Chapter 9

“A camera…?”
“I’ve got eyes too.”

At Jun-hyeok’s growled threat, Park Jae-man changed tack and made a show of thinking it over again.

“I honestly don’t recognize it.”

As Park Jae-man’s voice trailed off, Jun-hyeok threw him a hint, as if he found him hopeless.

“Sea Velvet 7.”

Park Jae-man’s eyes darted about behind his serious expression before he finally jabbed a finger at the camera.

“Ah…. This is that — that hidden-camera creep’s camera from the cruise!”

Remembering at last, Park Jae-man raised his voice in excitement. No doubt about it, he had taken this very camera off that sneak-photographer with his own two hands.

“Hold on, though, why do you still have this….”

Jun-hyeok cut the puzzled question short and put one of his own.

“You remember anything about this camera’s owner?”
“Come on, Boss, what are you going to do about it now? She was just some paparazzi kid who didn’t know enough to be scared of you. Nothing’s come of it all this time, so what’s going to come of it now?”

Park Jae-man tried to head him off, wondering what Han Jun-hyeok, whose hobby was shaking a person down and then biting and tearing at them, had gotten hold of this time.

“How about you just answer what I ask?”

Jun-hyeok ground the words out through his teeth, and the menace in them sent Jae-man scrambling through his memory.

“A college student at most? Strikingly fresh-faced, odd air about her. I wondered if she was a celebrity, remember? You remember that sneak-photographer too, don’t you, Boss?”

Jae-man grinned as if that pretty face had surfaced right in front of him, and Jun-hyeok kicked him in the shin. Luckily he had a guard on, because the kick was hard enough that one careless moment would have buckled his knee.

“Ah, if I don’t remember, I don’t remember — why hit me for it!”

He had been answering as best he could, and the injustice of it made him shout. Jun-hyeok paid him no mind, raked his hair back with a scowl, and said only one thing.

“Your face was pissing me off. Let’s stick to what’s needed.”

Today’s meeting must have gone badly, Jae-man figured, and he grumbled to himself, sore that his boss was taking it out on him for no reason.

“There wasn’t any sign she couldn’t see, was there?”

Jae-man’s eyes darted about as he answered Jun-hyeok’s question.

“You’re joking, right? How would someone who can’t see take photos with a camera? That sneak-photographer was definitely shooting with our Principal as the target. Which is exactly why that camera’s in our hands now.”

Park Jae-man eyed Jun-hyeok suspiciously. Why was he asking strange questions about something long over?

“…Right.”

Even that answer wasn’t like Han Jun-hyeok. To Jae-man, the famously cool-headed CEO of Shield One seemed almost a stranger today.

Park Jae-man wiped the back of his hand across the tip of his nose and added one more question.

“But… you said that was a film camera, didn’t you, Boss? You must have had it developed. What on earth did she shoot, that now of all times….”
“Finish what you were doing. And don’t forget Karon’s walk.”

Ignoring the question, Jun-hyeok clapped him on the back as he said it, his tone back to its usual indifference. Then he walked out, having stirred up nothing but curiosity, and Jae-man, none the wiser, was left standing there alone with nothing to do but rub his smarting shin.

The interview had wrapped up, but the room was still noisy with laughter.

“Chairwoman, look at this. The photographs came out as pure art. It wasn’t even a proper photo shoot — how did they turn out like this? How do you never age?”

“It only looks that way because your team is so very professional, dear.”

The instant the official part was over, the way the two of them spoke to each other changed. As if to show off a long friendship, Cha Mi-yeon slipped naturally into casual speech with the reporter.

“Seo-ha-ssi, you really are blessed. It must be wonderful, having a mother who loves her daughter so devotedly.”

Seo-ha smiled as though she agreed, since this was hardly a situation where she could go out of her way to deny it.

“How are your eyes? Is the treatment making any difference?”

The reporter had turned to Seo-ha in her sweet, affable way, but Cha Mi-yeon, who had been listening quietly, slipped into the conversation.

“Atypical optic neuritis is just like that. Sometimes it looks hopeful, and sometimes it doesn’t. But whatever it takes, I’m going to cure Seo-ha.”
“Of course. If you say so, Chairwoman, then that’s how it is — it always has been. Seo-ha-ssi will certainly come to see again.”

The reporter’s encouragement, offered in complete ignorance, left Seo-ha unable to manage even a smile. It felt like standing by as an outsider, watching someone raise a toast in a funeral hall.

Whenever her adoptive mother vowed a complete cure like that, a strange feeling took hold of Seo-ha.

Funny, isn’t it, how the person who took my sight talks big about fixing these eyes….

It was worse than laughable; it was cruel. Given proper treatment, free of the drugs’ toxicity, Seo-ha could see again someday even now; it would simply take time. But the one standing in the way, for her own private and public gain, was Cha Mi-yeon herself.

So I can never, ever let her notice that I know.

For now it was nothing more than a show staged for later. To stage the moving moment of giving her daughter’s sight back, Cha Mi-yeon could not let Seo-ha go completely blind. But if Seo-ha’s sight came back now, before the awaited moment had arrived, Cha Mi-yeon was the sort of person who would do anything to blind her for good, so thoroughly drunk was she on the praise and acclaim showered on her for adopting a poor child who couldn’t see and raising her with such devotion.

The story behind that praise was half right and half wrong. To Cha Mi-yeon, it was as good as an invisible medal.

“I’ll go take some air in the garden.”

Seo-ha had no wish to stay in this hypocritical conversation any longer. She offered a brief word of parting and quietly left her seat, and as she walked away, the reporter’s voice followed her, hard to read as either complaint or compliment.

“I can barely manage raising one perfectly healthy child, and every time I see Seo-ha-ssi, all I can think is how remarkable you are, Chairwoman.”

Seo-ha let out one hollow breath, and as she stepped out the door she whispered to Dodam.

“I used to see the whole world too, you know. Your face as well, Dodam… I hope I’ll be able to see it again soon.”

A bitter aftertaste clung to the end of the words.

Interview or no interview, maybe I should have played dumb and stayed put when Han Jun-hyeok told me not to go.

Seo-ha shook her head at once. Out of the question. Cha Mi-yeon, and Yun Jeong-hwan besides, were investing a great deal in this marriage, and the ‘perfect marriage narrative’ they had drawn up left no room for a blemish like living together before the wedding. Things were going smoothly enough as they were; there was no need to complicate matters for nothing.

That was when Dodam stopped short and barked once, loudly.

Shield One Secure’s CEO office was walled in acoustic panels, fully soundproofed, so that even footsteps were swallowed clean away.

Nothing sat on the matte dark-gray desk but a few floor plans, an emergency tablet, and a single camera. The tidy space, without one personal object in it, said plenty about how restrained Jun-hyeok was.

“Yun Seo-ha….”

In the silent room he repeated, without meaning to, the one name that kept clamoring in his head, and stared at the compact camera.

I’d deliberately knocked the aperture ring slightly out of true, though.

Yet, unbelievably, every function on the camera now worked as it should.

Honestly, he had even entertained the thought that he might have mistaken her for someone else. However good he was at remembering faces, the world held a surprising number of people alike enough to be called doppelgängers. And still, no matter how he rationalized it, her looks and the air about her, hard to capture with a word as simple as pretty, kept dragging his doubts back.

Despite her youth, she had a face that left a different impression depending on how the light struck it. Her skin, smooth as porcelain, seemed less to absorb light than to give it back in a soft sheen, and beneath long lashes her eyes were set deep and clear, like the eyes of someone with a story behind them.

“What on earth are you hiding?”

Jun-hyeok’s eyes narrowed. He had no memory of the dimple that showed when she smiled, but back then he had never once seen her break into a full smile, so he had thought that fair enough. Now Seo-ha came back to him all over again, dimpling as she handled the camera.

An uncontrollable heaviness weighing on his lower body only stoked his irritation. With nothing in the situation going his way, he was in a foul mood.

Jun-hyeok picked up the palm-sized camera.

“Didn’t she know it was hers?”

The ‘Leica CM’ was a high-end film camera from the German luxury brand Leica. Before digital became an everyday thing, it had been a true ‘tool of memory’, preserving in analog the moments of people who loved photography. Discontinued now, it still fetched high prices secondhand, sought only by people who found ‘meaning’ in the photograph itself.

Jun-hyeok liked the brand enough to own two other Leicas himself. This one had come into his hands unexpectedly, and he had handled it so often that by now he too could work it with his eyes closed.

She definitely touched the aperture ring.