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"What are you doing, Ms. Goral?" Director Ho asks in disbelief.
"What flavor do you want? I have strawberry, mango, lime and…" Go Yeongeun makes a sad, sigh-like noise. "No, that's it. No other flavors."
Director Ho's eyes travel up to to the strangely colored mixture in machine.
It's suspiciously glowing and sparkling and pink.
"Is that a blender?" he asks, voice faltering.
Go Yeongeun would nod, but the room would spin if she did.
"Yes."
"And is it filled with…?"
Go Yeongeun squints and looks at the torn open margarita mix packets on the table beside her.
"Half strawberry, half lime, tequila, three wish potions and ice."
Director Ho eyes the empty bottles on the table. There's at least a dozen. His eyes are wide and round. Fear settling into his bones, perhaps.
Go Yeongeun starts the blender back up.
"How many of these have you had!?" he yells over the noise.
Go Yeongeun thinks about it really hard. Her expression becomes pinched.
She's lost count.
"Those plus the ones in the trash," she yells back.
His eye twitches. Director Ho's hopes have vanished.
She seems satisfied with the consistency of her concoction and turns the blender off. He watches as she pours it into a wide glass carefully coated in salt. She sticks a large bendy straw into it and takes a large sip.
Director Ho is offended on the salt's behalf.
She closes her eyes.
"I wish for bibim naengmyeon and two slices of cheesecake."
His heart skips a beat as she speaks casually. He can feel the power of a wish going off.
A headache builds between his eyes. It gnaws at his system.
There's a knock at the door, to his horror. Director Ho can't believe that she would use a wish potion on such a thing!
He opens it, heart heavy.
There's a delivery person with a pixelated face handing over a bag and disappearing into a strange black void once their delivery is done.
He helpfully unpacks the food for her on the table so she'll sit down instead of standing there swaying too and fro. She slides one of the cakes to him after he sits down across from her at the table.
What a kind gesture for a thief who has engorged herself on his wish potions.
"Thank you. And what else?" he asks and takes a bite of cheesecake. He might as well make the most of this mess.
She hums and takes another sip of the drink.
"Margaritas. Wish potions taste kind of fruity…? It reminded me of a college roommate who shared tequila with me once and I wanted it again."
"That sounds like a fond remembrance, what el — "
"She was a bitch."
He's a counselor. He should know what to say to that, and yet, it's wildly off-topic.
"Let's try this again. How did Ms. Goral end up in my office?"
"Oh." Go Yeongeun blinks and looks around just like she's just realized where they are. "I wished I could find a way to make more wishes and ended up here."
It's a common event for employees to wish for more wishes. Something about the way she phrased it must have —
"And the wish potions were there so I made wishes for everyone," she slightly slurs and leans back in her chair to count off with her fingers.
"I wished for Jang Heoun's wish to come true then realized I have more! So I wished he'd get better. And that he and his brothers would have good health and fortune."
She ticks off three on her hand.
"Then I wished for Kim Soleum's wish to come true. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized I don't know what his wish was? So I also wished for his good health and fortune. Then that the weird thing going on with him and those agents would work out since he needs more friends and they seem nice you know? He always seems so sad."
Another three come next. Go Yeongeun is mad. A lunatic. No other person would ever do this.
"And then Kang Yihak. I wished she would never be rich. Then I felt bad so I wished that she could be rich she just could never touch gold again."
She continues speaking. Director Ho realizes she will leave no stone unturned.
"For Baek Saheon, I had a few ideas for him. I think I chose the right ones? He's temperamental sometimes, so I thought I'd give him the gift of communicating his feelings so that no misunderstandings occur. But then I felt like he'd be forced to say too much, so I wished for Saheon to live as his true self. Still, that might be too much. I decided to give him the wish of letting him see the person he loves most! I hope it was used well…"
He is a professional and will not put his head in his hands.
She pauses to drink more of her frozen wish margarita then clears her throat.
"I wish for luxury leather loafers that are stylish and comfortable for me."
He feels it pop off. She sticks her leg out and shows off her new, very expensive, leather loafers.
"You have good taste in footwear, Ms. Goral."
"Thank you."
"I don't quite follow when the margarita wish occurred. Can you help me understand?"
"Oh," she says, suddenly solemn. "I wished for my living parents to come to me. They didn't show up. So I wished for margaritas."
"Unfortunately, there are limits to any wish, Ms. Goral."
She rotates the stem of the ridiculously oversized glass in her palms. The salt is still untouched.
"Apparently so. But you know what, Director?"
"Yes?"
"I made wishes for almost everyone I could think of. But I still haven't made a wish for you."
He feels his blood run cold. He makes sure to keep his smile steady.
"It's nice of you to think of me, Ms. Goral," he says. "But if there was something I wanted from a wish potion, I would have wished for it already, yes?"
"That's true," Go Yeongeun agrees. "Director Ho can get whatever he wants even without it."
That doesn't seem quite right, but nothing will come out of arguing with someone drunk on wish potions and… whatever else. "Then we can put the potions down, don't you think?" he tries.
"No."
"What."
"You might not have a wish. But surely I can come up with one for you."
She stares hard at him, like she's trying to analyze everything about him but doesn't quite have enough data to go on.
"Ms. Goral." Ho keeps his voice stern. "Let's think about this a little, hm? You've had a lot to drink, take some time to sober up — "
"I got it," Go Yeongeun decisively interrupts. "I'll wish for you to go away."
Ho opens his mouth to argue. The next moment he's standing behind a closed door.
His own closed door.
He tugs at the handle, incredulous. It's locked. He's been locked out of his own office by a wish potion.
His nameplate mocks him from the door.
Director Ho looks at his phone. He has 24 missed calls from Director Cheong. He turns his phone off.
Somewhere else Jang Heoun comes to in the hot springs. He feels refreshed, relaxed and shined down to his pores.
Somewhere else, Kang Yihak falls over at the sight of her bank account. There are far more zeroes there than there should be.
At yet another somewhere else, Baek Saheon comes face to face with a ghost. He doesn't speak to it, he doesn't step back. He stares, haunted, and does nothing at all.
And at a final somewhere else, Kim Soleum is having a breakdown in the darkened doorway of a closed shop in the subway.
Fifteen minutes ago he found out he wasn't human in the basement of DayDream Inc. Ten minutes ago he was melting as Director Cheong offered to sign a contract to fix him. Seven minutes ago he was suddenly teleported to a strange void full of reflections where everything up was down was sideways as reality tipped over on itself. Five minutes ago he found himself in the Seoul metropolitan subway in his Bureau uniform after falling in through the ceiling. No longer melting.
What is happening?
"Grapes!" his head whips up to see Agent Bronze and Agent Choi running toward him.
What the fuck.