Magic Rich Boy // JHS

nine: sleep ii

Nine: Sleep Pt. 2

Namjoon had been staring Maria down ever since she came into work. Of course, she noticed, but she wasn't going to say anything about it since the little spectacle that she and Hoseok pulled a few of days ago. Luckily, she hadn't seen the thing since that time and last night was the first night of full sleep she's gotten since it happened. Maria almost managed to convince herself that they had, somehow, hallucinated the whole thing. She did have low sodium after all. That didn't explain the whole thing with Hoseok. Not that she planned on thinking about that. Ignorance is bliss after all.

Namjoon was trying to figure out whether it was appropriate to ask about her relationship with Hoseok, specifically where and how they met and if they were really friends. If he had to think about that, then it wasn't, right? But the curiosity was eating him up. Stepping a little bit out of a professional relationship shouldn't be that bad. Oh, but it was. It would look extremely bad if Maria took his question out of context. He was her supervisor, nothing else. He didn't have the right to meddle in her personal life.

Namjoon frowned. Hoseok was a part of her personal life.

He couldn't lie to himself. Namjoon, after these few weeks of working with Maria, had begun to like her and to see her as much more than just an intern. He didn't know when it started, but he looked forward to going to work and expected a lot more from her than usual. Her workload was waaaaay over what a regular intern would receive and she thrived in doing that. It was the perfect excuse for them to spend maybe a couple hours more together.

Maria continued to organize papers while sitting on his office floor. Namjoon sat on his desk making calls and typing away. While she could go work at the empty conference room next door, Namjoon had asked for her to stay in case he needed her to run some errands soon (a complete lie). Maria was going to work on his desk across from him, but the close distance between the two of them made her a bit nervous. She lied and said that she would prefer to work on the floor for the time being. Her back hurt. A lot.

One advantage of being in Namjoon's office was that Maria could eavesdrop on his calls. Namjoon was an expert negotiator and there was no way that, if they ever had an argument, she would win. Maria wasn't much for negotiating and just generally getting her way on things. Matthew, on the other hand, isn't afraid to speak his mind to strangers (which, sometimes, really embarrassed Maria).

Namjoon had already reserved the venue for the next gala since they planned on opening a new safehouse in Sangju. Maria thought it would be a waste to place one there since it didn't have a very big population, but Namjoon had reasoned that it would be a small one and that the size of the town usually didn't matter since people would come from towns over to get help. The Sangju safehouse would smaller than those in more populated areas, but that was perfect because that meant less staff and more budget to play with for its size.

"Maria-ssi?" Namjoon called while signing a paper. "I'll be joining in on a meeting with one of the House's sponsors in about five minutes. Could you get this paper to the HR office?" He placed it inside an envelope before handing it to her.

Maria stood up from the floor, a little overexcited of having something else to do besides file and organize by date a bunch of House documents. She took the envelope with two hands and bowed before leaving Namjoon's office. The walk to HR was, strangely enough, the most walking she'd done all day. People who asked where she was headed gave her another handful of letters to deliver on her way. Why did all these people needed to send things to HR today?

Today was a bit of slow day compared to most and Maria had spent most of it holed up in Namjoon's office. While it was nice to be with her work crush, she was tired of sitting on the floor. She waited in front of the elevator, slapping the envelopes on the palm of her hand.

"M-maria-ssi?" she heard a voice call her with bit of a frantic tone

Maria looked back and made eye contact with a wide-eyed, flushed and fearful Yang Kitaek. He stood almost four feet away from her, his body weakly swaying from side to side. Yang Kitaek was one of the interns who came in the same day as her. He was one of the errand running interns for everyone in the office. When they first met he was a bubbly guy from Jeju Island. His hair was dark, his face had freckled and was decorated by a pair of cute dimples and his skin was tanned.

He seemed like a dead body; ghostly pale with eye circles as dark as his hair.

"Maria," he put his right hand on her shoulder, heavily clinging on to her. "They found me."

"W-what are you talking about?" Maria asked, her thoughts immediately going to the thing her and Hoseok saw across the street. "Are you okay?"

But Kitaek didn't answer.

Maria saw his body fall almost in slow motion. He fell forward, directly on her. His head leaned on her shoulder, and she dropped the envelopes, placing her hands against the side of his ribs to avoid both of them falling. Kitaek's body went limp and Maria was now sure that something was definitely wrong. Thankfully, Namjoon saw them on his way to the meeting.

The people in the lobby had seen Maria get into the ambulance with Kitaek on a stretcher and Namjoon rushing behind them to his car while barking to someone on his phone. Once they reached the hospital, doctors were ready to attend to Kitaek, so Maria and Namjoon waited in the waiting room.

"What happened?" asked Namjoon, putting his cellphone in his pocket. He noticed Maria was a bit shaken up by the whole ordeal.

"He just fell on me," she answered, clasping her hands together and tapping the floor with her foot impatiently.

"Okay," he said.

Namjoon's hand hovered over her shoulder for a second, but then he retracted his hand, placing it on his thigh.

They left after waiting a few hours. Within the first hour, Kitaek's family had come in and Namjoon had briefly explained what happened. Later, the doctor had spoken with his family and Namjoon while Maria had gone to the bathroom. Namjoon decided to keep the news to himself until he brought her home. It was time for them to leave, so he offered Maria a ride and she had accepted, her nerves from sitting in a hospital room slowly dissipating.

"Will you be coming in tomorrow?" Namjoon finally asked as they came to a stop at a red light, he gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white.

"Yes," she answered, her hands let go of her seatbelt as the car came to a full stop. Namjoon was a very fast driver.

"Okay," he said. "Are you available to go to Sangju with me tomorrow? It's a two hour trip, I wouldn't want you to miss any classes because of it."

"I have a class in the morning until 9:45. I'm supposed to come in at eleven o'clock," she answered. "At what time do you want to leave?"

"We can leave at eleven, if you're comfortable with that. I'll make sure to tie some loose ends with one of our sponsors before then," the light turned green. "Make sure to bring sneakers."

"Did the doctor say anything about Kitaek-ssi?"

Her abrupt change of subject shocked Namjoon. Maria looked at him, expectant of an immediate answer. He didn't want to answer her though. It had been a rough night on both of them and he didn't want to make it any worse for now. However, he felt as if he lied, she would be able to see right through him. The right thing to do was to tell her now, when it's recent and that she wouldn't have to find out what happened at work, where everyone was looking.

Maria began to have a bad feeling when Namjoon began to pull up to the curb and parking the car. He didn't make any indication he was getting off.

"Yang Kitaek is dead, Maria-ssi."