It cannot get worse, right?
“Buff”-a snort left the lips of an exhausted Baekhyun as he flopped onto the bed.
Finally Friday! -Those 2 words had the same effect on his body as taking a bubble bath. At least now he would have 2 and a half days to relax before his big headache started: Christmas week. Don’t get him wrong, it’s not that Baekhyun hated this time of year, well maybe he hated it a bit. It’s that it was difficult for him to deal with everything that this celebration entailed; first his family, his mother had been insisting three Christmases in a row for him to go and celebrate with them. But Baekhyun didn’t feel like spending the last days of the year with his father arguing about how “unusual it was to be attracted to boys” and also with his brother, who never thought twice before boasting about his achievements: his 50k-dollar-sport car, the two-story house he and his fiancee just bought and earning a raise 2 times in the short period of 3 years and a half that he had been working for the Gangnam Stock Exchange*, things Baekhyun could only dream of. If you compare his achievements to Baekhyun’s, it is not too hard to realize that Baekchan was the perfect heaven-blessed-older son while Baekhyun was, well, just Baekhyun.
On the other hand, his work as a graphic designer didn’t help much. He had to do a lot of designs for the Christmas holidays, New Year’s Eve and Harvest Week in January, so his tasks kept piling up on his desk. Sometimes when he saw a Christmas tree, Baek just felt a strong urge to set it on fire and watch it burn.
Although his life seemed pathetic, Baekhyun wasn’t that unhappy with it. At least he had a place to live and he didn’t depend on his parents, he didn’t earn much, but it was enough to pay his expenses and from time to time treat himself with the money he had saved at the end of the month.
After a 30-minute break, he gets up from bed and heads to the kitchen to prepare something for dinner before taking a shower.
“Mmhh”-she rubs his index finger on his chin as he thinks about what to cook with the ingredients left in the fridge-“Looks like I’m having ramen and egg tonight.”
He lets the noodles cook in the pot while he gets ready to grab his towel and pajamas and take a quick shower. As she pulls out a new towel from the cabinet by the bed, he accidentally drops a blue-bound book with a little white ribbon. Baekhyun bends over to pick it up thinking it was one of his old design books from college, but anything like that vanishes from his head as soon as he reads the gray letters on the cover: Yi Chong High School Year 2016-2017 . It’s his high school yearbook; he only saw it once: on graduation day.
August 2017
“Attention all senior students and their parents, please head to the school theatre. The diploma ceremony will be held in a few minutes and the yearbooks need to be signed before that.”
The head master’s rough voice echoed from the speakers in each of the facility’s rooms. Baekhyun sighed softly; he seriously didn’t feel like standing on a stage in front of the whole school just to get a damn piece of paper, if he were a good actor, he would have faked a stomachache or maybe appendicitis that morning, so he could skip the ceremony, but he couldn’t do that tn his mother who had not stopped chattering about how proud she was of her youngest son the entire weekend . No matter how annoying Mrs. Byun can be sometimes, but she is his mother and he adores her. Baekhyun suddenly looked towards a specific desk where a particular person used to sit and smiled bitterly as a blurry memory came to his mind. He looked at his desk table with the letters BB carved by himself,and then he looked up to have one last look at his classroom and get out of there.
The ringing of the phone snapped Baekhyun out of his trance. He placed the yearbook along with the clean clothes and towel on the bed and went to the living room to take the call.
“Hello.”
“Design Assistant Byun. I’m CEO Shim, I know it’s Friday and it’s already late at night…” -Baekhyun takes a quick glance at the square-shaped-black clock hanging on the wall above his TV, which already shows 10:30pm; yes, it is quite late; he says to himself -“…but I would need to meet you now to discuss an important work issue”.
“Yes sir, It’s alright, no problem” – Mr. Shim is the second highest ranking employee in the company, it’s not like Baekhyun can turn down his superior request.
“Good. Let’s meet at a nearby cafe. Is Itaewon Cafe okay for you?”
“Yes-yes of course”-says Baekhyun a little nervous, at least he hopes the meeting is not to tell him off for a shoddy job.
“I’ll be there in 10 minutes. Good evening”- With a simple farewell and after having agreed on the details of the meeting, Mr. Shim hangs up the phone.
“From here to Itaewon Cafe it’s 8 minutes by taxi, so I won’t have time to eat; bye-bye ramen and egg night”.
Ramen, ramen…; those words made a click in his head, as if it was something important, something essential, something that he needed to re…re…recall! - “Ramen, my ramen is burning”.
Baekhyun ran into the kitchen only to find a huge mess: the water in the container had overflowed, some of it was flooding the burner area, and some of it dripped onto the floor in a small puddle, along with a few noodles spilling out. In the blink of an eye Baekhyun was next to the cooker trying to close the gas pipe but all he got was his hand burnt .
“Great, simply great”’-it would be impossible to tidy everything up and get to his appointment on time when he was already a few minutes late. He decided to leave everything just like that and go to his meeting place. Anyway, when he gets back home he will have more than enough time to clean up that mess.
He grabbed his gray leather jacket, his wallet, and his cell phone, also checked his appearance in the mirror, and when he thought he looked acceptable, he walked out the door.
In the minute Baekhyun was inside the elevator until reaching the reception floor, he started thinking about why his boss wanted to see him: maybe it was a problem with one of the designs, although he and Miss Min, one of the employees from the Marketing department and also in charge of the Christmas designs, thoroughly reviewed each document looking for the slightest error, but in case that was the problem they could fix it right there without having to postpone the situation until Monday, since Baek always kept a copy of his work on his cell phone as a precaution. It could also be about that incident on Thursday when he accidentally spilled his mango juice on Human Resources Chief(HRC) Huang, while he was walking amusedly playing Stickman Party on his cell phone; but that wasn’t entirely his fault; number 1: it was his lunch hour and at that time everyone is in their own world, either gossiping, eating tteokbokki or playing video games as is his case; number 2: it is almost impossible to see Mr. Huang, that HRC is 35 cm shorter than him and Baekhyun is 1.72, that man is a dwarf, it was a fact that sooner or later someone would end up bumping into the poor guy and number 3 : That game is more addictive than all drugs put together. The other idea that was going through his head is a promotion or at least a raise, although that would be difficult since he has only been working in that company for ten months and luck did not hit him as often as his brother Baekchan. Whatever the reason for the meeting was, he doesn’t think it cannot be more apocalyptic than those 15 minutes at home. Seriously, it cannot get worse, right?
