Chapter 8.2

Whether or not he was intentionally trying to do it, Sangwoo was provoking Jaeyoung by treating him as a troublemaker. Jaeyoung had no thoughts of losing. He crossed his arms and leaned back on the chair.

“We haven’t even begun yet, though? We don’t know when it’s gonna turn around, so what kind of income balance are you talking about? If it’s that kind of plan, I don’t have any desire to create a design.”

He had spoken quite harshly, but Sangwoo answered without blinking an eye.

“Then what should we do?”

“Fix the plan, dude. Don’t ask me.”

“What would you suggest we do, sunbae?”

“I would change it all. How would we proceed with this?”

“Good. It’ll be difficult to change the whole plan here, so please revise it by the next meeting. Since you’re participating in the project now, I’ll divide things equally for a 5:5 income balance.”

“What?”

He had fallen into a trap. In the confusion of the moment, Jaeyoung  was now put in charge of planning. He opened his mouth, but Sangwoo didn’t give him a chance to talk. He presented Jaeyoung with a document that summarized the early concepts of the game. He had seen it before.

“You said it was really boring in the past, right? Fix it so it will be fun. If you haven’t done it by the next meeting, I’ll just go with this. Send the material to the email address written there by midnight the day before.”

Jaeyoung gave a wry smile after checking the schedule. The next meeting was tomorrow. So midnight the day before the meeting meant seven hours from now.

“…. Are you a thug?”

“Because I have a tight schedule, I can’t spend much time planning,” Sangwoo spoke coldly and then organized the documents and put them in his backpack.

This really was a Chu Sangwoo kind of meeting. He got up without even making eye contact. Jaeyoung had assumed it would be different from his imagination, but he hadn’t expected it to be this businesslike. He thought that the special atmosphere from the previous day would remain.

“Already leaving?” Jaeyoung casually asked.

“There’s a situation that makes me unable to stay for long.”

“Why?”

“…I don’t want to talk about it.”

Sangwoo had never avoided answering in such a vague manner before. Even though Jaeyoung was sharp, he still couldn’t figure out why he had left in such a hurry. He soon heard the door of the conference room open.

‘Yeah. It’s better that we finished than continuing to talk about work.’

Jaeyoung muttered to himself inside, but still felt disappointed.

“Oh, one more thing…”

He could hear Sangwoo’s words in his head. The eyes that were heavily shadowed because of the ball cap, looked down at Jaeyoung.

“Please refrain from unnecessary physical contact in the future. It makes me feel very uncomfortable.”

It wasn’t as if he said it because he knew something. However Jaeyoung nonetheless felt a prick of conscience for no reason, as he felt like his secret desires had been exposed. On the other hand, his face was burning with pride.

“Be especially careful with patting the top of the head, restraining the wrists, and whispering.”

“Go figure.”

“Then, I’ll see you at the next meeting.”

“Just say tomorrow. It seems as if there are a few days left when you say ‘next meeting.’”

“It’s up to me.”

Sangwoo left him with those parting words. Chu Sangwoo had simply just swept out of the conference room. There, Jaeyoung sat surrounded by snacks, with a beaten expression on his face.

‘What… is this?’

He had no interest in developing mobile games. There wasn’t even anything urgent enough for him to subject himself to such a hard deadline. He had been seduced into accepting the absurd offer solely by the sound of ‘hyung.’  However, it wasn’t a cute hoobae that had turned up at the meeting, but a devil bastard who was crazy about work.

‘I really don’t fucking feel like it.’

Jaeyoung was late for his dinner appointment because he was busy cleaning up the snacks that Sangwoo had prepared for him.

⌘W[2]

“The two of you in four months? And during the semester at that?”

His friend frowned and lost his concentration. He looked away from the table and accidentally used his arm to hit the ball instead of the cue. Missing the ball completely and having it roll away didn’t even bother him.

“Is it completely impossible?”

“It depends on the quality. If you use an engine well, you can even build something like Galaga in a day.”3

“For now, I know he’s good at coding. He seems to expect tens of millions of won in profit.”

“Ey, that’s not possible. You’ve been tricked.”

“Ah, is that so?”

Jaeyoung laughed off his friend’s words and grabbed the cue. He lowered his body and put the cue between his fingers and moved it back and forth, but he heard a message notification from his pocket and lost his concentration. Two more notifications in a row arrived. Jaeyoung momentarily put the cue down and checked his cell phone.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Unsaved: There are 5 minutes to the deadline.

23:55

Unsaved: I still haven’t received an email so I’m sending a reminder.

23:55

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

He wore an annoyed expression as he returned his cell phone to his pocket. When he saw the messages, he remembered the face that seemed to show a neutral expression, as if nothing had happened between them.

‘You being you, I’m sure it was nothing.’

Jaeyoung squeezed the cue more tightly than necessary. He chose his stance. The white ball rotated as it was struck hard and pushed the red ball across the table. It went right into the pocket.

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