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“Hey, stop pretending you can’t see me.”
Kim Dokja sighed and turned around.
A petite young woman was leaning on the sleek black podium of the reception lobby. Her hair was shorn almost too short for the silk dress she wore, the ends ragged, like she’d done it herself. The stench of cigarette smoke lingered on her clothes.
He tucked his phone into his back pocket, resigned. “May I help you, miss…?”
She didn’t seem any more impressed to see his face than his back. Her dark, made-up eyes flicked over him once, appraisingly. “Are you the chocolate guy?”
Kim Dokja blinked, but the girl simply held her hand out demandingly.
“Aren’t you a little old to be asking for candy?”
“Cough it up before I tell the cops you were giving them to my baby cousin.“
With a sigh, he fished out a chocolate and dropped it on her outstretched palm.
Satisfied, she tore the foil apart and flopped down onto the steps of the main staircase, kept spotlessly clean for guests.
“This chocolate is shit,” she informed him, chewing.
“That’s what your cousin said,” Kim Dokja said absently, remembering the bratty twelve year old who’d barrelled into him earlier that evening. His eyes had the same sharp angle as this girl’s. If she hadn’t said anything, he would’ve assumed he was her brother.
“The little bastard,” she said amicably. “Gimme another.” She stretched out her hand.
“There isn’t any left,” Kim Dokja said, his fingers curling over the last piece. He was saving that one for after his shift.
“Liar, it’s in your hand.” But she didn’t seem to mind. She propped an elbow on her lap, resting her chin on one palm. She tipped her head, faintly speculative. “What were you reading?”
Kim Dokja tucked the candy into his uniform front pocket and paused, debating several responses, before deciding on the truth. “A script.”
Fine, arched brows flew up and she tsked. “You’re an actor?”
“Among others.” Kim Dokja smoothed his cheap tie.
“Are you here to get a job?”
Having seen the guest list, Kim Dokja couldn’t really blame her for the assumption. “No, I’m already signed to an agency.” Work was just thin on the ground, recently.
“Tonight’s… extra.”
A skeptical hum told him the girl didn’t believe him. But her eyes lingered on his phone. “Show me, then.”
He really shouldn’t. His part hadn’t even been named. But Kim Dokja looked at the smudge of shadow on the side of her hand, like a bruise, and the cigarette ash that dotted her skirt and quietly tilted his screen towards her.
She leaned over, swiping a few pages, before leaning back with a huff. “Cheap. The male lead sounds like a dick.”
“It sells,” Kim Dokja said demurely, but his mouth quirked.
“They deserve to get scammed, then.”
“It could be worse.”
“Yeah?”
“He could be a CEO.”
The girl’s mouth fell open, for a second, then she laughed. A wheezing sort of laugh that made her clutch at herself, pale fingers over thin arms, and slap at her knee.
“He could be her brother.”
“Adoptive.”
“Conveniently. Then she moves in.”
“Mother won’t be happy,” Kim Dokja tutted, a hint of shrill creak in his low tenor.
“Not bad.” She tapped his phone. “Is everything you do like this?”
Kim Dokja shrugged. “People find it comforting, knowing exactly how a story will go. Familiar, like an old friend.”
The girl looked at him and hummed. “Han Sooyoung.”
“Kim Dokja,” he replied.
“Like ‘Reader’?”
Kim Dokja looked at her, startled. “Yes.”
She smirked at him. “Really leaned into it, huh?”
“You could say that. It’s better than watching the clock.”
Han Sooyoung glanced at him and smudged a finger under her eye, mimicking the shadows under Kim Dokja’s. “Trouble sleeping?”
“Sometimes,” he agreed lightly. He wound up reading a lot. Most of it was just as trashy as the script he currently had. But he couldn’t afford to be too picky. In anything. A heroine’s inane prattle was still better than the voices in his head.
He half expected Han Sooyoung to probe a little deeper, but she changed the subject instead. “Tell me what you like, then, so I can judge you for it.”
“How do you know I won’t judge yours?”
“I have standards.”
The conversation meandered over stories they’d read, the best websites, and a collective roast of several adaptations, only halting when the doors outside opened, ushering in a new group of people with the late winter air. Kim Dokja’s back straightened, a bland docility shuttering over his eyes.
Han Sooyoung pulled out her own phone, seemingly engrossed.
“Reservation?” He asked politely. The man in front seemed about his age, a little older than the group following behind him, but the furrowed brow added years. A quelling look from him quieted the rambunctious group and their loud, excited voices dropped to an enthusiastic murmur. Uniform jackets marked them as some kind of sports team.
The man was the captain, then. And ridiculously good-looking, scowl or no. His wavy hair was a little long in front, but it did little to hide his strong nose and a chiseled jaw. He was tall and his shoulders broad, filling out the black and lime jersey with a casual strength that was missing in all the others. His presence was strong, too, immediately grabbing attention. Kim Dokja briefly wondered if he’d seen him before, but no, that face was a little too striking to be missed. Even The Fourth might do a double take.
“Yoo Joonghyuk, Room 5,” the man grunted.
“Do you have a reservation slip?”
“It’s under my name,” the man glowered.
Kim Dokja smiled pleasantly. “A digital one will do.”
“Ah, here,” one of the other team members hurriedly came forward, flashing a screenshot of their confirmation.
“Thank you,” he said courteously. “May I have an ID?”
There was an awkward pause. Kim Dokja ignored it as he scanned the QR code and counted the group. Ten people. Everything seemed in order.
“ID?” He repeated, his professional smile unwavering.
“C-Captain…” One of the members began uneasily.
For a moment, ‘Yoo Joonghyuk’ seemed to want to reach across the desk to strangle him. But his clenched hand turned out to be holding a card, confirming his identity.
Kim Dokja quickly checked the hangul and tapped the confirmation on the tablet, sending a signal to the waitstaff.
“Follow me, please.”
He stepped out from behind the podium to lead them down the ground floor corridor. The upper halls had already been reserved for the party Han Sooyoung had escaped from.
Bringing them to one of the larger private rooms, technically a double, Kim Dokja handed the team over to one of his coworkers.
As luck would have it, another group was already starting to exit an adjacent room. The college crowd- they’d gone in at the start of his shift. Now drunk and laughing, they staggered out into the passageway. Several of them were covered in pink-streamers and heart-shaped confetti, couples holding hands and giggling.
The hallway was slightly too narrow for so many people at once. One of the guests clipped his side with a bag on their way out, sending him thumping against the one directly behind him.
Yoo Joonghyuk looked down at him, irritated and unmoved. Brick walls likely had more give. “Get off.”
“My apologies,” Kim Dokja said insincerely, and straightened his uniform. “Please enjoy your night.”
By the time he got back, he was surprised to find that Han Sooyoung was still there.
“Nice one,” she gave a lazy thumbs up.
“What do you mean?”
“Trolling Yoo Joonghyuk? He of the eyebrow meme?” Han Sooyoung scrunched her brow in imitation. “Don’t tell me you really don’t know who he is?”
“I don’t,” Kim Dokja snorted. “What is he, a model?”
“E-sports player, brought home a championship and everything two weeks ago.”
“Huh. Eyebrow meme?”
“Yeah, it was all over the internet for like a week.” Han Sooyoung tapped on her phone and showed him a GIF of the same man, his eyebrow twitching emphatically in an otherwise stone-cold face.
This particular post had also added a similar GIF of a grumpy cat. The resemblance was uncanny.
“Seriously, did you just finish your service or something?”
Kim Dokja shook his head. “No, I’ll be going soon, actually.” It was part of why he’d been saving up.
Han Sooyoung nodded. “So you’re just a loser, even on the internet.”
“I really don’t think someone who ran away from a party can say that.”
“I can if it’s my family’s,” Han Sooyoung said.
Kim Dokja said nothing. That was more than fair.
She curled her shoulders in, bracing. From where he stood, her shoulders looked thin. “Guess I should get back before they send out the army. Here.”
His phone buzzed, lighting up with a friend request. Kim Dokja accepted it and was immediately sent a link.
“My novel. So you can read something not shit at your shitty job.”
“Just because my job is trash doesn’t mean I like to read trash on it.”
Her hand whapped just above his elbow- the easiest for her to reach. “Shut up. I’ll make you cry.”
“Is that a threat?” Kim Dokja asked. She was five feet tall, he could take her. Maybe.
“You’ll understand when you read it,” she said loftily, heading upstairs.
The reception was quiet without her, a stillness broken only by the faint strain of music from the upper floors.
A pang of hunger reminded him, again, that he hadn’t eaten since lunch, but try as he might, he couldn’t find the chocolate he’d kept back. He must have lost it, somehow.
On his phone, the clock slowly ticked over to midnight, without any fanfare. No messages and no notifications. But that was to be expected when only two people knew this number and both were admitted.
No, that wasn't true. It was three, now.
And as birthday presents went, he’d gotten worse than a new friend.