Pairing: Kwon Ohyul! x reader
Synopsis: In which the ultimate ramen sale has exactly four packs left, and you are absolutely not about to share with the smug stranger who got there first.
Genre: A romance/rom-com slow burn strangers-to-lovers workplace AU full of fluff and banter.
WC! 9.9K words
ˏˋ꒰🍥꒱ A guide on how to make the perfect ramen relationship
Step One: Boil 2–2.5 Cups of Water
There were exactly four packs of Buldak left on the shelf. The banner above them screamed 70% OFF, TODAY ONLY in a font so aggressive it should have come with a warning label, and you had basically started narrating your own victory speech in your head before your fingers even made contact with the box.
Three days. You had spent three actual days of your one finite life preparing for this. You'd set an alarm. You'd cross-referenced restock timings on two different grocery apps like you were planning a heist instead of buying noodles. You had told Mira with full eye contact and zero shame that if this sale somehow fell through, you would simply have to abandon your degree and become a hermit who survived purely on principle and tap water.
So when your hand finally closed around the box, the box, the one you had been thinking about with genuinely unwell levels of devotion, and another hand landed on it at the exact same second, warm and very much not yours, your brain did not register danger right away.
It registered personal betrayal.
"Okay," you said, staring down at the four fingers that were yours, stacked against four fingers that very much were not. "This is weird."
"Yeah," said a voice that had absolutely no business sounding that calm about it. "Weird. You can let go now."
And immediately, instantly, regretted it, because the universe had apparently decided that the one obstacle standing between you and discounted noodles also needed to have an undercut, a jaw that looked like it had been drawn by someone showing off, and the specific brand of smug, unbothered calm that made you want to either flirt with him shamelessly or shove him face-first into the cereal display. You hadn't decided which yet. Some small, traitorous part of your brain was lobbying hard for both, possibly at the same time, and you immediately blacklisted that part of your brain from having a vote in anything ever again.
"No," you said, tightening your grip. "YOU let go."
"I had it first mentally. I have been having it first for seventy two hours. My claim has seniority."
He blinked at you like he'd just watched a raccoon successfully open a jar of pickles using only its tiny criminal hands. "That is not a real legal concept."
"It's a spiritual concept."
"There's a difference between legal and spiritual ownership and you're choosing to ignore the more powerful one out of convenience."
"I need this ramen," he said, slow, careful, the exact tone you use on someone who might be unhinged, which, fair, you probably did look a little unhinged right now and you had made peace with that about ten seconds ago. "I have a flight in four days and the emotional bandwidth of a man with literally nothing edible in his apartment."
"It's extremely a me problem, but currently it's also a we problem because your hand is still on my noodles."
"They're not your noodles. They're the noodles. I located them first, that's just facts."
A woman pushing a cart full of yogurt edged past you both, gave you a look that very clearly said get a room, not the romantic kind, the please-stop-blocking-the-aisle kind, and you and the stranger shuffled half a step sideways in unison without ever loosening your grip on the box, swaying together like the most hostile slow dance either of you had ever been forced into.
You could feel the warmth of his hand through the cardboard. It was doing something annoying to your pulse and you decided, on principle, to be furious about it instead of examining it further.
"Okay," he said, exhaling like he'd aged two years in the last ten seconds. "There's four packs left. Two for you, two for me. Everybody wins, nobody gets banned from a grocery store today."
"We can't both need four, that's not how math works."
"It works exactly like that if the universe respects me specifically," you said, with the full unshakeable conviction of someone who had clearly already lost this argument several sentences ago and refused, on a cellular level, to admit it out loud.
He laughed. Short, surprised, like it had escaped before he could stop it, and the sound did something stupid low in your stomach that you immediately filed away under things to never think about again.
"Counter offer," he said.
"Rock paper scissors. Winner takes the box. Loser lives with the shame forever."
You narrowed your eyes at him. He had the audacity to look amused by this, like he found you funny instead of terrifying, which felt, frankly, disrespectful, because you were being extremely terrifying right now, you were sure of it.
"Fine," you said. "But if you cheat I will personally find an employee and tell them you've been hoarding the sale ramen, and I will make sure you get banned for life."
"That's an insane threat to make over noodles."
You both let go of the box at the exact same time, suspiciously synchronized, and held out your fists.
"Wait, on three or after three."
"After three, obviously. Don't be unhinged about it."
"You're the one threatening to get me banned from a grocery store."
"Rock. Paper. Scissors. Shoot."
You threw scissors. He threw rock.
There was a long, devastating silence.
"Yes," he said, already reaching for the box with the calm of a man who had clearly known he was going to win this entire time, and something about that quiet confidence made you want to scream into a pillow later, purely out of spite.
"We agreed on one round."
"I'm amending the agreement retroactively, effective immediately."
"That's not how agreements work."
"Best. Two. Out of. Three."
He sighed, long and suffering, like he had several younger siblings or had simply, in this exact second, accepted that arguing with you was a battle better won through exhaustion than logic. "Fine. Two out of three."
You threw paper. He threw scissors.
"Ha," you said, possibly too loud, possibly loud enough to draw the attention of an entire aisle of strangers, but you genuinely could not have cared less in that moment, you had never cared less about anything in your life. "One one. Decider round."
"You are really committed to this."
"I told you. Seventy two hours of mental preparation. I refuse to be slandered in my own grocery store."
"It's not your grocery store."
"You cannot keep using that as a legal defense."
Silence again, heavier this time.
"Okay," he said slowly, dragging a hand down his face. "This is now officially embarrassing for both of us."
"Speak for yourself. I am thriving. This might be the most alive I've felt all semester."
"We are two grown adults standing in the snack aisle playing rock paper scissors over instant noodles, and we have tied twice."
"Third time's the charm," you said, already resetting your fist, fully prepared to do this until store security physically removed you both from the premises, fully prepared for this to become the story you told at parties for the rest of your life. That one time I almost got arrested over ramen.
He was looking at you now with an expression you couldn't quite name, something caught between disbelief and a warmth he was clearly trying very hard not to let show, the corner of his mouth twitching like he was losing a fight against his own face.
"You're genuinely deranged," he said, but it didn't land like an insult. It landed like an observation he found, against his better judgment, kind of charming.
"Thank you," you said. "Final round, for real this time. Loser walks away with their dignity intact and zero ramen."
You shook on it, which in hindsight was a bizarrely formal gesture to attach to a fight over discount noodles, but it felt right in the moment, his hand warm and steady around yours for exactly one second too long before you both yanked back like you'd touched something hot.
Your palm tingled. You hated that your palm tingled.
You threw scissors. He threw paper.
You blinked at your own hand like it had betrayed you in the best possible way.
"I win," you said, somewhat stunned by your own victory, the kind of stunned that comes from genuinely not believing your own luck even after three full rounds of complete chaos.
"You win," he agreed, and to his credit he didn't argue, didn't try to negotiate a fourth tiebreaker, just stood there with his hands sliding into his pockets, watching you with something unreadable that made the back of your neck go warm under the weight of it.
You reached for the box, victorious, ready to walk off into the sunset with your prize and never think about this stranger again as long as you lived.
And then, because the universe clearly had a sense of humor it had been saving up all week specifically for you, you actually looked at the shelf properly for the first time since this entire fiasco had started.
There were two more boxes sitting right behind the one you'd been fighting over. Calm. Untouched. Mocking you, somehow, despite being inanimate objects.
You both saw it at the exact same moment.
There was a long, soul crushing silence.
"There were," he said, very slowly, like each word physically hurt him on the way out, "more in the back. The whole time."
"There were more in the back the whole time," you repeated, staring at the two perfectly innocent, perfectly available boxes that had been sitting there unbothered while the two of you nearly got security called on you.
"We just played three rounds of rock, paper, scissors."
"We just played three rounds of rock paper scissors over nothing."
"I called you deranged to your face."
"You DID call me deranged to my face."
"I stand by it," he said, dragging a hand down his face, not laughing yet, clearly too annoyed at himself to find it funny just yet.
You grabbed your two rightfully won boxes off the shelf anyway, because you weren't about to let a logistical error undo a hard-fought victory, and held them against your chest like trophies.
"Well," you said, "this has been deeply unnecessary, and I regret every part of it except winning."
"You didn't even need to win. There was always enough for both of us."
"Doesn't matter. I still won. That's just a historical fact now, you can't undo it."
He grabbed his own two boxes, shaking his head, something flickering behind his expression that wasn't quite annoyance and wasn't quite anything else you could name either. "You're insufferable."
"That wasn't a compliment."
"I'm choosing to receive it as one. It's a personality trait at this point."
He huffed something that was almost a laugh, caught it before it fully escaped, and shifted his grip on his ramen like he was already trying to put distance between the two of you, physically and otherwise. "Well. I sincerely hope I never have to fight you for groceries again."
"Likewise. Genuinely. With my whole chest."
"I'm serious. I have a flight in four days. I will be on a different continent, far away from you and your spiritual ownership claims."
"Good. Enjoy your flight. Think of me never."
"I will think of you," he said, "exactly zero times."
"Perfect. Mutual. We're aligned."
"We're aligned," he agreed, already backing away down the aisle, ramen tucked under one arm like a man retreating from a battlefield with the bare minimum of his dignity intact.
"Bye forever," you called after him, with the cheerful, vicious energy of someone who fully meant it.
"Bye forever," he called back, not even turning around, already disappearing past the cereal display and out of your life, presumably, for good.
You did not exchange names. You did not, at any point, consider that this might be a mistake.
You went home, boiled water for a celebratory test bowl despite already having had dinner, told Mira the entire saga in such exhaustive detail that she made you repeat the rock paper scissors part twice, and did not think about the stranger again. Mostly. Aside from one or two stray moments where his laugh surfaced uninvited in your memory and you had to actively shove it back down where it belonged.
He, for his part, had no flight in four days. He had no flight at all, in fact, had not had so much as a plane ticket booked in over a year, and the lie had simply fallen out of his mouth in the heat of the moment because it sounded final, sounded like a clean exit line, sounded like the kind of thing you said to a deranged stranger you never expected to see again so that the goodbye would actually stick.
He, too, went home. He, too, did not think about you. Mostly.
If you had possessed any psychic ability whatsoever, which you did not, you might have noticed the flyer pinned to the staff board near the front registers on your way out, the one advertising a part time sales position, students welcome, flexible hours, one month only. The exact flyer Ohyul had already photographed on his phone an hour earlier, fully intending to apply the second he got home.
The exact flyer you yourself had screenshotted three days ago, right next to a note in your phone that read, in your own slightly deranged handwriting: *apply before sale ends. need the money. ramen money specifically.*
The universe, somewhere, was already laughing.
Step Two: Add the Noodle Block Once Boiling
Four days later, you walked into the staff room of a grocery store you had, until this exact morning, only ever thought of as "the place with the good ramen sale," wearing a uniform polo two sizes too big, a name tag still warm from the laminator, and the specific kind of nervous energy that came from this being your actual first part time job that wasn't babysitting your neighbor's chaotic twins.
The contract was for one month. Flexible hours, students welcome, decent pay for a uni kid trying to survive on instant noodles and the occasional act of God. You'd applied the same night you'd gotten home from the sale, ramen victory still fresh, mood embarrassingly good for someone who had nearly caused a minor incident over discount noodles, and the manager had called you back within two days because apparently nobody else wanted to work evening shifts in the snack and beverage aisle for a month.
You'd taken it without hesitation. Rent was rent. Ramen money, as your notes app had so eloquently put it, was ramen money.
You set your bag down at one of the lockers, read the laminated orientation schedule taped to the wall, and felt, for one full minute, like a functional adult who had her life together.
Then the door opened behind you, and every single cell in your body recognized the footsteps before your brain caught up, which felt deeply unfair, because you had only spent twenty minutes with this man and apparently that had been enough for your nervous system to file him under threat, recurring.
He stopped dead in the doorway.
There was a very long, very loud silence, the kind that somehow had a sound even though nobody was speaking, and you watched in real time as several emotions crossed his face in quick succession. Confusion. Recognition. Horror. A flicker of something that almost looked like betrayal, like you personally had engineered this for the sole purpose of ruining his week.
"You," he said, pointing at you with the kind of accusatory energy usually reserved for catching someone red handed at a crime scene, "have a flight."
"YOU'RE the one who's supposed to be on a flight," you said, at the exact same moment, pointing right back, both of you talking over each other like a poorly rehearsed duet.
"I.......I never had a flight."
"I lied," he said, dragging a hand down his face like the words physically pained him on the way out. "There was no flight. There has never been a flight. I have not so much as looked at a plane ticket in over a year."
"You lied," you repeated slowly, letting the full weight of this information settle into your brain like a stone dropping into still water, "to get out of a rock paper scissors rematch."
"I lied," he said, with the wounded dignity of a man whose perfectly good exit line had just detonated in his face four days later, in the worst possible setting, wearing a name tag, "to get out of ever seeing you again. Specifically. As a goal. And the universe has apparently rejected that request on every possible level."
"This is the worst thing that has ever happened to me," you said, staring at the name tag pinned to his chest, which, against every law of probability you had previously believed in, read OHYUL in the exact same chunky laminated font as your own.
"This is the worst thing that has ever happened to me," he said, "and I have a fairly competitive list of contenders."
"We're going to be coworkers."
"We are going to be coworkers," he confirmed, in the flat, hollow tone of a man reading his own eulogy out loud to a room full of strangers.
Before either of you could spiral further, the staff room door swung open again, and a woman in a navy blazer breezed in, clutching a clipboard, radiating the specific brand of relentless positivity unique to retail managers running on her third coffee of the day.
"There you two are," she said brightly, glancing between you like she had absolutely no idea she'd just walked into a crime scene. "I'm Jihye, the store manager. You're both on the part-time sales intake for the month, evening shift, snacks and beverages aisle. Orientation starts in five, follow me."
She turned and walked out without waiting for a response, clearly assuming the two new hires standing six feet apart in stony silence were simply shy.
Neither of you moved for a second.
"Snacks and beverages," you said.
"The aisle," he said. "Our aisle. The crime scene."
"There is no transfer, this is a one month part time retail job, there's nowhere to transfer to."
"Then I want a refund on my own life decisions."
"Get in line," he muttered, already grabbing his name tag off the counter and clipping it on with the resigned energy of a man walking toward a firing squad, and despite everything, despite the betrayal, despite the flight lie, despite the fact that you were apparently cursed to be tethered to this specific human for the next four weeks, you felt the corner of your mouth twitch upward against your will.
You followed Jihye out of the staff room with Ohyul half a step behind you, both of you radiating the kind of tension that made another employee passing by visibly slow down to stare.
"For the record," he said quietly, just for you, as you walked, "I want it on file that I tried to escape. I made a genuine attempt."
"Noted," you said. "For the record, I also want it on file that I'm furious about this, on principle, and reserve the right to be furious about it for the entire duration of this contract."
"I still think you started it. At the shelf. Originally."
"We are not doing this again."
"I'm just saying, historically—"
"That's the first time you've said my name."
You stopped walking for half a second, caught entirely off guard by how unfairly pleased he looked about that small, stupid fact, like he'd won something far more significant than a rock paper scissors round, and you forced your expression back into something appropriately unimpressed before continuing down the hallway.
"Don't get used to it," you said.
"Too late," he said, falling back into step beside you, and you could hear, even without looking, that he was smiling.
Jihye led you both through a set of double doors into the main floor, past the registers, past the fruit section, straight toward a long aisle lined with chip bags and soda bottles and, conspicuously, a half empty shelf where the Ultimate Spicy Ramen sale had clearly continued without either of you, and stopped in front of it with the proud, sweeping gesture of someone presenting a kingdom.
"This is your aisle for the month," she said. "Restocking, customer assistance, inventory checks twice a shift. You two will be working together most evenings, so I hope you get along."
"We've actually already met," Ohyul said, in a tone so carefully neutral it could have won an award.
"Oh, perfect," Jihye said, beaming, already turning to walk off toward the next item on her clipboard, completely unaware of the live grenade she had just casually tossed between the two of you and walked away from. "Even better. You'll have great chemistry then."
The word chemistry hit the air and just sort of sat there.
You turned to look at Ohyul. Ohyul turned to look at you.
"She has no idea," you said.
"None," he agreed. "She has genuinely no idea what she's just unleashed."
"This is going to be a long month."
"The longest month," he said, already reaching for a box of cereal to start restocking the shelf beside you, sleeves pushed up, expression somewhere between dread and something suspiciously close to anticipation, "of both our lives."
And if you noticed, in that exact moment, the small, helpless way his mouth curved when he thought you weren't looking, you decided, firmly, that it meant absolutely nothing.
You were, after all, sworn enemies.
You just happened to be sworn enemies who were about to spend the next four weeks standing three feet apart for six hours a day, restocking shelves, bickering over inventory counts, and slowly, without either of your permission, falling apart at the exact same rate the water in that long-ago grocery aisle had once come to its rolling, inevitable boil.
Step Three: Cook 2–3 Minutes, Separating the Noodles as They Soften
By the third evening of working together, you had developed what you privately referred to as the Ohyul Survival Manual, a mental document with exactly one entry, which read: do not, under any circumstances, let him near the price gun.
This was because on day two, Ohyul had taken it upon himself to "fix" the pricing on a display of off brand potato chips, had somehow priced an entire shelf of them at $0.05 instead of $0.50, and had not noticed until an elderly woman walked up to the register with eleven bags of chips and a smile so radiant it looked like she'd witnessed a miracle.
"I genuinely thought it was a sale," he said, for the fourth time, while you stocked cans of soda directly above his head with the specific, deliberate aggression of someone restraining themselves from dropping one.
"It is not a sale. You invented a sale. You manifested a sale into existence using nothing but a faulty price gun and pure incompetence."
"That woman seemed really happy though."
"She bought eleven bags of chips, Ohyul. Jihye had to comp it out of the register."
"I'm just saying, in a way, I brought joy into someone's life today."
"You brought joy into someone's life and a financial discrepancy into mine."
He grinned up at you from where he was crouched, restocking the bottom shelf, looking entirely too pleased with himself for a man who had, less than twenty four hours ago, single handedly created a pricing crisis. "You're welcome, by the way."
"For the character development. You're learning patience. This is basically a gift."
"I am going to put you on that shelf next to the discount chips."
"Kinky," he said, immediately, without missing a beat, and you nearly dropped an entire case of soda cans directly onto your own foot trying to process the audacity.
"Nothing. I said nothing. Continue restocking."
"You cannot just say something like that and then tell me to continue restocking like it's a normal transition."
"I can, actually. Watch. I just did it."
You stared at him for a long moment, torn between genuine horror and the deeply inconvenient urge to laugh, and settled, ultimately, for shoving a stack of flattened cardboard boxes directly into his arms with slightly more force than strictly necessary.
"Break it down. All of it. As punishment."
"For what crime exactly."
"Existing within three feet of me and saying the word kinky in a grocery store."
"That's not a real workplace violation."
"It's not your aisle, it's our aisle, Jihye said so herself, with the chemistry and everything."
"Do not bring up the chemistry comment again."
"I think about the chemistry comment honestly more than I'd like to admit," he said, breaking down a box with theatrical effort, like the act of folding cardboard required his entire upper body and several deep breaths, "she really just dropped that on us and walked away. No context. No warning. A woman of few words and devastating impact."
"She has no idea what she did."
"She has no idea what she started," he agreed, tossing the flattened box onto the growing pile, and you both worked in silence for almost ninety whole seconds, which, for the two of you, was basically a personal record.
"Okay but genuinely," he said, breaking the silence like it personally owed him something, "what is your professional opinion on the chip pricing incident. Be honest. Funniest thing that's happened in this store in a year, or funniest thing that's happened in this store ever."
"Neither. It was a logistical nightmare that took Anjali forty five minutes to sort out on the register."
"That's not an opinion, that's a customer service report."
"Fine. It was moderately funny. In hindsight. After the financial damage was contained."
"Moderately funny," he repeated, looking wounded, hand pressed flat against his own chest like you'd physically struck him. "I generated a once in a lifetime grandma related miracle and you're giving it a moderate."
"I don't grade on a curve."
"You should. For me specifically. As a courtesy."
He went quiet for a second, the kind of quiet that you'd already learned, after three days, meant he was building up to something, and you braced yourself accordingly while pretending to be extremely focused on aligning a row of energy drink cans by label.
"You know what your problem is," he said.
"I have several. Please specify which one you mean."
"You're deeply competitive in a way that suggests trauma."
You turned to look at him so fast you nearly knocked over the can you'd just aligned. "I'm sorry, trauma?"
"I'm just saying, the rock paper scissors thing. The seventy two hours of mental preparation thing. The spiritual ownership concept. That's not normal behavior, YN. That's a man, or in this case, a woman, who has Lost Something Before and refuses to lose again."
"I have never lost anything in my life, I am undefeated."
"You're undefeated at rock paper scissors over discount noodles. That's not a flex, that's a cry for help."
"At least I didn't accidentally invent a sale that doesn't exist."
"It happened Tuesday. It is currently Thursday. The grief is still fresh."
He laughed, properly laughed, the kind that made him have to put a hand against the shelf to steady himself, and you fought, valiantly and unsuccessfully, against the small, traitorous smile threatening to break across your own face, turning back to the energy drinks specifically so he wouldn't see it.
You did not entirely succeed. You suspected, from the smug silence behind you, that he had absolutely seen it.
The thing about working a closing shift together, you'd discovered by day five, was that the store got eerily quiet after nine, the overhead music switching to some instrumental playlist clearly designed to lull both customers and employees into a state of mild hypnosis, and there was something about the emptiness of the aisles that made conversation feel different. Looser. Less like sparring and more like something you were doing simply because you wanted to keep doing it.
Not that you'd admit that out loud. You would rather restock the entire frozen foods section with your bare hands.
"Truth or dare," Ohyul said, apropos of absolutely nothing, while you both folded down delivery boxes in the back stockroom, the fluorescent lights buzzing faintly overhead.
"We're bored employees with forty minutes left on shift and nothing to restock. We are, spiritually, twelve."
You paused, mid fold, narrowing your eyes at him. "Did you just use my own spiritual concept against me."
"Truth or dare," he repeated, undeterred, sitting cross legged on a stack of flattened cardboard like he owned the place, like this was a perfectly normal way for two coworkers to spend their evening.
"You said it was an option."
"I said it was an option, I didn't say I'd respect the choice." He thought for a second, tapping his chin with theatrical consideration, the kind that made you brace yourself for something deeply stupid. "Okay. Real question. Day one. At the shelf. Be honest. Did you think I was hot, even a little, even for half a second, before you decided to hate me."
You nearly choked on air that wasn't even going anywhere near your throat.
"That was way too fast. That's a guilty answer if I've ever heard one."
"Your voice went up two octaves."
"My voice did not go up two octaves, you're hallucinating, possibly from the fumes of all that cardboard."
"I refuse to dignify that question with anything further."
"That's basically a yes."
"It is not basically a yes, it's a refusal, those are two completely different categories of response."
He was grinning now, the full, unfairly bright kind that made the stockroom feel about four degrees warmer than it had any right to be, watching you fumble through your own sentence like it was the single most entertaining thing he'd witnessed all week, possibly all month, possibly since the chip incident itself.
"My turn," you said quickly, desperate to redirect the conversation away from whatever cliff you'd nearly walked off. "Truth or dare."
"Dare. Obviously. I have nothing to hide."
"Everyone has something to hide, that's a deeply suspicious thing to say."
"Dare," he repeated, ignoring you completely, arms crossed, leaning back against the cardboard like a man fully prepared to accept whatever consequence came his way.
You looked around the stockroom for inspiration and landed, with the swift, merciless instinct of someone who had been waiting four days for exactly this opportunity, on the box of leftover sale stock sitting in the corner.
"I dare you," you said slowly, savoring it, "to eat a pack of the Ultimate Spicy Ramen. Raw. Uncooked. Right now. As a tribute to how this entire disaster began."
There was a long silence.
"That feels like cruelty."
"There is genuinely no difference between those two things from where I'm sitting."
"I am not backing out," he said, with the offended dignity of a man who had clearly never backed out of anything in his life and did not intend to start now, already reaching for the box, already tearing open a pack with the grim determination of someone walking willingly into battle. "I want it on record that this is psychological warfare."
He broke off a corner of the dry noodle block, examined it like it had personally wronged him, and ate it.
The sound that came out of him afterward was somewhere between a cough and a wounded animal noise, and you laughed so hard you had to sit down directly on the stockroom floor, clutching your own stomach, while he stood there chewing with the deeply betrayed expression of a man who had genuinely believed, right up until this exact moment, that he could handle anything.
"This is," he managed, through what was clearly immense personal suffering, "the worst thing I have ever eaten in my entire life."
"It's dry seasoning powder, Ohyul, what did you expect."
"I expected dignity. I expected to survive this with my dignity intact."
"You haven't had dignity since the price gun incident."
"That's fair," he admitted, finally swallowing, grabbing the nearest water bottle from his bag and downing half of it in one go while you continued to laugh from your spot on the floor, utterly unable to stop, tears actually threatening at the corners of your eyes. "I want it on the record that I did this dare with honor."
"You did this dare while making the exact sound effect of a dying raccoon."
"With honor," he repeated, pointing a finger at you, though he was laughing too now, breathless and a little wrecked, sliding down to sit on the floor across from you, the two of you a mess of cardboard and half eaten ramen and unrestrained laughter in the middle of a stockroom at 9:40pm on a Thursday, and for one unguarded second, looking at him laugh with his head tipped back and his eyes crinkled shut, you forgot, completely and entirely, that you were supposed to still be mad at him.
You filed that thought away immediately under things to deal with never.
You suspected, with rising dread, that the list under that particular heading was getting uncomfortably long.
Step Four: Add the Seasoning Packet, Stir In
You knew, somewhere around day twelve, that something had shifted, because you had started doing the thing where you checked the schedule first for your own shift, and then, immediately after, for his, as though his name printed in the same blocky font as yours was somehow load bearing information you needed before you could properly plan your week.
You did not examine this habit too closely. You had decided, weeks ago, that several things about this entire situation were simply not going to be examined too closely, ever, on principle, and you intended to stick to that policy for as long as humanly possible.
It became significantly harder to stick to on the day the new guy showed up.
His name was Veer, he was doing a rotation through three different departments before settling somewhere permanent, and he had the specific, polished charm of someone who had clearly been told his whole life that he was charming and had simply decided to believe it. He showed up at the snacks and beverages aisle on a Tuesday afternoon to "shadow the team," which in practice meant standing very close to you while you restocked granola bars and asking questions that had nothing to do with granola bars at all.
"So," Veer said, leaning one shoulder against the shelf in a way that suggested he'd practiced leaning against shelves specifically, "you're a psych student, right? That's actually really interesting, I've always thought psychology people have this whole other read on situations that the rest of us don't get."
"That's generous," you said, "mostly I just memorize a lot of acronyms and panic before exams like everyone else."
He laughed like you'd said something far funnier than you actually had, the kind of laugh designed to make you feel clever, and you caught, out of the corner of your eye, Ohyul appearing at the end of the aisle with a restocking cart, stopping dead the second he registered the scene in front of him.
You did not think much of it. You went back to the granola bars.
Veer did not go back to anything. Veer stayed exactly where he was, shoulder against the shelf, asking you if you had plans this weekend, in a tone that made it extremely clear he was hoping the answer involved him specifically, and you were mid sentence explaining that you had an ANOVA practical due, actually, very thrilling, when Ohyul appeared directly beside you with the restocking cart, parking it with significantly more force than the cart's structural integrity probably appreciated.
"Sorry," Ohyul said, in a tone that did not sound sorry at all, "need to get past you for the chips."
Veer straightened up, stepping aside with the easy, unbothered grace of someone who had never once in his life felt unwelcome anywhere, and gave Ohyul a once-over that was somehow both polite and faintly territorial.
"You're on this aisle too?"
"Every shift," Ohyul said. "For a month. With her."
"Lucky guy," Veer said, smiling at you in a way that made his meaning extremely clear, and you watched, with the specific fascination of a scientist observing a new species in the wild, as Ohyul's jaw did something very small and very tight that you had never once seen it do across twelve days of working together.
"Yeah," Ohyul said. "I am."
There was a beat. A very strange, very loaded beat, the kind that made the air in the aisle feel thinner than it had any right to be over a conversation about chips, and Veer, sensing something he couldn't quite name but clearly didn't love, cleared his throat and announced that he should probably go check in with his supervisor, and left with one last lingering smile in your direction that you barely registered, because you were too busy staring at the side of Ohyul's face.
He was restocking chip bags like they had personally wronged him. Aggressively. With great purpose. A bag of nacho flavored crisps did not deserve the level of violence currently being directed at its placement on the shelf.
"You okay there," you said.
"You're attacking a bag of chips."
"I'm organizing them. By flavor. It's a system."
"It is not a system, you've put barbecue next to plain three times now, you keep undoing your own work."
He stopped. Set the bag down. Did not look at you.
"Did you give him your number," he asked, in a tone so carefully, deliberately casual that it sounded like the exact opposite of casual, like a sentence assembled with great effort to appear weightless and failing at the last possible second.
You blinked. "Who, Veer?"
"Sure. Veer. The shadowing guy. The granola bar guy."
"No. We talked about my ANOVA practical for ten minutes, that's hardly a number exchanging level of conversation."
"He seemed very invested in your ANOVA practical."
"He seemed invested in me, Ohyul, the ANOVA practical was incidental."
You said it lightly, half teasing, fully expecting some kind of deflecting joke in response, the kind he always had loaded and ready, and instead he just exhaled through his nose, shoulders tight, still very studiously not looking at you, restocking the same shelf of chips for what was now the fourth unnecessary time.
"Right," he said. "Cool. That's. Cool."
"Are you jealous?" you said, mostly as a joke, the kind of thing you said to make him fluster so you could watch him fumble through a denial, except the second the word left your mouth, he went very still, and the stillness lasted just a beat too long to be the easy, deflective non-answer you'd expected.
"No," he said, finally, too fast, the same too fast you'd used four days ago on day one when he'd asked if you thought he was hot, and the symmetry of it landed somewhere in your chest with a force that startled you.
"Your voice just went up two octaves," you said quietly.
"It absolutely did. I know this because you told me, on day one, in this exact aisle, that mine did the same thing."
He finally looked at you then, and there was something different in his face, something that had shed all its usual easy humor, something rawer underneath it that made you suddenly very aware of how close you were both standing, close enough that you could see the small furrow between his eyebrows, the way his jaw worked like he was deciding whether to say something he'd been holding onto.
"Maybe I was a little jealous," he admitted, quiet, almost reluctant, like the words cost him something to hand over. "Is that a crime."
"No," you said, equally quiet. "It's not a crime."
"Good. Because I don't really know what to do with it."
"Any of it," he said, gesturing vaguely between the two of you, the chip aisle, the entire last twelve days, like the words for it simply didn't exist yet, like he was trying to describe a feeling that had snuck up on him somewhere between the rock paper scissors and the ramen dare and the closing shifts that had started running long not because there was more work, but because neither of you particularly wanted to leave first.
You didn't say anything. You weren't entirely sure what there was to say, standing in the middle of a chip aisle at 4pm on a Tuesday with your heart doing something distinctly unprofessional, and for a second the two of you just stood there, the overhead lights humming, a shopping cart squeaking somewhere two aisles over, the entire store continuing on, oblivious, around the two of you standing very still and saying nothing at all.
"I should," you said eventually, gesturing at the granola bars, voice coming out slightly rougher than you intended, "finish this."
"Right," he said. "Yeah. Me too. The chips."
Neither of you moved for another three full seconds.
Then you both, finally, turned back to your respective shelves, and worked in a silence that felt entirely different from any silence you'd shared before, charged in a way that made your hands slightly unsteady around the granola bar boxes, aware, suddenly, acutely, that whatever this had started as four days into a discount ramen sale, it had quietly, without either of your permission, become something with weight to it.
Something seasoned. Something that had stopped tasting like plain water somewhere along the way, and you weren't entirely sure either of you knew how to go back from that, even if you'd wanted to.
You were fairly certain, by the look on his face, that he didn't want to either.
Step Five: Add the Extras in the Last Minute
The thing about a one month contract is that it has a last week, and the thing about a last week is that it has a last day, and somehow, despite the two of you spending twenty six days finding increasingly elaborate ways to bicker your way around the truth, the last day arrived anyway, completely unbothered by the fact that neither of you was remotely ready for it.
You found this out properly on a Wednesday morning, when Jihye pinned the new month's schedule to the staff board and your name was simply not on it. Neither was his.
"Contract's up Friday," Jihye said, breezing past with her clipboard, entirely unaware, as always, of the devastation she left in her wake. "You two were great, by the way. Best inventory accuracy we've had all year. If anything opens up permanently, I'll call you first."
She said it like good news. It landed like a verdict.
You stood there holding a box of granola bars you'd already restocked twice that morning out of nervous habit, staring at the schedule, at the blank space where your name should have been, and felt something in your chest drop in a way that had nothing to do with employment status and everything to do with the fact that Friday meant two days, and two days meant the end of something you had spent twenty six days pretending you weren't building.
"Hey," Ohyul said, appearing beside you with his usual restocking cart, reading the schedule over your shoulder. He went quiet in a way that told you he'd done the same math you just had. "Friday."
Neither of you said anything else about it. You both went back to work, and the day passed the way every day had for almost a month now, full of small bickering and shelf reorganizing and the kind of comfortable, charged silence that had started feeling less like tension and more like something you didn't have a name for yet, and you told yourself, several times, that you had two more shifts to figure out what to do with that.
You did not figure it out. You ran out of time instead.
Friday's closing shift was supposed to be ordinary. Restock, inventory count, lock up, go home, except the store emptied out early, a slow Friday with rain hammering the windows outside, and by nine fifteen it was just the two of you and one bored cashier up front scrolling on her phone, the snacks and beverages aisle quiet except for the hum of the overhead lights and the rain against the glass front of the store.
You were doing the final inventory count, clipboard in hand, when you reached the end of the shelf, the exact shelf, the one with the faded sale sticker still half peeling off the edge from a month ago, the one that had started this entire disaster, and you stopped.
There, tucked behind a row of off brand crackers, sat exactly one box of Ultimate Spicy Ramen. The last one. Somehow overlooked through an entire month of restocking, sitting there like it had been waiting specifically for this exact night.
He came around the end of the aisle, took one look at what you were holding, and went very still.
"I'm not joking. Look at it. It's the actual last bite. The literal last one. Of the entire sale."
"That's insane. That's actually insane, the sale ended weeks ago, how is there even still stock—"
"I don't know, but it's here, and it's the last day, and it feels like it means something, and I refuse to examine why I think a discount ramen box means something, but here we are."
He laughed, quiet, a little disbelieving, taking the box from your hands and turning it over like it might explain itself. "Of course it's this. Of course the universe saves the last one for tonight."
"The universe has had a vendetta against us since day one. This feels consistent."
"It does," he agreed, and then, after a beat, quieter, "can we make it. Right now. Here. I know we're not supposed to use the break room hot water for personal stuff but I genuinely do not care tonight."
You looked at him. He looked at you. Neither of you needed to discuss it further.
You boiled the water in the break room kettle, the two of you crowded into the small space together, watching it climb toward a boil with a strange kind of reverence, like you were watching something far more significant than instant noodles, and when it finally bubbled you dropped the noodle block in together, both your hands brushing on the same fork as you tried to separate the strands once they softened, neither of you pulling away first.
"You know," he said, quiet, watching the noodles loosen in the water, "I've been thinking about how to say something for like a week now and I haven't figured out a version that doesn't sound insane."
"Try the insane version. I have a high tolerance, you've personally tested it."
He set the fork down. Turned to face you properly, the kettle steam curling up between you, rain still hammering steady against the window outside, and the break room suddenly felt very small and very warm and very far from the kind of place you'd expect anything important to happen, which somehow made it feel exactly right.
"I started this month hoping I'd never see you again," he said, "and now I genuinely don't know what Monday looks like without you in it. I don't know when that happened. Maybe the chip aisle. Maybe before that. Maybe the second you called me deranged in front of a stranger with a yogurt cart and I thought, oh no, I like her, this is going to be a problem."
Your chest did something complicated and warm and slightly unbearable.
"I started this month convinced you were the most annoying person I'd ever met," you said, "and I have never once, in twenty six days, been bored standing next to you, which is honestly the most frightening thing anyone's ever told me about myself."
"So what do we do about that."
"I don't know. I've genuinely never not known what to do about something before, it's deeply unsettling."
"We could," he said, slow, careful, like he was testing the words before fully committing to them, "not stop. After Friday. We could just. Keep doing this. Differently. On purpose, this time, instead of by accident."
"That's a terrifying amount of vulnerability for a man who once ate raw seasoning powder as a dare."
"I'm aware. I'm choosing to do it anyway. Growth."
You laughed, the sound catching somewhere close to tears you hadn't expected to be fighting, and reached out to add the seasoning packet into the pot, his hand meeting yours on the packet at the exact same moment, just like the very first time, except this time neither of you fought over it. This time you just held it together, stirring it in side by side, watching the broth turn rich and warm and fragrant in the small steel pot between you.
"For the record," you said softly, "yes. I want to keep doing this. On purpose."
He smiled then, the real one, the one that reached all the way to his eyes and made something in your chest settle for the first time in twenty six days, and leaned down, slow, giving you every chance to pull away if you wanted to, which you very much did not, and kissed you there in the break room with steam curling around you both and rain against the window and a pot of last minute ramen going slightly overdone on the counter because neither of you were paying it any attention at all.
When you finally pulled back, breathless, faintly stunned by your own life choices, he was grinning at you like he'd won something far bigger than a rock-paper-scissors round.
"For the record," he said, "I take back every cruel thing I ever thought about you at that shelf."
"I don't take back a single thing. You were deranged. I called it correctly from day one."
"I contain multitudes," you said, and kissed him again before he could argue, the noodles overcooking quietly behind you, the rain still falling outside, the two of you finally, fully, unmistakably caught.
Step Six: Turn Off Heat, Let It Sit, Serve Hot
Three months later, you still had the same kettle.
Not the break room one, obviously, that belonged to a grocery store and a contract that had quietly, officially ended the same night the last box of Ultimate Spicy Ramen had gone overcooked on a counter neither of you had been paying any attention to. This was your own kettle, secondhand, dented on one side, sitting on the counter of an apartment that had somehow, without either of you formally agreeing to it, become yours, plural, his toothbrush next to yours, his hoodies folded into your drawers, the two of you so thoroughly tangled into each other's daily life that you genuinely could not remember, some days, what your apartment had looked like before him.
You found this terrifying sometimes. Not in a bad way. In the way where you'd catch yourself staring at him doing something completely mundane, like reading the back of a cereal box with unnecessary intensity, and feel a wave of something so enormous and unmanageable that you had to physically look away before you said something deeply, embarrassingly unhinged out loud.
You did not always succeed at looking away.
"You're doing the thing," he said, from the couch, not even glancing up from his phone, somehow able to feel the exact weight of your staring from across the room like it had its own gravitational pull.
"I am not doing a thing."
"You're doing the thing where you look at me like you're trying to figure out how to fit me inside your ribcage."
"That is an insane and oddly specific accusation."
"It's a little accurate."
He looked up then, grinning, and your stomach did the same stupid, helpless drop it had been doing for three months straight, the one that should have calmed down by now, that should have leveled out into something manageable, and instead had only gotten worse, had gotten so bad that you had genuinely, privately, started to worry about your own capacity for rational thought whenever he was in a room with you.
"Come here," he said, holding an arm out, and you went, immediately, no resistance whatsoever, because resisting Ohyul had stopped being something your body was capable of doing somewhere around month one, back when you'd still been pretending the chip aisle hadn't changed everything.
The kettle clicked off behind you. Neither of you moved toward it.
"The water's done," you mumbled, face already pressed against his chest, breathing him in like it was a documented food group, essential to your survival.
"You're the one who taught me not to let ramen overcook."
"I'm willing to make an exception tonight," he said, voice low, fingers tangling into your hair with a tenderness that still, somehow, after three months, made your chest ache in a way that felt almost unfair, like no one had warned you a feeling could be this large. "I'd let an entire kitchen burn down before I let go of you right now."
"That's deeply unhinged."
"I'm aware. I've made peace with it."
"You'd let the building burn down."
"I'd let the city burn down," he said, with the calm, devastating sincerity of a man who had clearly lost every ounce of his own perspective somewhere along the way and did not care even slightly. "I think about you in the middle of completely unrelated things. I was buying groceries yesterday, alone, no reason, and I saw instant ramen on the shelf and had to stand there for a full minute because my chest hurt. Over noodles. Because of you. You've ruined my relationship with an entire food category."
"You're being deranged right now."
"You made me deranged. I was a normal, functional person before you put your hand on that box."
"You started it. You put your hand on the box first."
"I would put my hand on that box a thousand more times if it meant ending up exactly here," he said, pulling back just enough to look at you properly, eyes soft in the low lamp light, voice dropping into something quieter, something that didn't have any jokes hiding behind it anymore. "I used to think love was supposed to feel calm. Like, settled. And then I met you and it has felt like absolutely nothing calm, not for one single day, and I don't ever want it to. I want to keep being this stupid about you. I want to be ninety years old somewhere arguing with you about rock paper scissors rules."
Your eyes were stinging, embarrassingly, over a conversation that had started with a kettle.
"I love you so much it's genuinely concerning," you whispered. "Like clinically. I should probably mention it to a doctor."
"Don't. I like being your specific, undiagnosed problem."
"You are my specific, undiagnosed problem."
"Good. I want to be the only one."
"You are," you said, voice cracking slightly, hands fisting into the front of his shirt like you could somehow pull him even closer than you already were, like proximity alone could communicate the sheer, overwhelming size of how much you'd fallen, how far past reasonable you'd gone somewhere around the third week of bickering over a shared shelf. "There's no room in here for anyone else. You've taken up the whole thing. It's actually a problem. I can't think straight half the time, I forget words mid-sentence because I'm thinking about your stupid face."
"Your face is criminally stupid, and I think about it constantly, and I hate it, and I never want it to stop."
He laughed, wrecked and disbelieving, forehead dropping against yours, both of you breathing the same air, hearts going embarrassingly fast over nothing more dramatic than standing in a kitchen at eleven at night.
"Marry me eventually," he said, suddenly, like it had simply fallen out of him the way the flight lie once had, except this time there was no escape plan hiding behind it, nothing to take back. "Not right now. I don't even have a ring. I just need you to know that's where this is going, because if I don't say it out loud I'm going to combust."
You stared at him. "You can't propose like that. In a kitchen. With no ring. Over cold ramen."
"I'm not proposing. I'm pre-proposing. I'm giving you advance notice."
"That's not a real thing."
"It is now. I just invented it. Spiritually."
"You cannot use my own concept against me."
"I learned it from the best," he said, echoing himself from months ago, and pulled you in and kissed you like the answer was already obvious, like he already knew, the same way you already knew, that there was no universe left where either of you walked away from this.
"Yes," you murmured against his mouth, barely a breath, "obviously yes, you absolute idiot, ask me properly whenever you want, I'm not going anywhere."
"I know," he said, smiling so wide you could feel it against your own lips. "That's the part that still doesn't feel real. That you're just. Staying. Every single day. On purpose."
"On purpose," you echoed, the same words from the break room, from three months ago, from the night two extra boxes of ramen had finally stopped mattering at all.
The kettle sat cooling on the counter, completely forgotten, the noodles inside it going soft and overdone and utterly beside the point, because neither of you needed feeding in that moment nearly as much as you needed exactly this, wrapped around each other in a kitchen that had quietly become a home, hopelessly, helplessly, humiliatingly in love in a way that made absolutely no logical sense and that neither of you had any interest in recovering from.
It had started with a fight over the last bite.
It ended, and kept ending, every single day after, with neither of you wanting anything else for the rest of your lives.
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