Chapter 13

Ji-an flung the door open and looked around the rooftop room as if she couldn’t believe her eyes.

“Wow! Unnie really must have cleared the whole thing out.”

It had been swept clean, just as Hee-jin had said, and with the grubby clutter hauled away the place turned out to be perfectly usable. A small but clean sink stood in the kitchen, which ran straight on into the living space. There was a little bathroom too, and inside it, of all things, a top-loading washing machine.

“Is this all of it?”

Sa-heon asked it with a slight smile. Maybe because only his mouth was smiling, it was somehow all the more frightening.

“There’s more space hidden away somewhere, isn’t there?”

“There’s nothing like that… It’s a studio.”

“That can’t be.”

“What you see is all there is.”

He probably couldn’t believe a house this small existed anywhere in the world. Ji-an had been to his place, so she knew. This whole rooftop room was smaller than the bathroom in his own home.

“The room’s small, but you can still use the roof, so it feels open. Isn’t that nice? And it isn’t even that hot yet. I’ll go and see if there’s a chair nobody’s using.”

“It’s fine. I’ll try to adjust.”

Sa-heon said it evenly as he snipped the price tag off a pair of bathroom slippers. Ji-an had loaded several of the new towels into the washing machine and pressed the button, and now she glanced over to read his mood before she spoke.

“Um, Managing Director.”

“Yes.”

“I told my unnie you were a colleague from work, not the Managing Director. One wrong word and I’d probably have had to tell her about the memory loss too.”

“Good thinking. From now on, out here, just call me by my name.”

“Yes. I hope you’ll understand.”

“What’s there to understand? I like it better this way.”

“…And I’ll give the money back.”

“Keep it. The Lee Sa-heon who’s out of his mind gave it to you. The Lee Sa-heon who gets his mind back might not give you anything like that.”

“Even so, it’s far too much money. I don’t think this is right.”

It weighed on her and made her awkward, and it was a little mortifying too, as though she’d nagged at him over nothing.

Ji-an rolled her lips in between her teeth, kept glancing back at him and let out a troubled sigh. Sa-heon tore open a toothbrush packet and set the brush down on the washstand, and a little pfft of laughter escaped him.

“If it bothers you that much, well, your husband just handed you money he worked hard for. Give him a peck for being sweet, or something.”

“Managing Director!”

Ji-an’s face went scarlet as she cried out, and Sa-heon laughed playfully.

“There’s ‘Managing Director’ again. If you don’t want to use my name, you can call me Oppa¹. You did say I’m the older one.”

“It’s only because I’m not used to it yet. So please stop teasing.”

“Yes. Honey.”

The backs of her ears had gone red, but her flare-up was cute, so Sa-heon kept the teasing going. Ji-an, by now a sweet potato fresh off the fire, bit her lip and sprang to her feet.

“…I’m going to run downstairs for a moment.”

“Want me to come with you?”

“No, I just want to see if there’s anything I can borrow from my unnie. It’d be nice to have a pot and things like that, right?”

“All right.”

Sa-heon nodded obligingly, and Ji-an slipped quickly out of the rooftop room.

As luck would have it, the second floor was empty. They must have stepped out for a while. Ji-an hurriedly gathered up a pot, two side plates, some rice bowls and spoons and chopsticks.

Now that she thought about it, there was no dining table, and no chairs either… They needed more than she’d expected, so she would have to talk it over with Chief Choi when he came tomorrow.

She hunted around for this and that for a good while, and when she finally opened the door of the rooftop room again, her arms were full of odds and ends.

“Managing Direc…”

The words she’d meant to call out to Sa-heon got no further. He had fallen asleep sitting up, propped against the wall.

“…He’s gone and fallen asleep.”

Well, it had barely been a few days since he was discharged, and he’d spent hours in a car coming down from Seoul since the morning.

Ji-an quietly set the pot and plates from her unnie’s place down on the floor. She opened the bedding that sat folded up in the corner out to half its size, laid it lightly over Sa-heon’s knees, then sat down carefully beside him.

Her gaze traveled down the brow bone that still bore its wound and along the straight ridge of his nose, and came to rest on the delicate line of his lips.

“Haah.”

The sigh slipped out of her before she could stop it. However often she looked, it really was a handsome face. That had to be why he trusted it so much and carried himself as if he were sure of everything. But the man in front of her wasn’t the Lee Sa-heon she’d known. He wasn’t… he wasn’t.

Everything Sa-heon said to her was nothing but the teasing of a twenty-one-year-old man, and even if one percent of it were sincere, that was only because he was unwell for the time being.

Yet teasing or not, when a face like that called her honey and sweetheart in all seriousness, she was a woman too, and she couldn’t help being shaken.

…Honestly. This is nothing but toying with a person.

Ji-an let out a long breath and pulled her eyes away. She was just getting to her feet when—

“What are you doing?”

Her gaze met a pair of black eyes that had opened in an instant.

“Ah!”

A large hand caught her wrist, and at the unexpected touch her heart started pounding. She lost her balance and fell straight into Sa-heon’s solid chest.

“You’ve been sneaking looks at a man’s face all this time, so where do you think you’re going? Here I was waiting, thinking you might give me that peck.”

“…”

“When my honey was staring at me like that.”

He’d broken off for a moment mid-sentence. Now, so close their breaths tangled, Sa-heon ran his eyes slowly over her face and whispered mischievously.

“I’m hard, by the way.”

Hard? What’s hard?

“What’s that supposed to…”

Ji-an’s words trailed away and her eyes darted wildly. She looked at him like someone who doubted her own ears, and Sa-heon just smiled brazenly back.

“You know what I mean.”

Was the throbbing in her palm her own, or his? Why is it this fast? At this rate, a person could die. She had barely thought that far when Sa-heon’s mouth curved playfully.

“My chest is pretty hard, isn’t it.”

Ji-an started as though she’d been burned and snatched back the hand she’d braced against his chest.

“S-sorry.”

“Your heart’s really racing, isn’t it? It’s going to burst at this rate. Feels like things down below might burst too.”

Only then did Ji-an realize what she’d been sitting on, held there against him.

“…!”

The thing pinned under her backside swelled exactly as if it had a mind of its own. Ji-an jerked away as if scalded and scrambled out of his arms.

Watching her eyes dart all over the place, Sa-heon burst into mischievous laughter. Ji-an knelt on the floor, pressed the back of her hand hard against her burning face and put on a deliberately angry look.

“Why on earth are you doing this?”

“That’s what I’d like to know. Why on earth I’m doing it. Don’t you know, Ji-an?”

“If you don’t know, Managing Director, how would I?”

“Sa-heon.”

He corrected her in a low voice.

“I told you to call me Sa-heon.”

“…”

Ji-an was lost for words for a moment, then drew in a big breath and huffed. Did she think that made her look frightening? She had no idea she looked like an angry rabbit. Sa-heon smoothed down the corner of his mouth that kept wanting to rise. He tipped his chin as if to say go on, so Ji-an opened her mouth.

“Yes. Sa-heon. If you don’t know, Sa-heon, how am I supposed to know?”

“How can you not know? Who was it that stared at a sleeping man’s face like she wanted to lick it? You get a man hard and then you play innocent?”

“Who stared like she wanted to lick anything…! And you’re the one who got hard, Managing Director, no, Sa-heon, you did that entirely on your own…! Hah. Honestly.”

Why am I having this kind of conversation with this man? Ji-an fanned her face with her hand as though she couldn’t believe it and avoided his eyes.

Sa-heon looked at the scarlet nape of her neck and let out a hollow laugh.

“This is going to drive me crazy.”

He muttered it and rubbed the space between his brows for a moment as if a headache had come on. Then he stared fixedly at Ji-an, and the faint trace of laughter around his mouth slowly faded.

“I’m starting to think that before I lost my memory, I took an enormous interest in you, Ms. Han Ji-an.”

“You did, Managing Director?”

Ji-an’s eyes went round, and Sa-heon gave a pfft of a laugh.

“Yes. That Managing Director Lee Sa-heon did.”

“That can’t be…”

“Anyway, that’s what I think. Otherwise, why would I forget everything else and still remember you, Ji-an? As my lover, no less.”

“That’s absurd. You and I barely had anything to do with each other outside of work, Managing Director. There was nothing that would have started it…”

“You’re pretty, Ms. Han Ji-an.”

“Sorry?”

“Does there have to be some grand reason? You’re drawn to someone, they get you hot. That’s what liking someone is.”

“…”

Yes, he was right. What was there to a relationship between a man and a woman, after all? People were drawn to each other, went on a few dates and started going out. That was how romance ordinarily went, and Ji-an didn’t hold any grand fantasies about it.

But Sa-heon and she were nothing more than a superior and his subordinate, so a relationship like that couldn’t come about in the first place. And above all, Sa-heon wasn’t in a normal state right now.

Ji-an looked at him, lost for words for a moment, and Sa-heon went on.

“Or maybe I woke up in the hospital, saw you, Ms. Han Ji-an, and fell for you at first sight.”

“No, you’re only like this because you aren’t in your right mind, Managing Director.”

“That’s right, I’m out of my mind. That’s why I’m running my mouth like this. Because I want to sleep with you, Ms. Han Ji-an.”

“With me… do what, now?”

“Want to sleep with me?”

Ji-an’s tightly shut lips parted a little. Sa-heon laughed, though it looked almost like a frown.

“Too soon?”

She knew it was a ridiculous line, but her heart pounded out of all control, so hard she worried he might hear it.

Sa-heon grinned and asked.

“Then how about a kiss?”