Chapter 7: Sabotage & Coffee

The research facility was cold, sterile, and miserable.

The only thing worse than the endless security protocols and the dull, windowless offices?

Ji-Ah.

They were given one shared workspace. One set of project files. And one mission: to merge their AI models into something functional.

It was a disaster from the start.

Evelyn had planned to make Ji-Ah's life hell—but Ji-Ah was already doing the same to her.

The first night, Evelyn sent her a massive data file to review, full of unnecessary reports and outdated documents.

Ji-Ah sent it back, fully annotated, with corrections in red.

The second night, Evelyn "accidentally" disconnected Ji-Ah's workstation from the secure network.

Ji-Ah fixed it in under five minutes. Without even looking frustrated.

By the third night, Evelyn was ready to throw something.

Instead, she sat in the empty lab, staring at the screen, stuck on a line of code that refused to cooperate.

She hated this.

Hated that Ji-Ah was smarter than she expected.

Hated that their AI models actually worked better together.

Hated that Ji-Ah was right.

Evelyn sighed and reached for her phone, scrolling to Ji-Ah's contact.

She hovered over the call button.

Then, before she could press it, the door swung open.

Ji-Ah walked in, holding two cups of coffee.

She placed one on Evelyn's desk without a word.

Evelyn blinked at it. "Poisoned?"

Ji-Ah smirked. "Drink and find out."

For the first time all week, Evelyn laughed.

And she had no idea why that felt like a loss.