Work Text:
Yoo Sangah’s date is 20 minutes late. She has gone through three cups of this café’s coffee by now, and is starting to think she needs to move on to a stronger drink despite it only being one in the afternoon.
“I think you two could really get along,” Kim Dokja had said, while they were eating together in lunch break the other day. “She’s a popular writer, so she probably likes the same sort of books you do, Sangah-ssi. Ah, but she can be a bit much at first… still, I think if anyone can handle her, it’d be you.”
At the time Yoo Sangah had wondered how on earth Kim Dokja thought a description like that was the best way to introduce a blind date. But he had seemed so excited about them meeting, and Yoo Sangah supposed she had nothing better to do on the weekend, so she’d agreed and went along with it. It can’t be so bad, she had thought all morning today while getting ready. Dokja-ssi wouldn’t be friends with someone absolutely intolerable.
This ‘someone’ hasn’t even gotten here, and they’ve already proven Yoo Sangah wrong. She sighs into her empty cup, wondering if she should get a fourth one or just leave entirely. Being 20 whole minutes late has to be a no-show, right? But she doesn’t want to let Kim Dokja down… maybe she’ll wait five more minutes. Just five. Maybe whoever is on their way here is just running into subway difficulties or stuck in traffic. Yes, Yoo Sangah can understand those.
As long as it isn’t someone like her, Yoo Sangah’s sure she can get through this just—
Someone slides into the seat across her. “Hey, I’m just on time, aren’t I?” Han Sooyoung asks, dumping her bag on the table. “No one else is sitting alone, so you’re probably my… date…”
Yoo Sangah stares at her for exactly three seconds.
Then she stands up. “I’m leaving.”
“What? Hey, wait!?” Han Sooyoung stands up too, smacking her knee against the table as she does so. After some cursing and hopping, she snaps, “Hey, it took me forever to get here! At least get a drink or something!”
“I’ve already had three. You can get your own drink when I’m gone.”
“What the hell? Come on… Is this some kind of joke?” Han Sooyoung grumbles. “Did Kim Dokja set us up knowing about this? But it’s not like I ever told him about you…”
How do they know each other? Yoo Sangah vaguely remembers Kim Dokja mentioning ‘college friend’ and ‘full-time writer,’ but she hadn’t thought the world could possibly be this small. Had he known, somehow? Had Han Sooyoung maybe slipped up and mentioned Yoo Sangah’s name while speaking to Kim Dokja? Either way, Yoo Sangah has no intention of staying here a second longer than necessary. “Well, I’ll let Dokja-ssi know this thing was a failure,” she says, shouldering her bag. “Goodbye.”
“Hey, seriously, sit down! Where the hell do you think you’re going!? Since when did you know Kim Dokja anyway!?”
Yoo Sangah briefly considers just ignoring her and walking away, but even now she knows Han Sooyoung well enough to predict the other woman will dog her until she answers her questions. “Friend at work.”
“At work…? You mean that game company or something?”
Technically Han Sooyoung’s not wrong, but every time she opens her mouth Yoo Sangah can’t help but get annoyed anyway. “Yes. Are you done? May I leave?”
“Ugh.” Han Sooyoung looks grossed out by the sight of her too. “Kim Dokja’s going to blame this on me for sure.”
“I’ll let him know I left first.” Even if Han Sooyoung had wasted 20 goddamn minutes of her time, time Yoo Sangah could have spent doing something else other than drink unhealthy amounts of coffee. But she makes the mistake of glancing over her shoulder — honestly, part of her still can’t believe Han Sooyoung of all people had been sitting across her, even for only a moment — and Yoo Sangah falters; not, of course, because she has any lingering feelings after their break-up or whatever, but because she can’t help but wonder how Kim Dokja and Han Sooyoung know each other. Is it worth asking?
Han Sooyoung glares back up at her. “What? Thought you were gonna leave already.”
Stay calm, Sangah. Stay mature. “You knew Dokja-ssi back in college?”
“Uh, well. Yeah.” Han Sooyoung looks taken aback Yoo Sangah had actually spoken, which Yoo Sangah can’t blame her for — she’s taken aback by herself, too. “But we weren’t all that close then, so I never told him anything about you. N-Not that we’re close now, we just ended up spending time together while working on our thesis projects and… anyway, why do you care?” Her brows rise. “Were you scared he found out about us back then? Like I’d tell anyone about you.”
Stay. Calm. Stay. Mature. “Of course,” Yoo Sangah says, forcing a smile. “The feeling is mutual.”
Han Sooyoung just sighs irritably and looks down at the menu. A waiter, the same one who served Yoo Sangah all three cups of her coffee, has already drifted over. “Ugh, anyway… yeah, I’ll get lunch set B…”
The waiter scribbles it down, then turns to face Yoo Sangah despite her clearly standing up and about to leave the table. “And you, miss?”
“No, I…” Right on cue Yoo Sangah’s stomach decides to remind her that she had, in fact, only drank coffee because she’d waited 20 minutes for her stupid date to show up. Part of her would rather keel over and die than have lunch with Han Sooyoung, of all people, but she is already here, and she’d been eyeing one of the meal sets since she first saw the menu. Just why does Han Sooyoung have to be here? The waiter stares back at her, looking a mix of nervous and expectant, and after a moment’s deliberation Yoo Sangah sighs. “I’ll have set D. Thank you.”
“Eugh,” Han Sooyoung says. “Weren’t you leaving? Can’t you go back to doing that?”
Yoo Sangah sets her bag down on the table, placing it sideways so it serves as an effective divider between the two of them. “I waited almost half an hour here for you, so I may as well make it worth my time.” She should have asked for a glass of water, just to have something to do with her hands — Han Sooyoung has always done an impeccable job at making her restless.
Han Sooyoung squints at her like she’s not quite sure if Yoo Sangah is making fun of her. “Aw, and here I was thinking you were starting to enjoy my company after all.”
Maybe it’s a good thing she hadn’t gotten that water. She wouldn’t have been able to resist the urge to splash it on Han Sooyoung’s smug little face. “Please don’t say such things, Sooyoung-ssi.”
“Or what? You’ll kill me?”
“It’s tempting.”
“Ugh.” Han Sooyoung inches a little further back in her seat. “The more I look at you, the more it’s obvious you haven’t changed at all. You look the exact same.”
“Really?” Yoo Sangah almost rolls her eyes, reflexively stops herself, then realizes she’s talking to Han Sooyoung here and not a coworker or a supervisor or anyone she needs to not be herself around, and so rolls her eyes. It’s oddly freeing. “You don’t look that much different either. Didn’t you say you were still waiting for your growth spurt?”
“Shut up! Why do you remember that!?”
“It’s not like the last time we saw each other was all that long ago.” Yoo Sangah toys idly with the strap of her bag. She doesn’t keep up with many friends from high school and only still speaks with a few from university; she just feels like she’s always done better by herself, which may have been why she and Han Sooyoung had done so, well, terribly when they had been in that relationship. If one could even call it a relationship, as much as it was some sort of love-hate rivalry that transcended campus barriers…
Han Sooyoung sighs again, resting her cheek on her palm, facing Yoo Sangah but looking away from her. The posture is so overwhelmingly familiar it almost feels like they’re back in uni, their dinner date turned dinner argument, Han Sooyoung trying to say something she can’t meet Yoo Sangah’s eyes for. The afternoon light falls over Han Sooyoung’s face, the shadow of sunshine in her eyes, and Yoo Sangah feels her chest clench with emotion she recognizes but dares not name. “Yeah, it hasn’t felt that long either,” Han Sooyoung mutters. “I can’t believe that fucker did this.”
Yoo Sangah takes a deep breath. “You and Dokja-ssi studied in the same university?”
“Yeah. Different departments, though. When we were still—” Han Sooyoung makes some sort of vague gesture with her hand that Yoo Sangah cannot even begin to interpret — “I didn’t know him yet. So maybe he spotted you at some point… or I let it slip while I was drunk…”
Neither sound likely; Kim Dokja seemed like he genuinely thought neither Yoo Sangah nor Han Sooyoung knew each other. Blind dates were supposed to be blind, after all. Then again, that doesn’t mean the two people can’t be strangers… “When we were still what?” Yoo Sangah asks, not quite able to help herself; Han Sooyoung just makes teasing her so easy. “You’re a grown woman, surely you can say the word.”
Han Sooyoung’s eye twitches. “Oh, you want me to say it? When we were still fucking!”
The waiter pauses by their table for a long, uncomfortable moment. “Y… Your orders,” he manages, setting the plates before them before fleeing back behind the counter.
Han Sooyoung’s mouth hangs open. Yoo Sangah shakes her head. “Look what you’ve done,” she says, as condescendingly as possible. “Went and embarrassed yourself.”
“Thanks to you!”
At least the food is good; Yoo Sangah dearly wants to wolf it down and get out of this place, but she doesn’t want Han Sooyoung to harp over her table manners or something (never mind that Han Sooyoung’s are inarguably worse), so she takes her time with the meal. For a while it’s quiet, that tense, awkward silence Yoo Sangah had almost grown used to with her time together with Han Sooyoung — almost being the keyword here, because she had never really quite gotten accustomed to it, all the way until the end. With Han Sooyoung there was never a dull moment. Many tense, awkward silences, usually when they were in the middle of an argument, but just as many conversations, about everything and anything and sometimes nothing at all.
And a lot of… less talking, more doing. Somehow Yoo Sangah had walked away from that relationship thinking the physical aspect of it would be what she’d remember most down the line, but now all she can think of is the way Han Sooyoung used to yell at the security guards on campus for not letting her in, and Yoo Sangah having to go down from her dorm to pick Han Sooyoung up, every single time she wanted to drop by.
“So you work in a game company,” Han Sooyoung says, suddenly. She’s staring down at her food, same as she always used to do when she wanted to apologize for something without saying the s-word. “Do you, like… code games or something?”
“No. I’m in HR.” Honestly, sometimes Yoo Sangah wishes she could ‘code games or something’ instead. Much less human interaction. “I heard Sooyoung-ssi is a full-time writer now?”
“Uh, yeah.” Han Sooyoung glances up at her before quickly looking away again. She used to do that back during uni, too; whenever Yoo Sangah asked about it, Han Sooyoung always snapped at her for standing directly in the light or something equally strange. “Got published and everything.”
Yoo Sangah raises her brows despite herself. “Really? Which title? I remember your most popular one was Infinite Regressor, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, I might be getting a movie deal—” Han Sooyoung blinks. “You remember that?”
“Well, it—” Shit. “It’s your most popular one,” Yoo Sangah repeats, weakly. “I… saw it… on an advertisement somewhere just recently and it came back to me. Congratulations, by the way. You must be rolling in money.”
Han Sooyoung squints at her again, like she definitely doesn’t believe Yoo Sangah but can’t think of a counter-argument. Then she huffs and leans back. “Sure am. Everyone’s scrambling to get their grubby hands on some of it.”
“Are you writing anything new?”
“Not yet, but my agent’s been suggesting something, so…” Han Sooyoung trails off, then stares at her. “Uhh, you’re not just making small talk or something, are you? I hate small talk.”
“These are normal questions to ask on a blind date,” Yoo Sangah coolly returns.
“How is this still a blind date? We clearly know each other!”
“Fine,” she says. “Just a date, then.”
Han Sooyoung looks stunned. “Oh,” is all she says, softly, lowly.
Yoo Sangah looks down at her food, trying to act like she hadn’t said anything that makes her want to die in a hole. Why did she just say that? She’s embarrassing herself, even if she tries to speak calmly. If there’s anything about Han Sooyoung that Yoo Sangah can confidently say she hates most, it’d be how Han Sooyoung brings the absolute worst out of Yoo Sangah, everything she’s tried all her life to suppress, repress. Rolling her eyes, just saying anything that comes to mind, that awful twist in her gut…
That last one was — is — the worst. That longing, that yearning, that pathetic desire — Yoo Sangah had never felt it to this degree with anyone else before, not until Han Sooyoung came waltzing in that seminar on writing Yoo Sangah helped co-host and pointed out everything they got wrong.
Yoo Sangah wouldn’t go so far as to say it was love at first sight — if anything, it was complete and utter loathing at first word spoken — but afterwards, after Yoo Sangah dragged Han Sooyoung to the side and argued with her over when it was appropriate to interrupt the speaker… after Yoo Sangah thought they would never meet each other again, only to see Han Sooyoung in the next seminar, and the next… after they’d both been kicked out of the lecture hall for bickering during what was supposed to be the speaker’s discussion…
She could not quite recall when she’d first felt it, only that it grew stronger every time she saw Han Sooyoung’s kiss-swollen lips, Han Sooyoung asleep on her dorm bed, Han Sooyoung with her feet up on her car’s dashboard.
“A date. Sure,” Han Sooyoung’s mumbling. “I still hate small talk on dates, though.”
Yoo Sangah tries to look extremely preoccupied with cutting into her food so she doesn’t distract herself by how Han Sooyoung hadn’t denied this being a date. “Then what do you want to talk about?”
“Ugh, I don’t know. Do I look like someone who goes on normal dates?” Han Sooyoung snorts. “All the blind dates I was ever set up with were just me dunking on dumb men and sending them home after they pissed themselves in their seats. I honestly thought this would go the same way. Who trusts Kim Dokja when he says, ‘you’ll definitely love her’ or something?”
Yoo Sangah’s first instinct is to ask, teasingly, So? Do you definitely love me yet? But she has a feeling that would lead the conversation on a downhill slope, so she only pulls up a smile. It doesn’t feel fake. She’s not going to think about that. “Is this date going the way you expected it to?”
“Not since I saw your ugly mug.”
“Then I’m glad we feel the same.”
“Do we?” Han Sooyoung scoffs, then returns to her food. “So what do you do in HR anyway?”
“Isn’t this the small talk you hate so much?”
“Can you shut up and answer the question for once?”
There’s that longing feeling again, twisting her gut, wrapping around her heart. Yoo Sangah stares down at the table, not quite able to meet Han Sooyoung’s eyes, not quite able to look away from her hands.