I CANNOT WAIIIITTTTT - Tumblr Posts
secrets untold (teaser) | sunghoon
summary: ever since sunghoon graduated university, he’s been working the same bothersome job without any real excitement in his life. but when you move into the apartment next to his, sunghoon’s reality is turned upside down and he finds himself running all over korea with you by his side. as he comes to learn, not everything is as it seems.
notes: so eager to get this one out and i'm not usually one for posting teasers, but i just can't help myself. estimated word count north of 20K. to be published soon! x
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Just once does Sunghoon wish for something exciting in his life.
Day in and day out, he swipes his keycard to enter the lobby of the high-rise building he calls his workplace and locates his secluded office by the back of the floor. His name sits in gold lettering, the prestigious plaque gifted to him upon his promotion a few years prior. Sunghoon’s morning begins by opening his laptop to note all of the reports he has yet to finish from the day before and checks his email for any lingering questions from clients or his co-workers. Despite his diligence, his peers aren’t and he finds himself picking up the slack more often than not. Being a financial analyst was not on Sunghoon’s bucket list of goals to achieve in his twenties. In fact, Sunghoon would rather do almost anything other than look at numbers all day and tell people what to do with them.
If he had his way, Sunghoon would have chosen a career path less rigorous and numerical-based. He would’ve tried his hand at photography and studied the fine arts to garner a career in the editorial space, or perhaps he would use his time at university to study the history of coffee before opening his own shop in the busy city of Seoul. But his parents had other plans for him, namely to study law, medicine, or finance, and the latter of the three options seemed less boring to him.
His years of studying lead him here, at Kim Search Group, crunching numbers that mean absolutely nothing to him.
The glasses that sit on the bridge of his nose become bothersome after an hour of staring at his laptop. His next meeting is in twenty minutes and he’s less than pleased when he realizes his reports are on the docket. The agenda stares back at him in hard, black letters like they’re taunting him. Sunghoon thinks they mock him with the way the cursor hovers over the parts highlighted for his portion of the presentation. Nonetheless, Sunghoon acquires what he needs and heads to the meeting room.
Everybody arrives early as usual. His boss concludes the opening remarks and lets his employees take the floor. One by one, Sunghoon’s co-workers stand in the front of the room and report their findings and other related topics from the past month. It all sounds the same to him; every person in this room looks like they could be carbon copies of one another with their suits too expensive and cologne too strong. It makes Sunghoon nauseous. Everybody here lives for everyone else instead for themselves, himself included.
“Good work, Park,” his boss tells him on the way out of the meeting room. “I grow impressed by your work ethic and capabilities everyday.”
“Thank you, Mr. Kim,” Sunghoon says with a bow.
“Do you think you can finish the Kang-Yoon reports by tonight? Our clients will be here first thing tomorrow morning to review before they decide on their purchase. I’d love to get them a first draft of their financial report when they come in.”
With a tight smile, Sunghoon nods. “Sure thing. I’ll email it to you tonight.”
“I knew I could count on you,” Mr. Kim winks. He nudges Sunghoon’s arm like they’re old friends.
By the time he gets home, it’s nearly nine in the evening. His tie sits loosely around his neck and his suit jacket is thrown haphazardly over his arm with the too-expensive briefcase his father bought him when he had been promoted. Sunghoon can’t help but scoff when he sees the dark brown leather staring back at him.
Sunghoon lives in a quiet part of town, just on the outskirts of Seoul. His neighbors are either asleep by the time the sun goes down or busy juggling children with muffled laughter echoing in the hallways. Typically, Sunghoon expects to come home and enter his apartment lobby to be greeted by the doorman who wishes him a good night, take the elevator to the third floor, and tidy his living room while trying to undress himself in the meantime.
Except, you’ve moved into the apartment next to his.
Now, Sunghoon walks with excitement because he anticipates running into you when he’s on his way up. Sometimes you both arrive at the lobby together. Other times it’s you that he sees unlocking his door when he approaches. It doesn’t matter to him, though. The only good thing about working late on the weekdays is that he gets to run into you when he comes home.
He quickly learns that you like to keep to yourself. You aren’t a loud person–not like his neighbor who lives on the other side of him–because he barely hears your footsteps and never hears you watching television. The most he’s heard is the scrape of a chair against hardwood floors.
Above all, Sunghoon thinks you’re cute. You make his heart flutter for no good apparent reason. He’s barely spoken a word to you beyond introducing himself when you first moved in and yet he finds himself pacing his living room, wondering what kind of food you like to eat and what you do on the weekends.
Sunghoon wishes he could come up with something witty to say to convince you to keep talking to him. But even seeing you in your well-worn clothes and tires expression on a Wednesday night is enough to leave him flustered.
“Hey,” Sunghoon says awkwardly with a single nod in acknowledgement when he sees you standing in front of your apartment. He watches your hand halt by the knob. You turn your head to look around you and Sunghoon feels the heat creep up his neck.
“Hi?” you say with an uptick in your voice, pointing at yourself.
Sunghoon nods. “Hey.”
“You already said that.”
“Right.” He clears his throat. “I’m Sunghoon.”
“I know. I remember you from when I moved in.”
“O-Oh,” Sunghoon stutters. “Right, yeah. You’re right. Well, I’ll introduce myself again in case you need anything.”
You unlock your apartment and step inside. “Duly noted. Goodnight, Sunghoon.”
When the door locks behind you, Sunghoon closes his eyes and curses at the ceiling for being awkward around you. He swears he might’ve felt his knees buckle when he looked into your eyes and struggles to fish out his apartment keys.
He always wishes he could say something that would convince you to stay in the hallway just a minute longer. He wants to be courageous enough to ask a question that piques your interest, so much so that he invites you back to his apartment to discuss it over a bottle of soju before you head back to your place. But Sunghoon doesn’t do any of that because he always gets tongue-tied when he realizes you’re standing before him, and because you always close the door before he can even think of something else to say to you. Sunghoon sighs in defeat and loosens his tie as soon as he steps through the threshold of his own apartment.
He sleeps with the sound of crickets chirping outside his window.
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