The Personal Secretary System

Ruby had spent the entire time thinking about how he could make Haeseo regret losing him. While studying, he imagined the day she'd read a news article about his success, proudly splashed across the media; while working out, the thought of sculpting a perfect body to win her over always came first.

Even after turning twenty and crossing into adulthood, that sixteen-year-old brat inside him had never once left.

Swallowing back his dry throat, Ruby hid every trace of emotion from his face as he stared at the woman in front of him.

"Hm? Even the small stuff is fine. Tell me anything you remember."

Even after he'd cleared his throat, Ruby said nothing more, and Haeseo's voice trembled with unease.

Hmm…….

Ten years after that — meaning, ever since I turned twenty-six, she'd been employed as my personal secretary, right there beside me.

"Professor Jeong told me to say out loud anything that comes back, even if it's tiny, and to talk with the people around me as much as I can."

A fleeting smile too faint to be seen crossed Ruby's face as he pressed a hand to his forehead and feigned a slight stagger.

"Oh? Ruby, are you okay?"

And right on cue. Haeseo, pale as a sheet, hopped over to catch him. Ruby bent his upper body forward, obediently pretending to lean into her. He looped an arm around her shoulder, but never actually shifted his weight. Even so, Haeseo groaned and threw every ounce of her strength into hauling his massive frame toward the sofa.

Poor thing.

Thump — he dropped down onto the sofa exactly where she guided him.

"Hold on, I'll get you some water."

Haeseo darted off to the kitchen. Every movement was so practiced that she looked far more like the owner of this house than the man who'd supposedly forgotten it.

She apparently hadn't grown an inch since high school — still that tiny little body — and watching her, Ruby finally burst into the laughter he'd been holding back. So in the end, after all the winding roads, Haeseo had come right back to his side, hadn't she.

Ruby leaned fully against the backrest and spread his legs with easy abandon. It was so natural, as if it were a motion he'd always made.

Honestly, when he first heard the explanation about his amnesia, even he had been thrown. The mirror had shocked him the most. The face staring back, barely distinguishable yesterday from his high school graduation photo, now carried a maturity he had never once experienced.

When he first came face to face with Professor Jeong and Haeseo at the hospital, he couldn't have guessed that much time had passed. The professor had always looked old for his age and now seemed to finally be settling into it — but Haeseo, that little…….

He'd last seen her at eighteen, and this was the first time since, yet honestly his only thought was that she looked identical — like she'd been cryogenically frozen. No, wait. Not identical. She'd gotten fucking gorgeous.

A bare, unmade-up face flushed red only around the eyes. He'd imagined their reunion in hundreds of different versions over the years, but never in his wildest dreams had he expected it to begin with her in a hospital gown and his dick standing at full attention.

He'd been fed explanation after explanation on the way here, and none of it mattered. Only one thing did: he was with Haeseo.

Ruby felt not a single shred of regret about his amnesiac present. If they'd only reunited at twenty-six, it would have meant six more years of the same gloomy, suffocating waiting as the four before. Skipping all of that and having Haeseo appear right before his eyes made him feel like the luckiest bastard alive.

It was like a full twelve-course royal feast spontaneously spreading itself out before a graceless wretch who'd flipped the table and walked away.

And if something had changed, it was that the present him had grown enough to gratefully eat the meal laid out before him instead of overturning it. Grown — or you might say, gone soft.

Ruby's eyes gleamed slyly as he watched Haeseo walk toward him.

"Here, Ruby. Yin-yang water — I poured the boiling water first, then topped it with cold. Oh, and the one-minute wait is already done. You can drink it right away."

She held out the mug, murmuring something, but not a word of it registered. She was so practiced at it, you'd think someone had drilled this bizarre ritual into her over and over. Didn't matter. Ruby's eyes were fixed solely on Haeseo's lips — both of them so plump that they bounced softly off each other with every word she spoke.

"I'll drink it later. Put it on the table and come here."

"Huh? Okay."

The tilt of her head carried the full weight of her complaint — why won't you drink it when I just brought it to you — but Ruby ignored it. Instead a short laugh escaped him, pfft. Even her habits hadn't changed.

Haeseo carefully perched on the very edge of the seat beside him.

"Aren't you sitting a little too far away?"

Ruby reached out, wrapped an arm around her waist, and pulled her flush against his body. The whole woman came along in barely a handful. Throb — his crotch swelled full against that soft flesh.

"Eek!"

Unlike Ruby — mental age a brisk twenty, fully prepared to tear her clothes off on the spot — Haeseo sprang upward as if deploying some last-ditch defense. Both arms flapped like wings before she slid clean off, dropping below the sofa.

After a whole lot of crashing and clattering, Haeseo remained seated on the floor, angling her upper body as far from Ruby as she possibly could while she barely managed to smooth down her tangled hair.

"Wh-what— what are you doing?"

Having watched that entire lengthy slapstick routine, Ruby was the one who wanted to ask.

"Why are you dodging?"

"Dodging? You were the one trying to hug me!"

She was the original architect of what Ruby had become, so he had sworn to treat her with the utmost tenderness — but he couldn't hold back the shout. He'd lost his memory, so why on earth was she the one trying to initiate s-skinship?

In that instant, the memory of himself in the office — trying to pull her into his arms while hunting down the woman who'd fled — flashed through his mind, and his body bolted before his brain could weigh a single thought.

At her words, Ruby frowned as though even more hopelessly lost.

"You said you're my personal secretary, noona."

"Yes."

"Doesn't that mean we're that kind of relationship? Where we've, you know, done everything?"

"What— no!"

Haeseo shouted even louder than she had a moment ago.

"A secretary helps manage schedules and daily life, that's all. Like I said earlier, the representative — your mother — scouted me personally."

What kind of degenerate was twenty-year-old Baek Ruby, that her mind jumps straight there? Haeseo couldn't fathom it. And leaping straight into bed with a woman he could have……. Wasn't he supposed to be a believer in pre-marital chastity?

Lost in her own tangled thoughts, Haeseo failed to notice that Ruby, several shocks deep, was sitting there wearing an equally dopey expression.

What the fuck has Baek Ruby been doing these twenty-nine years? Ten years of spiritual training and you ended up a eunuch? Even amid all this, Ruby stared blankly down at the member still pulsing between his legs. Judging by how it stood up at the drop of a hat, though, apparently not.

Personal secretary, his ass — now that he'd reunited with Haeseo, he'd simply assumed the relationship had naturally blossomed into lovers. But judging by her reaction, her wariness toward him seemed to have grown far worse than back in their student days. Lovers weren't even in the picture.

"Then why does noona live with me?"

"That's — temporary. Because of my mistake, you lost your memory……. So until you get it back, we're living together for now, just so I can keep a close eye on you."

So that's how it is. Ruby gave a small nod. The old him had apparently failed to milk this arrangement for all it was worth like a proper idiot, but the personal secretary system seemed genuinely excellent.

Haeseo, working for him and him alone. Ruby crossed his legs.

"While we're living here in this house together, I'll work hard so you can get your memory back fast. So don't worry too much. I'll pull together all the know-how I honed while taking care of you — anything's possible. You just cooperate, okay?"

By now she was kneeling in perfect formal posture, raising a fist with the expression of a soldier heading to war. Ruby looked down at the display of pure obedience with a blank face, and his eyebrows quirked in a peculiar way.

"By the way, noona."

"Hm?"

"Did I talk casually with you before I lost my memory too? With the superior I was 'serving'?"

Elbow propped on the armrest, body stretched out in lazy insolence, Ruby curled the corner of his mouth upward. Good lord. It was Team Leader Baek Ruby, undeniably and completely.

"Oh? Um. That's — no……. I'm sorry."

Like one of Pavlov's dogs lowering its tail, Haeseo smoothly set her raised fist down neatly atop her thigh.

At the same moment, a bright haha of laughter drifted down from above. Whatever could be so funny, Ruby laughed for quite a while, the corners of his eyes crinkling.

"No, I'm kidding. Don't use formal speech with me."

"Really? Really, though? I mean — really?"

"Yeah. I like it better this way."

Ruby wiped the lingering laughter from the corner of his eye. There was another change the personal secretary position had wrought, too.

This Haeseo who reacted instantly to his every move and swayed at his every word was a fresh and stimulating novelty. The old Ruby was savoring it with quiet, devious delight. What a fucking pervert.

"Got it."

"And come sit back over here."

Ruby tapped the spot beside him, shooting a glance at the nodding Haeseo. She rose with a doubtful look and lowered herself onto the sofa with only the very edge of her backside touching it — and Ruby abruptly closed the distance.

"……Isn't this too close?"

And yet she didn't leave the sofa. His custom-made Haeseo, incapable of defying a single word from his mouth.

The old, perverted twenty-nine-year-old Baek Ruby might have been content to stay like this, but I am not. I'm going to push things forward. By any means necessary.

"I don't want you far away from me."

Ruby bowed his head and leaned it against Haeseo's shoulder. His unstyled, fluffy hair tickled her cheek.

"Honestly, ever since I lost my memory, I've been so anxious. But you…… you said you'd take care of me, noona."