked. Not like I cared. I could become the head of the department someday. Yeah. I could do that too.

You know when bad things happen to you, they happen like you're paying your karma. I looked to my right and that tiny b-word had climbed up the chair.

"Hey, you!" I tried to grab him but he jumped first. At me? At me!

He laughed but slammed on my laptop so hard that I rattled off my chair. What the fuck—

I rolled back and landed so ugly on the floor that it sounded like a bag of potatoes exploding.

"You bug of a person!" I screamed, my back already thronging as I grabbed the table and lifted myself up. No.

My jaw dropped.

This kid.

He had slammed random keys.

My heart.

My chat. This fuc—child had messaged Jeon Jungkook. Random words. A drooling emoji. A poop emoji next. A few random words again and a green heart!

My gut clenched as I hunched—the impact so bad that it felt physical.

I clutched my hair, eyes wide with disbelief.

"NOOOOOOOO!!!!!" Friends, Season 4, Episode 12, 15:30—Monica.