For Life - EXO x YOU

XXXV - My Friend, My Love, My Soulmate

Jasmine x Chanyeol

Park Chanyeol was a single, 23 years old, mid-level executive in the Seoul office of a multi-national company.

Jasmine Lee was a single, 21 year old, mid-level executive in the Incheon office of the same multi-national company.

Every morning they dragged themselves out of bed, somehow managed to find the motivation to push themselves into the company bus, exchanged pleasantries which they never meant with their co-workers, locked themselves in their cubicles for the better part of the day, sipped badly made canteen coffee, and logged in to their desktop computers for mind numbing number crunching work that made minutes look like hours, and hours look like days. They would watch with frustration at the clock tick slowly to closing time and finally made their way back home to nagging relatives and badly written paperback novels.

It was during one of those dreary days that the managers of the Seoul and Incheon branches along with the managers of other branches all over Korea announced to their respective teams that a management conference was being held in Busan, and they needed candidates to attend that conference. The theme of the conference was not a particularly interesting one, and nobody in any office felt like attending. The announcement prompted intense bickering and politics in all the branches with the losers being booked on the flights to Busan. Chanyeol and Jasmine were the unfortunate victims of the intrigues in Seoul and Incheon and thus found themselves travelling to the Busan.

At the conference they were seated next to each other, with both of them desperately fighting sleep and apathy as speaker after speaker droned on endlessly on inconsequential matters. As the third speaker got off the stage, and the fourth one came on to take his place, Chanyeol made a sarcastic joke under his breath. Jasmine heard the joke and burst out laughing, rather too loudly. Everybody turned and looked at her, stunned. Jasmine stopped laughing and her face turned red with embarrassment. She realized that Chanyeol was also looking at her, confusion writ all over his face. Jasmine hurriedly apologized and made a haphazard excuse about receiving a funny text message. Her fellow attendees gave her a few sullen stares and then went back to being bored.

But Jasmine went back to quietly chuckling under her breath at the joke, and Chanyeol went back to feeling proud that he had made a joke, and somebody had actually laughed at it.

During lunch Jasmine came up to Chanyeol and said

"I am sorry"

"For what?" asked Chanyeol.

"For laughing so loudly and embarrassing us both like that"

"Oh, please don't apologize. I am flattered that someone laughed at my joke. Honestly, I think the proceedings needed a joke. This conference is such a bore."

"Really, you feel that way too. I thought that I was the only one who was bored"

"Are you kidding? I am sure most of the attendees cannot wait for these three days to get over. By the way, how did you get dragged into this conference"

"Office politics"

"Yeah, same here"

And so Chanyeol and Jasmine began talking.

Their lunch time conversation began with what they were doing at their individual branches and the nature of their work, and it continued on to the machinations of colleagues and the idiosyncrasies of bad bosses during the tea time break. Their conversations continued on to more personal matters during lunch and tea on day two, and during lunch and tea on day three. They also found themselves spending time with each other during the farewell party.