Chapter 4

Returning home late at night after overtime, Woojung dragged her leaden legs up the villa stairs.

Since it was a four-story building, there was no elevator, but fortunately for her, Woojung lived on the second floor. The unlit stairs were pitch black. Over a month had passed since she requested a replacement bulb, but the darkness remained the same.

Reaching the top step, Woojung came to an abrupt halt. Her eyes, narrowed to make out objects, widened slightly.

Step by step.

With every footstep she took, her unpainted lips protruded, and her small lower jaw quivered slightly. The wrinkles on her chin deepened as if she was about to burst into tears.

“So annoying… seriously.”

A faded jade-green front door. Leaning against it was a multi-use shopping bag packed full of side dish containers and garden vegetables. It was the mark of Jung Woojung’s guardian angel, her father, Jung Youngwon.

Unlocking the door lock, Woojung tossed the bag hanging from her shoulder aside and lifted the heavy shopping bag with both hands. From the phone wedged between her ear and shoulder, a call connection tone played.

-Hey, Woojung prin…

“Why did you bring so much side dishes, it must’ve been heavy. If you came, you should’ve at least shown your face and left!”

-Wahahaha! You rascal! Catch your breath before you scold me!

A voice full of dismay chided her in succession. Jung Youngwon laughed heartily, taking his daughter’s nagging in good stride.

Operating a hangover soup restaurant in Yangpyeong, he would occasionally visit like this, buy side dishes and heavy daily necessities, and head back. Although he had given her the front door password so she could go inside and wait, he steadfastly refused, saying he couldn’t just barge into his grown daughter’s home.

Taking out the side dish containers and putting them in the fridge, Woojung sprawled out flat on the wooden-patterned linoleum floor. A satisfying crunch of bones snapping back into place came from her lower back.

“I’ll come this weekend.”

-What for when you’re busy?

“I have to go because I’m busy. To lend President Jung a hand.”

-I’ll pass on high-end labor because it’s a burden~

Youngwon laughed boisterously. Saying that since she found a part-time job, she shouldn’t worry about the country business and instead focus on prospering her daughter’s romance business.

Hmph, as if that’s hard? She clicked her tongue internally, but to Woojung, romance business was an unknown territory where she hadn’t even opened shop, let alone seen prosperity. Still, in front of her father, she put on a tough act as if she could do it whenever she set her mind to it. It was a paltry bit of pride.

-How’s work?

“Huh?”

-No, well. Is it tolerable? Our daughter is such an elite and has experience, so it wouldn’t be weird for her to transition to a new job soon.

“Oh please. I entered Jaeyang Group with the resolve to bury my bones there.”

That skeleton joke¹ full of company loyalty must only work on executives. Beyond the receiver, which had suddenly grown quiet, only rattling noises drifted through. He seemed to be doing the dishes after closing up the evening business.

A few stiff words were exchanged after that, and the call ended with a final greeting to take care of each other’s meals.

Jung Youngwon was secretly interested in his daughter’s job longevity, but he wasn’t exactly in a supportive mood. Sometimes she wondered about that, but she figured it was just because it was a corporation that worked its daughters to the bone.

Woojung stared at the low ceiling for a while like that. Her back, stuck to the floor, wouldn’t easily detach. Couldn’t she just fall asleep like this and go straight to work like this?

“……Yeah. Not gonna happen.”

Prompted by the sudden thought of Kim Ju-shin sitting next to her at work, Woojung bolted her upper body upright. Even without him, she was already intimidated by his looks, and she didn’t want to add a slovenly appearance on top of that.

On top of his innate appearance, he kept himself neat. From his crisp-pressed shirts and well-textured jackets to his neatly groomed hair.

Even while spending most of her day with a fellow whose exterior coolness exploded like that, the reason no romantic interest arose was probably due to that unfathomably bizarre personality of his. Well, and also because she had someone else tucked away in her heart.

Heavily seated, Woojung unbuttoned her blouse from the top.

……Anyway.

“What was that earlier?”

The voice asking why she had changed her phone number felt as vivid as if it were pooling right by her ear. Even that indifferent face, which had asked the question yet didn’t look particularly curious.

“Did he mistake me for someone else…?”

She wondered if they had met before and tried to recall, but the conclusion that there was no way arrived relatively quickly. Because if she had seen him even once, he wasn’t someone she would easily forget.

After stripping off her upper garments, her hands moved by routine to her trouser buckle. Zip, lowering the zipper and shifting her hips a few times, Woojung raised her gaze to the desk. An old notebook tucked into the wooden bookshelf caught her eye. A sleeping memory that had grown as faint as its faded color.

It was around the summer of her second year in middle school. That was when phone calls that would cut off without a word started coming in.

At first, she didn’t think much of it. The area code was Seoul, and she knew that most 02 numbers were advertisements. Even knowing that, she picked them up every single time. Because it might be a call from her mom’s hospital.

Then, around the time the same pattern repeated about three times, she realized. That it was neither an advertisement nor the hospital, but a number from a public payphone. Still, the reason she picked up was a sort of curiosity.

And the reason they started speaking informally arose around the time that mysterious number faded from memory. It was the day her mother passed away.

It must be hard, what are you going to do, Woojung-ah, Woojung-ah. She had received countless similar words of comfort, but none of them could truly comfort her. Rather, it was sheer torture to have to force a fake smile and reply that she was fine in response to the condolences she received.

She wanted to cry. But she had to make sure her young brother—who had collapsed and fallen asleep from crying—and her dad—who was secretly wiping away his tears in hiding—wouldn’t find out. So she wouldn’t add weight to their grief. She needed someone who would simply and silently listen to her sorrow, someone she didn’t have to pretend to be fine for, and someone who wouldn’t make her blush with embarrassment.

That was when the call came. The familiar number starting with 02.

Only then did she cry. Clinging to a person whose identity she didn’t even know.

That kid waited until her crying stopped. Even then, there were no words. That was actually why she felt at ease. Because their silence provided more comfort than anything else. As ridiculous as it might sound.

Ever since that day, she developed a habit of checking her phone. It was because she didn’t want to miss a call that might come at any moment. The calls, which used to come about once a month, gradually decreased in frequency to once a quarter, and then once in a blue moon, but the contact never completely cut off.

Without asking about each other, they only shared their voices.

She liked the raspy voice going through a voice crack. She liked sharing a silence so profound the phone grew hot, and the dawn they met after that.

Why of all people it was her, and for what reason it had started—such questions didn’t matter at all. It just turned out that way.

And when she turned twenty, the year she came up to Seoul alone to enter university.

The year she grew sick and tired of life in Seoul. On a day that was uniquely and terribly hard, a call came from that kid. As always, a one-sided call.

That day, a sudden thought occurred to her. The one-sided outgoing calls she had naturally accepted all this while, a relationship where she was always the one waiting as if it were only natural—it all felt terribly unfair. The emptiness that washed over her after hanging up was entirely hers to bear, too.

Why on earth wouldn’t this kid tell her anything? Was it because they couldn’t trust her? Or was it because she wasn’t worth telling?

The method to verify that was clear.

—Do you want to meet up?

Meeting face-to-face. Getting to know each other properly.

What returned to the words she had mustered up the courage to say was a silence so long it felt futile. Even though the call was still connected, it felt as empty as grasping at a phantom.

Still, she shouldn’t have done that. She should have waited and given it a little more time. There might have been a story they couldn’t tell her, either.

—Let’s stop this kind of thing now. We’re not kids.

The her back then didn’t wait even a little bit longer anymore. Like someone who had grown sick and tired of waiting for their phone calls.

That was the last call. She didn’t even know the kid’s number, and as she changed her own number, the kid’s one-sided calls naturally came to an end.

Even now at twenty-eight, she sometimes thinks about it.

Are they doing well? Since they seemed to be around the same age, they might be an office worker by now.

Prying her thighs, which were stubbornly stuck to the floor, away, Woojung pushed herself up. After hanging up her discarded clothes and grabbing fresh undergarments, she glanced at her weather-beaten diary and stepped into the bathroom.

It was a night where her shower ran unusually long, as if trying to wash away something she couldn’t shake off.

“Wow, this guy’s a true problem child.”

Right before lunchtime, the office was buzzing. At its center was the young corporate dinosaur, PR Team Manager Kang Jin-sung.

“Can’t you even make a single proper copy? I told you to make scans into a single file like this, like this! You couldn’t even manage that and made me come all the way here?”

Since he was hogging the multi-function copier, the employees who had come to use it suddenly found themselves standing around like spectators. Glances telling him to tone it down poured from all directions, but Manager Kang couldn’t care less.

There was a good reason why he, famous for his strong temperament, was particularly picking on Kim Ju-shin.

Aside from his inferiority complex stemming from looks or educational background, his hysteria had worsened ever since he got word that a rookie in the sales team whom he had been wooing supposedly liked the PR team’s intern.

“Are you not understanding, or are you just choosing not to?”

Leaning his elbow on the machine with a crooked posture, Manager Kang rolled up a sheet of copy paper into a tube and jabbed it repeatedly against Ju-shin’s shoulder. Since it was just a bundle of paper, however, the sturdy shoulder didn’t even twitch. He merely looked down at the viciously picking opponent.

“Intern Kim Ju-shin, who graduated from a prestigious university. How about you give me an answer?”

So you were the one Kwon Seon-o said he wouldn’t let out of his sight. If that’s the case, lunch is going to be spicy beef soup.

It was right when she was having such thoughts. Jung Woojung, who had been absent all morning due to a meeting with another department, returned. Along with Manager Kang’s favorite, Sales Team rookie Yang Soyoung.

Upon confirming Soyoung’s arrival, Manager Kang’s tyrannical behavior became deliberately more ferocious. He probably wanted to show off his superiority in power.

“Why is Manager Kang really like that? Making people uncomfortable.”

Knowing full well that Kang Jin-sung’s vent of anger had splashed onto innocent Kim Ju-shin, Yang Soyoung sneered with a prim expression.

Woojung simply let out a laugh of sheer resignation. Ha ha ha. What is it this time? She was at the point of being blinded rather than dazzled by the intern’s performance, which never failed to defy expectations.

Judging from his past history of accidents, Kang Jin-sung’s behavior probably wasn’t completely without grounds for picking a fight. The problem was just that the degree of harassment was excessive.

The department and deputy head-level folks must have already gone out to eat, as they weren’t at their desks. It was a good thing those evaluators of the interns were out of the way.

Scanning the office and turning her head toward the scene of the controversy, she locked eyes with Kim Ju-shin, who was already looking this way. Shrugging his shoulders, the fellow innocently blinked his sharp eyes. As if asking why she wasn’t coming to rescue him already. Perhaps due to his sturdy build, it didn’t feel like much of a plea for help.

Anyway, what that fresh graduate relied on was Jung Woojung, and Jung Woojung was soft when someone depended on her.

Since she was practically an expert on how to handle Manager Kang, it wasn’t even a difficult quest. It would be enough to moderately take his side and then buy him a cup of coffee afterward.

It was right when she was running simulations in her head before launching the operation—

“I really can’t let this go. I’ll rescue Intern Kim Ju-shin.”

Yang Soyoung from the sales team abruptly stepped forward.