12 days of christmas!
on the twelfth day of christmas, my true love gave to me—
— seokmin makes you confused. — coworkers to lovers, fluff, crack comedy, jihoon and his girlfriend play a big role here —none hehe —2.3k — part three of Ro Attempts to Be a Friend! as usual, i'm trying to get my good karma points so that the ghosts do not visit me again (please i'm traumatised) this is for @miniseokminnies, who's one of the finest writers i know, and also my comrade in tomfoolery and other general shenanigans™. this is for you, my lover of historical aus, and i am so glad i asked you for details on that one jihoon wip <3 —check out the rest of the list!
“Lee Seokmin?” you screech, looking at your phone screen, “they’re pairing me up with Lee Seokmin? Of all people, him?”
“Bad news?” your friend sets down a cup of iced coffee in front of you, “why has a work email got you making faces?”
You groan, pulling the saddest face you can, “they’re pairing me for the field training with Lee Seokmin.”
Your friend lets out an understanding sigh, patting you on the back, “how long is it for?”
“Three months,” you frown, “and the worst part is that it’s in Tokyo.”
“Tokyo, Japan?” This piece of information has her excited, “wait, I think I know Professor Ryusei at Tokyo University. If you want more information, you can always email him and ask for help. He’s one of the foremost authorities in Japan on Meiji-era legal doctrine—”
“Babe, I’m pretty sure he’s great, but this is not my concern right now,” You cut her off, “I need to coexist in the same space for the upcoming three months with Lee Seokmin of all people.”
She nods, and then looks at you, very seriously, “I can kill him for you.”
“Please do not threaten or conspire to murder anyone in my favorite cafe, please.” Lee Jihoon walks into your field of vision, one hand wielding a glass full of the most diabolical-looking iced americano you’ve ever seen, and balancing a plate of snacks in his other, “if you need to make plans, do make them in the privacy of your own home, where you don’t have a whole cafe full of people as your witnesses.”
“You’re very chill about this, Jihoon,” she points an accusatory finger towards the man, “but have you been on the receiving end of the force of nature called Lee Seokmin? I think not.”
Jihoon, as always, remains unruffled, only peering at her from behind his glasses, “who is Lee Seokmin?”
“Her mortal enemy,” your friend pipes up, placing a delicate kiss on the tip of Jihoon’s nose, “and this is why I keep telling you, you need to pay attention to what’s going on.”
You wrinkle your nose, “eugh. Please take your dumb lovey-dovey couple shit far away from me, please. Why subject your only single friend to a display of your romance when she’s been unable to get someone for the past seven years?”
Your friend nods, immediately detangling herself from her boyfriend, but Jihoon points an accusatory finger at her, “you need to start dating. Being single for too long has warped your views of how normal couples should be.”
“No fighting in the court,” your friend lightly smacks her phone on the table, imitating the noise of a gavel, “y/n, tell our wonderful Attorney Lee here exactly why you don’t like Lee Seokmin.”
You sigh. As wonderful and funny as your friends are, they inhabit a world of their own. “Can’t imagine it would be anything worse than what you both went through in law school,” you joke, “Lee Seokmin is my colleague. And he’s very annoying.”
“Why?” Jihoon raises both his eyebrows, “makes offensive jokes? Gets easily offended? Eat your lunch? Microwaves fish?”
“What? No—what kind of people are you working with, Jihoon?” you ask, and he shrugs, “there’s nothing like that. He’s just very—positive.”
“Positive.” Jihoon repeats, not believing you at first, “he’s positive.”
“Very,” your friend replies, “he’s a veritable ray of sunshine.”
“And you have a problem with him, because?”
“Because he’s weird!” you exclaim, “I’m not the most positive person, and he keeps doing things, which makes me think he’s either insane, or he’s got it out for me.”
“Wait, I’ve not heard about this,” your friend sits up, interested, “but first, does he make you uncomfortable?”
“No, not at all, he’s always kept very respectful boundaries,” you wave their concerns off (Jihoon was looking particularly menacing) “I just don’t think he’s all right in the head. I mean, can someone realistically be that happy all the time? Just like that? I doubt it.”
“Tell us more,” your friend is grinning, “before you go off to Tokyo and are forced into close proximity with this man for three months, we need to sort out what kind of a person he is.”
“Okay,” you take a deep breath, “first, did you know, our desks are on opposite sides of the office, but every time he comes in for the morning, he greets me first? And my desk is not even close to the entryway! He just walks in, and it’s ‘good morning, y/n!’ with a cheery wave and a smile! Who does that?”
Your friend is taking notes, and Jihoon is sipping his coffee, “wow, he sounds like a monster.”
“He is,” you reply, pleased at the fact that Jihoon shares your confusion and annoyance, “and over the last three months, he’s started involving me in everything? Even if I don’t want to do it, he’s there, asking me to join in? Why would I do that?”
“Elaborate.”
“Okay so,” you think back to the moment, “when we all went for a company retreat, he made sure to include me in every single activity he was on. Cooking, cleaning, setting up the tents, he even dragged me into playing the games as his partner.”
“Playing the games as your partner?” Jihoon shares a look with your friend, “what else?”
“Well, he did bring me pain meds and massaged my back when I told him I’d pulled a muscle, so maybe he was just a little slow.”
“He massaged your back?” your friend has a look on her face that you’ve never really seen before, and you can bet fifty thousand won that Jihoon’s holding her hand under the table, “what else?”
“He brings me food every week. I told him I don’t have side dishes at home, so he just showed up in my neighbourhood with a big bag full of his mother’s side dishes. I don’t know how he got my address. I think he’s stalking me.”
Your friend looks close to tears. Jihoon looks like he’s struggling to hold on to the last of his composure, “typically, giving food is not a sign that he’s stalking you.”
“But he knew my address!” you retort, “how else would he know it, if he was not stalking me?”
“He was in your neighbourhood, not knocking on your house. And besides, you can get the location information pretty easily. All one has to do is pull the employee records.”
You are not one to be stopped, so you open your mouth again, “this is not all, did you know what he did last weekend?”
Your friend holds up a hand. “No wait, I think we’ve heard enough.” she wheezes out, wiping a tear, “how long have you made the poor man suffer?”
“Suffer?” you cock your head, “haven’t you heard? He’s making me suffer.”
“No, she’s right, pretty sure you’ve been making him suffer,” Jihoon is holding your friend’s hand on the table, knuckles white from how tight his grip is, “you did get a degree in psychology, didn’t you, y/n?”
“Huh?” now you’re offended, “of course I did. I set the two of you up, remember?”
“Yes, and we thank you for it,” your friend says, “I don’t know how else to say this, but—he likes you.”
The words roll about in your mind for a while, making no sense at all, “he does not like me. He just wants to annoy me and drive me crazy so that he can steal my seat in the office.”
Jihoon sighs, “yn, I’m telling you. I’m possibly the most oblivious man on the planet, and even I can see it. That man likes you so bad he gave you a massage. You’ve been torturing him.”
You look to your friend for support against Jihoon, but to your surprise, she nods, “only the most down bad of all people would lug their mom’s cooking to the flat—”
“Neighbourhood.”
“—neighbourhood, of a girl who has no interest in him.”
You sigh, “then what about the Tokyo Assignment?”
Jihoon snorts, “poor sod must have begged your supervisor on his knees in order to be paired up with you. They usually don’t send people of the opposite genders on field assignments together.”
This gives you pause, because some of his actions make sense now, if you apply their hypothesis, but the larger picture? That remains unclear, “I highly doubt he has any desire to—”
“y/n?”
The three of you look up, and your friend’s face immediately breaks out into a sly grin. In front of you, Lee Seokmin stands, wearing a camel-coloured jacket that looks unfairly good on him, looking very puzzled, “am I intruding? I saw the three of you having coffee from outside, and I presumed—”
Before you can say anything, your friend opens her fat mouth, “Of course not, Mr Lee Seokmin, was it? You’re welcome to join us!”
“He is?” you ask.
“I am?” Seokmin points a finger to himself, and Jihoon looks at his girlfriend. A wordless signal passes between the two, and he holds out his hands for a shake.
“Lee Jihoon, Attorney at Oh and Partners,” Jihoon grins, “me and my girlfriend were just leaving.”
Seokmin looks at your friend, puzzled.
“I’m the girlfriend,” your friend laughs, holding out her hand for Seokmin to shake, “I teach Constitutional Law at Hankuk. Pleasure to meet you.”
“We were leaving, sweetheart,” Jihoon winks at her, one that does not go unnoticed by you, “see you later, y/n.”
“Wait, hold on—” you open your mouth to protest, but before the whole sentence gets out of your mouth, the two of them are gone, giggling and laughing in the cold. It leaves you and Seokmin standing in the middle of the crowded cafe, a cafe latte held in his hand, secure in a to-go cup.
Suddenly, you feel awkward. It’s nothing new, because Seokmin, with his boundless energy and infectious good humour, has made you awkward on other occasions too, but this time it’s something else. The words of the two idiots keep replaying in your mind, he likes you, you know. It’s probably nothing, but the way Seokmin is looking at you, it makes you feel self-conscious.
“Should we go out?” he asks, “the cafe is kinda crowded.”
“Sure!” you yelp, “let’s uh, let’s go out.”
The streets are cold. Sure, Christmas is only a few days away, but the cold has been unbearable these past few days, and you shove your hands in your jacket in an effort to keep them warm. Seokmin notices, and he practically shoves the coffee cup in your hand, “I don’t have a handwarmer,” he shrugs, “you can hold it as long as it’s warm.”
“Right. Thank you.” you nod, falling into step beside him, “those two—”
“Right, yeah, they were your friends?” Seokmin looks interested, “they’re in law, right?”
“We were part of the same university club,” you clarify, “photography club.”
“Then they went on to go to law school.”
“Yeah,” you grin, “Jihoon became an attorney. She went into academia.”
“I see,” he smiles, “they seem like wonderful people.”
“They are,” you agree, “very funny, too.”
“Right.” the two of you fall silent, walking along the road, until Seokmin opens his mouth, “so, you got the field training assignment?”
“Yeah,” you reply, then decide to try out a hypothesis, “did you ask Seungcheol to pair us up?”
Seokmin immediately goes red in the face. You see it, ten other people see it too, “why would you do that?”
“I mean,” he trips over his words, “I wanted to do the field assignment with you.”
“That doesn’t make any sense, Lee Seokmin,” you start walking towards a side alley that serves as a shortcut to your house, “last week, you came to my house to give me your mother’s side dishes.”
“I did,” Seokmin hangs his head.
“And before that, you kept making excuses to include me in things, or to be near me,” you muse, walking along the alleyway, “I told my friends, and they told me there was only one reasonable hypothesis.”
“One reasonable hypothesis?” Seokmin squeaks, “what is it?”
“That you are—”
“You’re right!” Seokmin shouts, scaring off three birds and a cat, “you’re right.”
You stare at him, “so, you’re stalking me?”
You think about it for a second, and in that interval, Seokmin crosses the distance between the two of you, grabbing hold of your hands, “yeah, yn. Your friends are right.”
He blinks, “what? No. I'm not stalking you."
"So, you mean to say, my friends are right?”
“So, you like me?” you raise your eyebrows, “that’s a very strange way of expressing it.”
Seokmin groans, “I know. I kept thinking that you weren’t interested, and that I had no chance.”
“Did you ask Seungcheol for a favour?”
He looks mighty ashamed, “I begged him on my knees, actually. To let me be your partner.”
“I see.”
Seokmin looks at you from under those stupidly long eyelashes, and the only thought in your mind is how unfair. Seokmin’s entire existence is unfair; he gets to be cool and funny and personable without trying, and you have to be the agony aunt of the office who doesn’t smile at all. His attention is flattering and fascinating, you think, to have someone as brilliant as Seokmin be interested in me, would be wonderful.
But do you like him? Are you interested?
You hold his gaze as you think about it. You think about Lee Seokmin, golden and brilliant and perfect, and his place in your life. He would be wonderful, you realise. He would slot easily into your life, make a place for himself in your little circle. He’d get along with Jihoon and talk about books with your friend, and you can see yourself waking up next to him, the sun golden on his eyelashes, golden and so, so brilliant.
Before you can stop yourself, you reach and plant a small kiss on his cheek. Seokmin looks like someone has slapped him across the face, and it makes you laugh, “be my date for christmas, Lee Seokmin.”
He stands there for a whole ten seconds while you walk away, and then blurts out a “huh?” before running to you, “you’re sure?”
“Very sure,” you laugh, handing him back the coffee cup, “give me your hand.”