Chapter 25

Smaller than Jun-hyeok’s house, the place was still fairly spacious, and its floor was packed solid with something.

“There are quite a lot of your things here too, Yun Seo-ha-ssi, and I wasn’t sure what on earth to do with them….”

Outwardly Kim Do-hee was polite and businesslike, but she could not quite hide the distaste coloring her words. Whether she resented being saddled with odd jobs outside her duties or simply disliked Seo-ha, there was no way to tell.

Pretending not to notice, Seo-ha asked.

“What is all this…?”
“I know. Even I took one look and wondered whether the CEO had bought up an entire online store.”

Her faintly dumbfounded tone suggested that Do-hee had known nothing about this either.

His name was ‘Han’ Jun-hyeok, yet he carried on more like ‘Cheon’ Jun-hyeok¹. Seo-ha could hardly believe a person really existed who got everything done as though he had a thousand bodies instead of one. When on earth had he ordered all of this?

Setting her astonishment aside, Seo-ha put her question to Kim Do-hee.

“You’re saying my things are in here?”
“Yes. Though moving it all on your own would be too much….”

All at once Do-hee broke off. Into the gap, from somewhere, drifted a frail voice so soft that it was impossible to believe it belonged to the same insufferable creature who had been bawling her head off the day before.

“Do-hee-unnie….”
“Jun-hee.”

Do-hee spoke to Jun-hyeok’s younger sister with such unusual affection that Seo-ha’s nerves bristled for no good reason. Perhaps conscious of Seo-ha standing right there, Do-hee quickly changed her tone.

“Let’s talk about that later. For now, would you move the load sitting here into Yun Seo-ha-ssi’s room and tidy it away?”
“I will.”

Han Jun-hee was as docile as if she had become a different person overnight. Seo-ha hadn’t thought her blind drunk, yet she was just beginning to wonder whether yesterday’s behavior really had been the drink talking when Jun-hee, passing at her side, muttered under her breath.

“Can’t do a single thing on her own, and look at all the luck she’s got.”

Just as she’d suspected. Seo-ha breathed out a quiet sigh. The drink might have left last night hazy for Jun-hee, but one fact, at least, she had plainly not forgotten: Seo-ha could not see.

Seo-ha held her face determinedly blank and spoke without so much as a twitch of an eyebrow.

“Thank you for helping.”

Perhaps Jun-hee had not expected her to let the words pass with such an untroubled face, because she stopped mid-stride and turned to stare.

It seemed like far too long since she had last heard anyone say thank you to her.

Finding even that split-second pang sordid and pathetic, Jun-hee wrenched her head away.

Playing the good girl.

She had wondered how anyone had ever charmed the cold-blooded Han Jun-hyeok; so this was how that woman had softened him up. Jun-hee trampled down the faint pity trying to well up in her, her gaze turning vicious. The truly pitiful one wasn’t that woman. It was Jun-hee herself.

Just then Seo-ha spoke, smiling lightly.

“Ah, I can do the tidying on my own, actually.”

She leaned deliberately on the words ‘on my own’. She knew it would only grate on the other woman’s nerves, but she’d breathe easier for having made at least that point clear.

“Sh—, she makes me sick….”

Leaving a curse pitched right at the edge of hearing, Jun-hee brushed past her.

The road to freedom held far more obstacles than Seo-ha had ever counted on. She steeled herself to end this wearying journey as quickly as she possibly could, and to do that, her first order of business was to get in touch with ‘Hae-su’ before contacting Cha Mi-yeon.

After finishing a light walk and seeing to Dodam, Seo-ha hurried off to the bathroom.

Shopping bags were piled all over the room, and even wading a path between them was no easy thing. She had said she would only step out in front of the building for a moment, yet Kim Do-hee had tagged along anyway, and it kept nagging at Seo-ha. Here or at her family home, the space she was allowed to move in was just as small.

“No. Wish for too much all at once and something’s bound to go wrong.”

Seo-ha locked the bathroom door and filled the space with the sound of running water. Then she felt for the feature phone and held one button down. The other end picked up before the first ring had even finished.

— Seo-ha. Have you been well?

The greeting came as easily as though they had last talked only yesterday, and the tension drained out of Seo-ha.

“Mm. It’s been a long time. Hae-su, you’ve been well too, haven’t you?”

— Obviously. Have you already forgotten what Granny Ok-i said — that if the world ended and nothing was left but cockroaches, I’d still survive?

Seo-ha burst into whisper-quiet laughter. It was true. If anyone could manage that and more, it was ‘Yu Hae-su’. Her dream of Granny Ok-i yesterday hadn’t come for nothing, it seemed. As she listened to Hae-su’s voice over the line, one corner of Seo-ha’s heart went tender and sore.

— Your voice doesn’t sound good, though. That’s exactly why I told you to just walk out. I said I’d help you somehow.

Hae-su sounded displeased, and Seo-ha shook her head as she answered.

“And become a burden to you for the rest of my life? No. And I don’t want a life spent running away, shaking with fear, either.”

She could feel Hae-su sighing. They had said these same things to each other a hundred times over and more.

Seo-ha already knew the misery of a life without money down to her bones. Cha Mi-yeon, who treated her like a trophy, and Yun Jeong-hwan, who paraded her like a stage prop, were never going to let her go. Even if she broke out of her present life like that, hounded and fleeing, all that awaited her would be a repeat of the same hell she had already lived.

— So where are you now? How did you even manage to call?

For a moment Seo-ha hesitated, unsure how to explain it. A little thought, and she decided to spare him the details.

“I think, with a bit of luck, the plan might get moved up.”

— Really? How?

“Because I get to live apart from my adoptive mother now.”

— That woman just let you go? Does that make any sense?

Suspicion crept into Hae-su’s voice. Since it wasn’t a lie, Seo-ha could set his mind at rest.

“Mm, a situation came up that allowed it. You know I can’t let this chance slip without your help. I absolutely need it.”

— You can set that worry down. My end has been ready for a long time now.

Just hearing his voice steadied her heart. Seo-ha clenched her fist hard enough to leave nail marks in her palm, yet the joke she made to Hae-su came out light, belying her hardened resolve.

“I think from now on I’ll give some thought to what my will should say, too.”

Hae-su laughed at that, and Seo-ha laughed along.

Over and over, fervently, Seo-ha repeated the wish in her heart: please, let there be nothing ahead but days of laughing together like this one.

Jun-hyeok had already guessed why his father, Han Dong-pyo, might have summoned him out of nowhere.

At times like this, the label ‘mad dog’ was not altogether a bad thing to wear. Whether or not he foamed at the mouth and raised hell, people would just write the bastard off as a ‘mad dog’ and be done with it.

When the secretarial staff showed him into the chairman’s office, an uninvited guest had already taken a seat.

“Oh-ho. Jun-hyeok, you’ve come.”

His father had never once welcomed him like this, and Jun-hyeok’s brow creased of its own accord. Like bait dipped in honey, the unfamiliar kindness stirred an instinctive revulsion in him. He let none of it show and bowed from the waist in greeting, but before he had even straightened up, a shrill voice lashed out at him.

“Where is Seo-ha right now?”

At Cha Mi-yeon’s point-blank question, one of Jun-hyeok’s straight brows lifted at a slant.

“I pushed her a bit too hard yesterday, so she’s resting.”

Even Han Dong-pyo seemed embarrassed by so shameless an answer and covered it by clearing his throat several times.

“What did you say…?”

Cha Mi-yeon’s face flushed crimson. As though the blood had surged to the very top of her head, blue veins stood out on her forehead and the nape of her neck. If she was holding the murderous glint in her eyes in check even this much, it was probably only because Chairman Han Dong-pyo was in the room.

“I was going to come and see you anyway. Let’s skip the formal meeting of the two families and go straight to the ceremony itself.”

Jun-hyeok’s words were so outrageous that Cha Mi-yeon’s mouth opened to snap back, and in that instant her mobile phone vibrated on the coffee table. She shot one irritated glance at the screen and ignored the call. Jun-hyeok’s gaze drifted to the phone as well. The caller ID had been withheld.

That the young whelp had nothing going for him but a pretty face made Cha Mi-yeon angrier still. With his mug right there in front of her, she kept matching it against everything Madam Kim had said.

Just as she was about to open her mouth again, a text message came in. Like the call a moment ago, it came from a withheld number.

[Mother, it’s Seo-ha. I’m sorry for being so late in getting in touch. I lost my phone, so I called from the one Jun-hyeok-ssi lent me, but you must be busy. I haven’t forgotten the eye drops and I’m putting them in properly, and I’m resting comfortably, so please don’t worry about me. Jun-hyeok-ssi said he would come and see you soon.]

None of the other words even registered. Her eyes fixed solely on the sentence ‘I haven’t forgotten the eye drops and I’m putting them in properly’, and Cha Mi-yeon finally let out a sigh of relief.

Yun Seo-ha was, as ever, the most obedient daughter anyone could ask for. That settled it: the root of all the trouble was Han Jun-hyeok. If he would just hand Seo-ha over, even today, Cha Mi-yeon was prepared to forgive him magnanimously and let the matter pass.

At that moment, another text message came in.