Chapter 16

6:00 AM. The sky was still hazy and dark. Despite the early hour, Seoul Station was bustling with weekend energy.

Carrying bags as varied as the purposes that brought them here, people hurried to find their gates or relaxed in the waiting hall to pass the time.

Jaeyang Food’s PR Team—dubbed the “Hurrah, Farming Volunteer Corps”—was one of those groups.

The total departure count was five: Section Head Kang Jin-sung, Assistant Managers Ha Yun-sang and Choi Sookyeong, PR Officer Jung Woojung, and Intern Kim Ju-shin. The Team Leader, absent because her child was sick, had simply wished them a good trip and contributed travel expenses. Kim Ju-shin and Choi Sookyeong had not yet arrived.

“Should we give Ju-shin a call?”

Checking her watch, Woojung pulled out her phone. At that, Yun-sang, standing beside her, covered the screen with his palm to stop her.

“Leave him be. He’s not a child; he’ll show up when it’s time.”

To his gentle, smiling face, Woojung nodded and answered, “Right.” Her fingertips, brushing past his in passing, tingled. When she glanced over and their eyes met, he flashed a handsome smile. That smile filled her with unnecessary guilt. The Assistant Manager would never know that even meaningless physical contact made her heart race.

Anyway, was this fellow Kim Ju-shin actually coming? He couldn’t still be asleep, could he? Before she even realized it, her train of thought naturally drifted over to Kim Ju-shin. Just as she was about to send him a text message because she had a bad feeling,

“Is Choi Sookyeong going somewhere far away?”

Watching Choi Sookyeong approach with a hurried step, Kang Jin-sung clicked his tongue in disbelief. It was because of the 24-inch carrier she was dragging along. When he teased that it looked big enough for a four-night, five-day overseas trip, Sookyeong scanned the group’s luggage and dryly retorted.

“This is the bare minimum for an overnight stay. Officer Jung is just being modest.”

The modest Officer Jung simply chuckled heartily.

Her black backpack, a leftover from her student days, looked quite light with its sagging shape. Still, insisting she had packed everything she needed, Woojung proudly showed off the hiking hat she had pushed back behind her neck.

“Oh my, is that so?” teasing her like an indulgent adult talking to a child, they giggled among themselves. Sighing deeply as a playful retort, Woojung felt her phone vibrate and readjusted her grip on it just as—

“Whoa… Seeing him out here in public, he’s practically a walking model.”

At the end of Kang Jin-sung’s exclamation stood Kim Ju-shin, descending the escalator.

Watching him for a moment with his phone pressed to his ear as he stared in their direction, Woojung stepped slightly away from the group with a stiffened expression. Then she lowered her eyes back to her still-vibrating phone.

Restricted Caller ID.

Ever since she had changed her number—meaning for the first time in eight years—she had received a call from an anonymous caller.

The nameless punk, who usually contacted her from public payphones bearing Seoul area codes, sometimes called while hiding his caller ID. Even though she knew there was no way it could be that kid, the moment she checked the screen, her heart pounded instinctively.

It couldn’t be him. There was no way it could be. And yet, she desperately wished it were him—that he had finally managed to find her again. Shamelessly, for a brief second, she had hoped for just that.

With trembling fingertips, Woojung pressed the answer button and brought the phone to her ear. True to the past, the caller was silent.

“……Is it you?”

Biting down hard on her lower lip and then letting go, she spoke in a small voice. No answer came back. Only faint external noises drifted across the line.

Right then. An announcement chimed from the speakers mounted on the station pillars.

Ding-dong-ding!

[A train is currently entering the station. Behind the safety line on the platform…]

-[A train is entering the station. The platform…]

“……!”

Her eyes growing wide in an instant, Woojung busily looked around her surroundings. The platform, with train time fast approaching, was crowded with passengers.

Was it just her imagination? She could have sworn she heard the exact same announcement echoing simultaneously through the receiver.

While she stood there flustered and bewildered, the call disconnected, and Kim Ju-shin, who had arrived unnoticed, was staring right at her with his chin resting against the corner of his phone. His expressionless face with the shadow of his cap cast diagonally, his strangely piercing eyes. A gaze like a snare.

Only when the rumble of the incoming train wedged between them did their locked gazes break apart.

Even while they took their assigned seats and exchanged trivial chatter about whether the youngest was late, how nice the weather was, and being thirsty, Woojung remained somewhat dazed.

It might have just been a prank call. What if—though it made no sense—it really was that kid…? Wouldn’t he call her back at least once? She wanted to apologize so badly…

The train rolling onto the tracks departed right on time. Plunged deep in her subconscious until then, Woojung only realized Kim Ju-shin was sitting right beside her when she felt body heat transferring through their touching thighs.

“Officer Jung. Be honest with me.”

Kang Jin-sung, poking his head out from the front seat, asked.

“Since when have the two of you been dating?”

“Pardon?”

Startled back to reality as if splashed with cold water, Woojung asked back loudly. She even nervously glanced at Yun-sang, who was sitting across the aisle. The intern remained indifferent, acting as though it had nothing to do with him. Kang Jin-sung’s interrogation didn’t stop there.

He pressed on like a persistent detective, claiming that even on the platform the way they looked at each other was unusual, and demanding an explanation for why she ignored the greetings they offered and rushed straight toward Officer Jung.

“Am I right? Right after he dropped you off at your house on the night of the company dinner. Suspicious smells started wafting in ever since then.”

“Oh, what smell? If you interrogate people like that, you’re going to get called a boomer, Section Head. Sit properly, please.”

Only after Choi Sookyeong, sitting next to her, gave him a stern reprimand did Kang Jin-sung finally shut his mouth. Peace arrived at last.

The scenery outside the window changed from moment to moment. Mountains, fields, trees, rivers, and rice paddies rushed past with a sense of speed. Framed against that backdrop, Kim Ju-shin’s silhouette reflected in the glass.

His long legs stretched tightly toward the aisle and his threateningly broad shoulders. Even reflected in the stained window, his features were striking. Jeans and a plain shirt. A beige hat casually perched atop his short hair. Overflowing with a boyish charm, he looked almost pretty—to the point where she felt a sudden impulse to playfully snatch his slightly tilted cap off and ruffle his hair.

Kang Jin-sung’s words weren’t entirely wrong. Kim Ju-shin’s attitude was different from before. Should she say he had grown strangely friendly ever since the company dinner? He dropped honorifics quite naturally now.

Had he opened his heart to his senior’s human side? ……Hah. No way. Chuckling quietly to herself, Woojung hummed a familiar melody.

“Outside the village~ orchard road~ acacia blossoms are in full bloom~”

Then, glancing sideways, she saw Kim Ju-shin staring blankly at her. With a somewhat pitiful look.

“You don’t know this song?”

Feeling a bit awkward, Woojung tentatively asked.

“Was that a song?”

“……”

If you call it that, you wouldn’t even recognize the national anthem. Curving the corners of his eyes into half-moons, Ju-shin answered brightly.

He was irritating enough to make her want to punch him once, but making do with just glaring at him, Woojung searched for the audio online and played it for him. The track was nearing its end, but he still looked completely clueless.

“This is in the elementary school music textbook. It’s practically a national children’s song.”

“I see.”

His indifferent face replied without any emotional resonance. Turning her body to face him, Woojung twitched her cheeks, which were plastered with playfulness.

“Did you doze off during music class?”

“Not doze off.”

“Hey, if you didn’t even doze off,”

“I didn’t go to school. My dad wouldn’t let me.”

The lips that had been grinning mischievously, revealing a row of straight teeth, slowly closed. She straightened up and began fidgeting with her hands, looking as though she were trying to figure out how to react appropriately.

For the first time, interest spread across Ju-shin’s face as he watched her struggle to find the right words. She reminded him of a stubborn little kid from long ago, the one who had shoved him over instead of offering the comfort he had been hoping for.

‘Hey! Are you an idiot? You’re supposed to get angry, why are you just taking it!’

Jung Woojung, who had thrown a tantrum and raged even more than he did.

‘It’s an item that gives you courage. If you carry it, your bravery increases.’

And yet, on their parting way, that same Jung Woojung was the one who had gifted him courage.

If only he had known back then that she didn’t go to school. He would have gotten angry on her behalf and told her that her dad was a really strange man. He couldn’t help regretting that he hadn’t.

While Ju-shin was lost in thought, Woojung—who had been restlessly rolling her eyes and feeling nervous the whole time—suddenly slammed her fist down onto her open palm. As expected, in times like this, an indifferent response was best.

“Ah.”

“……?”

“……I see.”

Speaking without any inflection, she creaked like a broken robot before violently whipping her head around and slamming her forehead against the window. It was meant to be a lean, but since she hit it hard enough to make a thud, it was practically a deliberate head-butt. She even seemed to mutter a soft “Dammit…” like a passing breath.

Watching that scene blankly, Kim Ju-shin let out a short, snorting laugh. Then, covering his face with one hand, he let his sturdy shoulders shake. Though his expression was hidden behind his hat and hand, he was laughing. So refreshing and brightly that the team members sitting in front and beside them all turned around to look.

Woojung stared at Ju-shin as if under a spell. She had no idea why seeing someone else laugh made her feel so strange.

And yet, it was true.

It was, without a doubt, a laughter so crystal-clear it felt breathtaking.