Work Text:
It was a slow day at the office. The sun had already set, but its heat didn’t cease, making the air conditioners work at full capacity. Go Hye-Ran was typing furiously away at her computer eager to finish up with the next day’s assignment. She still had some time until they were shooting that night’s news.
There was loud bustling around the office, as usual around this time with the shoot just around the corner, but she shut the noise out to focus. She didn’t even notice that Song-Yi walked over to her desk until she decided to half-sit on it to draw Hye-Ran’s attention to her.
“Hey, Earth to Go Hye-Ran,” Song-Yi said, her brows raised and arms crossed. “I’ve been talking to you for the last five minutes, and yet you keep ignoring me.” She tried to make the sternest expression possible, attempting to hide the fact just how endearing she found Hye-Ran’s intense focus on her work. Hye-Ran’s jaws were clenched, her back straight as ever and her legs crossed at the ankles. Occasionally, she rubbed them together, pausing her typing as if it would help her in thinking up the next word to write.
Hye-Ran snapped out of her work instantly at Song-Yi’s voice. She looked up at her with wide eyes, as a deer caught in the headlights. A moment later she offered an apologetic smile to the other woman.
“Sorry Sunbae,” she said, leaning back in her chair and stretching out her hands in front of her. “I’m just really preoccupied with this assignment, you know.” She then slid her hands under her glasses and rubbed her eyes, realizing they were as dry as the desert.
“There’s a new prosecutor on the board, the boss wants you to do an extensive background check on him,” Song-Yi said, sliding a picture onto her desk.
“I have to finish this up first, then I’ll get on it,” she said, nodding at her colleague, preoccupied.
“The boss wants you on it now. Just do a general background check on him before the shoot, and then you’ll do the fieldwork tomorrow,” the other woman said firmly.
Hye-Ran raised an eyebrow, then sighed, picking up the photo from her neatly organized desk. She scrutinized the man’s features for a moment, then looked back up. “Do we have a name to go with the face?”
“Kang Tae-Wook,” Song-Yi replied, enunciating each syllable clearly. “Don’t you think he looks pretty handsome?” She asked Hye-Ran with a conspiratorial smile, lowering her voice a notch.
Hye-Ran huffed in response and rolled her eyes. “Shouldn’t you be getting ready for the shoot? I'll do the background check just do quit pestering me,” she said, waving the other woman off.
“That’s just rude! I’m your elder, you know!” Song-Yi snickered in mock exasperation.
Hye-Ran half smiled at her, but her focus was already on the man in the picture, punching his name into the search bar of the prosecution office’s website---she barely noticed as the other woman walked away from her desk.
As she was skimming through the details written on the site, she found herself glancing down periodically at the photo Song-Yi gave her.
After a while, Hye-Ran finally stopped with a sigh and held the picture up in front of her, narrowing her eyes. If she’s going to do a background check on him, she definitely should look at the man more closely.
Kang Tae-Wook had strong features, for sure. He had sharp cheekbones, two moles on his left ear, and another on the right side of his head. His hair was closely cropped---likely just finished his military service. On his thin, bow-shaped lips there was an almost cheeky smile, turning his eyes into a crescent shape.
His eyes were intense, and for a moment Hye-Ran felt like he was looking straight at her instead of the photographer behind the camera. As a slight flush crept upon her cheeks, she squirmed in her seat. She shook her head, putting the photo back down on her desk.
As if.
“Pretty handsome, my ass,” she muttered under her breath, suddenly feeling irritated, and turned the picture face down for good measure. “As if reporters should care how handsome a prosecutor looks.” She rolled her eyes and turned her attention back to the screen.