Chapter 6

In the sitting room of the VIP hospital suite, Chief Choi stood at the window and looked down.

A small, well-kept park lay in front of the hospital, and the early-summer sun lit its green into something sharper.

Ji-an came over with two cups of coffee, handed one to Chief Choi, and stood quietly at his side.

“Chief, have some.”

“Thank you.”

Chief Choi took the cup with a short bow. He drank a mouthful, his expression troubled, then spoke.

“Tomorrow I’ll bring a substitute agenda item to the head-office board regarding the Managing Director’s absence, and put the new overseas acquisition on hold for now. I’ll handle the first-quarter earnings announcement in his place.”

Ji-an nodded.

“Yes, Chief. I’ll pull together the investors’ inquiries and report them to you.”

“Understood.”

“When do you think the Managing Director will be discharged?”

“The doctor says it could be as soon as today…”

Chief Choi seemed to be picturing a Sa-heon who was not in his right mind. The thought left him at a loss, and he let the sentence trail off and took another mouthful of coffee, his face full of worry.

Ji-an nodded and sighed.

“I think it’d be better to get him discharged quickly. The hospital will have its own informants, and they’ll pick up soon enough that the Managing Director’s memory isn’t intact.”

“I agree. For now, let’s take him to his own home.”

If word got out that Sa-heon had lost his memory, the balance of power in the family would shift. The people who’d tried to get rid of him, going as far as a car accident to do it, would hardly let a chance like that slip by.

And on top of all that, he kept treating Ji-an as his lover and saying the most preposterous things.

Another sigh slipped out between Ji-an’s teeth. Chief Choi, still looking down from the window with a helpless face, changed the subject.

“The weather’s gotten quite hot.”

“It has.”

For a moment neither of them could find anything to say.

The weather had turned warm, and that meant Eurosatory, Europe’s largest land weapon systems defense exhibition, wasn’t far off now.

“Still, it’s a relief the Managing Director is recovering quickly.”

“Yes. It was sheer luck he wasn’t badly hurt.”

But Sa-heon’s memory was still stuck at twenty-one.

It was a heavy secret, shared by Ji-an and Chief Choi alone, and it pressed down on them both.

“Let’s talk it over with the Managing Director and start the discharge paperwork straight after. I’ll stop by the office and come back.”

“Understood, Chief.”

Ji-an bowed her head. Chief Choi tipped back the coffee, which had gone cold by now, in one gulp, and swallowed a sigh along with it.

The twenty-one-year-old Sa-heon who’d lost his memory was impossible to get a handle on.

“I just can’t accept that we weren’t lovers.”

He was lying crookedly on the bed, staring at Ji-an, and he muttered it, not quite a question and not quite an opening for conversation.

“Why would I have done that? With a woman that pretty right in front of me.”

Ji-an, who was adjusting the humidifier by the bed, heard every word, but she pressed the button and set the humidity as though she hadn’t.

“Was I impotent? Doesn’t seem like it, though.”

He muttered that one more quietly, yet in the hush of the hospital room it came through all the more clearly. Ji-an’s hand faltered for an instant, then pressed the humidifier button again as if nothing had happened.

Pfft. There was the faint sound of air escaping.

“Sweetheart. Can I get your number?”

This time Ji-an looked up from the flowers she’d been arranging in the vase. Her expression was composed, but there was a wary question in her eyes.

“Why would you need my number? You don’t even have a phone yet.”

“You said you’re my secretary. Obviously I’d need it, wouldn’t I?”

Ah, right. Ji-an bit her lip.

He’s been going on and on about how pretty I am and saying strange things, so of course I’m overreacting for nothing. She squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again, scolding herself, then took a business card out of her bag and handed it to him.

“Here you are.”

As she passed it over, her fingertips brushed his. Something like a current ran through her, and Ji-an hurriedly pulled her hand back.

“Thanks.”

He ran a hand over her name, tucked the card into the breast pocket of his hospital gown, and smiled like a villain.

“I’ll put it to good use when I need it.”

“…Yes.”

Vaguely uneasy, Ji-an managed a half-hearted smile, and Sa-heon threw back the blanket and slowly got up.

Her head tipped back on its own to follow his height. He’d taken only one step toward her, but his stride was so long that the distance closed in an instant.

“Why are you so on your guard?”

Sa-heon laughed as if he found it absurd, watching Ji-an flinch and take a step back.

“I wasn’t on my guard.”

“Come on. You were.”

He might have lost his memory, but he was as quick as ever. When Ji-an couldn’t answer, he opened the refrigerator and took out an orange.

“Want one?”

“I’m fine. Shall I peel it for you?”

Ji-an held out her hand, but he tossed the orange up with a light tock, caught it, and grinned.

“If you’re going to peel it, you can feed it to me too.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Figures. She never falls for it, not even once.”

“She’s got charm, I’m telling you,” he muttered. He tossed the orange into the air once more, caught it with practiced ease, and walked over to the dining area at one side of the suite.

Ji-an made a point of not having heard. She took a paring knife and a plate out of the cabinet, set them on the table, and took the orange out of his hand.

“I’ll just do it for you.”

“All right, then.”

He’d barely escaped death and lost his memory on top of it, so what on earth did he have to be so carefree about? I seem to be the only one whose insides are churning. Ji-an let out a worried breath as she peeled the orange.

“Managing Director, do you know how serious things are right now? Someone deliberately wrecked your car.”

“That’s a big problem.”

Sa-heon propped his chin on his hand and gazed at her blankly, saying it as though it were someone else’s business. A little riled, Ji-an set the orange down and raised her voice slightly.

“The last person you were on the phone with was the Vice President. Your phone’s broken, so we can’t listen to the call itself right now… but going by the conversation the dashcam picked up, there’s a good chance the Vice President is behind it.”

“Ha. In elementary school he used to tie me to a tree and beat me, and now that I’m in my thirties he’s out to kill me.”

He sneered, as if it didn’t even surprise him.

“He beat you?”

“Yes. Pitiful, isn’t it?”

He folded his long arms and leaned forward onto the table, then tilted his head to one side and looked up at her with lonely eyes.

“Two total strangers move in out of nowhere calling themselves my hyungs, and they beat up a little kid like that.”

“So you never got along? Not even at twenty-one, the age you remember now?”

“We never got along. Especially the year before last. Ah, I mean my final year of high school. They’d wake me up at three every morning.”

“Why?”

“Afraid I’d get good grades. They’d open my bedroom door, come in, and throw water on me so I couldn’t sleep. Well, I guess by now that’d be more than ten years ago.”

Ji-an picked the orange back up and muttered as she peeled it, as if she couldn’t believe it.

“How could they… That must have been hard for you.”

“Not really, no.”

Sa-heon shrugged, brushing off something so extraordinary as if it were nothing much, and Ji-an was a little startled inside.

“So it went on all through your final year?”

“Hm… No. They stopped after I rigged a shock device to my door handle.”

A segment of orange slipped from Ji-an’s hand and fell to the floor.

“A-an electric shock?”

“They got zapped, see. Must’ve hurt pretty bad.”

Sa-heon sat up with a perfectly calm face and went on.

“Well, thanks to them I woke up early, and on the nights I couldn’t get back to sleep I just studied. Good prep for the college entrance exams. I was the top admit in my department, you know.”

“Ah, haha… I see.”

“I barely got any college life at all, and all of a sudden I’m past thirty. Kind of unfair. And the person who seems to be my lover denies me and says we never even dated.”

Sa-heon brushed the back of Ji-an’s hand with his fingertips, as if to tickle it, and raised one eyebrow in displeasure before lowering it again.

“I can see how that would be bewildering for you.”

Ji-an slipped her hand out from under his with an awkward smile, picked the dropped segment up off the floor, and set it on a tissue.

“You don’t get why I’m not more surprised, do you?”

Sa-heon smiled easily and went on.

“I was kidnapped a few times when I was small, and in my teens I nearly got stabbed while I was out with my father. And when I came home, there were brothers who’d have loved to see each other dead.”

“Ah… I didn’t know.”

Sa-heon couldn’t trust people, which was why his own secretariat, his closest circle, was only two people.

Only now did she understand why he’d been so extraordinarily thorough about security, and why he stayed so unshaken even when something this big had happened. Things an ordinary person would be tormented by after going through them just once, he talked about as calmly as yesterday’s weather.

Behavior that struck her as shockingly abnormal might be perfectly normal in the world he belonged to.

The brothers threatened each other’s very lives over the seat at the very top of Hyeongang. It must have felt like destiny to them, in a world where only the strong survived and winning that seat was how you proved you were the last man standing.

Ji-an couldn’t answer, so she finished cutting the rest of the orange into segments. She was too hesitant even to offer a hasty word of comfort.

“You look like you’re sorry you asked. I’m fine, though.”

“Ah.” Sa-heon opened his mouth and gestured with his eyes at the orange in Ji-an’s hand. Caught off guard, Ji-an put a piece into his mouth.

Sa-heon ate it, then broke into a brilliant smile.

“See? Bad things happened, but in the end, sweet things like this come along too.”

A fresh, tangy scent spread through the air. For a while, Ji-an couldn’t take her eyes off that face.