A week had passed since she finally drafted something that she felt proud enough of to submit to Embrace's editors. But knowing that if she sent it to Dara, her beloved manuscript would never see the light of day, she had cheated a little by sending her draft straight to Julie instead of going through her most immediate supervisor.
Dara was so busy, anyway, Jisoo doubted she would miss it.
It was nearing the end of Jisoo's shift. She was in high spirits as she sat at her work station, reading over submissions and checking the formatting for the proper submission guidelines. It was a quick way to weed out the unlikely ones, since anyone who truly merited being published in Embrace would care enough to make sure their manuscript followed the guidelines. Normally, this was a tedious job. Jisoo would sit at her desk measuring font size and wishing she was doing something else.
But today was different. She had actually done something, had actually taken action, and she was glowing with pride in herself and in her work. Measuring text font size no longer felt like a job she only deigned to do. She was happy to be of service.
Then it all ended when Dara slapped something down over her work.
Jisoo gasped, startled as she looked up and met the ire in Dara's eyes.
"What do you think you're doing?" Dara shouted, causing everyone in the office to look up at them. Jisoo's heart started pounding. All at once, she started zooming back through the recent past, making sure she hadn't messed up on any tasks.
"Excuse me?" Jisoo said, shocked and a little scared. Dara leaned in, bringing her furious glare closer to Jisoo's shaking form.
"You think I don't see you sneaking around behind my back," Dara hissed. "Snuggling up to Julie and changing your title? What is this? Are you after my job?"
Jisoo's voice shook as she spoke. "What? No! I... I don't understand what you're talking about—"
"This!" Dara shouted, pushing the stack of paper closer to Jisoo on the desk. "I'm talking about this! Look at the byline! Read it out loud, new girl."
Jisoo's felt frozen in her chair, but she reached a hand out, took the paper from the desk. It was the mock-up of the upcoming issue. For just a moment, Jisoo surged with pride seeing that the story printed on it was the one she had sent to Julie. But then she read from the byline as Dara instructed. Jisoo swallowed.
"Kim Jisoo, Editorial Assistant?" she said. She looked up at Dara, who was still seething.
"I don't understand," Jisoo said. Dara scoffed and leaned in again.
"Editorial Assistant?" Dara said, spitting the title out as if it were vinegar. "What game are you playing at? Aren't you the optimist?"
Jisoo looked around at all the people who were staring at the Associate Managing Editor yelling at the new girl. But she still didn't understand what had made Dara so angry.
"But... I am the Editorial Assistant," Jisoo said quietly. Dara flushed red with fury.
"You're not an editorial assistant yet, missy!" Dara shouted. "You're just my assistant, my secretary!"
"Dara, that really is my title," Jisoo said, trying to keep herself calm, but her heart was pounding and her breathing was getting hot and heavy. "I'll even go down to HR with you to confirm it—"
"Are you calling me stupid?" Dara said, crossing her arms and narrowing her eyes at Jisoo. "Do you seriously think that I don't know my own assistant's title?"
Jisoo swallowed a painful lump in her throat.
"But I really am the Editorial Assistant! Julie said—"
Dara gripped the edge of her desk as she brought her face dangerously close to hers. Jisoo had never seen Dara so angry.
"That's Ms. Kiyoko to you!" Dara said. The look on her face was so ripe with fury that Jisoo could do nothing but sit in her chair and tremble under her stare.
"Stay out of my way, alright?" Dara hissed in a low voice. "This is my job and I worked my pretty little ass off for four years to get here. I gave up too much, and I'm not about to let a naive little piece of plastic like you take this from me. Stay out of my way and stay in your place. You're just an assistant around here, keep your head down and pay your dues like everyone else, or else I'll fire you. Do you understand? And say goodbye to that short feature project, you're manning my inbox and fetching my dry cleaning until further notice."
Jisoo pressed her lips together to keep from crying. "You can't do that," she whispered.
"Can't I?" Dara said, standing up. "I'm your supervisor."
Jisoo felt a sharp stab of pain in her chest as she felt her dream slipping away, crushed under the tyranny of Dara's supervision. She swallowed again and tried one more time to fight back.
"Dara, please," Jisoo said, voice breaking. "I'm telling the truth. I really am the Editorial Assistant. I've been working on the short feature for weeks, I'm—"
"Are you listening to me?" Dara said. "I already told you: new girls don't do features. I don't even want you to go near a word processor until I say you can. Got it? Now, cancel my 3 o'clock and get me a tall skinny latte."
When Dara turned and went back to her office, Jisoo was left behind to choke on the ashes of her rage. She felt everyone in the office looking at her. If Dara had barged into the office and stripped her naked in front of everyone, Jisoo couldn't have felt more humiliated than she did already. She couldn't even look down at her own story in the mock-up of the issue and feel any bit of pride. All of it was stripped away in just a few moments of rage.
Jisoo tried her hardest to keep it together as she sat at her work station. But her pounding heart wasn't calming down, and neither was her breathing, and the tears she was holding back were stinging her eyes, and her chest felt tight with all the emotions she was keeping at bay.
Giving up, she stood and speed-walked to the women's room. Once there, Jisoo found an empty stall and locked herself in it.
Her legs shook. So did her arms. Her whole body, in fact, shook as she finally let herself have the cry she had been holding back. She cried so hard she couldn't even breathe and she didn't care who else in the room could hear her.
Her heart was crushed and she felt completely alone.
In the middle of her tearful outburst, Jisoo reached for her phone in her pocket. She wanted to call someone. Jennie, maybe, or her father. Everything was falling apart, and she just wanted someone to ground her.
Call Jinyoung.
Her heart seized up at the thought of him. Jisoo's brain at once began to present to her all the reasons why she shouldn't call him, which were numerous and extremely complicated, but her heart had just one reason that won out in the end: she just wanted to hear his voice.
So she found his number and dialed it.
Jinyoung was in the on-campus lab when his phone lit up with a call from Jisoo.
He let out an exasperated sigh. He and his group mates were all there for a group study session, and with exams getting closer, everyone was tense. Everyone was stressed. Everyone was tired. Everyone needed absolute focus from everyone else in the group.
But Jinyoung had an odd feeling about this call. She hadn't contacted him in weeks, and suddenly a call out of the blue?
His mind was telling him to ignore it and focus on the study group. Everyone else was working hard, and he should be, too. But in the end, he excused himself from the group and followed his gut sense.
Stepping out into the hall, Jinyoung accepted the call.
"What is it this time?" he said, trying to sound as disinterested as possible.
At first, he didn't hear anything. And then he heard heavy breathing. And then he heard her crying.
"Jisoo?" he said, his voice softening at the sound tears. "Jisoo? Hello? You there?"
"Jinyoung?" she said with a trembling voice.
"What is it? What's wrong?"
"I—," she started to say, but then a fresh round of sobs attacked her and she couldn't speak again without choking up. Jinyoung was starting to get worried.
"Jisoo," he said again. "Are you alright? Are you hurt?"
"I—I'm sorry," she said. "I shouldn't have—called, I'm—I'm sorry—"
He could hear her voice becoming more distant as she prepared to end the call.
"Jisoo, no, don't!" he called out. "Don't hang up. Tell me what's wrong."
Back in the women's restroom of the Embrace office, Jisoo was pressing her lips together, trying to keep her crying under control.
What's wrong? Jisoo wanted to say that what's wrong is, Dara wouldn't let her work on any projects; she hadn't written anything worthwhile in months and she felt like a failure; working at Embrace was nothing like she had imagined it would be and everyday she felt more and more disheartened by everything; this was the furthest she felt from her dream than ever before; and she had just been humiliated in front of everyone by her boss and she felt broken...
And to make matters worse, she thought, You've ignored me for weeks and I'm sorry about that night at the infirmary and I miss you and I just want everything to be okay between us again.
But she didn't say any of that.
"I'm still at work," she said through the tears. "I'm sorry I called, I don't know what I was thinking I just—it's—"
And then all at once, it came out:
"I don't know what I'm doing here," Jisoo said, tears spilling over anew. "Everything is going wrong, and I don't—Dara just started yelling at me, and she was just misunderstanding and I—I really am the editorial assistant—I just feel like every time I think something good is happening it gets ruined—"
"Jisoo," he said over the phone, his voice tender. "Do you want me to come to you?"
Through the haze of tears and heavy emotions, something like relief suddenly hit and brought with it a little clarity, like a drop of alcohol in the watercolor. Jisoo heaved in a deep sigh during a calm in her sobbing.
"Yes," she whispered.
"Meet me in the coffee shop across the street in twenty minutes."
Jisoo returned to her work station after her brief crying session in the restroom. When she spotted herself in the mirror, her tears had smeared her eye makeup, so she decided to run her hands under the water and wash it away altogether. She had some semblance of control as she got back and finished up her shift.
After twenty minutes, she packed up her things in a hurry and made her way over to the coffee shop across the street. On a weekday evening, it wasn't very busy. Jisoo ordered herself a cup of tea and found a table close to the wall that was a bit more private than the others. She anticipated that there was a lot between herself and Jinyoung that needed to be said, so a little privacy would be needed.
Her heart was still slightly pounding from all the excitement of earlier that evening. If she closed her eyes, she could still picture Dara's livid expression, could still feel the sting of her words, could still feel the utter humiliation. All of it was crowding around her like a dark cloud, suffocating her.
But the air cleared when the door opened, and Jinyoung walked in.
He stood at the doorway for a little while, scanning the room, looking for her. When his eyes finally landed on her and their gazes met, Jisoo couldn't stop her legs from standing up to greet him.
And then she couldn't stop herself from running across the shop, throwing her arms around him, and burying her face in his chest.
Jisoo had run to him with so much force that the hug nearly knocked the breath out of Jinyoung. But when he realized what was happening, he softened, and then slowly, he put his arms around her, too. She was crying again, and he started to rub her back, and neither one of them paid much attention to the other customers, who were watching the tender scene unfold.