The Shattered Moon Jar

Ruby abruptly kicked back his chair and shot to his feet. Grabbing his car keys on the way out, he strode for the door with a look on his face that boded nothing good.

"Wh-where are you going?"

"Allmaps Hotel."

"I'm sorry—what?"

"Even if the main hotel CCTV goes down, the backup feed behind the private rooms' rear entrance runs no matter what. I'll ask Gong Jigang for it myself."

Humiliating as it was, there was no other way. Haeseo planted herself in front of the resolute Ruby, crouching into an awkward half-crouch to block his path.

"I-I really don't think you should do that."

Ruby looked down at her with a what now? expression.

"B-because the thing you're worried about? It's not going to happen."

"What?"

"No, really. It was just one night. Th-the, um, seed theft, or whatever. It's not like getting pregnant is that easy. Look—all those fertility clinics out there. See?"

Haeseo pointed out the window at an obstetrics clinic sign across the street, proudly emblazoned on the building's outer wall: Specialists in Infertility Treatment.

Ruby followed the direction of her fingertip, then let out a short, scornful laugh.

"No. Do you have any idea how much I dumped in there? There's no counting what went in, and my swimmers are vicious little survivors."

The way his eyes glistened as he said it made Haeseo go weak in the knees. She had received that baptism with her whole body, after all—so it didn't strike her as entirely impossible. And how was it he managed to remember that, but not who he'd done it with?

Like Pandora resolved to open her box, Ruby no longer looked like anything she could stop. She'd sensed it vaguely the moment he walked into the office: Baek Ruby was not in his right mind right now.

Which meant Haeseo had no choice either.

"Before you go anywhere, sign my resignation papers! Otherwise I'm not letting you out. I really, truly want to quit!"

When reason failed, all she could do was cling to his trouser leg like a stubborn child.

Substituting his sleeve for the trouser leg, Haeseo grabbed hold. If this didn't work, she'd get down on her knees. No sooner had she steeled herself than her gaze turned pleading all on its own, and she lifted her head to look up at him—

Huh?

Sometimes, right after a word leaves your mouth that never should have left it, a sense of doom shoots straight down your spine. This was one of those moments.

Ruby's face darkened into something grim, and for an instant he pressed a hand to his forehead and swayed.

"I... did I... sleep with another woman?"

"I'm sorry?"

"I mean—look, it was an accident. Yes, a traffic accident. The drunk driving part is the problem, though... Shit. I know, all right. I know I'm not completely blameless here."

Talking himself into a tangle, Ruby ran his eyes over her from head to toe, slowly.

"So... I'm pretty sure you were the only one."

Frowning as if something were surfacing at last, Ruby muttered in an eerie voice.

"Hold on. I need to chew this memory over."

Having somehow let go of his sleeve, Haeseo had begun shuffling backward, step by cautious step. She'd thought she was well-versed in handling Baek Ruby by now—but good grief.

This level of unhinged was uncharted territory. Holding her palm out in front of her like someone soothing an animal escaped from its cage, she placed her feet down carefully.

"Let me hold you."

"Excuse me?"

"That muscle memory thing—jogging it might make something come back."

Ruby's pupils contracted, flashing red for an instant. The distance Haeseo had so carefully, gingerly backed away to avoid provoking him, he closed in three long strides.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

Uh, uh, uh?

Frozen in place like a pedestrian staring down an oncoming car, Haeseo couldn't move a muscle. It was utterly absurd that his resolve to revisit his memories had led straight to hugging her, but her heart was pounding so violently she thought it would leap out of her chest.

Because if he held her like this, Ruby really might remember. And that—that alone—could not be allowed to happen.

"I won't eat you. Just a second is all—"

"I'm sorry!"

Arms spread wide, Haeseo nimbly dodged the approaching Ruby. Wrenching her body around so abruptly, she slammed face-first into the bookshelf beside her.

Clunk, clatter. The Moon Jar, resting delicately on the shelf's top, tipped off balance, rolled once in a lazy circle—and then whirled off the edge, plunging downward.

Thwack! Crack!

And directly beneath it, of course, sat the crown of Ruby's head.

"No, no—!"

"Ugh."

Struck squarely by the porcelain with an audible smack, Ruby lost his balance and crumpled to the floor.

Crash! In the same instant, the Moon Jar—which had hammered down on his skull with devastating force—shattered into a thousand flawless pieces.

"Waaah, Team Leader, what have I done."

Sniffling and swallowing back her nose, she still couldn't stop the flood of tears.

Haeseo had scrambled to call a Baek Sarang Hospital ambulance and get Ruby moved to the emergency room. Professor Jeong—the physician who attended the royal family, so to speak—treated him swiftly and ran every test in the book, but Haeseo's anxiety refused to settle.

She hadn't wanted to disgrace herself in front of Professor Jeong, her grandfather's own doctor—but perhaps for that very reason, she found herself sobbing her heart out before she knew it.

"Hey, he's fine. It's not like the young master died."

"Waaah, don't say that even as a joke, hic."

Professor Jeong stroked his thick double chin and chuckled.

When he'd heard the whole sorry tale—the vase knocked loose by Haeseo's blunder, landing square on Ruby's head—Professor Jeong's heart had lurched too. But the tests turned up no serious trauma, no alarming signs of anything.

There was a rather large lump... but frankly, weighed against all the karma from the way he'd run poor Haeseo ragged, it hardly counted. So thinking, Professor Jeong turned sideways in his chair.

"He'll wake up soon. Let's wait in the patient room."

"Sniff—really?"

"Really. If he opens his eyes and you're not there, you'll catch it far worse. Right?"

That was fair enough, so Haeseo excused herself just long enough to wash her face in the restroom.

Professor Jeong headed for the VIP suite first. Seizing on Haeseo's absence, he meant to have a word in private—she'd already cried herself dry, so surely Ruby shouldn't scold her too harshly. Not that a lowly soul like himself carried any weight, of course.

Scritch. Sliding the door open, he found Ruby already awake and sitting up in bed.

"Ah, young master. You're up?"

"Professor."

Hm? Sensing something off, Professor Jeong pushed his glasses up his nose.

He'd joined Baek Sarang Hospital around the time Ruby started elementary school, so the title young master was by far the most familiar to him—but he hadn't used it since Ruby formally joined BH Group. An unwritten rule of the Baek family, you might say.

And yet here was Ruby, raising no question at all about this casual relic of an old nickname.

"Why am I lying in a hospital?"

"Well, young mas—"

"Oh! Team Leader, you really are awake! Oh thank goodness."

Before Professor Jeong could get a word out, Haeseo—face scrubbed pink and raw—popped up from behind him. Whether it was relief at the sight of Ruby awake and whole, or something else entirely, she smiled through her puffy, swollen eyes with heartbreaking sweetness.

Ruby's gaze slid past Professor Jeong to her—and his eyes went wide in a heartbeat. As though he'd just seen someone utterly unexpected.

"Haeseo..."

At the sound of his own lips shaping her name, Professor Jeong let out a sigh that cost him ten years of his life. He was just telling himself it was a harmless overreaction when—

"Noona."

Haeseo's footsteps stopped dead on her way to the bed. In the sudden silence of the hospital room, that low, pleasant voice spoke again.

"Noona... why are you here..."

Even on the phone, Haeseo kept bowing her head as if Baek Yoon-ah were standing right in front of her.

Of all times—Yoon-ah was in the middle of an extended business trip to Türkiye, chasing the massive Middle Eastern capital investment that Chairman Baek so desperately wanted. Having to deliver her son's devastating news to that woman was agony beyond words.

Ruby, who had called her noona, retained his memories only up to his early twenties. From his perspective, then, he had been about to leave the country to start university—and woken up instead in a hospital in Seoul, Korea.

President Baek's razor-sharp voice pierced Haeseo's ears.

Baek Sarang Hospital belonged to the BH Foundation—which meant that for anyone of Baek blood, it was a place to be treated like royalty. And medical records had a way of slipping out the back door, too.

Professor Jeong had deliberately left no diagnosis of amnesia in the official record, discharging Ruby under the pretense of a full recovery.

The fury in Baek Yoon-ah's voice subsided, if only slightly. Her worry for her son remained as fierce as ever, but with the most urgent fire put out, she seemed to have steadied herself a little.

Noh Joo-hee was Baek Huhan's wife—Yoon-ah's sister-in-law. The couple had never had children of their own. And yet when Baek Huhan, on the very brink of death, had moved to register Baek Gi-baek in the family registry, Noh Joo-hee had enthusiastically approved.

So long as the Baek household had some child to call its own, even one not of her body, she could hold on to her place as its eldest daughter-in-law.

"In any case, Gi-baek must never find out what state Ruby is in. He'll tear himself apart for an excuse to pull him down!"

Ruby had been steadily consolidating his position in the line of succession, with an executive promotion just within reach.

Granted, Gi-baek currently held the higher title—but judged on present performance and the pace of his rise, there was no telling how the balance might tip going forward.

If anyone was going to stop Ruby in his tracks, now was the opportunity of a lifetime.