Chapter Text
In front of you in a row sat your collection. A plethora of different squishy objects, collected in various places with different memories correlating to each one. Their beady eyes bore into you, and you stand ahead of them like a sergeant, your gaze glaring and observing. Each unique plushie was loved and clearly well taken of, as seen by their perfect condition, but there was a nagging feeling in your stomach. You have one, two, three… you have eleven plushies, and yet you don’t feel satisfied with this line up. What you wish for is an army of them, all invading your home like children at school. It will happen. One day. When you have money. Which that day is not today…
The apartment you stood it was eerily quiet. No one was home. It was the obvious trope. Mother always on business trips, no siblings, no rules. But you’re a good kid who can be trusted to be on her own, and good kids don’t cause trouble, and they most definitely do not sign up for sketchy jobs off an advert on Facebook.
Convincing yourself was crucial. Doing this was for the better good of everyone. You could buy more food and fund for the things you love! But the negatives plagued your mind, and the image of your mother’s disappointed looks irked you. Ever since she started her new job, she became more parental, nagging you whenever she came, that's if she came home, and expected too much from you. But you did not want to make life more miserable than it was, and getting told off wasn’t on your to do list.
But! You’re a growing girl- no. Woman. And it's time to take your destiny into your own hands.
If the job was a scam, it would be your fault for getting caught up in it. It’s terrible that you’re insanely gullible. But you had never taken any risks, so today must have been a push from the universe. The urge to sign up grew strong, and before you knew it, surrounded by your group of plushies staring at the computer screen with you, you filled out a form and sent it through email.
Maybe the inanimate objects had peer pressured you, or you peer pressured yourself with the voices in your head, but the benefits of this far outweighed the negatives. Just one risk that you would allow yourself would be to become economically stable on your own, and you will never do anything else bad. For now, this will be your only bad deed.
You waited a week before you got a response.
Walking home from school, you were tired and yawning with a hand over your mouth, and the hand in your pocket was met with a vibration from your phone. You pulled out the object, staring at it like it was some invasive species. A notification.
That’s rare.
You were nervous and jittery, unlocking it and staring at the notification.
Mark Jung - Head of Daily Fashion sent you an email.
And suddenly you were gulping and breathing hard, nerves completely replaced with excitement. You pressed on it before you could process your joy and quickly read through the information.
The shop Daily Fashion had opened years ago close to your home, its business painfully slow, but you had positive thoughts about it. The shop itself was catered towards the elderly. The clothes, stylish. Though, word had spread some time ago that the owner had got into some shady stuff. It’s none of your business though.
The email monotonously explained that you got the job, and your first day would be the same day but the following week, and a short sappy message about how the boss couldn’t wait to meet you. More like he couldn’t wait to make you do all the work.
As far as you were concerned, no one else works there, so having all the jobs to yourself would bedifficult, but that meant the pay would be lest varied and shared. Plus, the thought of adding to your faux family struck a chord in your heart, and the jitters in your body increased.
Then the day came where you finally became employed for the first time in your life. You’re a teen,hoping to grow, and your life goal would be achieved through this.
You prepared carefully. Your alarm clock woke you at 8:00, ready by 9:30, and arrived at Daily Fashion by 10:00. The shop was closed, and you stood awkwardly in front of the shut door for a while, confused as to where the boss was, and if you had mixed up the information given to you. Before you could pull out your phone to pass time, an overly confident and pleased voice rang out from behind you, causing you to jump in fear.
“Well hello my dear.” The voice was that of a man’s, but its cheery, high-pitched nature sent a shiver down your spine. You gulped and forced your body to turn towards the speaker.
“Haha! Sorry for scaring you. I’m Mark Jung, your new boss.”
Mark Jung was…well. A guy. Messy black hair with chunks of white, tan and wrinkled skin, short and kind of chubby, and a smile only a mother could love.
But his demeanour, although relaxed, seemed strained and practiced. Calm yet calculating. Gaze happy yet... dirty? His grinning face scanned yours for a response, and you had to fight the urge to pull a disgusted face. He wasn’t particularly young either, so you knew for sure he had nothing in common with you, except for the fact that you both prefer being in the company of people the age of high schoolers. Unluckily, you were that age, and the strange glint in his eyes was starting to make more sense.
Making assumptions about people was a bad habit. That’s if tiny rumours of his weird behaviour hadn’t travelled their way to your ears. It’s why you never personally shopped there, not that you could anyways since it was for old people. But you vowed not to get too close. Mr Jung was still a man after all.
You shook off the thoughts and decided to be more civil. You needed to be if you wanted this job, and simply pushing through it and ignoring the man shouldn’t be too hard. You nodded at his words, and he motioned for you to move out of the way.
Soon he had opened the door and flicked all the lights on and placed his hand on his hips, beginning a dramatic monologue about his past and how he started this business from scraps. It still looked like scraps, but you would have to make do and really help Mr Jung, for fear that his evil looks would hex you. Gosh, you were being mean again.
You smiled politely and bared all his words and instructions. That day, you had cleaned the entire shop from ceiling to floor, bought your boss a coffee entirely too sweet, and were plainly confused the entire time. At the end, he waved you off with his hand, too busy on the phone with a contractor, and you bowed before dashing away. Your body hurt, but you had to get home to wash away the results of your hard work, back pain, and sweat.
You would have never expected yourself to be so hard working, but you had done so much today that you almost felt proud. And when you walked into your room afterwards, your plushies seemed all too proud as well.
Your first day on the job was tiring, but you would persevere and take over if Mr Jung couldn’t do it, and you bet your life that you could turn that shop into something great.
Juggling school with work became tedious after that, but being a smart cookie had its upsides, and work did make you rush projects and overwork yourself in school, but the grades never lied. Yeo-il high school was quite demanding, not only in the work it gave out, but also with the students it let in. When you first received your letter of acceptance, you had squealed for the first time in ages, texting your mother about the amazing opportunity. By the end of the day, your throat was sore.
You began working in your first year of middle school, and now you were 17, and a pro at being the best Mr Jung avoider and worker.
He was awfully weird, asking random requests, such as simply getting him snacks and drinks, but it would force you to interact with him when you came back, and your tasks would be long forgotten when he had showed off his business for 30 minutes and glanced at the curve of your feet too many times to count. Then he would reminisce on his high school days and the many girls he dated.
Creep.
But maybe he was having a hard time, and the memories keep him sane. You couldn’t say the same for yourself.
Blinking mechanically would get the job done. He would shoo you off when he didn’t get the attention he wanted. Your work had also improved from cleaning to managerial duties, being at the cash register, ordering new materials, stock checks. If anything, you were the one running this whole circus, and Mr Jung was the clown at the centre of it.
Speaking of Mr Jung, your work had been piling up as a result of his laziness. In the middle of the day, Mr Jung would get up and leave, even though he had a whole shop to run. He would yell out something about going to get some stuff from the shop, but that was obviously fake. You were the errand girl. He wouldn’t get up voluntarily if the shop was on fire. It seemed weird. You wanted to move past it, but you couldn’t help watching him when he sat at the register, a sly smile on his face, not trying to hide whatever he was feeling.
Your work had slowly integrated itself into your life, and it became a norm. Juggling work and school no longer became much of a hassle, and you get through the week without sore limbs.
Then the first bag appeared.
You had returned from your coffee run, and when you entered the shop and approached Mr Jung to hand him his drink, he was speaking to some young kid who passed him a black duffel bag with the word ‘GOLD’ printed on it, in the colour…you guessed it. Gold.
Mr Jung had a cheshire-like smile printed on his face, and when he turned to you, you swore you had never felt goosebumps like that before.
He’s so hard to look at. But you recognised that glint in his eyes from when he would come back from his little day trips. He was up to something.
The same day happened to be pay day. For the past year, it had been minimum wage, but the day the first duffel bag came in, your pockets felt heavier when you left, and when you counted your pay back at home, your eyes had nearly bulged out of their sockets and you clutched at your beating heart. Mr Jung must have been branching out his business for this new load of income.
You repressed the memory of spending half of it immediately online and smiled way too hard two weeks later when a package filled with seven different plushies arrived. This is what you had the job for, and Mr Jung didn’t seem so bad after all. Your change in opinion towards him was totally not because he had given you an incredible raise. Nope. Never that.
But it has raised some thoughts in your head. Why had he gotten so much money so suddenly when you knew for sure he didn’t have a life outside of his one store? Who was the guy giving the bag to him?
You tried to remember, but his face was boring, and his uniform seemed far too unfamiliar.
You raised quickly in your bed. You blinked and then reformed the thought.
Wait, uniform?
It was a boy in education. A high schooler. What is someone like that doing with so much money?
Whatever. At the end of the day, you were earning money, and you were getting more babies. Secret mafia business be damned. Though, you were still curious.
And that was the beginning of this messy arc in your life.