“Director Han will be arriving in 10 minutes.”
At Secretary Oh’s call, Jaekyung closed the book he had been reading and sprang to his feet. A brief silence followed. In the spacious living room, the ticking of the second hand sounded strangely loud.
Had that clock always been this noisy?
Fortunately, a housekeeper came every day to clean, so the house itself was always spotless. When Jaekyung had first stepped inside, it had been so enormous that he had wanted to run away. Every necessary piece of furniture was already in place, and the house was even nicer than his family home, yet to Jaekyung, it felt like a prison.
The chill in the air only deepened his loneliness. He had been certain that if he stayed here even for a single day, he would go mad. He had taken a step backward, but he could not bring himself to retreat any farther. In the end, he had entered the house.
Fortunately, people were creatures of adaptation. The first day had been unfamiliar, but by the second, the place had begun to feel a little less strange. He wandered around, looking into one room after another.
The mansion had a basement and three floors above ground.
The third floor was equipped with exercise machines, various rooms for personal care, a sauna, and a hot-spring room. The second floor had a study that could have passed for a library, a dressing room, and guest rooms furnished to a standard comparable to that of a five-star hotel.
The first floor consisted of the master bedroom, a small dressing room, the kitchen, and a spacious living room. The basement had been fitted with a private theater.
The clean, modern interiors, contemporary furniture, and state-of-the-art electronics were on an entirely different level from the somewhat outdated Jaewang Group family home. At least, they made Jaekyung think that someone had put considerable thought into this house.
But that was all.
Jaekyung never touched any of it.
Because none of it felt like his. It all seemed to belong to someone else, and for some reason, he could not bring himself to touch anything.
The only thing he ever bothered to handle was the books in the study.
The housekeeper prepared all his meals, so there was no reason for him to cook or clean in the kitchen. He wasn’t much of a TV person, so he never turned it on. He had even considered using the theater room at least once, but no one had bothered to teach him how to operate it, so he couldn’t enjoy that either.
As a result, he spent all seven days cooped up in the house, doing nothing but reading.
During that entire time, his mother called him only once. There wasn’t even a single word from anyone in the NI family.
Except for one incident that had sent a chill down his spine.
Feeling so suffocated that he decided to take a walk around the garden, Jaekyung had barely stepped outside when the security team called him.
They told him to go back inside immediately.
There was no assassination threat or anything of the sort, yet the security team had suddenly ordered him back into the house. Alarmed, Jaekyung hurried inside. After sitting there and thinking it over carefully, he sank into despair.
I was being watched.
He didn’t know whether there were cameras inside the house, but he realized that the CCTV cameras around the garden and the property weren’t there solely for the house’s security. They were also being used to monitor him.
And that night, Director Ji called him as well, giving him another round of scolding.
It had been a truly dreadful seven days.
-“Oh dear, I guess Director Han is finally here.”
The housekeeper approached the dazed Jaekyung, wiping her hands on a towel. She was practically the only person he had to talk to while he spent his days alone.
Just as she said, the sound of a car could be heard in the distance. A moment later, the doorbell rang, and the housekeeper hurriedly pressed the door-release button.
Jaekyung stood before the entrance.
The sound of footsteps grew steadily louder.
He clenched his fists.
How am I supposed to greet him?
Welcome home?
Did you have a good trip?
Hello?
Which one is right?
Click.
The doorknob turned, and the door opened.
At the same time, a man in a long coat stepped inside.
His partner.
The first time Jaekyung had seen him in seven days.
Their eyes met.
His mouth… wouldn’t move.
No.
I still have to greet him.
“Wel…come home.”
Of all the things I could have said, I had to pick the stiffest, strangest one…
It wasn’t something a husband would say to his husband. It sounded more like something a subordinate would say to his superior.
He regretted it inwardly, but on the outside, he looked perfectly composed.
Han Taeseok nodded, took off his shoes, and walked into the house, brushing past Jaekyung without a word. Secretary Oh and the other accompanying secretaries followed shortly after. They stayed close behind Taeseok, talking nonstop, apparently giving him work-related reports.
-“Jaekyung, what should I prepare for you?”
The housekeeper asked.
“Do we have pear and ginger tea?”
As he walked past, the air seemed to turn cold.
-“Yes, we do.”
“Then, please prepare some… No. I’ll do it myself.”
Jaekyung went into the kitchen, took out a pear and some ginger syrup, and transferred them into a clear glass. He waited for the water to boil.
Beep, beep—
The water finished boiling, and Jaekyung quickly poured it into the glass, stirring it with a spoon.
He placed the tea on the tray the housekeeper had prepared and put two yakgwa on a small plate. He was just about to take it to Taeseok when Taeseok emerged from the bedroom, having done nothing more than change his clothes, and headed for the entrance with Secretary Oh.
Jaekyung stared at him in surprise.
But Taeseok said nothing.
He simply walked out.
-“Oh dear… He must be terribly busy.”
The housekeeper murmured sympathetically.
Jaekyung released his grip on the tray handle and nodded.
“I suppose so. He seems very busy.”
That was all Jaekyung could say right then.
**
For the first time in a while, Jaekyung had a day off, so he decided to do the laundry and clean his apartment.
It was a small studio, so there wasn’t all that much to clean or much laundry to do. Still, he experienced firsthand just how satisfying—and how annoyingly exhausting—it was to clean and do the laundry with his own hands.
This little bit of laundry is already this tiring. How hard must it have been for the housekeeper who washed the bedding every week?
Of course, his clothes had been sent out for dry cleaning, and the house had a washer and dryer specifically for bedding, so he hadn’t needed to do much heavy lifting. But still…
“Ugh. Finally done.”
He swept and mopped the floor, keeping himself busy from one task to the next. After shaking out the laundry and hanging it up to dry, Jaekyung sat down on the bed and rubbed his aching lower back as he looked out the window.
The sky was blue.
The weather is really nice today…
On a day like this, he should go outside.
Without giving it another thought, he sprang to his feet.
He wanted to go to a bookstore. There were probably plenty of new releases by now, so he planned to buy a few books. He also wanted to stop by a department store and buy a laptop.
He didn’t really watch TV, so he had no need for one, but he needed a laptop to keep an eye on the stock market. He couldn’t touch the shares he owned in Jaewang Group, but he was curious about how the stocks of the small and midsize companies he’d bought little by little as investments years ago were doing.
Now that life had become somewhat bearable, now that he could finally breathe a little, he found himself thinking about the things he’d always wanted to do.
Back when I was in that house, even thinking about what I wanted for myself felt like a luxury…
“Hm?”
His phone rang while he was getting ready to go out.
The moment he saw who was calling, he was so happy that he answered without a second thought.
“Hello?”
[Ah! Team Leader Park! Hello!]
Hearing the voice of one of his team members for the first time in five years, Jaekyung broke into a wide smile. His legs went weak, and he felt like he might burst into tears.
So this is what it feels like to be truly happy to hear someone’s voice…
Jaekyung sank back down onto the bed.
“Of course I do, Yeongeun. How have you been?”
[We’ve all been doing well!]
“That’s a relief. I’m sorry about everything. I should’ve contacted you sooner.”
[No, it’s okay! We’re just glad you never changed your phone number, Team Leader. You’ve been doing well, right? You’re healthy?]
“Yeah. I’m doing well, and I’m healthy. Ah, why don’t we stop talking like this and meet up sometime?”
[Really?! Is that okay?]
“Haha, of course.”
[Th-then when should we meet?]
“Are you free today?”
[Today! Of course!! Where should we meet? Just tell us the time and place, Team Leader, and we’ll come to you!]
“Us?”
[Ah! We’re all together right now. The whole team is here. Is that okay?]
Jaekyung was overjoyed.
He could see them again.
If he told them that, in his short thirty-three years of life, the time he had spent with them had been the happiest of all, they probably wouldn’t believe him.
There was no reason for Jaekyung to refuse. Even if he had been scheduled to work today, he would have found a way to make time for them.
He made a reservation at a sushi restaurant near Gangnam Station, and they agreed to meet there.
Their appointment was at six, but Jaekyung arrived at five-thirty, rented a private room, and waited there.
Around five-fifty, he heard several sets of footsteps approaching, and his heart began pounding.
Could a heart really beat this hard?
He hadn’t known.
My heart’s been beating all this time.
The sliding door rattled open, and Jaekyung sprang to his feet.
Two women, two men—
Familiar faces. People he’d missed, people he’d longed to see.
The moment their eyes met, all of them broke into delighted smiles.
-“Team Leader!”
Anyone watching would have thought a long-lost family reunion was taking place. Jaekyung and his former colleagues threw their arms around one another, laughing and embracing.
It had been five years.
Five years since he’d seen people who still recognized him as himself.
“All right, enough with the greetings. Let’s sit down and talk.”
-“Yes!”
Jaekyung quickly got them seated and ordered the most expensive course on the sushi restaurant’s menu.
Everyone’s faces went pale when they saw the price, but Jaekyung told them not to worry about it.
He wanted to give them the best, most precious meal he could.
Once the order was placed and the server left, everyone wiped their hands with their wet towels and turned to look at Jaekyung in unison.
“What? Can you finally see how old I’ve gotten?”
Jaekyung joked with a laugh, but they all shook their heads.
-“We were just thinking that you’re still the same. You still look amazing.”
“Thank you for saying that. You all look exactly the same, too. Yeongeun, Haseong, Minji, and Haesin.”
When Jaekyung’s eyes met Kwak Haesin’s, Haesin looked slightly startled and quickly averted his gaze.
Jaekyung remembered him crying on the day he quit.
He had found out by chance, through another colleague, that Haesin had feelings for him. But Jaekyung hadn’t been able to give him an answer—and that was still the case now.
Of course, by this point, it might have become nothing more than an embarrassing chapter of Haesin’s past.