IWTSDLPF 8

                                                                           <8>

“Who keeps throwing cigarette butts into the flower bed? Just wait until I catch you!”

This happened just as Seol-hee was leaving the villa entrance to go to her interview.

Of all days, she had to run into the landlady on the first floor, who was in a particularly bad mood today.

“Ah, hello.”

The landlady was loudly complaining as she picked up cigarette butts from the flower bed with wooden chopsticks and put them into a clear plastic waste bag.

Their eyes met.

Seol-hee was afraid the woman’s anger might somehow turn toward her, so she greeted her and tried to leave quickly.

But the landlady called her.

“Seol-hee?”

“Yes?”

The landlady looked Seol-hee up and down. She was dressed in a neat suit.

“An interview?”

“Ah, yes…”

Seol-hee suddenly felt nervous, as if she were standing in front of an interviewer.

The landlady walked toward her and put the plastic bag and chopsticks on the ground.

Why is she doing this? Did I do something wrong?

Seol-hee shrank her shoulders.

The landlady pulled out a hairpin from her own neatly arranged hair.

Then she gathered Seol-hee’s loose hair with her rough hand, tucked it behind her ear, and carefully fixed it with the hairpin.

“There. Now go.”

The landlady calmly picked up her things again and went back to looking around the flower bed.

Seol-hee was about to leave, but then she turned around and approached her.

“Thank you.”

The landlady straightened her bent back.

“For the hairpin? Don’t think you can keep it. Pay me back.”

“That too, but…”

Seol-hee thanked her for something she had heard from her father the night before.

“For giving us part of our housing deposit back early.”

“Oh, that? That’s what you were talking about. I was only returning your father’s money. You don’t have to thank me so much.”

As if telling Seol-hee to stop bothering her and go, the landlady returned to her work.

It sounds easy when you say it like that.

But it was not easy to make things easier for someone else when you had a contract with them.

Just then, Seol-hee noticed a cigarette butt lying under a branch of an azalea.

She quickly picked it up and dropped it into the plastic bag the landlady was holding.

The landlady’s eyes widened.

Without saying anything else, Seol-hee bowed politely and turned around.

As she ran down the alley, she heard the landlady shouting loudly behind her.

“Good luck with your interview!”

Seol-hee turned around and bowed once more before hurrying on.

Seol-hee’s reflection appeared in the bus window as she headed toward the interview.

She had run as fast as she could so she would not miss the bus.

The part of her hair that the landlady had fixed with the hairpin had not moved at all.

The problem was the top of her head.

Her fingers nervously fixed the small strands of hair sticking out.

Phew. I’m nervous.

For the past two weeks, everything had been going according to plan.

Her father had scheduled his surgery at Naum Hospital.

Now, if she could get into the Shinwol Foundation, she could move on to the next step.

Seol-hee took out her phone and checked it.

The day after the wedding, she had met Dong-chan when he came all the way to her house.

Since then, he had not contacted her again.

He’s not the kind of person who would give up after coming to see me only once.

It did not seem like he would simply stop after blocking all her job and part-time work opportunities.

What is he planning?

Seol-hee told herself not to worry.

Since she knew the future, things should go in her favor.

But she also had to consider that there would be unexpected changes because the future was already different.

The bus continued for a long time.

Finally, she got off at her stop.

The Shinwol Foundation’s silver-gray building was enormous, just like its reputation.

The moment she saw it, she felt so nervous that it was hard to breathe.

“Let’s do this.”

The waiting room was crowded with many people.

Are there really this many competitors?

There was nothing she could do except give it her best.

While waiting, she clasped her trembling hands together and took deep breaths again and again.

As the applicants were called into the interview room one by one, the number of people in the waiting room became smaller.

At the same time, Seol-hee became more and more nervous.

“Woo Seol-hee.”

“Yes!”

Seol-hee was called into the interview room and sat in front of the interviewers.

She calmed herself down.

I already came back from the dead. Compared to that, what’s so scary about an interview?

She repeated it to herself like a spell.

Fortunately, the interviewers asked many of the questions she had expected.

She answered smoothly, as if she had never been nervous.

Could this be a good sign?

For some reason, she felt hopeful.

A few days later.

Inside the chairman’s office of the Shinwol Foundation.

Yi-hyeok slowly tapped his index finger against the heavy mahogany desk.

His eyes had been fixed on the tablet screen for several minutes without moving.

His secretary quietly watched him.

It was a simple report.

The final list of successful candidates for the recent new employee recruitment had been released.

But there had been an unexpected change.

One more employee had resigned.

Now Yi-hyeok only had to decide whether to hire the applicant who had narrowly failed based on her score or announce another recruitment process.

It was a simple decision.

So why was the chairman staying silent for so long?

Woo Seol-hee.

The secretary looked down at the name on the résumé that Yi-hyeok had been staring at for several minutes.

If they chose someone based on the scores of the unsuccessful applicants, she would be the final person to pass.

Why are you at the Shinwol Foundation…?

A moment ago, after checking the résumé, Yi-hyeok had muttered those words.

Then he had suddenly become completely still.

An uneasy tension appeared on his face, as if he could not see even one step ahead.

After hesitating for a while, the secretary carefully asked,

“Chairman, do you perhaps know her…?”

“This time…”

“…”

“Announce another recruitment.”

After a long time thinking, his decision was surprisingly simple.

But the veins on the back of his hand stood out as he tightly clenched the hand that had been tapping the desk.

The secretary pretended not to notice and nodded.

“…I’ll tell the Human Resources Team.”

Yi-hyeok leaned back against his chair and continued looking at the tablet.

His face looked as if he might cry at any moment.

Even after the secretary opened the door and left, the image of the man who looked as if he might collapse remained in the secretary’s mind for a long time.

“What hope? What a joke.”

Seol-hee stared blankly at her phone screen.

[The Shinwol Foundation is informing you of your interview results. We regret to inform you that Woo Seol-hee has not passed this recruitment process.]

I failed.

No matter how many times she checked it, the result did not change.

Her heart dropped.

Her head suddenly felt cold, as if someone had poured cold water over the back of her head.

“Ha…”

Who said living after regression would be easy?

“Why didn’t I get the employment cheat key?!”

She had not expected to pass for sure.

But now that she had actually received the rejection, she felt hopeless.

She thought back over everything from the interview.

Her facial expressions.

Her answers.

Her posture.

She went over everything again and again, but she could not find anything that should have caused a problem.

Seol-hee fell flat onto her bed.

She did not even have the strength to sit up.

The rejection had hurt more than she expected.

“What should I do now?”

She could not think of an answer.

She stared blankly at the checkered wallpaper on the ceiling, as if the answer might be written there.

Bzzzz—

Just then, a notification appeared on her phone.

Thinking it might be a message saying she had been accepted after all, she quickly sat up.

A faint wrinkle appeared between Seol-hee’s eyebrows as she checked the message.

[It’s about the shoes.]

What kind of strange message is this?

Then her phone rang.

It was an unfamiliar number that was not saved in her contacts.

Seol-hee carefully answered the call.

“Hel… hello?”

After a short silence, a low and calm voice came through the phone.

“—You didn’t throw away my shoes, did you?”

Seol-hee’s eyes widened.

That’s right! The shoes!

Only after hearing the man’s voice did she remember the shoes she had been keeping in her shoe cabinet.

“Hello. Since you didn’t contact me, I thought you had forgotten about them.”

“—Of course not. They’re my favorite shoes.”

“If you waited any longer, I was going to… no, I almost sold them on a secondhand website.”

Ten years later, almost everyone would use a secondhand marketplace app, but such an app was not popular yet.

The man quietly laughed on the other end of the phone.

“—That was close. Can I get them now?”

Seol-hee hesitated.

It was nighttime.

And she did not really want to meet a man she had only met once.

“—If not, we can meet another time…”

After thinking for only a moment, Seol-hee answered.

“Let’s meet now.”

If we meet somewhere with lots of people, it should be okay.

More importantly, she felt uncomfortable keeping his shoes in her house any longer.

“—I’ll be driving there. I’ll come near where you are.”

Seol-hee gave him the location near the café at the intersection where she had met Dong-chan.

She heard some sounds through the phone, as if he were entering the location into his navigation system.

“—It says I’ll arrive in twenty minutes. See you soon.”

“Yes. See you later.”

Click.

After ending the call, Seol-hee immediately took only her wallet and phone and left her room.

“Dad, I’m going to the convenience store for a little while!”

“I’ll come with you. It’s dangerous at night.”

“It’s okay. The road is bright. Do you need anything?”

“No.”

“Okay. I’ll be back soon.”

Seol-hee glanced at Song Geun, who was completely absorbed in a television drama, as she stood near the shoe cabinet.

Her father had recently become obsessed with a popular drama called The Woman of the Moon.

I think the female lead dies at the end of that drama.

Seeing her father constantly wiping away his tears made Seol-hee worried.

He’s going to be devastated when he sees the ending.

Seol-hee quickly put the shoes she had kept in the shoe cabinet into a paper bag and left the house.

The air in the morning and evening had changed noticeably.

The season had changed enough that her short shorts and thin windbreaker looked a little too cold.

It was perfect weather for taking a walk, but her heart still felt heavy, as if a stone were sitting on it.

She still could not get over failing the interview.

Seol-hee stopped at a convenience store to get rid of the bitter feeling in her mouth.

She bought a handful of apple-flavored lollipops, opened one, put it in her mouth, and headed toward the meeting place.

When the sweet taste touched her tongue, she somehow smiled.

Just walking around with a lollipop in her mouth made her feel free.

“This is something I never could have imagined before.”

It was not only about keeping up appearances.

Dong-chan and In-ok had rarely allowed her to go outside alone.

They were always worried that she might run away.

She had only learned the reason when she was close to death.

The distance was not far, so she walked slowly.

As she enjoyed the feeling of freedom, her mood seemed to improve a little.

She finally reached the area near the meeting place.

The man was waiting for her, leaning against a black sedan parked by the side of the road.