TW 6

Chapter 6

That night, a company dinner was arranged to mark the official beginning of the project. Of course, Hae-il was attending as well. If there was one thing to be grateful for, it was that he would be sitting with the team managers rather than with them.

The beef was expensive, paid for with company money, but every person sitting around the tables wore a troubled expression. They were still suffering from the aftermath of the meeting earlier that day, not to mention worrying about the bleak future ahead.

Even so, attendance was surprisingly high.

It was the mentality of eat it while they’re giving it to us.

Since it was a fairly large company dinner, people naturally gathered in groups of three or four according to their teams or whoever they were already familiar with. Once the planning team’s table filled up, the people from Development naturally called over the abandoned Suhyeon, and he blended into their group without the slightest awkwardness. His easygoing personality truly shone at gatherings like this.

“Mr. Suhyeon, I really enjoyed the energy drink you gave us earlier.”

At Danbi’s words, the other team members eagerly joined in, thanking him for the tonic drinks.

“Seriously, that was so thoughtful…”

“I drank every drop. Thank you so much.”

As the praise poured in, Suhyeon scratched his head awkwardly.

“Oh, come on. It wasn’t anything special.”

“Still, you’re such a nice guy.”

“Your girlfriend must have loved you~”

“You have to be this sweet to stay in a long-term relationship, I guess.”

He was famous as a hopeless romantic, enough that even people from other teams knew about it.

Whenever they worked together, Danbi had noticed that the development team’s chat profiles were often anime characters, while people in planning tended to use pictures from their everyday lives. Suhyeon’s profile picture, however, had always been a photo of himself with his girlfriend.

“Ah…”

He gave an awkward laugh.

“I, uh… broke up with her last year. Haha…”

Since they only collaborated occasionally, their updates about each other were always a little behind.

A conversation that had begun with compliments had unintentionally hit one of his sore spots.

Noticing the sudden chill in the atmosphere, Suhyeon handled it with practiced ease.

“Ah, it’s okay. It was quite a while ago, and we didn’t break up on bad terms. It was just…”

He shrugged.

“There was the distance, and we both wanted to focus more on our careers…”

It sounded like they had broken up because of the circumstances of adulthood.

Yunseok, who had gone through something similar, offered some joking advice.

“Date someone at work. Workplace romance. You’re close by, and they understand when work gets busy. What’s better than that?”

He was speaking from experience, having actually married the woman he had dated at work.

Since it was a large corporation with frequent collaboration between teams, it wasn’t particularly uncommon for coworkers to become lovers through working together on projects.

At that moment, Suhyeon and Danbi’s eyes briefly met across the air between them.

When Danbi didn’t look away, Suhyeon cleared his throat and turned his head first.

As various conversations continued around them, vivid-red slices of beef appeared on the sizzling grill.

The moment the youngest employee reached for the tongs, Suhyeon naturally took them from him and began grilling the meat.

“I’m actually an artist when it comes to grilling meat. Everyone’s okay with it being slightly rare, right?”

He deliberately displayed exaggerated confidence so the youngest employee wouldn’t feel bad.

Even in such small gestures, his innate thoughtfulness was obvious.

He was the kind of person who made you feel good simply by being around him.

After a few pieces of meat had gone around, people began reaching for their drinks.

“Danbi, have a drink. You worked really hard today.”

Suhyeon offered her a glass.

Danbi pulled a bicycle helmet out of her bag and lightly tapped it as she laughed.

“Sorry. I have to ride my bike home later. You absolutely shouldn’t drink and drive.”

“Oh, you use one of those public bikes. Why don’t you just take a taxi?”

“My place is pretty close, so it’s kind of an awkward distance for a taxi. I just ride it for exercise.”

“You said you live near the company, right?”

“Yes.”

Suhyeon didn’t press her to drink any further. Instead, he placed a perfectly cooked piece of meat onto Danbi’s small plate.

For the brief moment his arm came close to her, a faint scent of soap tickled the tip of her nose.

A familiar yet unfamiliar scent.

She thought she remembered smelling something like it from that boy in his school uniform, once upon a time.

“Really? I live nearby too. Where do you—”

Just as Suhyeon’s question was about to continue, Danbi felt a sharp, persistent gaze dig into her cheek.

She turned her head.

At the table a short distance away, Hae-il was staring directly at her.

She tried to tell herself that she was imagining it.

But there was no room for doubt.

His gaze was unmistakably fixed on Danbi.

What the hell is wrong with him…?

Danbi let out a deep sigh inwardly.

“Danbi?”

“Ah. Sorry, I’m out of it. Where were we?”

“You must be really tired. You’re eating the meat with your chin.”

Suhyeon poked his own chin with one finger.

Danbi had been so distracted by Hae-il that she hadn’t even realized where the food was going.

Whenever her eyes met his, it felt as though an error occurred somewhere inside her brain.

The malfunctioning Danbi stammered as she tried to wipe the wrong spot, causing Suhyeon to let out a quiet laugh.

She asked Dongjun, who was sitting beside her, for help, but the already thoroughly tipsy Dongjun had sauce smeared all over his own mouth.

Developers were apparently quite good at expressing their condition with their faces.

It was intuitive.

And efficient.

“Mmph… wha…”

“No, never mind. Just eat.”

After quietly observing the two malfunctioning humans, Suhyeon cautiously asked,

“Can I wipe it for you?”

“Ah, it’s okay. I’ll go to the bathroom later and…”

“Hmm. This is kind of funny.”

Suhyeon barely managed to suppress the laughter escaping from him.

Danbi flinched.

Under normal circumstances, she wouldn’t have cared what her face looked like.

But right now, she was painfully aware of Hae-il’s gaze upon her.

In the end, Danbi cautiously leaned her face toward him.

Suhyeon pulled out a tissue without hesitation and gently wiped the sauce from her chin.

Just then—

Crash!

Every gaze in the restaurant turned toward the source of the sound.

At the table where the team managers and department heads were sitting, spilled alcohol and scattered shards of glass lay across the floor.

Everyone around the table wore shocked expressions.

Everyone except the person who had broken the glass.

Hae-il didn’t move an inch.

He was staring only at Danbi.

She couldn’t endure that gaze any longer.

“I, uh… I need to use the bathroom…”

Danbi practically fled from her seat.

Only after leaving the restaurant and turning into a quiet alley did she finally feel as though she could breathe again.

She hadn’t had a drop of alcohol, yet her face was burning like a furnace and her thoughts were a complete mess.

When the cold night air touched her cheeks, she finally began to regain some composure.

Then a familiar scent of cologne drifted toward her on the wind.

A scent she had become far too familiar with.

Cool, yet somehow chilly.

A deep, mature fragrance that effortlessly overwhelmed the faint scent of soap she had just noticed on Suhyeon.

Without realizing it, Danbi turned her head toward the source.

As expected.

It was Han Hae-il.

How did he even find me here?

He approached with long strides and stood beside Danbi, who was leaning against the wall.

The little refuge she had painstakingly created for herself had been taken away once again.

As the familiar silence stretched between them, Danbi broke it first.

“Why did you come out?”

“Just. I felt suffocated, so I came outside.”

His voice was a tone lower than usual.

Suffocated?

Had sitting with the older team managers and department heads made him uncomfortable?

Or perhaps he was simply feeling the pressure of work too.

No matter how capable Han Hae-il was, the responsibility of leading that many people had to be burdensome.

“You…”

Danbi hesitated.

“Worked hard today.”

“What hard work?”

“Um…”

She tried to think of something.

“Eating beside a department head who nags a lot? Though I guess he probably didn’t say much to you, Team Manager.”

“You seem to have checked who I was sitting with.”

At his pointed remark, Danbi’s heart sank.

The fact that their eyes had met so often was ultimately proof that she had been conscious of him too.

“Even so, you seated someone else instead of me.”

His voice was quiet.

“Your team members did too. And so did you, Danbi.”

He was clearly criticizing her for filling the one empty seat at their table with Suhyeon.

“Ah, I just assumed you’d naturally sit with the other team managers…”

“So you didn’t even consider me.”

Danbi was stunned.

Who would have thought he would actually feel hurt over something so trivial?

As she struggled to process his unexpected reaction, Hae-il clicked his tongue softly and continued.

“Shouldn’t you have seated me there?”

His low voice seemed to cling heavily to her ears.

Just as Danbi sensed that something in the atmosphere had changed, Hae-il moved and stood directly in front of her.

Without asking permission, his presence completely occupied her field of vision.

His face, silhouetted against the moonlight, was strangely vivid even within the shadows.

His eyes gleamed in the darkness, their depths impossible to read.

Danbi could neither avoid nor ignore his gaze.

“I’ve tried to understand it…”

He paused.

“But I really can’t understand this one.”

“…What?”

“No, think about it.”

His voice was low.

“Does that make any sense? I’m right there beside you, and yet you’re so distracted by some other guy…”

Danbi couldn’t quite understand what he was talking about.

He clearly seemed displeased about something.

But this wasn’t like his usual criticism.

There was something deeper in it.

Something darker.

What did I do wrong this time?

Even though she hadn’t drunk a single drop of alcohol, her stomach churned, and something hot seemed ready to rise back up her throat.

“The Lee Danbi I know…”

The instant the man standing before her stopped being Team Manager Han and became simply Han Hae-il, her heart began pounding wildly.

“Likes me.”

Thump. Thump. Thump.

It felt as though the sound of her heartbeat had swallowed the entire world.

Beyond that deafening noise, a voice from the distant past overlapped with his.

You like me, don’t you?

Just like that day, when he had casually exposed her innermost feelings with an unbearably confident expression.

Even now, he could still shake Danbi to her very core with such ease.

That was right.

Han Hae-il was Lee Danbi’s first love.