Chapter Text
Kim Dokja's daily routine had been perfected after nearly a decade of trial and error.
Every day— except on weekends —he would wake up at 7:00 am, brush his teeth, shower, and sit on his loft to read a manuscript with a cup of coffee. He usually skipped breakfast unless he had worked overtime and hadn't had time to eat dinner the day before, so he would read, annotate manuscripts, and tackle some emails from the comfort of his home until 8:30, at which point he would leave for work to arrive at his office at 9:00 am sharp, where his 'secretary'— aware of his habit of neglecting the most important meal of the day —would have some sort of fruit smoothie waiting for him.
"Blueberries and acai today." Yoo Sangah smiled.
"Just in time for the morning meeting." He took the cup and motioned towards the conference room, "Did you manage to take a look at what I sent over regarding the new magazine branch?"
Yoo Sangah wasn't really his secretary, in fact, she was Vice President of Nebula Publishing House, but calling her Kim Dokja's secretary was a sort of joke they both had carried on with since the founding of the company nearly a decade ago. The number of names on the list of potential investors who dismissed her as nothing more than a secretary back when they were first getting started was so ridiculously long they lamented they would sooner succeed by themselves than find someone who didn't ask Yoo Sangah to make them coffee before the meeting.
Not that they wouldn't have been able to succeed on their own, but it was nice when they finally got their lucky break.
"I did, everything looks great." Yoo Sangah took her seat and unpacked her computer, "There's just a few things I wanted to go over after we review the new author onboarding proposal for our flagship publisher."
"Sure," Kim Dokja looked at his watch and frowned— 9:07, not late yet, "Talking about authors... Where is she?"
"She'll be here." Yoo Sangah responded without looking up from what she was doing.
"She better be," He grumbled, "Last week she—"
"—She what?" Just then, a voice broke in through the doors and imperiously made its way to the front of the room, "Are you talking shit about me again, Mr President?”
"Of course not," He smiled, though it looked more like a grimace.
"Good, let's get this show on the road then." Han Sooyoung sat with her feet up on the table and crossed her legs, "Did you read my new manuscript, by the way? How was it?"
"I did." Kim Dokja pulled up the files he'd been working on that morning, "It was trite and pandering, like you stuck the top ten bestsellers of the season in a blender and shat this out in a week."
Han Sooyoung grinned, "So...?"
Kim Dokja sighed, "...It's going to sell amazingly." He loathed to admit it, but she had a gift when it came to writing— he'd hardly been able to put the damn book down even as her gloating face floated into his mind through the pages.
Han Sooyoung had been their lucky break. Not only had she already made a bit of a name for herself as an author in the industry, she also came to them with quite a bit of money to throw around. She claimed she made it from her writing, but even though she was fairly popular by that point, there's no way it would have earned her that much in such a short amount of time. Kim Dokja suspected she had a comfy trust fund out there somewhere... Either that, or she had robbed a bank. He wouldn't put that past her.
In any case, all she had asked for in return was a nominal position as co-founder— she didn't actually want to be in charge of too many things that would distract her from her writing —and a reasonable share of the revenue and stocks for when they made it big.
Not if, when.
"I knew you'd like it." Han Sooyoung laughed.
"Get your feet off the table and let's get started," Kim Dokja smacked her boots and gave Yoo Sangah a pleading look.
Yoo Sangah got her cue and began, "Right, this should be quick. We need to go over..."
After the morning meeting, Kim Dokja would usually have an early lunch at his desk, spending time with either more emails or looking over a few promising manuscripts.
The company was big enough that he didn't have to personally read the prospective books anymore, but that had always been his favourite part of the job. He'd started a publishing house out of his love for reading, and somehow stumbled his way into success.
He would get off work at 6:00 pm and head straight for dinner at his favourite restaurant just two blocks away from the office, then head home, where he would spend the rest of the time doing a variety of miscellaneous activities until he started getting ready to sleep at 10:30 pm.
Weekends were slightly more prone to variation. He'd usually wake up at 9:00 am and laze around until lunch, then his schedule for the rest of the day would depend mostly on what needed to be done around the house. He liked spending Saturdays on cleaning and groceries— he did have someone who came in once a week to give the place a good scrub down, but the day-to-day tidying up and laundry was handled by himself —then meal prepping his lunches for the rest of the week. Sundays were exclusively for rest unless something had gone horribly wrong in the days prior. He would go to the movies or for a drive around town— anything that caught his fancy, really —though always making sure to be back in bed by 11 at the latest so he could start Monday off on the right foot.
That had been his well-established routine for almost ten years. Very few things had managed to break it as quickly and as thoroughly as the snot-nosed brat who moved in next door.
The first clue that something was different was the cover inside the lift on Saturday morning.
Kim Dokja was heading out to buy a few things when he noticed the lift he was in had on that padded, curtain-like covering they usually put to protect the mirror and fragile walls when someone was moving large things, which probably meant someone was moving into the building, but he didn't give it much thought aside from the initial bout of curiosity and pity for whichever poor soul would have to deal with all that moving racket ruining their peaceful weekend.
When he got back from his errands not even two hours later, he realised that poor soul turned out to be himself.
Since he parked in the underground lot and headed straight up to his floor on the unoccupied lift, he didn't notice the moving truck out front or the hustle and bustle of people bringing furniture inside. As a result, he had barely stepped out of the lift onto his floor when he was almost run over by a couch.
"Sorry, comin' through!" The two men carrying the couch narrowly missed hitting him, but the fright made Kim Dokja step back so fast he banged the back of his head against the now-closed doors of the lift behind him.
He reflexively went to grab at the back of his head, but the groceries weighing down both arms meant he could do little more than slightly lift his arms before giving up and simply letting out a hiss of pain.
"Are you okay?" A young man approached him and asked politely. He seemed to have been standing out in the corridor, probably supervising the work.
"Yeah," He shook his head to dispel the lingering pain, straightened up, and looked around, "Is someone moving in... here?" He could clearly see the open door of the apartment across from his, so his question was really more of him talking to himself.
The young man simply nodded, gesturing towards the open door.
"I see... Do you know how long it's going to take?" He looked the young man up and down, he couldn't find a company logo on the tracksuit he was wearing, but since he was out here supervising it probably meant he knew something about the progress of the move.
"Hmm, couple hours, maybe?" The young man shrugged, "Do you need help with those?" He pointed to the bags of groceries currently cutting off the circulation to Kim Dokja's arms.
Kim Dokja shook his head, "Don't worry, just get back to what you were doing." The young man seemed too laid-back for someone in the middle of work. If he were the one moving in, he wouldn't trust such an indolent guy with his precious furniture.
"Sure." The young man smiled and walked back to the corridor, coincidentally in the same direction Kim Dokja was going to get back to his own place.
He had no choice but to grit his teeth as he struggled with the grocery bags while trying to open the door, he even swore he heard a muffled laugh from the guy, but refused to turn around and acknowledge his presence. Kim Dokja finally opened the door after several agonising seconds and slammed it shut as soon as he was inside, not even sparing a last glance towards the hallway.
He spent the following hours trying to ignore the racket outside as he got on with his life. The apartments were well sound-insulated, so he normally wouldn't be able to hear what his neighbour was doing when both doors were closed, but the hallway seemed to amplify the noise tenfold, and it was as though he could practically feel every single bump and scrape of furniture that went on in the other side of the door.
Kim Dokja tried to ignore it, he really did, but couldn't help but storm outside after a particularly egregious screech that made him almost drop the bowl he was holding.
"Would it kill you to keep it down?" He shouted at no one in particular.
"Sorry," The young man popped his head out from behind the pile of boxes he was holding, "We had a close call just now."
Curiosity got the better of him, and he peeked in through the opposite door, where he saw a group of men trying to right a large display case that teetered precariously.
"Tsk. I hope you have insurance," Kim Dokja muttered at the sight, thought he doubted the owner of the place would have hired an uninsured moving company.
"I do." The young man smiled.
"Hmm." He moved his eyes back to the young man, who seemed to be carrying boxes full of electrical equipment, "How much longer are you going to be here?"
The young man frowned for a second before a look of understanding flashed across his eyes, "Furniture's almost all unloaded, we'll be out of your hair in two hours tops." He grinned.
"Good. Remember to keep it down." He went back into his apartment without looking back.
Two hours later, just as promised, the hallway quieted down.
It was almost 7 pm, and Kim Dokja was just making a late dinner when there was a knock at his door. He opened it to find the young man from earlier standing alone in the hallway with a paper bag in his hands.
"...Yes?" Kim Dokja looked around in confusion, wondering why that guy was still here.
"Now that everything's done, I thought it would be a good time to formally introduce myself." He handed the bag to Kim Dokja, whose frown of confusion only deepened as he reached out to take it.
"My name is Yoo Joonghyuk, I'm the guy who just moved in next door."