Chapter 9

“I’ll help you remake the pottery. So let’s work together for one season. Just one season with me.”

“……”

“If you still don’t want to after the season’s over, I’ll terminate the contract. No questions asked.”

Ah.

He was too close. She could barely breathe. Ja-yeong hurriedly turned her head away, flustered by the way her heart was pounding of its own accord.

“Are we back to that again? You’re seriously as persistent as a leech…”

“What can I do if I’m a leech? I need those dishes, and you still haven’t given me the answer I want.”

“Ha! I’ve already given you that answer…!”

“Just say yes. That’s the right answer. Everything else is wrong.”

He knew he was being unreasonable. Han Eden wasn’t stupid, after all.

He’d tried approaching her, letting misunderstandings happen, protesting, negotiating, and persuading her. He’d rolled around on the ground, waved his watch around as a threat… He’d even attempted to build rapport, despite it being completely out of character for him. He’d tried everything he could think of while still keeping things aboveboard.

Now, all he had left was to stubbornly badger her into agreeing.

“Mr. Han Eden.”

“You said you were sorry.”

“That was because you got hurt on my account…!”

“So you should say yes, then, right?”

Ja-yeong had been about to fire back another sharp retort, but she pressed her restless lips firmly together. There was no point in arguing with him. He only left her feeling completely drained… And she hated the feeling of being pushed around by him.

The peaceful atmosphere shifted in an instant, and once again, a suffocating silence settled between them.

Rrrrr. Rrrrr.

Just then, an unexpected sound vibrated through the wooden floor. The intruder was none other than Eden’s phone. Clicking his tongue, he picked up the clothes he’d taken off.

“……”

When he saw the name on the screen, Eden’s brows drew together slightly. It was Do Do-un, the general manager of Moesan Restaurant.

“…Just answer it. It’s noisy.”

At Ja-yeong’s reproach, Eden sighed and tapped the answer button.

“What?”

“Chef! You need to get here right away. There’s a crack in the tiles…!”

Do-un’s frantic voice burst through the receiver. Eden squeezed his eyes shut. When one thing refused to go right, everything else seemed to fall apart right after it.

By the time he arrived in Seoul, the night was ablaze with artificial lights.

“…Shit, shit!”

After parking, Eden slammed his fist against the steering wheel.

Driving back and forth between Seoul and Mount Worak in a single day had left his shins aching, but compared to the bitter feeling of losing his chance to negotiate just when it had been within reach, his legs were the least of his concerns.

The kitchen and dining staff all stopped what they were doing when Eden appeared. They were visibly taken aback by his disheveled appearance, so unlike him. Do-un spotted the chef a beat after the other employees and nearly jumped out of his skin.

“My goodness, Chef… Did you get into an accident on the way here?”

“The tiles? What are you talking about? That was taken care of ages ago.”

Eden seemed utterly unconcerned about the state of his clothes. His attention was entirely focused on the restaurant itself.

“I took care of it.”

Before Do-un could respond, the heavy sound of dress shoes approached, and a voice cut in. The speaker was none other than Chairman Jang Gwan-cheol, the man who had persuaded Eden to come all the way back to Korea—and a major power player in the Korean food industry.

“Chairman, you’re here.”

“What happened to you? You look like you got into a fight with a wild animal.”

“What about the tiles?”

Eden swept a few strands of hair off his forehead and asked again. Whether the man standing before him was Chairman Jang or the president of the country, Eden’s only concern remained the restaurant.

As if this were nothing new, Chairman Jang rested his hands on his hips and answered.

“Looks like some of the tile grout has come loose. Maybe the sudden muggy weather had something to do with it… The repair crew is coming tomorrow to fix it.”

“Oh.”

Eden had thought there might be a crack in the wall, but it turned out the only problem was that the grout between the tiles hadn’t dried properly.

It wasn’t exactly good news, but even in New York, incidents like this were common during restaurant renovations.

Actually, a tile problem was practically a blessing in comparison. There had been a time when a building superintendent was shot and killed the day after Eden paid the deposit. On another occasion, a bundle of drugs had been discovered in a flower bed the day before opening, prompting the police to cordon off the area.

He would probably never forget the time he had raced around New York with lawyers and insurance company representatives, trying to prove that the people responsible had been temporary construction workers on-site rather than restaurant employees.

“You could’ve just called me. Bringing the chairman all the way here over something like this… Don’t you have a tendency to overreact, Mr. Do Do-un?”

Eden’s icy rebuke made Do-un lower his head.

“I-I’m sorry. I really thought there was a crack in the wall…”

“Don’t get the wrong idea. I came without warning. When I got here, I happened to find him in that state, so I offered to help.”

Eden studied Chairman Jang, who remained perfectly composed, for a moment before raising an eyebrow.

“Well… I’ll consider it a bit of bad luck warded off. You even took care of the mess yourself, Chairman. Besides, it’s better this happened now than after we’ve opened.”

“Warded off bad luck? Hahaha! You’ve really become Korean. You’ve only been in Seoul for a year!”

Chairman Jang Gwan-cheol’s hearty laughter reverberated through the restaurant.

“You there! Have someone bring the tea out to the terrace!”

“Yes, Chairman.”

Chairman Jang and Eden made their way smoothly up to the third-floor terrace and took their seats.

The restaurant occupied a small, three-story building with a garden, but it sat on a hill with a beautiful view. Just standing on the terrace offered an unobstructed panorama of the city at night.

“Magnificent, isn’t it? No matter how many times you see it. The Han River, I mean.”

“Yes. I never imagined Seoul’s river would be this big.”

“Manhattan has everything going for it, but it doesn’t have a river running through it. No hills, either… Maybe that’s why rich people keep moving into eightieth- and hundredth-floor penthouses. It’s the only way they can look down on everyone else.”

Chairman Jang, the investor, had chosen the location. He’d apparently had his eye on it for a long time.

It sat on a hill with inconvenient transportation, naturally weeding out people who relied on the subway and casual visitors who saved up their paychecks to treat themselves once in a while.

Yet its name would be etched into the minds of the entire country, a name that conveyed a sense of luxury just by being spoken. Not everyone could afford to come here, but those who did could look out over Seoul in every direction.

Chairman Jang had said this was the perfect location for Moesan Restaurant, the place that would redefine the standards of fine dining in Korea.

“I heard you went to Mount Worak. The representative of Ijobyeongga told me.”

A cup of hot tea sat in front of Chairman Jang, while a glass of iced coffee was placed before Eden.

“Yes. I went to meet the owner of Cheongso-yo.”

“What did they say? Are they giving you the pottery?”

“Not yet… But I’ll make it happen soon. One way or another.”

It was a muggy night, with warm, humid air blowing across the terrace. As he listened to Eden, Chairman Jang downed his steaming tea in one go and let out a satisfied, “Ahhh.”

“Good grief, I just don’t get it. There’s no shortage of fine tableware out there. Why does it have to come from that pottery workshop tucked away in the mountains?”

“I already told you.”

“Korean beauty? I thought you only said that because I suggested using Japanese Arita plates. As long as it’s a Korean pottery workshop, isn’t that enough? One phone call from me, and I could have people embedding diamonds in plates and coating them in gold.”

Eden ran a hand through his hair, looking troubled. The ice in his untouched coffee rattled softly as it melted and sank.

From the beginning, Chairman Jang had wanted to partner with a luxury tableware brand. The moment word spread that Han Eden was coming to Korea, collaboration offers had flooded in. For the restaurant, all it had to do was accept one of them, and the publicity would practically take care of itself.

Besides, the people who awarded the stars were French in origin. It might have been a little too blatant, but setting the table with plates from a French luxury brand would surely make the goal of earning three stars that much easier to reach.

“But…”

How could anyone else understand? The moment he’d first seen Cheongso-yo’s plates, when he’d run his fingertips over them. The sensation that seemed to pierce straight through his entire body.

Their shape and weight. The width and angle of the foot. Their seemingly rugged yet graceful curves and texture. Even the surface of the water inside seemed to show through, along with the light wandering around it, so translucent were they…

It was a feeling he’d never experienced before. There was no way he could have encountered pottery from Korea, let alone a secluded rural workshop, in the past. And yet, a warm, rough sense of déjà vu had crept through his fingertips.

“No matter how I look at it, nothing else will do. It has to be Cheongso-yo’s pottery. Absolutely.”

“Good grief. I brought you here because I liked that stubborn streak of yours, but…”

Chairman Jang fanned the front of his shirt, then grabbed the iced coffee in front of Eden and downed it in one go. Crunching the ice between his teeth, he asked,

“Is their pottery really that perfect? So perfect you just can’t give up on it?”

“Should I call it perfect…? Or should I say it feels familiar?”

Eden narrowed his eyes. He slowly closed his empty hand into a fist, as though he were holding something in his palm. The lingering sensation of a slender waist and the cool touch of porcelain strangely overlapped.

“It just feels like it belongs to me. Like it always has.”