Part 1

Part One of Three. 12k words.

---

The day before the trip, you’re turning a corner at the office and she’s spilling an iced caramel macchiato - extra whipped cream, extra caramel drizzle - onto your clothes.

“Oh my god-” she spits, mouth frozen open as the reality of what she’d just done dawns on you both. She sees the suit, sees the ID card dangling on a lanyard from your neck, sees the Director title on it - and freezes.

After you both overcome your momentary shock, she steps close, producing napkins from her blazer’s inside pocket and using it to wipe uselessly at the whipped cream and caffeinated sugar-water soaking into your jacket.

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” you say, genuinely. You were late to a meeting, and it was probably your fault for turning the corner too quickly without looking. You notice the equally wet patch on her own blazer, and notice her napkins quickly shredding into wet pieces as they try and fail to absorb the rogue caffeine stain. You reach into your pocket for your handkerchief and offer it to her.

“I- shit, I’ll, uh,” she stammers, even as she takes your handkerchief.

“Don’t worry about it,” you say, slipping the jacket off, offering a crooked smile. For the first time you look up at her. She’s an unfamiliar face, and her ID card isn’t immediately visible. She’s slim, with dark hair, and beneath the awkward, worried look on her features is the kind of face that belongs on a magazine. You smile sheepishly.

“I’m so fucking sorry, I’ll get it cleaned, oh my god-”

“Seriously, don’t worry about it,” you say, already heading down the hall. “Late to a meeting. See you around!”

She watches you leave, still a little frozen in shock. She clutches what’s left of her macchiato in one hand, your handkerchief in the other.

She sighs.

---

“Seoul. Tokyo. Two weeks each. You leave tomorrow.”

Taeyeon slides a tablet across her desk, just past the Vice President, Strategy name plate. On it are graphs and spreadsheets, numbers generally in green and arrows pointing generally upward. She spares a glance at the clearly dripping blazer folded over the back of your chair, and the corresponding damp spot on your chest, before leaning forward and threading her fingers atop her desk.

“Seoul is doing fine. Tokyo needs to pick it up a little,” she continues, tone sharp and direct, business persona fully on and engaged. “Either way, the CEO wants a status report on both offices by end-of-month so he can decide whether to expand ops in either country. We already have the hard data we need for a business case - we just need someone on the ground to confirm the numbers. Meet with the directors of each office, let them wine and dine you, take a tour of the facilities and offices, slap together a report for me to hand to the boss when you get back. Piece of cake.”

“Sounds like a month-long vacation,” you reply, relaxing a little further into the leather chair opposite her desk.

“Consider it a thank you for the good work you did on the Hirai deal,” Taeyeon says with a shrug, taking a sip from her mug - double-shot Americano, black, extra hot. You smirk as you recall the details of the deal, which took every ounce of your attention and time for a couple of months. There were too many long nights spent in this very office, the two of you working away at this document or that.

“And you’re too busy?”

Taeyeon glares, but there’s no heat in the frown on her lips. “I’m going to London to check up on the office there. I’d spend too much time in Seoul fielding ‘why aren’t you married to a chaebol heir and popping out kids yet’ questions from the family.”

“Coward. Come to Seoul with me. I’ll play the handsome foreign fiance in front of your parents. Maybe we tell them there’s a bun in the oven. Maybe in the hotel room-”

Taeyeon throws a paper clip at you. Her faux-serious frown becomes a reluctant smile to mirror the one on your own. Thankfully, her promotion to a VP position a year ago didn’t change the close relationship you’d forged over almost a decade of working together, especially now that you technically reported to her. HR would’ve had a field day with the things said and done in this twentieth-floor corner office, had even a fraction of it somehow leaked beyond its walls. 

“You had your shot with me,” she says, mostly-jokingly, under her breath. You don’t miss the wistfulness in the corners of her eyes as she crosses her arms and makes a playful show of looking out of her office’s floor-to-ceiling windows at Vancouver’s dark, cloudy afternoon. “I’ve moved on.”

Silence reigns for a moment that felt longer than it actually was. The I haven’t on your lips dies there, unspoken.

“Anyway, you’ll need a translator,” Taeyeon continues, eager to change the subject before it drowned you both in memories of years past. She shuffles a few papers around randomly on her desk in an attempt to alleviate the sudden tension in the air. When she looks up at you, the wistfulness isn’t entirely gone - just pushed down by the professionalism she wore like armor. “Her file’s on the tablet. Some new kid from Marketing.”

Your eyes linger on Taeyeon’s for a moment longer before you pick up the tablet. There is something behind her eyes in that split-second - thoughts she perhaps wants to turn into words. But the moment passes as quickly as it comes. She turns her eyes to her laptop, and you return yours to the tablet.

A swipe left reveals a resume and an unfamiliar name.

“Ryujin Shin.”

“Brand new to the company - only been with us less than a year, but apparently she’s already a bit of a rock star. Got promoted to Marketing Lead in six months. Her manager says she volunteered for this assignment. She was pretty insistent that she get it, apparently. Maybe she thinks overseas experience will be good for her career.”

“Hmm,” you muse, as you review Ryujin’s resume. Degree with honors, top of her training cohort, gleaming reference letters. 

“She’s fluent in both Korean and Japanese,” Tayeon continues, “so make sure you get your translations directly from her. CEO wants real shit in the report, not a sugarcoated version from the local translators.”

You place the tablet back on her desk as you rise. “I’ll get it done, ma’am,” you state, before straightening up and giving her an exaggerated military salute. 

Taeyeon returns the salute with one of her own, a soft smile perking up the corners of her lips. For a moment she’s twenty-six again, bright-eyed, greeting you with a smile at the company orientation that she was in charge of organizing. You feel something stir in your chest, somewhere deep down where the past still lingered.

“Dismissed, Director,” she answers.

Her smile follows you out the door. It lingers even after you leave, but tinged with a sadness that she’d fought to keep hidden while you were in the room.

---

Ryujin Shin was late.

You weren’t exactly sure what to expect - her profile didn’t include a photo or even so much as a birthdate, so you treated every female that approached within twenty feet as potentially being your translator and guide for the next month. This resulted in some awkward eye contact and equally awkward smiles with random female travellers making their way through Vancouver International Airport’s departures terminal.

You’re directing one such awkward smile toward a middle-aged woman when the actual Ryujin Shin approaches.

“Director?”

You turn your head to the sound and there she is - the girl from the morning prior. The one that had left half her drink on your suit jacket.

“...Ryujin Shin?”

“That’s me,” she says, shyly. She fidgets with the slim silver chain around her wrist. She’s dressed casually, in an oversized navy cardigan and wide cut jeans, but looks just as fitting for a magazine cover as she did when she was spilling iced caffeine on you the day before.  “Shall we get going?”

---

The thirteen hours over the Pacific are relatively uneventful - hours of movies on your iPad, a microwaved but surprisingly edible bibimbap, and dying more than you’d like in the latest Souls-like to test your blood pressure. Ryujin spent most of it asleep, snoring softly in the seat next to you.

It’s near midnight when the two of you arrive in South Korea’s capital city. The bright neon lights of downtown Seoul paint Ryujin’s soft features in bright blues and pastel pinks as she stares out the taxi windows with wonder, awe, and nostalgia clashing on her soft features. The taxi pulls up in front of a high-end boutique hotel that your assistant had insisted was popular with travel influencers.

Ryujin slipped into her translator duties early, helping the two of you check in to your rooms. You don’t miss the blush on her cheeks and the embarrassed wave of her hands when the desk clerk sheepishly asks her a question in Korean before shooting you a glance heavy with implication. Eventually, Ryujin receives two key cards from the clerk and hands one of them to you as you both make your way to the elevator.

“She thought we were married,” she admits, shyly, as she pushes the up arrow button on the wall. “Thought we were here for our wedding or something.”

“Cute,” you say, shooting her a smile. The blush lingers.

The elevator dings on the 10th floor, and the doors open. Ryujin heads out first, but when you make to follow her, she stops you with a raised hand.

“Company got you a suite. You’re on the 14th floor. Room 1421.”

“Oh,” you admit. “Got it.”

“Don’t forget - first meeting tomorrow is at 9am. See you in the lobby at 8?”

“I’ll be there.”