Chapter Text
Hyun-Woo waited for Bo-Bae to finish saying goodbye. Sukwon always took it hard the day Bo-Bae left for topside.
Sukwon hadn’t spoken with words since Gwi-ma’s harvest. Hyun-Woo assumed that he and Bo-Bae still had a method of communicating. Bo-Bae said something, then Sukwon gave a mournful little howl.
“I know something that will cheer him up,” Jinu said, then he started playing a sweet peasant song about spring.
Bo-Bae hated goodbyes. They never failed to make him angry… well angrier than he normally was. This sweet song appeared to be the final straw for Bo-Bae.
“It's fucking autumn up there, dumbass!” he snapped at Jinu. “Sing him your autumn songs until I get back. Don't you perform that song about that snowboarder again, you utter numbskull!” He scolded waggling a finger in an almost parental fashion. “The guy is trying to sharpen the edge of his fucking snowboard so he can stab you with it.”
“Then he’s the moron,” Jinu chuckled. “You can’t stab someone with a snowboard. It’s too flat.”
“He can swing it like an axe though, you knucklehead.”
“Please, he's already tried. He can't land anything - which is why he made a deal with Gwi-ma in the first place,” Jinu joked.
Sukwon snickered at that.
“You think I should add a verse about how all his trick jumps were a result of his deal with Gwi-ma and all of his medals are empty and hollow because he shouldn't have won them?” Jinu turned to Sukwon to ask.
Sukwon made an encouraging sounding yip.
Bo-Bae blinked at them furiously, not knowing what to say in the face of such reckless disregard for enraged and aspiring to be axe-wielding snowboarders. He wouldn’t yell now because he never yelled at Sukwon. “Fucking idiots,” he muttered very quietly, then rounded on the animals. “Tiger, Bird - I’m leaving you in charge,” he barked and stomped away.
The bird squawked in protest behind them, as if she didn’t want this responsibility.
Hyun-Woo fell in step beside Bo-Bae as he strode irately towards Gwi-ma’s temple. The sound of the pipa followed them down the hill.
“I’m going to smash the fucking pipa one of these days,” Bo-Bae said.
“You’ve already tried several times,” Hyun-Woo pointed out. “You stop every time because it upsets the tiger.”
Almost all of the other demons in the underworld were scared of Bo-Bae and his volatile temper and absolutely savage and unhinged schemes. But Hyun-Woo had known him for a very long time. Bo-Bae didn’t scare him. Deep down he was a big softie.
(Hyun-Woo was one of the few demons who knew he cuddled the tiger on his very bad days.)
“Oh, I almost forgot, happy thousandth birthday,” Bo-Bae said, giving Hyun-Woo a rather firm punch in the arm. Hyun-Woo rubbed his shoulder and looked at him in confusion. “It’s a birthday punch. It’s a topside custom. You need to know these things if you’re going to be my apprentice,” Bo-Bae explained innocently.
“Good to know.”
“I never thought you’d volunteer to go Topside,” Bo-Bae said, giving him a sideways glance. “Lots of sentinels go up as soon as they can. Is it that time for you already?”
“I’m volunteering for being an awful co-worker, not a mission,” Hyun-Woo replied, moving the subject away from his fallen brothers and sisters. “Why does Gwi-ma want to demoralise the tourism industry?”
“Eh, my best guess is that tourism would bring in money, especially to some smaller communities and give people opportunities. They might get less desperate and be less likely to make deals, and Gwi-ma can’t be having that,” Bo-Bae said with a shrug.
Bo-Bae trained one demon to be an awful co-worker every few years. This year, the humans were getting ready for something called Y2K, and it involved computers. Bo-Bae would work in the office of Culture, Sports and Tourism as part of the IT team. Hyun-Woo had been assigned as an assistant to a government official. Awful co-workers weren’t allowed to work in the same department, even during the training period.
“You absolutely sure you want me to train you? You sure you want to work in the same building as me?” Bo-Bae asked after a second. “Last chance to back out now if the answer is no.”
Gwi-ma very rarely summoned back an awful co-worker until the office environment had met the required toxicity levels. Summoning and launching demons took too much of his energy with the honmoon so strong.
The current group of hunters were doing well. Lately there had been several ominously golden shimmers in the threads that illuminated the sky above them. Hyun-Woo wasn’t worried. It had happened frequently when a trio were in their prime and never went anywhere, but Gwi-ma panicked each time. He’d launched more missions recently than he had in years - but it was clearly draining his energy.
Several demons Bo-Bae tried to train ended up begging to be brought back down by Gwi-ma after a few weeks, but Gwi-ma had been refusing to bring them back in the last few decades, saying it was a waste of resources. Hyun-Woo was in this for the long-haul.
“I've fought Mongol Hordes, Bo-Bae. Whatever you’ve got up your sleeve can’t be worse than that,” Hyun-Woo said.
“You've never been my coworker,” Bo-Bae replied with a sly smile.
“No time like the present, old friend.”
Bo-Bae looked shocked for a second, before he quickly schooled his features into a more neutral face. “Don’t think I’ll go easy on you just because we’ve known each other a long time.”
-0-
The rest of the awful co-worker department were waiting on the stairs of the temple, ready to take up their positions. Gwi-ma kept delaying their journey, until long past the point where everyone was huffing impatiently, feeding off their frustration.
“As soon as you see the tear, teleport just past it,” Bo-Bae whispered, as Gwi-ma prepared himself, gathering all his strength.
Gwi-ma channeled a huge fireblast at the honmoon until a tear appeared.
Hyun-Woo felt the familiar lurch, then tumbled out into an alley with the rest of the department. He blinked as his eyes adjusted to the sunlight.
Sunlight.
An administration demon was waiting for them. He was handing out wallets and keys to apartments. As Bo-Bae spoke to the administration demon, Hyun-woo looked around Topside and tried to get his bearings.
Bo-Bae came back, clicked his fingers and suddenly they were in modern clothes. He handed over a set of keys and a wallet then gestured for Hyun-Woo to follow him. “Now that you’re Topside, you need to know - the land has become two separate countries. Your mountain is on the other side of the border. The place you tried to protect is under the crushing thumb of a brutal dictator,” he said pleasantly as they walked.
“Why are you telling me this?” Hyun-Woo asked patiently. Bo-Bae always had a reason. There was a method to his madness.
“I’m just starting as I mean to continue. Topside - It’s not our home anymore. You understand what I'm saying? This is the key to where we will live, but this isn’t our home," Bo-Bae said vehemently, holding a little metallic object. "Don't get attached to anything here.”
“I know that,” Hyun-Woo said calmly.
“It can mess with your head - being here,” Bo-Bae said more softly this time. “I never go to forests. You shouldn’t go to the mountains. He could be watching at any time - remember that.”
-0-
“Choi Hyun-Woo and Lim Bo-Bae - here are your passes,” The human running the orientation meeting called out. Hyun-Woo was handed a lanyard with a picture of his face with his name and department printed underneath. Bo-Bae was taken to meet the IT team. He was shown to an office with several other humans who were working in an equal position to him. Two women and another man.
So these were his direct co-workers.
Ostensibly, he was here to make them miserable, but that was not his true goal.
This government department directly liaised with the music industry on certain projects. It gave him the best chance to meet the hunters in a non-hostile setting. If he could just talk to them, and explain…
Hyun-Woo had been trying to manage things down there since the harvest first happened, and he had come to the conclusion that there was no way to defeat Gwi-ma without the help of hunters. Perhaps the hunters of the future would be more reasonable than those of the past.
This was his chance.
Hyun-Woo looked through something called a stationary cupboard and availed himself of a diary and some writing implements. He took it back to his desk. Bo-Bae had instructed him just to ‘look busy’ and listen out for opportunities on his first day.
Hyun-Woo wasn’t used to idleness, so he started on his actual mission. He’d always kept a record when he was general, the details of his plans felt more real when he wrote them down.
He’d never had a mission more important in his entire existence.
He opened the first page and wrote: All tyrants fall and all revolutions are built on hope...
-0-
The two female co-workers were drinking some coffee with some other women in the break room together. Hyun-woo positioned himself by the stationary cupboard so he could listen in unobtrusively.
“What do you think of the new guy?”
“I keep getting distracted just looking at him.”
“Yeah, Hyun Woo can get it.”
“What an office perk for all of us,” one of them giggled.
-0-
Bo-Bae was watching something called a television when Hyun-Woo got home.
Hyun-Woo had been invited for drinks with his co-workers to welcome him to the team. Bo-Bae had ordered him to go with them and to get the train home because that would look more human. But he’d given Hyun-Woo little instructions about how to use the train system for the journey, so it had taken Hyun-Woo some time to figure it out himself. Now he had emerged victorious from mass transit and had safely made it to the apartment.
Bo-Bae glanced at the clock. “Sooner than I expected. You’re a fast learner,” he said without apology.
"What does it mean if a human says you can get it?" Hyun Woo asked, sitting next to Bo-Bae on the couch.
Drinks with co-workers had been fine. The conversation had flowed easily and Hyun-Woo had listened attentively. This phrase was the only thing from the day that he hadn't understood. He had always tried to learn as much about the terrain and local situation before a battle, and this mission was no different. He'd studied Topside in the months before he'd taken on this position, but local idioms were hard to study from afar.
Bo-Bae flicked off the television and turned to look at him. He tilted his head, and studied Hyun-Woo’s face with an almost scientific air, before he nodded and concluded, “Yeah, you can definitely get it. "
“What am I meant to be getting?”
Bo-Bae completely ignored that question. “Oh, we can use this. You can be sexy, but also sweetly naive in a way that is also super hot to many humans. Let’s get you some sexier work-wear, more tailored to show off that cute butt. I’d hazard a guess that everyone in your office is at least 35 percent attracted to you already… if not more. But if we make sure all your shirts are super tight, we can definitely boost that higher. Then you sexually frustrated everyone around you,” Bo-Bae said, brainstorming his version of battle strategies.
“I thought I was meant to be breaking computers and re-arranging dates, not trying to be… alluring,” Hyun-Woo said, feeling a little flustered now that he better understood what that conversation had meant.
“There’s more than one way to make people miserable at work,” Bo-Bae said with a wicked smile. “See, I don’t use this angle much, because young, completely incompetent nepotism hire who can’t be disciplined because he’s related to the chaebol family normally works so well for me, but causing inter-office drama with a ridiculously attractive middle-level assistant is a fun prospect.” He rubbed his hands together in anticipation.
His face fell suddenly. "But you're such a Topside baby. You'll never be able to pull it off. Didn't even know what get it meant," he muttered.
Hyun-Woo felt a little offended. He'd been a brilliant strategist and he'd pulled off many impossible victories in his time. Being charming while wearing a tight shirt posed no great difficulty.
"You could teach me how to flirt and how to be sexy," Hyun-Woo suggested.
"I don't know if it's something that can be taught," Bo-Bae mused.
"Well, not with that attitude," Hyun-Woo said encouragingly.
Out of all of Bo-Bae's schemes, being sexy sounded the least time-consuming, so it would free him up to work on his actual purpose in being here.
“Okay, let's do this!" Bo-Bae decided. "I need to do it anyway. If you're going to be an awful co-worker, you need to learn how to be socially inappropriate to make people uncomfortable on purpose ... not because you have no idea what's going on."
"I know what's going on," Hyun-Woo pointed out, but Bo-Bae ignored him.
"listen up, trainee," he said clapping his hands together, " your lesson begins here."
-0-
Four different women always stopped to flirt with him in the break-room, and all his co-workers currently had a silent rivalry brewing about who sat next to him at team lunches. Bo-Bae deemed this good work for his first week.
Hyun-Woo was getting the hang of conversing with people in the modern world, and the time had come to put his real plan into action. He fished out the outfit that Bo-Bae had deemed ‘the sexiest’. It would be good for getting attention.
“Woah - it’s way too early to bring out the big guns,” Bo-Bae declared when Hyun-Woo came out from his room wearing the outfit. “When you’re wearing that even I’m attracted to you,” he joked.
“The minister has an event with the music industry today. He has requested ‘all hands on deck’ to make sure this runs smoothly. I was instructed to ‘dress nice’ by A-Reum."
“A-Ruem wants you so bad,” Bo-Bae observed. "They're even gossiping about it down in IT."
“The Sunlight Sisters will be attending,” Hyun-Woo said in an offhand way.
He felt bad deceiving Bo-Bae about his true intentions before coming Topside, so this was his way of telling him now. Bo-Bae was smart and would be able to connect the dots. He deserved to know what Hyun-Woo was planning.
The words Gwi-ma is watching, Numbnuts practically slammed into his mind. Bo-Bae was staring at him intently, looking extremely pissed-off.
“Scope them out for weaknesses,” Bo-Bae said out loud, indicating how he wanted to play this conversation, given that they had an audience.
Gwi-ma didn’t watch all the time. He wasn’t omniscient and there were too many demons topside in the different departments for him to do that with his power so depleted. But he was clearly observing them now. Bo-Bae was one of the few demons who could sense when they were being observed. Perhaps that was an older demons power.
Also he could communicate telepathically - which was a useful thing for Hyun-Woo to know.
(It was probably how he and Sukwon spoke to each other. Perhaps it was an another older demon power. Bo-Bae was at least a 1600 years old, and Sukwon was even older.)
“ I have a good mind for strategy. Maybe I'll spot something that can be exploited,” Hyun-Woo bragged, playing into how Bo-Bae wanted this conversation to go.
Awful co-workering is a hunter-free mission, you complete Fuckwit! echoed in Hyun-Woo’s mind.
But Bo-Bae simply asked “They have an AV presentation tonight, don't they?”
“Yes,” Hyun-Woo answered.
“They'll need extra IT help. I'm coming too,” Bo-Bae, unable to hide how annoyed this prospect made him.
What on earth have you dragged me into, you absolute fucking muppet!
-0-