Chapter Text
Kim Dokja wanted a girlfriend.
He really needed one. He needed a good fuck, wake up the next day with breakfast in bed, with a person who loved him for him, and not his money.
Was that too much to ask?
He wanted a hot, pretty, and nerdy girlfriend with a messy bun and thick glasses who was secretly a beast in bed. Preferably in a chinese dress. Yes, that's the most important part. And she'd have to be the kindest, most domestic woman to ever live, who would cook for him every day.
He could already imagine her cooking in a naked apron, stuttering awkwardly when he approached her from behind in the morning. Calling his name so sweetly—
“Dokja-ssi, I think you need to change your standards.” Yoo Sangah, his very competent secretary, handed him another stack of papers to sign. Cutting off his fantasy.
“Compromise means weakness.” He pointed out, uncapping his blue pen, as his eyes swam in jargons he refused to decipher. “You could've made the cut, y'know. But—”
“I'm a lesbian”
“You're a lesbian.”
Yoo Sangah stared at Kim Dokja.
Kim Dokja stared back harder.
“You're still mad I got a—”
“Yes! I'm mad that you got a hot nerdy girlfriend who's a sex fiend before I do!”
Yoo Sangah’s eye twitched once. They had been through this already. She considered filing a harassment case just for the settlement money, but figured that the paperwork was too much of a hassle. “Please sign the papers.”
He did.
Then, he slammed his head on his desk.
“I've done everything right…” he cried pathetically. Unbefitting of someone in his position.
“I am rich.”
“You are.”
“I am handsome.”
“That’s debatable.”
“I have a good personality.”
“No, you really don't.”
“Dammit! I'm basically of marriageable age! I'm the perfect bachelor.”
“Yet you're still single.”
Kim Dokja glared at his secretary. She ignored him and shoved another stack of paper in his face.
He had tried everything. Dating apps, flirting with the new recruits, shooting his shots at random women on the street, even went to those stupid arranged marriage meetings his mother set him up on. And yet he hadn't found THE ONE.
And how the hell did all those girls end up with their middle-class suburban childhood friends?
He didn't get it.
“You got your girl. Tell me how to get one too.” He demanded shamelessly.
Yoo Sangah sighed, then blurted out, “Try to be gay. Maybe that'd work. You can definitely pass off as a twink.”
And instead of going into yet another meltdown, Kim Dokja fell into silence. A long silence that only surfaced when he had an awfully concerning, lawsuit-impending idea in his head.
Yoo Sangah shook her head and grabbed him by the shoulders the moment he pulled out his phone.
“I was joking.”
“Were you?” But he was already typing so fast.
“But…you're not gay.”
“I've decided that I am now. I'm painting the headquarters in rainbow colours this pride month— when was it again? May?”
“It's June…”
“Whatever. Get it done by May. We need to get ahead of those other seasonally woke losers who capitalise on our identity.”
He was one of those seasonally woke losers for years.
“You're…not serious.” Yoo Sangah scoffed in disbelief. “And— our….our identity?”
“A hole is a hole.” Kim Dokja said in all seriousness. “Send an email broadcast. Everyone has to have a pride flag on their desk by Monday. Oh, don't forget the inspection. It'll affect their KPIs.”
He stopped typing for a second.
“Hold that thought,” he said, raising his hand.
Yoo Sangah almost hoped that he had come to his senses.
Just for one second—
“That unprofitable fabric factory in Pohang…” he paused. Yoo Sangah listened. “Redirect the production to make the pride flags. Make sure our logo is big and bold in the centre, and all our employees have to buy it.”
“With…their own money…?”
Kim Dokja tilted his head as if she was speaking gibberish. “Of course. I just said the factory's running at a loss.”
Her hope instantly shattered into rainbow powdered dust.
Yoo Sangah looked up and started praying to whatever gods that would listen to slap some sense into this man. But she was sure that even they would rather stay away from this filthy, unsalvageable, piece-of-shit human that would be refused at the gates of hell.
Just a minute ago the same man was openly whining about finding an imaginary girlfriend to fuck.
But now…
“Dokja-sii…” Yoo Sangah let go of his shoulders she hadn't realised she was holding.
She knew that whatever she said now would probably not have an effect on a Kim Dokja who was already determined, or rather, desperate to lose his status as a bachelor. “You need to think this through. Love isn't something you can rig. You can't just find a random person and—”
“Ha! Found one!”
That was fast.
She looked at his screen.
Yoo Joonghyuk.
A retired pro-gamer, used to be in a gaming team sponsored by their company, who had since faded into obscurity. Hot. High chance of being a nerd. Not much of a talker, and looked poor enough to do whatever Kim Dokja asked of him. And worst…he was known to cook for himself.
Oh god, he was perfect.
“He's perfect!” Kim Dokja slammed his phone on his desk. “Sangah-ssi, call him to my office. Now.”
“Now?”
“Yes, please.”
“You have a meeting with our South district subsidiaries in ten minutes. And we don't even know where this Yoo Joonghyuk is since he is no longer affiliated with our company. It's basically illegal to contact him without any basis.”
Kim Dokja groaned. “Our first tribulation,” he said dramatically.
Then, his eyes widened. Another idea had descended upon his depraved brain.
“Sangah-ssi—”
“You have another genius idea?” She asked, tone dripping with sarcasm.
“The utmost brilliant of plan to ever grace the romance genre!”
“Since when did this become a romance genre?”
“The moment I said I'm gay. Keep up, Sangah-ssi.”
She sighed. Half in defeat, half in dread. The desperation was cute at first, but now, it was simply downright pathetic and had dissolved into pure madness. This man needed to be sedated and be clothed in a straitjacket. Not sharp looking suit and endless money.
“What's your plan?”
“We need a way to establish first contact. It has to be natural, something that shows our good side, and forces him to come see us.”
‘We’. ‘Our’. ‘Us’. She hadn’t even consented to being pulled into this.
“And by natural, you mean…?”
Kim Dokja snapped his fingers “I'm going to sue him.”
“Pardon me?” Yoo Sangah blinked three times.
“For causing me emotional distress.”
“Over…what?”
“For having such angelic face, and never making himself be known. To me. That, Sangah-ssi, is a cardinal sin.”
Yep. He's gone.
“Don't you think suing an already unemployed person is counterproductive? He might hate you for it.”
“Good point…” Kim Dokja casted his gaze down, resting a finger against his lips, and thought.
He typed more things into his phone, tapping, scrolling, and reading article after article silently at an inhumane speed.
Yoo Sangah's hope unshattered for a brief moment, before it was completely blown away yet again the moment Kim Dokja opened his mouth.
“I’ve got it. We'll sue Ash Dynasty instead. Threaten them with contract severance, bring Yoo Joonghyuk in as witness and victim for the match making scandal, and then,” his eyes glinted, “I will establish dominance, destroy that team in front of his eyes, and get his number!”
He sounded more like a demon dressed in a three-piece suit by the day.
“That's—”
“Postpone the subsidiary meeting. I need my PR and Legal team to look into it.”
Yoo Sangah was about to point out why that was the worst idea she'd ever heard. And a terrible, terrible waste of money. But kept her mouth shut. She wasn't paid enough for this. She was paid to follow through and not question a thing.
And that meant letting her boss fail another one of this attempt at being the ‘romantic male lead’.
This wouldn't tank the stock…or would it? She couldn't quite tell.
She quickly rescheduled all of Kim Dokja’s meetings that day, and squeezed in a new one. Notifying the PR and Legal team that they needed to come up to Kim Dokja’s office right away. And to take heart attack or blood pressure medications just in case.
The insane pride flag manufacturing, and building redecoration— those could wait. If Yoo Joonghyuk rejected Kim Dokja fast enough, he might return back to his straight, more predictable path and not even remember this conversation ever happening.
This could only go so well.
“It's done. What now?”
“Now,” Kim Dokja smirked, “we fabricate our first coincidental encounter.”
Yoo Joonghyuk stared at his diminishing bank account with growing concern. His fingers twitched and cramped up once on the statement book.
With the constant visit to the hospital for Yoo Mia's speech therapy and the unending stream of bills, it was hard to not feel like he was trapped back in the dark room, wasting away. Grinding other people's accounts for meager money.
He…didn't want to go back there. Not in a million years.
He didn't know what else to do. The world hadn't ended, and time had cruelly ticked on. The private investigators had found nothing, and he had wasted money which could've gone to other, more important things.
Then, there was the email that came this morning. Right after he dropped Yoo Mia off at school.
The sender made his jaw tighten instantly.
Fourth Wall.
His former sponsor.
Requesting him to appear as a witness and affected party of an ongoing settlement dispute involving Ash Dynasty.
He wanted nothing to do with that world anymore. Wanted to just toss the letter in the bin and forget it even existed. But…the next paragraph in bold letters caught his attention.
Fourth Wall is prepared to offer temporary consulting support and financial assistance for the duration of the proceedings.
And
Appearance fee paid per hour.
They were offering to pay him to reopen a wound. To sit in a room and let faceless suits dissect his failure, package it into legal jargons, and turn it into leverage to earn more money off of him, using him like a pawn to destroy others in their game of corporate chess.
He hated it.
He hated how quickly his mind calculated the hours.
How easily the numbers rearranged themselves into speech therapy paid for, rent covered, school fees no longer overdue, and one less night lying awake staring at the ceiling.
He pressed his aching wrist against his thigh.
He didn’t want to go back.
But Yoo Mia needed him. And pride didn’t pay the bills.
Yoo Joonghyuk picked up his phone.
He stared at the email draft for a long time before replying.
“…Just this once,” he muttered to the empty room.
For Mia.
He hit send.
Somewhere, far away, a man in a perfectly tailored suit was probably smiling for all the wrong reasons.