They presented both their drinks before their judges, who were to taste and vote for the better one.
Kim Dokja got Jung Heewon's blue cocktail and Jung Heewon took his, though their opinion about the drinks wasn't going to be counted.
Jung Heewon's won and it was not a surprise. But Kim Dokja got a few votes, which was unexpected. He was expecting a unanimous win for Jung Heewon, she had been a bartender for a long time and knew a lot more about this than Kim Dokja.
"I like it," said Lee Seolhwa. "It's like a nice savoury lemonade. But like when you really want to destress."
Han Sooyoung nodded along.
"I'm going to pour this in a flask and carry it around," she said.
"No, you're not," said Yoo Sangah.
"It is pretty nice," Jung Heewon said. He got approval from the mixologist goddess of their group herself.
"I like the lime slices," Lee Hyunsung said, tapping his glass with his finger. "It's cute."
"Where did you even learn all this, hmm?" Jung Heewon said. "You haven't been working at bars behind my back, have you? Are you denying me the right to have a work bestie?"
"I'm not," Kim Dokja chuckled. "I don't like going to bars. Why would I work at one?"
"Then?"
"Yoo Joonghyuk taught me," Kim Dokja said.
"Lies," Yoo Joonghyuk scoffed. "I didn't."
"I'm not talking about you, obviously," Kim Dokja sneered back. "The other Yoo Joonghyuk."
"Right," Jung Heewon gave a nod. "And he's a bartender?"
"No," Kim Dokja shook his head. "We just do it when we get bored while taking a rest."
The reaction was instant.
"Rest?" Yoo Sangah echoed.
"Rest from what?" Han Sooyoung demanded.
"From singing?" Kim Dokja said, sounding like he didn't really know what was going on in their minds.
"What?!"
"I already told you," Kim Dokja cried, indignant, acting as though he hadn't worded his thoughts in a certain way on purpose.
"We basically just use the karaoke all night. It's really fun."
He didn't know why he was still trying. Even with the words he had used, his Yoo Joonghyuk didn't show a reaction. At this point, it looked like Kim Dokja was just trying to make himself miserable. Yoo Joonghyuk might have felt something for him years ago, but not anymore. He had moved on completely.
Kim Dokja found something else to think about.
Kim Dokja liked Jung Heewon's drink better. It was really nice. He wondered how she made it. If he'd paid some attention, maybe he would have seen her make it. He could ask her, but did it really matter? He wasn't dying with curiosity and even if he was, he could always look it up on the internet. He was looking up a lot of things on the internet these days. He wasn't even sure if it was all reliable information. He was just reading the most popular articles and websites. He really should be paying more attention to it. He knew that most of the stuff these days was just marketing and to increase the viewership count.
When Kim Dokja got called over to Yoo Joonghyuk's penthouse a day before his birthday, he thought it would be a good way to relax. The next day was finally a Sunday and he could sleep in. Sure, he would have his friends burst into his apartment, but at least until then he could rest.
He would sing and drink, go back home all wobbling and crash on his bed, wake up as late as he wanted to and there were some instant hot chocolate packets he'd gotten on a deal at the supermarket and he could have that once he woke up. He'd read some web novels and in the evening when his friends arrived, he could act all surprised, like he didn't remember his birthday at all.
For some reason, they seemed to like that a lot. While his friends looked slightly sorry for him, they seemed to like the idea of them surprising him so he let them have it.
He was in a pretty good mood when he walked into Yoo Joonghyuk's penthouse. He saw Uriel on the sofa and supposed it was going to be one of those days when they went wild. Uriel got very passionate when she was singing, and if she got even the tiniest bit of alcohol into her system, she would become crazy. She was terrifying from a sober perspective, but drunk she was the most entertaining person ever. Kim Dokja remembered actually sobbing because he was laughing so hard.
He was expecting wine or whiskey or soda or even dinner, really.
But what Yoo Joonghyuk had done was sit him at the dining table, put a cup of coffee in front of him, and then sit down opposite him.
Uriel walked into the room with a black folder that she put in front of him and then went to sit down next to Yoo Joonghyuk.
"What's this?" Kim Dokja asked.
"Open it," said Yoo Joonghyuk and Kim Dokja opened it, all his alarm bells ringing in his head.
The folder had sheets of pages filed in neatly. Kim Dokja blinked.
He flipped the first page. Then he second.
By the time he reached the fifth page, he was stupefied.
"Wh-what?"
He stuttered. He fucking stuttered and Uriel giggled at him.
No, no—What the fuck?!
"You can't be serious," he looked up at Yoo Joonghyuk.
"You gave me your word, Dokja-ssi," Yoo Joonghyuk grinned sinisterly.
Kim Dokja knew he should have run when his gut started screaming at him. Fuck!
"I—what?"
"I remember it clearly," Yoo Joonghyuk said calmly. "And I even made sure to let Uriel know of it the very next day so that you wouldn't bring up lapse of memory as an excuse."
Kim Dokja's brain worked incredibly hard to find something to say against that.
"I said I'll think about it," he said. "If you remember what I said, then you should know that. I would never enter a deal blindly and I said, verbatim, that I will think about it."
He didn't know if that's what he said. He was just saying whatever to get out of it. It was the attitude that sold the lie, not the lie itself.
"Well, then, think about it now," said Yoo Joonghyuk, gesturing at the folder.
"I don't even understand what half of this means," Kim Dokja cried. "What on earth—I—What?. . .Listen, when I said I'd think about it, wasn't it. . .I mean, I have no clue what all this is supposed to be doing."
"Consider it the first draft," Yoo Joonghyuk said pleasantly like this wasn't a big fucking deal at all. "If this was a novel, it would be the first draft. And we edit it from here, improve it and then get it published, in a way."
"I'm a reader, not an editor," Kim Dokja tried. "I don't edit anything."
"You mentioned you used to edit for your writer friend."
Son of a bitch! Maybe he should limit all the stuff he was telling Yoo Joonghyuk.
"It's not the same," Kim Dokja closed the folder and pushed it away. "Besides, I'm pretty sure it's going to be a flop. Not that I'm saying N'gai is incompetent in any way. But it's just not going to work."
"Well, I was hoping we could put our heads together and think or something," Yoo Joonghyuk raised his coffee mug to his lips and Kim Dokja had known this man long enough to know that he was trying to hide a very smug smirk.
Kim Dokja felt like smacking his head a little.
"Did—Did you even try to talk about this with other, qualified employees of yours?" he said.
"I did."
"Uriel-ssi," Kim Dokja turned to the only person who he thought would be logical about it. Uriel raised her eyebrows at him.
"Noona," he corrected and Uriel's expression smoothened out into a pleasant smile.
"We both know this is a bad idea, don't we?" he said. "It's not going to work."
Uriel sighed softly.
"It does seem a bit like it," she said. "But my dumb boss is after it, so what can I do?"
See! Even Uriel thought so. What the fuck was Yoo Joonghyuk doing?
"We tried getting it past the executive board and a lot of them had issues with it," Uriel said. "Mostly cause they're old baldies with piles and it hurts their ass to sit at a table for too long."
Yoo Joonghyuk snorted while Kim Dokja stared at Uriel.
...What?
Uriel continued unbothered. "And well, they get little gift boxes from our assemblymen. Double agents basically, but we can't kick them out either. So we were hoping we'd find a way to get around it."
"Remember our deal, Dokja-ssi?" Yoo Joonghyuk said.
Kim Dokja took a deep breath.
"We cannot consider it good enough to be a deal," Kim Dokja said. "One, there was no written version of it, no recording or any other confirmation other than word of mouth."
He did not like the looks he was getting from the other two, but bullshitting was something he had been doing for ages now.
"Two, we were both drinking that night, we could both be intoxicated. Three, I said I would think about it, not that I'll agree."
"That's word of mouth too," Yoo Joonghyuk pointed out. "Who can prove that we were drinking wine that night? We could have been drinking cranberry juice."
"How did you know it was wine then?" Kim Dokja snapped.
"You said drinking."
"Yeah, and as Koreans when we say drinking, soju or beer is the first thing that comes to mind. Not wine."
Uriel made a weird noise and when Kim Dokja looked at her she seemed to be vibrating of sorts. It took him another second to realise that she was trying her best to not laugh at them.
Kim Dokja felt his face boil with shame.
What the fuck was he doing, seriously?!
"If," he cleared his throat, pretending he could see Uriel who had tears in her eyes now. "If I suggest a solution will you let me off?"
"I'll think about it," Yoo Joonghyuk said.
"Not good enough," Kim Dokja narrowed his eyes.
"You seemed to think it was good enough of an answer last time," Yoo Joonghyuk said without missing a beat, sipping on his coffee.
Kim Dokja really wanted to smack his head.
"N'gai has this sponsorship scheme of sorts," Kim Dokja said. "I know it's not called that, but it's the simplest way to explain it. I don't know a lot about it, but this is what I found on the website. You guys find start-ups and little organisations and give them a push."
"But this also means you can support them in more ways than one. I'm not sure if this is correct, but the internet said nothing about the government having any issues with this."
Kim Dokja drank some of his coffee because his throat felt very dry.
"And from what I've seen," Kim Dokja put his coffee mug down. "The government even supports them. There's a tax cut because of the recent bill to support small businesses. And I bet I'm not the first person to think of exploiting this, it's pretty obvious what they were going for when they passed the bill. And a smaller organisation will reach better, to a smaller group of customers, of course, but it's a start. And if since you mentioned that N'gai isn't solely based in South Korea, you could partner up with establishments abroad."
"Universities are a great idea, I just read a couple of articles and I can't really be sure that they're a hundred per cent right, but we do have a lot of foreign exchange programmes and the government does push the education thing. Not to mention, there are already places that are looking into this overseas, universities and research centres to be particular. And you know how it is for universities if you focus on the research-based ones, they'll push it into the curriculum for most of the study fields."
"You've been thinking a lot about this," Yoo Joonghyuk sounded very pleased.
Kim Dokja moved his eyes from his coffee mug and regretted it. He did not like the look on Yoo Joonghyuk's face. And Uriel wasn't doing anything to increase his confidence either.
"Did you tell him the answer before?" Uriel snapped at Yoo Joonghyuk.
"I did not," Yoo Joonghyuk shook his head. "I swear."
Uriel glanced at Kim Dokja and then turned to Yoo Joonghyuk again.
"And I didn't think about using the education sector either," Yoo Joonghyuk said. "It was something that never crossed my mind."
Uriel furrowed her eyebrows, put her hands together and brought them to her mouth.
". . .Do you actually have an eye that sees through everything?" she said finally.
Yoo Joonghyuk laughed. He really had a wonderful laugh, but Kim Dokja couldn't admire it as much as he would usually have at the moment.
What was going on?
"Was this a test?" he said slowly when things clicked into place in his head.
Fuck! Why didn't he think of it before? It was obvious, now that he was looking at it. He was supposed to act dumb...dumber, since dumb seemed to look like genius to these two for some reason.
"Kim Dokja-ssi, it's time to keep your promise," said Yoo Joonghyuk.
Kim Dokja considered running. He quickly dropped that idea. He didn't exercise, the other two did. He would get caught the second he got up from the chair.
"Dokja-yah, you really, really, really should," Uriel said, dropping her hands from her mouth and picking up her coffee mug. "I know you might not think it's all that much, but you figured out this from just reading articles online."
"Even this guy," he jerked her thumb at Yoo Joonghyuk. "He's been doing this stuff for years, he was trained to do this, and even he didn't think as far as you did. They're solid ideas."
"You can take the ideas," Kim Dokja said, almost hysterically. "I have no problem with it. They're not even that great, really—I mean, they're basically plagiarised at this point."
"Hmm?"
"It's the plot from web novels," Kim Dokja explained, feeling mortified. "In those fantasy setting novels with regression or second chance at life plots, it's what the protagonists always do. It's not something I've thought up. I was just. . .reading."
That's really all he was doing.
"I was bored and I was reading. There's nothing to it."
Uriel was looking at him with that gaze again. A mixture of pity, indignance and pride. Kim Dokja didn't really understand what that look was supposed to mean. No, he understood what it meant. He didn't understand why.
He often didn't understand the 'why'.
"And this," he waved a hand at the folder he had pushed away. "It might as well have been gibberish. That's what it seemed like to me."
"I'll teach you," Yoo Joonghyuk said.
"No, no, you're not understanding. I am not qualified for whatever you want me to do," Kim Dokja said frantically.
"A college degree doesn't mean jackshit," Uriel waved it away. "It's only for entry-level jobs. And after that people really look at experience."
"Which I don't have," Kim Dokja stressed. "The only explanation I have for changing jobs every few years is the fact that I never got a long-term position, it was always a temporary one-year contract and it's so for a reason."
"N'gai also does training programs," Uriel said brightly. "We have a lot of employees who take them and get certified."
"I'm a horrible employee," Kim Dokja tried his hand at that. "I have zero motivation towards work, no loyalty to the company, the worst work ethic ever. I'm really just in it for the monetary gratification."
"So am I," said Uriel. "I hate this job. I regret it very fucking much. And every day I wake up and debate if murder is worth it and I come pretty close to yes. I'm in it for the money too."
"I don't enjoy managing a company, but my bank balance makes me feel good about it," Yoo Joonghyuk nodded.
Kim Dokja grabbed his head.
Should he just try running? Maybe jump out of the window or something? Nah, he was on the thirty-fifth floor. He'd fall right to his death. . .Ah, well, he was turning thirty soon. That worked then, didn't it?
"Dokja-yah, I think it's awesome that you thought of all this from reading novels," Uriel said, smiling widely at him.
"Doesn't everybody?" Kim Dokja said.
Uriel blinked and Yoo Joonghyuk let out an amused puff of air through his lips.
"No?" Uriel said, a little confused. "Why would they?"
"Because that's how it works?"
"Why would it work that way?" Uriel said. "I just read my romance novels for fun. I like the stories."
"Yes, exactly," Kim Dokja said. "I read it because I like the stories too."
"Yeah, but I don't think about the plot like you do, Dokja-yah."
"Noona, that's because you read romance and the plot aspect you care about is different from mine."
"Does that mean everyone who reads Sherlock Holmes is a detective?" Yoo Joonghyuk scoffed.
"Exactly, they are not!" Kim Dokja cried.
"And that's what I was trying to say," said Uriel.
"What?!"
"What?"
Huuhh?!
"Don't I have to give an interview and stuff like that?"
"You already did," Yoo Joonghyuk said. "Though it was in a very informal setting, I consider this sufficient for an interview and a test."
"And I've already gone through your CV," Uriel piped up.
"I don't want to work for you though?" Kim Dokja cried.
Yoo Joonghyuk grinned at him, a thin line of his white teeth showing.
"Well, that's too bad," he said.
"If I cry, will you let me off?"
"Absolutely not."
He was going to cry. He really was. . .Damn it.