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“I am not going to whore myself out for fifty-thousand won,” Dokja says, sounding offended.
It’s an admirable ruse, considering the fact that he’s lying. Sooyoung met him in their second year of university, so she might not be as well-versed on the subject of Kim Dokja’s whoreism as, say, Yoo Joonghyuk, but two years have been plenty for her to become intimately acquainted with the knowledge that Dokja has sold himself out for less. The examples include but are not limited to:
- Spinning a sob story about his ailing, nonexistent grandmother to weasel his way out of paying the month’s rent;
- Becoming the TA for a class outside of his major just so he could scam a wider range of desperate students into exorbitantly priced tutoring;
- Getting paid to write essays for other students only to rip essays with a similar subject off the internet and change the wording the bare amount needed to avoid detection;
- Buying clothes at a thrift store for dirt cheap and reselling them for double, or sometimes even quadruple the price to unsuspecting fashion wannabes;
- Faking his death.
Least to say, Sooyoung isn’t convinced. “It’s the reward, isn’t it,” she says, narrowing her eyes. “How much do I have to pay you? One-fifty? Two hundred? How much is your rent anyway?” When Dokja opens his mouth to argue, already looking exasperated, she changes tactics. Clearly she’s not thinking along the same lines here. “I’m not asking you to whore yourself out,” Sooyoung says, trying to sound rational. “All I’m asking for is one tiny kiss. That’s all. PG-rated. Maybe a little tongue, if you’re feeling frisky. That’s hardly whoring yourself out.”
“I will die if I try to so much as approach Yoo Joonghyuk,” Dokja says, incredulous, “and you want me to be satisfied with two hundred thousand won?”
“Two hundred and fifty thousand, actually.”
Dokja groans and slams his head into the desk.
The issue at hand, Sooyoung thinks, is that Dokja doesn’t see the importance of this task. He’s too busy lurking in his little puddle of happiness composed of napping during club meetings, stealing bites of Yoo Joonghyuk’s food, freeloading, and generally being a weasel menace with the aged soul of a finely trained conman. He’s a useless man who entertains no fantasies of overthrowing the bourgeoisie or leading a revolution or the like, which would be fine if he was a normal person.
But he isn’t. Kim Dokja is the kind of asshole who’d get stabbed in a mugging and, instead of taking himself to the hospital, convince himself that it didn’t hurt that badly anyway and slap a bandaid on it. Call it a day.
Sooyoung knows, because she’s seen him do it. Most days she’d be okay with this, but not today. Three years she’s watched Kim Dokja’s weird mating habits that involve annoying his love interest into reciprocating his feelings, and she’s had it.
“The newest chapter of my novel,” Sooyoung says finally. Dokja’s head snaps up and his eyes focus on her with the intensity of an apex predator. She tries not to cringe out of her skin, with minimal success. “I’ll trade you that in exchange for a little kiss.”
She can practically see the calculations whirring in his head. “The chapter that you said was going to be delayed?” Dokja clarifies, eyes narrowed.
“Yeah, that one.”
“What’s the time limit for this kiss?”
“This weekend. At MT. Actually, make that the first day of MT, ending at midnight.”
“How long does it have to last?”
“At least three seconds, but it has to be clear that it wasn’t an accident.”
“Fuck you, Han Sooyoung,” he mutters, and then, “I’m going to need some proof that you have this supposed chapter. And also one hundred thousand won.”
“You expensive whore,” Sooyoung says back, but she gets out her phone and texts him the first two paragraphs of her latest chapter. All in the name of romance—and not enduring another minute of Yoo Joonghyuk’s fucking pining.
**
The free circus had been funny, at first. Her second year was a haze of stress, assignments, and a truly unwise amount of alcohol, but a real highlight of her semesters had always been watching Joonghyuk and Dokja do… whatever the hell it was that they did. The chair stealing. Name calling. Pedantic arguing for hours about irrelevant things, like the state of the economy or the politics of white men.
She’d known Joonghyuk before Dokja, and it was admittedly hilarious to see him get riled up in the face of it; she’d never seen him like that, so honest with his emotions, willing to engage and get all the more pissed off the entire time.
“You could walk away, you know,” Sooyoung had once pointed out, watching Joonghyuk slam his bag down on the library desk. They had been meeting for a group project, and it was surprising to realize that in the process, they’d befriended each other in the most reluctant way possible. “He does it to piss you off. You make it easy.”
“I could kill him,” Joonghyuk had muttered, then. He’d sounded awfully serious.
“You aren’t going to kill him.”
“I could.”
“How? By poisoning his food?” At that, they both grimaced. It was a well-known fact that Dokja barely ate, citing time and expenses; yet another Kim Dokja-ism that pissed Joonghyuk off, and Sooyoung, also. But only a little. “Plan it out more. He won’t fall for obvious tricks.”
“So if I get him to eat my food, I could poison him,” Joonghyuk concluded.
“Wh— Yoo Joonghyuk. ”
The next day, she’d received a sign-up sheet for the new Home Cooking Club. President Yoo Joonghyuk. Vice President Kim Dokja. Treasurer Han Sooyoung.
After that: history. Or a deep exercise in Sooyoung’s self-restraint. Whichever.
**
“When did you say this plan was going to happen?” Sangah murmurs to her.
They’re at the annual membership training of their club, all nine members sitting in a haphazard circle on the wooden floor of the resort. Outside, the snow is drifting in hefty clumps on the mountainside, doing its purpose of creating the cozy fireplace atmosphere inside their cabin/Airbnb/whatever nebulous axe murderer’s house that Lee Hyunsung managed to book for their trip. It’s been four hours since they’ve arrived, and with Sangah’s help, Sooyoung has managed to get everyone in the club to a healthy level of inebriety. The freshmen kids are swaying like the babiest of leaves in the wind, and Hyunsung may be attempting to make a coin stand on its middle to little success. Heewon is watching him with something like amused encouragement.
But the kicker, of course, is the two homosexual stars of the show: the President and Vice President of this stupid fucking club, both four shots of soju in, arguing at a volume like they’re at opposite ends of the room instead of sitting thigh-to-thigh.
“At least they’re sitting together,” Sooyoung says grimly, because this is what she’s been driven to: matchmaking. Like the host of a terrible romcom reality show on MBC. She isn't drunk enough for this.
Beside her, Sangah purses her lips, watching her crack open another bottle of soju. “Yes, but—”
“All I’m saying,” Dokja The Fucking Idiot declares, cutting her off, “is that the flat earthers are onto something.”
It must be part instinct, the speed at which Joonghyuk reacts to his bullshit. Year after year Dokja has pulled this stunt with his awful conspiracy theories and stupid opinions that he obviously doesn’t believe in, and yet. Yet.
“They’re not,” Joonghyuk snaps. “The earth is fucking round. I’m going to kill you.”
“Consider killing me by pushing me off the edge of the earth, then.”
“Kim Dokja.”
Sooyoung rubs at her temple. “What time is it?” she asks. The only hope she has for this entire situation is the fact that Dokja had promised her a kiss by midnight like the stupid fucking little princess he is, and sunset was a couple hours ago, so it must be approaching midnight and therefore, the end of her years of suffering.
“It’s 11:36,” Sangah says.
In response, Sooyoung snaps her fingers at Dokja as if she’s calling for a dog; to Dokja’s canine credit, his eyes flick towards her. She taps a finger on her wrist before holding up two fingers, then four. Dokja grimaces and turns back to Joonghyuk, ignoring her.
“Son of a bitch,” Sooyoung mutters. And here she was trying to be helpful by pointing out the time.
“It’s amazing how you manage to communicate like that,” Sangah says in her patented Polite Voice, which really means, you two are freaks.
“Thanks,” Sooyoung says; she’s never been one to turn down a compliment.
Meanwhile, the bickering on the other end of the circle doesn’t seem to have wound down. If anything, they just seem to have moved topics.
“—doesn’t sound like it was in the syllabus,” Dokja is saying, with that stupid rodent grin of his.
A vein at Joonghyuk’s temple pulses. “It was. I read it today. From Nietzsche.”
“Oh? Lovely that you say that, because I brought some of his books with me.” Dokja stands up, stumbling just the tiniest bit, and Joonghyuk, lovelorn fool he is, instantly is on his feet to steady him. None of which Dokja notices, obviously, too preoccupied with heading for his room in a tipsy stupor. “Which of his readings?”
The door closes behind them before either Sooyoung or Sangah can hear Joonghyuk’s response.
A weighty silence hangs in the air for a long moment. Sooyoung is the one to break it, staring at the closed door in disbelief. “Tell me Kim Dokja didn’t actually just seduce Joonghyuk to his room by talking about Nietzsche,” she says.
“I admit that I’m not sure how that happened either,” Sangah says, blinking. “That was, um…”
“Fucking unbelievable.”
“That, yes.”
Sooyoung groans. “Time now?”
“11:39.”
“I’ll give them until 11:50 for them to kiss,” Sooyoung says grimly. “If nothing happens, we’re… We’re going to make a second plan. Eavesdropping. Stealing a mattress. Locking them in a closet. Whatever works. We gotta.”
“We?”
“Do you want to deal with another eternity of this?”
Sangah seems to concede the point. They take a few minutes to toss back shots and polish off Dokja and Joonghyuk’s abandoned soju bottles in solidarity, and then a few more shots after. Somehow, the alcohol tastes sweeter; maybe it’s the despair that flavors it so sweetly.
When Sooyoung judges she's markedly less sober and thus more inclined to patience, she decides it's time for a check-in. The two idiots have been rather too quiet, considering any argument about Nietzsche that they're involved in should have the staff worriedly knocking at the door.
"Right," she announces, staggering to her feet. "I have to check on my investment."
The freshmen turn to her like the gossip sharks they are, having scented blood in the water. She actually thinks about it for a second— what if she throws open that door and the idiots are doing something highly inappropriate, and the kids see all of it? Joonghyuk might attempt to murder her, and Dokja would never edit a chapter again, but it would be worth it.
"Esteemed Treasurer," Sangah murmurs. At some point she'd caught hold of Sooyoung's shirt and now has it in a death grip. "You wouldn't be thinking of involving the children, would you?"
Sooyoung attempts to shake her hand off. She does not succeed. "Well—what if I am?"
"What's going to involve the children," Heewon asks, sounding incredibly resigned. Heewon has drank way too much alcohol to still be sounding that responsible. Sooyoung knows she's bluffing.
"Yeah, what's going on? What's happening?"
Sooyoung looks at their fresh little baby faces. Jihye seems a bit too invested in where she's going. Maybe there's some remnant of conscience in her, though, because she sighs hugely and waves them off. She might want to shove Joonghyuk and Dokja into the pool a lot of the time, but they don't really deserve having whatever they're doing be the topic of club gossip. No, she thinks, it can just be… the topic of club committee gossip.
"Nothing to do with freshmen. I said an investment, didn't I? You kids should be going to bed."
She, Heewon and Sangah wait the respectably short time it takes for Hyunsung to chivvy the freshmen off to bed, and then they're all four of them plastered at the door to Dokja's room.
"Are you sure we should be—" Hyunsung begins, only to be shushed immediately. He may possibly be the only halfway-sober one here, Sooyoung admits, and probably should be the one making judgments about when to stop their drunken activities.
Does she care, though? The answer is a resounding no.
"Okay," Sooyoung says under her breath. "This door better not be creaky."
The door, having read the room adequately, does not creak. They lean in, and they can just about hear Joonghyuk in the middle of a proper lecture.
"You're neglecting your health again," he's saying, "just like before. Do you have to pass out on the floor before you take it seriously?"
“I’m doing fine,” comes Dokja’s flippant reply. “You worry too much.”
If Sooyoung wasn’t used to three years of his bullshit, she’s certain she’d be more pissed off by this, but as it stands, she’s drunk and swaying on her feet and more feeling sorry for Joonghyuk, who’s played the part of resentful mother hen for longer than anyone should. Not that he doesn’t enjoy it. Masochistic bastard.
On cue: “You skip breakfast and lunch to have a late dinner. You’ve been losing too much weight, and I know you haven’t been sleeping enough.”
“How would you know my sleeping patterns?”
“You sleep at my apartment,” Joonghyuk says, exasperated.
Sooyoung’s eyebrows fly up. Dokja and Joonghyuk? In an apartment? Together? And this squid of a bastard never said a goddamn thing to her?
She whips her head around to stare at Hyunsung—AKA Dokja’s unfortunate roommate—with a question in her eyes. It seems everyone else on the committee has followed her train of thought, because she finds Hyunsung pinned down by four incredulous gazes, demanding answers.
“He always said he was studying,” Hyunsung says, in helpless explanation, only to be shushed by Heewon.
Luckily Dokja and Joonghyuk are too deep into their lovers’ tiff to notice Hyunsung’s failed attempt at whispering. “You’re being ridiculous,” Dokja is saying. “Sleep at your apartment? I don’t do that. I mean, yeah, I come over sometimes to steal your food—”
“The only meal you eat is the one you eat at my place,” Joonghyuk says.
What?
But Dokja doesn’t even seem to register it. “—and I might crash a few days after studying since you have a better couch than I do, but that’s not, you know, being some sort of freeloader at your place.”
“You have a toothbrush in my bathroom,” Joonghyuk says, and before Dokja can open his mouth to retort or before Sooyoung can even process what the fuck is up with that, actually, Joonghyuk is going on, “You have your own closet in my room because you don’t go back to your place enough to change, not to mention your books. And you have slept at my apartment every day for the past three weeks.”
“You’re exaggerating,” Dokja says, but now he sounds a little uncertain.
Joonghyuk doesn’t falter, though. “Name one time in recent memory when you’ve slept in your own bed.”
Telling silence is his answer.
“Okay,” says Dokja after a moment. “You may have a point.”
“May.”
“You have a point,” Dokja concedes. Then, as if the conversation isn’t incriminating enough: “It’s not my fault that your bed is so comfortable.”
The executive board exchanges furious glances with each other, but Sooyoung doesn’t pay much attention to it. She’s too busy breaking her brain over this.
Yoo Joonghyuk’s bed. His goddamn bed.
She’s never seen the inside of Joonghyuk’s apartment, never mind slept in his bed. She didn’t even know that Joonghyuk had a bed, actually, because a part of her just assumed he retreated into his coffin or dug a hole in the apartment flooring or pushed a button at the base of his neck to power himself off, or something.
Like, logically, Sooyoung knows he has a bed. But she can’t fathom the idea of him having one. How big would it be? Queen-sized? King-sized, in such a small college apartment? She can’t help wondering what it would look like, too. Maybe it’d be one of those absurdly prissy and pretentious beds straight out of an IKEA catalogue, with the immaculate white sheets that were never meant for someone of their socioeconomic standing. Or it could be dark as the rest of him and his color palette, namely black on black on black.
She’s putting too much thought into this. Regardless. Kim Dokja in Yoo Joonghyuk’s bed is something she can’t even consider, lest she cause real brain damage to herself.
For her safety, she decides to turn her ear back to the conversation.
“—possible way you’re falling back on your courseload at this point in your academic career,” Joonghyuk is saying, flat.
“That might be the case usually—”
“Why is it not the case then?”
“Because I’m doing some extra readings.” When Joonghyuk remains silent, Dokja goes on to defend himself, saying, “I’m allowed to have hobbies, you know. Things to do with my time.”
“Is Han Sooyoung making you edit her web novels again?” Joonghyuk thunders.
Considering the force he says it with, she’s surprised that he doesn’t yell. But no. Joonghyuk’s anger is like a pot of water, simmering until it boils over, and even then it’s hard to notice until it’s already sizzling on the surface of the stove. This metaphor is getting away from her.
The point remains, though, which is that it’s unfair to pin this on her. Sooyoung hasn’t forced Dokja to edit her novels under duress in a long time—she’s too above that. She has him eating out of the palm of her hand for the chance to edit, as the natural order demands, and that means he makes time in his horrid schedule to accommodate it. In other words: if Joonghyuk kills her over this, Sooyoung is 100% returning as a ghost to haunt his loser ass.
“Hey,” Dokja says, sounding miffed. “I mean, yeah, but it’s fine! I’m also reading other stuff! I’m allowed to read other stuff, you asshole!”
Three years ago she’s certain he would’ve been more tempted to pin this on her and weasel his way out. It’s delightful to discover that Dokja’s moral backbone is alive and strong.
“You don’t read other stuff,” Joonghyuk says.
“Yeah, I do. I’m a lit major.”
“A lit major who reads the first twenty pages of an assigned reading and then writes essays off that alone. You don’t read.”
“I do too read!” Dokja yells, furious. “How else would I be arguing about Nietzsche’s core theories of pain and suffering with you otherwise?!”
“You what?”
“Oh my fucking god,” Sooyoung breathes. “He’s reading Nietzsche just so he can argue with Yoo Joonghyuk.”
Sangah fumbles to pat her on the back, and manages it after an admirable two tries. “If you think about it as an obscure courtship ritual, it might be better that way.”
Sooyoung considers it. The haze of alcohol is astounding with how much it opens up her imagination. The metaphorical TV in her brain clicks on. Cue documentary reel and narrator who has discovered the teachings of Buddha: Observe, the two exotic specimens of the Dokja genus and Joonghyuk genus. These two species mate by signaling their vigor and energetic spirit, and often do so by engaging in heated arguments. Common signs of attraction include feeding the other, creating a safe habitat to display their financial capability and malewife potential, and exerting visible effort to find topics to discuss.
Huh. It does help.
A collective intake of gasps makes her retreat from her wonderful British narrator coping mechanism and tune back into the real world. “What is it?” she whispers to Sangah, because Hyunsung and Heewon are now both pressed to the front of the door, hiding anything that might be going on inside from sight. “What’s going on? Why are they so riled?”
In response, Sangah gestures for her to listen.
Disgruntled, Sooyoung presses her elbow on Hyunsung’s shoulder and leans forward, straining her ears.
Joonghyuk’s murmuring voice comes across in snatches. “...told you before that I care about you,” he’s saying. “You still don’t believe me.”
He’s so quiet that it’s startling; she’s never heard him sound so— intimate. It’s like the ghost of a forlorn Victorian widow has possessed his body. It’s equal parts disconcerting and sweet, somehow.
“It’s not that I didn’t believe you,” Dokja says. “But I mean. Come on. You think I’m annoying. You can’t stand me. I steal your seat in every class we have, and I eat all your food, and I hog the blankets so your feet are always freezing in the morning, and—and—“
“And I let you do that.”
“No!” Dokja says. “You—you tolerate me, that’s what this is.”
Heewon cracks the door open a little wider. Whereas before they were barely discernible in the low light of the single lamp in the bedroom, now they’re in full view. Sooyoung has to blink to make sure her eyes aren’t deceiving her because Joonghyuk’s all but invading Dokja’s personal space to press his hand against Dokja’s cheek, and Dokja’s just standing there, stiff, tense, misery oozing from every muscle, like half of him wants to run and the other half wants to lean into Joonghyuk’s touch.
“What kind of drama is this?” Heewon mutters, her eyes fixated on them.
Sooyoung has to agree; TVN has nothing on them.
“You’re using the wrong word,” Joonghyuk says, low. “Last year, at the summer festival. On the rooftop. Do you remember what I said?”
“You were drunk.” Kim Dokja, the evasive bastard. “You’re drunk now.”
“You don’t believe that. Tell me what I said.”
“You said something ridiculous.”
“I said that I loved you,” Joonghyuk tells him, before he leans down to kiss Dokja.
It’s a miracle that Joonghyuk and Dokja are so wrapped up in their lovey-dovey TVN drama atmosphere, because upon the first contact of their lips, Heewon muffles a tiny little shriek/groan/gasp/odd animal chitter in the back of her throat while furiously slapping Hyunsung on the arm. Hyunsung himself doesn’t even notice, too caught up in doing a strange little dance with his fists, as if there’s a small goblin threatening to escape from his bones.
“I can’t believe I missed this,” Heewon whispers. She’s white-knuckling her grip on Hyunsung’s arm, and in the back of her mind, Sooyoung takes a moment to send a prayer for the tensile strength of Hyunsung’s flesh. “Like, this was going on right under our noses? A romance! Within the committee!”
“Sangah-ssi, did you know about this?” Hyunsung asks.
“I didn’t, but Sooyoung did pay Dokja-ssi to kiss Yoo Joonghyuk today,” Sangah says.
Sooyoung waves her off, focusing her bleary gaze past the duo of romance-infested committee members and on Dokja and Joonghyuk, who are still kissing even now. She doesn’t even think they’ve come up for air. “Shush,” she whispers, ignoring Heewon’s incredulous, ‘She what?’ “I’m watching TV.”
She never thought Dokja could kiss like that, virgin as he is. A part of her feels betrayed by this revelation, but another part of her is raising a metaphorical whiskey glass in his honor, cheering on the loser virgin.
Go get laid, loser! Inner-Sooyoung is shouting.
The kiss seems to go on for a while, or maybe that’s just the time slipping from her. When they finally break apart, they do the forehead-press thing, the kind that she’s really only seen in romantic dramas with Kim Soohyun or Lee Jongsuk as the lead, and the air is so tense that she almost feels tempted to slap it away.
“Are you going to reject me again?” Joonghyuk asks.
Dokja splutters. “I didn’t reject you, you dramatic bastard. I just thought you weren’t in love with me.”
“But you believe me now?”
“I could be convinced,” Dokja says, like the sly weasel he is, and Joonghyuk’s face does this uncomfortable thing that looks an awful lot like arousal and attraction and some other emotion that Sooyoung doesn’t want to name, and when they start kissing again with actual noises and clothes grabbing and Other Body Part Grabbing, she decides that as drunk as she is, she’s officially not drunk enough for this and, closing the door, begins herding the committee members away.
One kiss was fun to watch and all, but she doesn’t want to actually watch them fuck.
“I wanted to see more,” Heewon protests, because apparently Drunk Heewon is a voyeuristic pervert.
“You can watch more on TVN,” Sooyoung tells her, leading her back into the living room.
As she sits down for another round of drinking games with the rest of her committee members, the realization comes to her: the bet. She checks the time—it’s officially 12:04, which means that Dokja hadn’t actually managed to kiss Joonghyuk within the allotted time, which also means she doesn’t owe Dokja shit, and she got them together, as god intended.
“You seem satisfied,” Sangah says, as she tops off Sooyoung’s soju glass.
Sooyoung clinks her shot against Sangah’s. “All in a day’s work,” she says, grinning, and drinks.