Title: Sleeping Beauty Seo Yul
Fandom: Chief Kim
Rating: G-rated
Length: ~2,375 words
Notes: Seo Yul/Kim Sung-Ryong crack. Many many thanks to mergatrude for beta. <3
Summary: No one knows why there’s an ambulance parked outside TQ headquarters. Kim Sung-Ryong is determined to find out.


Monday

“Anyone know why there’s an ambulance in front of the building?” asked Yoon Ha-Kyung as she entered the Business Operations office.

Sung-Ryong looked up from the spreadsheet he was creating. “What ambulance?”

Yoon Ha-Kyung shrugged. “That’s why I asked.”

Sang-Tae was checking his phone. “Oh Kwang-Suk said she saw paramedics going to level 30.”

“Maybe the Chairman has food poisoning,” muttered Sung-Ryong, not quietly enough.

The others looked at him, shocked.

“What did you do?” demanded Yoon Ha-Kyung into the silence.

“Nothing! It was just wishful thinking!”

“I can’t believe you’d wish physical harm on him, even if he is your enemy.”

“He tried to have me killed!” said Sung-Ryong. “And I didn’t mean fatal food poisoning – just enough to scare him into being a better person.”

Manager Choo balled up a piece of paper and threw it at him. “What would you know about being a better person?”


*


There were two ambulances by the time Sung-Ryong wrapped up and left for the night. A woman in uniform was standing next to one of them, on the phone.

Sung-Ryong went over and waited while she finished her call. “Excuse me,” he said. “What’s going on? Is it the Chairman?”

“I’m not permitted to discuss—”

Her phone rang again, and she turned away to answer. “Yes. No, there’s been no change. The patient still isn’t responding. No, no cardiac symptoms. It’s as if he’s sleeping. The Chairman wants it kept quiet, but if it keeps up, we’ll have to bring the patient in.”

So it wasn’t the Chairman.

“Who’s the patient?” asked Sung-Ryong, but she ignored him, yawned and climbed into the back of the ambulance.

Sung-Ryong stood there, an uneasy feeling slithering into a ball in his stomach.


Tuesday

It was only one ambulance the next morning, and the expense reports were due at 5pm, so no one in Business Operations had time to think about it, let alone investigate.


Wednesday

The ambulance was still there. Sung-Ryong couldn’t see the woman, and the driver sitting in the cab looking tired and worried wouldn’t tell him anything. And something strange was happening around the edges of the building: hard thorny shoots were twisting out of the ground, reaching for the sky.

“This is ridiculous.” Sung-Ryong marched into the building, boarded the executive elevator and pressed the button for the 30th floor.

Na Hee-Yong, General Manager of Ethical Management, appeared from nowhere and waved her arm between the door sensors, stopping them from closing. “Chief Kim, this elevator is exclusively for members of the executive. Disembark at once!”

“Who’s the ambulance for?” demanded Sung-Ryong, refusing to move.

Na Hee-Yong’s expression grew even more forbidding than usual. “If Chairman Park wanted the hoi polloi to know that, he would have made an announcement. Disembark this instant or I’ll require you to write letters of apology.”

Sung-Ryong folded his arms. “To whom?”

“To each member of the executive, individually.”

Which didn’t tell him anything. Sung-Ryong debated with himself for a moment, then exited the elevator. They glared at each other, and when she finally turned away, he stuck out his tongue at her retreating back. He hated writing apologies. There had to be an easier way to find out what was going on.


*


Down in Business Operations, rumours were swirling. Everyone had heard a different story, but no one was able to verify anything.

Sung-Ryong was determined to get to the bottom of the mystery. He had Sang-Tae email him a list of all members of the executive team and their assistants, and he phoned them, one-by-one, pretending to offer free tickets to the theatre as part of a promotion.

After the second – Lee Gang-Shik, who recognised his voice and swore at him – an edict must have gone out from the Chairman, because people stopped answering their phones.

Sung-Ryong frowned at the list and tried the next name anyway: Seo Yul, Finance Director. There was no answer.

Come to think of it, Seo Yul hadn’t summoned him to yell or torment him all week. But he was too young and fit to need an ambulance. He was probably busy doing damage control for the Chairman.

“This would be a good time to launch an attack,” Sung-Ryong told Manager Choo, who just shook his head.

“Don’t you have actual work to do?”

“Launching an attack is more important than work.”

So Yoon Ha-Kyung brought him a giant stack of accounts to check.

That afternoon, an email went out to all staff informing them that non-attendance would be reflected in their pay and their performance reviews, and warning them not to discuss work matters with friends or family.


Thursday

By Thursday, the thorn vines were halfway up the outside of the building, and people on the lower floors were complaining about them blocking the light. Sung-Ryong talked to the weed-control crew who’d been brought in to eradicate the fast-growing plants, and when that failed to pay dividends, he spent the afternoon egging on the frustrations of the workers in one of the TQ warehouses, just because he could.

Still Seo Yul didn’t call to yell at him.

Sung-Ryong was starting to worry.

“Have you heard anything about the patient?” he asked Oh Kwang-Suk, but she said that since the executives were working off-site, no one on the top floors had ordered any coffee, so she couldn’t snoop.

“Anyway, it’s scary up there. It gives me goosebumps.” She tucked a stray ringlet behind her ear. “Accounting and Finance are in the dark too, literally and figuratively.”

Apparently the weed-control crew weren’t having much success. Sung-Ryong wondered if TQ’s insurance covered Act of Supernatural Vegetation.


Friday

The weed-control crew appeared to have accepted defeat, and the thorns on the outside of the building were nearly as long as Sung-Ryong’s forearm. He broke off half a dozen and took them down to Business Operations. There must be something he was missing.

“What are you doing with those?” asked Bing Hee-Jin.

“Don’t you think they’d be perfect for cooking fishcakes?” Sung-Ryong put them on his desk and frowned at them.

He went up to Finance, but the intern Hong Ga-Eun was worried too. “I haven’t seen a manager since Wednesday, but everyone else keeps coming to work! What if the thorns close up the doors and we can’t get out again? I bet the managers wouldn’t even send help.”

“There’s always the fire axes,” Sung-Ryong reassured her.

He went back to his desk and called a reporter he knew.

“There’s an embargo on the story,” said the reporter. “My editor won’t let me cover it.”

“Typical,” said Sung-Ryong. “The only thing Chairman Park cares about is not scaring the investors.”

“Sorry,” said the reporter. “Still, whatever’s going on, if you find anything concrete let me know.”

Sung-Ryong ended the call. He’d always chosen his course of action by opposing whatever terrible thing Seo Yul was doing. In the face of Seo Yul’s silence, he didn’t know where to start.


*


It was late. The others had all gone home. Sung-Ryong trudged through the foyer. He felt strangely flat, as if he were suffering a vitamin deficiency.

Maybe curiosity was bad for his health. He stopped at the front door, now densely fringed with long, vicious-looking thorns, and took a deep breath. He could invite Manager Choo and the others out for a drink, or go home and watch TV and drink there. Or he could be the hero who exposed the truth to the world.

After all, if Chairman Park Hyun-Do wanted it kept secret, revealing it must be the right thing to do. And under the circumstances, it might be the only thing that would provoke a reaction from Seo Yul. Sung-Ryong was starting to miss his sneering face.

Sung-Ryong spun around and ran for the stairs. They could block off the elevator, but fire safety regulations required them to keep the stairwells open. He started climbing.

After eight flights, he shrugged off his jacket and slung it over his arm.

Halfway between floors 10 and 11, he loosened his tie and wished he’d gone drinking instead.

But faintly, from somewhere above, there was the sound of falling glass, cracking and smashing, and Sung-Ryong gathered his determination and soldiered on. By level 25, he was really regretting not bringing a water bottle. The air was stale. The A/C must be broken.

He checked his phone, but there were no calls, no messages. Grimly, he climbed upwards.


*


The door to the 30th floor was barred with thorns, and a cruel wind was blowing. The woody vines had broken through the windows and invaded the floor, snaking over everything. It made the office feel exposed and unreal.

Sung-Ryong’s legs were shaking from the climb, his shirt sticking to his back. But this wasn’t a game. He would get to the bottom of this – he just hoped it wouldn’t kill him. He wrapped his jacket around his arm for protection and pulled out the pocket knife he’d started carrying after he was abducted, in case he woke up zip-tied in the trunk of a car again. Office work really was perilous business.

Carefully, he began to hack the thorns from the doorway. They couldn’t have been there more than a day or two, but they were already brittle and aged-looking. They tore at his shirt, scratched his arms, ripped a hole in his pants. Finally he broken through with a triumphant cry, and looked around.

A man in a paramedic uniform was propped against the wall, unconscious, encased in a cage of vines. Another was sprawled on the floor in front of the elevator. Sung-Ryong checked their pulses—they were still alive—and moved on, through a tunnel of thorns, letting the vines guide him.

There was a third paramedic in Seo Yul’s office, slumped over the desk next to an IV stand, barely visible through the growth. A portable defibrillator and other medical equipment were stacked at her feet. And lying on a gurny, in a cavern of thorns, pale and unmoving was Seo Yul.

Sung-Ryong rushed forward. “Hey, gluttonous sociopath! Wake up!”

His wrist was cold, his pulse sluggish and slow. He looked oddly ethereal, like a statue of an angel.

“You’re not an angel, you’re a thug in an expensive suit. Come on, wake up! You’ve been sleeping long enough.” Sung-Ryong shook him, and when that didn’t work, he slapped him. “Seo Yul!”

Nothing. The slap didn’t even leave a mark.

“Seo Yul! Wake up!” Sung-Ryong smothered a yawn and yelled. “Hey, the warehouse workers are going to strike if you don’t wake up! I’ll make sure they all get pay rises and overtime.”

But annoying Seo Yul awake didn’t work either.

Sung-Ryong yawned for real. His eyes wanted to drift shut, but he didn’t let them. Instead he stared down at Seo Yul’s immobile face. His stomach flipped like a pancake.

“This is crazy.” He didn’t mean the thorns, or the pressing blanket of sleepiness.

He yawned a third time. He was going to have to move fast. What if they found him asleep on Seo Yul’s body? Seo Yul would be furious.

“You know, I might have liked you if you weren’t such a rude, sociopathic asshole.”

The edge of Yul’s mouth was a clear, perfect line.

“I might have liked you a lot.” To illustrate, Sung-Ryong bent down, but he lost his nerve at the last minute and kissed his cheek instead, like he always did.

A faint flush coloured Yul’s skin where Sung-Ryong’s lips had touched him. Yul’s eyelids fluttered but didn’t open.

“Oh.” Sung-Ryong swallowed and brushed a kiss to Yul’s mouth.

Yul opened his eyes and looked at him. “You.”

Was that an accusation or relief? Sung-Ryong straightened anyway, and took a half-step back. “What me? I saved you.”

“Saved me?” Yul sat up stiffly, his bangs falling over his forehead. “What happened to you?”

“I’m fine.” Sung-Ryong had forgotten his torn clothes and scratches.

“You’re a mess! And what the hell did you do to my office?”

Sung-Ryong looked around, following Yul’s incredulous gaze. The thorns were turning green at the tips, leaf buds forming and unfurling like time lapse photography. The paramedic stirred.

“You’ve been asleep since Monday.” Sung-Ryong didn’t know that for sure, but the woman at the ambulance on Monday had said the patient wasn’t responding. “No one could wake you. The building is covered in thorns, and the executives have run away.”

Yul rubbed his face and looked at him. “Typical. So why are you here? Running away would have been the smart move.”

Sung-Ryong folded his arms. “They wouldn’t tell us who the patient was. You hadn’t yelled at me in days. It was so boring, I thought I had anaemia.”

His vitamin deficiency was cured now. He felt wide awake.

Yul clambered off the gurney and stretched. The paramedics must have loosened his clothing, because the stretch exposed a small sliver of skin, where the bottom of his shirt hung unbuttoned.

Sung-Ryong knew he should move away, but he couldn’t. “What happened?”

“I don’t remember,” said Yul. “I guess I must have been really tired.”

“You were asleep for a week,” yelped Sung-Ryong, indignantly. “No one could wake you! That’s not just tired.”

Yul’s gaze was hard and bright and alive, holding Sung-Ryong’s like a challenge. “Maybe I was waiting for you.”

Sung-Ryong glanced down. Yul was holding out his hand, and not like he wanted a business handshake. Sung-Ryong took it, his heart thumping. “You know, you should nap more often. It does wonders for your mood.”

“Shut up.” Yul stepped closer. “Thanks for waking me.”

Sung-Ryong squeezed his hand. Yul might not know it yet, but this was just the start of Project Save Seo Yul. Under the guidance of the Business Operations team, Sung-Ryong had found his way back to doing the right thing and helping people, and he had every intention of passing on the favour and making Yul his ally.

But that could wait.

Their bodies were nearly touching. Yul leaned in slowly and kissed Sung-Ryong, warm and undeniable, and Sung-Ryong kissed him back. The air was suddenly sweet and fresh, as the curling green vines burst into flower around them.


END