AER 2

Chapter 2

Hye-ryeon secretly bit down on her lip at Jiwan’s sharp words.

There had been a time when they were everything to each other. Being together had felt natural, something they never once questioned would continue.

In those pure days, Hye-ryeon had given him her first time—and then vanished like foam on water.

“You look well.”

Jiwan mocked her again. The cold anger rolling off him wrapped around her.

She understood him.

The sudden, absurd disappearance of the woman he had loved with everything he had.

The unkind goodbye that left him without a single reason.

Hye-ryeon knew better than anyone how terrifying the rage could become once love turned into resentment.

She had watched her own father twist into a monster while searching for the mother who left them.

“You’re still the same.”

She forced the words out, fighting the tremor in her voice.

“Same how?”

His tone was flat.

“The way you just… do whatever you feel like.”

Jiwan let out a short laugh. Then he crossed his long legs the other way and frowned, the corner of his mouth stretching into a thin line.

“I’m the same, huh.”

He murmured it low.

Beyond the café, NK employees started trickling in one by one. Office workers who skipped breakfast often stopped by early for a sandwich and coffee, so Hye-ryeon kept half an eye out for customers.

“Look at me when someone’s talking to you.”

Jiwan snapped again.

“Enjoy your coffee, then. From now on I’ll pretend I don’t know you even if we run into each other.”

She answered in a calm voice. The faint smile vanished from Jiwan’s face as he looked up at her.

“Who said you get to decide that?”

“If we both came here to work, shouldn’t we just do our jobs?”

“Still can’t let a single word go, can you.”

“People don’t change that much.”

Jiwan’s eyes darkened as he stared at her. They looked sharp enough to swallow her whole, bones and all.

“I changed.”

The knuckles of Hye-ryeon’s hand gripping the tray turned white.

“In your eyes I must still look like some brat who smells like milk.”

“…So you’re planning to fire me on a whim?”

Jiwan burst out laughing like the question genuinely amused him. His shoulders shook for a moment before he caught his breath and stood up.

The crushing weight of his gaze made Hye-ryeon’s throat go dry, but she refused to step back. She met his eyes and held them.

“Who do you think you are to fire me?”

“…”

“That’s the kind of thing people who still have feelings left do to each other, isn’t it.”

“…”

“And do you seriously think I took this position just so I could mess with barista staffing?”

“When you put it that way, I guess not.”

Jiwan raised an eyebrow in agreement.

“Then from now on I’ll treat you like the important person you are.”

Hye-ryeon pointed toward the entrance.

“Would you mind leaving? The café still has to open for business.”

Jiwan kept staring at her with that stubborn intensity, then reached diagonally down and picked up the small espresso cup from the table. He smiled.

“I ordered coffee. I should drink it.”

Gulp. Gulp. His throat moved exactly twice. Two sips were all an espresso needed.

“That hit the spot.”

His gaze dragged slowly across her face before dropping to her chest.

“Manager Ha Hye-ryeon.”

He stared hard at the gold name tag pinned to the upper part of her apron and tugged the corner of his mouth up again.

It was a twisted smile, but it overlapped with the face from the past, and for a second Hye-ryeon wanted to cry.

She held it in. She clenched her teeth and didn’t give a single step.

Jiwan set the cup down with a soft click and brushed past her without hurry.

No hesitation in the movement. No hesitation in his stride. A wind colder than midwinter slammed into her chest.

Hye-ryeon didn’t look back once. Only when she was sure every trace of his presence was gone did she grab the edge of the table and sink down.

“Haah…”

She finally let out the breath she’d been holding.

Their reunion after eight years had been nowhere near as beautiful as she’d imagined.

***

Bang!

Jiwan slammed the door to his office the moment he stepped inside. He yanked his loosened tie all the way off and undid a couple of shirt buttons. The fire in his chest still refused to die down. It felt ready to blacken everything inside him until he choked on it.

That bitch.

How could she just show up in front of him? How?

“Haah…”

He dragged in a rough breath and shoved a hand through his hair.

He’d first spotted Hye-ryeon last Friday. He’d been rushing back from the Busan plant after a problem with the parts production line. The schedule had been packed since early morning, so he’d already been exhausted.

He was walking while listening to his secretary report the next appointments when a face flashed across his vision. He flinched, but didn’t recognize it right away.

Then it hit him.

Ha Hye-ryeon.

Startled, Jiwan stopped dead. Thinking the fatigue must have made him see things, he slowly turned his head.

Hye-ryeon was already looking at him.

Aside from a slight change in style, she was exactly the same. No. The version of her that had stepped out of her teenage shell was… absurdly beautiful.

In that instant his entire body felt like it had turned into a single heartbeat, burning hot.

It couldn’t be. She couldn’t be here. Not after he’d searched for her like a madman and never found so much as a single strand of hair.

Jiwan had only given up on her after hearing from his mother how she had left.

‘How long are you planning to keep living like this?’

It had been a full year since he’d taken a leave from university and started hunting for any trace of Hye-ryeon like he was searching for lice.

‘Stay out of it.’

‘Do you even know what kind of girl she is?’

‘Don’t talk about Hye-ryeon that way. Even you… I won’t forgive it.’

He’d glared at his mother with bloodshot eyes.

He’d been convinced Hye-ryeon must have had her reasons, or that her father had shown up and dragged her away.

Anything was fine, as long as she was still alive. That was all he’d wanted back then.

‘She left on her own two feet.’

‘You said you didn’t know. Did you… do something, Mother?’

Yeo-jeong had scoffed.

‘How could I?’

She’d held out a letter for him to see. When Jiwan just stared blankly, the paper fluttered down onto his desk.

It was a letter from Hye-ryeon. Thanks for taking care of me all this time. I’m going to try standing on my own now. The handwriting was unmistakably hers.

What came next had been even more of a shock.

‘She said she got fired from her part-time job because of you. Brought that up while asking me for a little independence money.’

The part-time firing was something only he and Hye-ryeon knew about. Given her personality, she never would have casually told Yeo-jeong. They hadn’t even been that close.

‘I feel bad saying this about a girl who’s already gone… but maybe because her situation was tough, she was a bit calculating.’

Yet Yeo-jeong had recited details she never should have known unless Hye-ryeon had told her.

‘So I gave it to her. Twenty million. Then she just left that single letter and disappeared.’

‘…That’s a lie.’

‘Son. I know it hurts… but the feelings kids your age have are always shallow.’

‘Stop lying!’

‘That girl!’

Yeo-jeong had gotten worked up right along with him.

‘Twenty million mattered more to her than you did. Whether she didn’t want to pay it back or couldn’t face you! How could someone who’s always lived comfortably ever understand a girl who’s had nothing?’

‘Then why are you only telling me this now—!’

He’d flown into a rage, flipping furniture and screaming until Yeo-jeong ran over and held him tight. She’d taken the full force of her rough son’s strength and cried.

‘I knew you’d react like this… How was I supposed to tell you the girl left on her own, as your mother…’

Then she’d continued.

‘But… what does a wound from some… girl even matter… In the end you have to face it and get back up… I only realized that now. It’s all this mother’s fault… I’m sorry.’

He’d heard the snap of the rope he’d been clinging to so desperately, like tinnitus in his ears. Then the pain of his heart being torn apart had crushed him. It was the first time he’d ever cried out loud like an animal.

He hadn’t wanted to believe it then.

But as the years passed, he’d understood.

Unless she’d deliberately hidden, there was no way she could have stayed out of his sight for this long.

“And now she just shows up in front of me again?”

With that shameless face. That calm expression and those arguing lips belonged to someone who felt not a shred of guilt.

For a moment his blood had boiled, and he hated how much he still reacted to Ha Hye-ryeon.

Jiwan ground his teeth and dropped into his chair just as a knock sounded.

“Come in.”

The lean team leader of the secretaries entered with a forced smile. Secretary Ahn was always walking on eggshells, constantly reading the mood of a boss whose temper swung hard.

“Did you look into it?”

“Yes. Here.”

What Secretary Ahn handed over was the background check on Hye-ryeon. Money was nothing. From high enough up, a single order could shake a person down like dust.

Jiwan pulled the documents from the tan envelope. He skipped the childhood section. If someone asked him to recite it, he could close his eyes and write a novel’s worth from memory.

He quickly scanned the rest.

What had the life of the girl who’d sold her boyfriend for a measly twenty million and gone into hiding looked like?

Figures. Still only a high school graduate. Lived on the third floor of a shabby commercial building in a run-down neighborhood. Total assets: the three million security deposit on that place, and a couple hundred thousand left in her bank account.

She’d worked at the café for quite a while, yet didn’t have a single noteworthy award. The only thing that might look decent on a résumé was a barista certification.

That was literally it.

It was so pathetically insignificant that a dry laugh slipped out of him.

Then he found the few photos clipped together. His expression twisted the moment he looked down at them.

“Ah… that man used to be her school senior, then her workplace senior, and now he’s Miss Ha Hye-ryeon’s owner. Lee Young-hoon.”

He knew him far too well. The guy he’d run into in front of his house about ten years ago. And again at Hye-ryeon’s high school graduation.

The clueless idiot who’d turned around with a blank face when Jiwan had coldly told him off.

So this was the soft weakling she’d left him for.

His blood pressure spiked and the back of his neck went hot.

“Maybe… we should just fire her? It feels uncomfortable in a lot of ways.”

Secretary Ahn even stumbled over the suggestion. As a former classmate of Do Seong-woo’s, he’d been with Jiwan since he joined NK and knew a fair amount about his personal history.

He always kept his head down and tiptoed around, which made him look loyal, but the fact that he was friends with Seong-woo made Jiwan wonder.

“She walked in here on her own two feet. Why would I bother?”

“…Then what?”

“It’s a warm reunion with my first love. I should welcome her properly.”

A blue glint flashed in Jiwan’s eyes, like a predator that had just spotted prey. Secretary Ahn fell silent for a moment, reading the sharp edge of his boss’s anger.

“Ah, and… tomorrow there’s a meeting with Executive Director Park Jeong-hyeok, who’s joining the PR headquarters as a new hire.”

He threw out tomorrow’s schedule with no real connection, trying to change the subject.

Jiwan murmured that it sounded good.

“Right? Bringing in Executive Director Park this time is really…”

“No.”

Jiwan cut him off and lifted the corner of his mouth in a wicked smile.

“Pull Barista Cha Hye-ryeon over to the VIP lounge.”