AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“But she didn’t win,” Soyou protests.
“All the others require us to leave the building and we should stay here. Start the meditation while I go and get the coffee.” He hands her a legal pad. “Write down your order.”
The meditation exercise should have been the easiest team exercise to complete. It required no interaction from anyone, which is why Soyou recommended it. But not one minute into the breathing exercises, Yoo starts laughing. Someone else farts and the whole team falls apart. At minute four, it’s obvious no one is going to find transcendental peace today. Soyou gets to her feet and grabs her phone. “Let’s do the playlists instead.”
My knowledge of Korean music isn’t vast, but there are a couple of female soloists I love, so I select the two most recent songs from those artists and then scroll through the music and add three older songs to make it appear that I’m not a complete bandwagoner. The person on my right is Bong Hyoseob, one of the quietest members of the team. He’s not talked to me since I joined, but he doesn’t talk much at all, not in the office or at team dinners, so I don’t feel any anxiety when I share the link to the playlist. When it pops up on his phone, he silently opens it and proceeds to hit play. What he thinks of my music choices isn’t clear, and I’m not at all interested in his approval of my musical taste. Not at all. I only peek in his direction two or three or seven times.
“You like K-pop?” blurts out Yoo, who is seated next to Chaeyoung.
“Yes, why not? It’s very popular in the West, isn’t it?”
It takes me a half minute to realize Chaeyoung’s addressing me. Is she thawing again? “Yes. Super popular. Everyone listens to it.” That’s a complete lie, but if Chaeyoung had proclaimed that she saw two dragons flying over Hangang, I’d back her up.
“I’m not listening to this,” proclaims Soyou from the other side of the room. “This is offensive.”
“Rap is not offensive,” Yoo replies.
“I didn’t say rap was offensive, but these particular lyrics about how men are on top and women are below them? That’s misogynistic.”
“You women are so sensitive.” He mutters something in Korean that I can’t make out, but both women grow furious.
This innocent idea is quickly devolving into a giant mess. Beside me, the quiet one, Bong, drops his head into his hand. I need to salvage this and prevent a massacre of Yoo.
I reach over and pull Bujang-nim’s notepad toward me and start balling up paper. “Here.” I toss the balls down toward Yoo and Soyou. “Let’s get this over with before Bujang-nim returns.”
Bong nods in swift agreement. “Yes. Basketball.” He scoops a paper ball in his hand and tosses it with a light touch and a good arc. It drops neatly into the bottom of the can. Chaeyoung goes next and everyone else joins in, even Yoo and Soyou, who glare at each other the whole time. I sag into my chair with relief. We’re going to make it out of this terrible idea of mine in one piece.
Five minutes later, I eat my words. What started out as a simple, friendly paper toss turns into a full-fledged office-chair derby. Even Bong’s competitive spirit awakens. The sound of metal and plastic colliding is punctuated by curses and shouts. A wheel from one of the chairs falls off. Someone loses a shoe. The trash can gets knocked over. The team-building exercises have turned into team-building Olympics. Chaeyoung and I are the only ones not in the fray.
“This is going well,” I deadpan.
“Are you making a joke?” she asks.
“Yes. It’s not going well at all.”
“Yes. It is not going well,” she agrees.
“We should do something before Bujang-nim arrives with the coffee.”
“We should.”
Neither of us moves.
“This reminds me of one time during middle school. A girl brought in a seongnim manhwa. That’s like . . . an over-nineteen comic book. We crowded around her desk and read it with her. Suddenly, we hear footsteps running in the hall, and running is not allowed. We know our teacher is coming and we all try to help the girl hide her cartoon, but too many of us try at one time and it slips out of our hands and lands between two desks as Seonsaeng-nim walks in. To avoid getting caught, my friend pretends to twist her ankle and falls on the floor. She manages to shove the cartoon up her sweater and then pass it off to me before she is sent to the principal’s office.”
This is the most that Chaeyoung has ever spoken to me. “What happened to the manhwa?”
She covers her mouth but I can see the corners of her eyes tilt up. “I still have it.”
