HEART2HEART

chapter 3: daily lunch rant sesh

"I lost my entire fortune..."

"Cheer up, hyung-" Jungkook patted Taehyung on the head. "It's already been 4 whole days."

"I'm never ever returning to that PC café ever again..." Taehyung bawled as he buried his face in the table. "That was the single most embarrassing moment of my life."

"He's still going on about it?" Lisa, a software engineer from another team working on a zoo game to be launched next week, joined them at the table with a heaping plate of food. "Cheer up, bujang-nim."

"I shouldn't have placed such high stakes..." Taehyung groaned, writhing in agony. "But I wouldn't have known... How was I supposed to know that she was training that character for someone else? How was I supposed to know that she owns 6 of her own characters that are all already Level 275, the maximum level any character can be in MapleStory..."

"He's still going on about it?" Hoseok, the bujang-nim of Lisa's team, took a seat next to her at the table, giving Taehyung a half-hearted pat on the head as well. "Feel better soon, Taehyung-ah."

"The most embarrassing part of it all..." Taehyung whined as he looked up briefly. "...is that after winning, she finally let me have the seat and said she was just playing around..."

Jungkook heard this story over 15 times and it still hit different every single time he heard it. In a way, he felt bad for Taehyung but in another way, he also admired how gutsy that girl was to teach Taehyung a lesson. But of course, he was going to take the second part with him to his grave because Taehyung would never forgive him for that.

"That girl's mean..." Lisa laughed out loud, as if sharing the same thoughts as Jungkook. "How could she do that to you, bujang-nim?"

"And you know what's the worst thing?" Taehyung wailed. "It's the fact that I found her cool..."

The whole table burst into laughter.

"Ya-" Hoseok whacked Taehyung in the arm. "You're really suited for being in charge of the Heart2Heart team, Taehyung-ah. What a hopeless romantic, falling in love under such a scenario."

Taehyung facepalmed. "She was really pretty freaking cool..."

Everyone burst into laughter again.

Jungkook glanced around at his table, his eyes shifting from Hoseok to Lisa, and onto Taehyung. Jungkook was really happy with his job so far. He had nice colleagues who didn't seem to treat him like a intern but rather, treated him with so much respect and inclusivity that he felt like he belonged to the company right off the bat. He had had lunch with so many different colleagues over the past week and all of them had been super kind and friendly towards him too. He was really starting to enjoy the work culture and slowly fitting right in.

He enjoyed his job scope too. Researching on ways to improve the existing algorithm and achieve breakthroughs in prediction accuracies was just the thing Jungkook was interested in. He loved how there was so much room for creativity and for him to expand his knowledge as time went by. It had only been a week into his job and he had already learnt so many things he wouldn't have learnt otherwise in university.

And to add a cherry on top of it all, he had the most supportive, knowledgeable mentor. Jieun was a wonderful teacher, a perfect role model for who Jungkook wanted to be in the future. But there was something Taehyung was right about - she was extremely proficient in what she did, but didn't seem to care much about forming personal relationships with her colleagues. She almost never ever showed up at lunch, and always buried herself at work. Everyone around him didn't seem to care much about it, and word of mouth just seemed to show that this was the way she had been since forever, so no one paid much attention to it.