For Ruby — Episode 3

It was around New Year's last year, the day Baek Yoon-ah had summoned Haeseo to her second home. Though Haeseo lived with Chairman Baek at the main residence, the woman kept a high-rise apartment in Gangnam as her own private space.

Since Baek Yoon-ah worked with absolutely no concept of business hours, days off—truly whole days off like today—were few and far between. Haeseo had thought the weather was nice for a reason, and sure enough, the president had preemptively called Ruby back to the main house, blocking any chance of him summoning her instead.

Having thus thoroughly separated Ruby from her, Baek Yoon-ah got to the point of her earnest instruction: Haeseo was to keep watch so that Ruby never got involved with a woman. If he did, something terrible would happen to him.

At a loss for how to respond, Haeseo covered her mouth first.

"You're not buying a word of it, so put your hand down. Who'd have thought such an innocent-looking kid could act this disgustingly well."

"……"

"Do I have to say it again?"

"No, ma'am."

Like begets like—sowing beans yields beans. Haeseo straightened her posture, thinking Baek Yoon-ah and Ruby were remarkably alike after all.

"Believe it or don't, it makes no difference to me. Just do exactly as you're told."

"Yes, ma'am……"

At that point she could well have told Haeseo to get out. Instead, Baek Yoon-ah sipped her coffee and fell silent for a while—long enough to be lost in thought.

"Do you think you can remember, at your age? Our Ruby, when he was four."

She spoke up suddenly, breaking the quiet as Haeseo obediently nibbled cake beside her.

If Ruby had been four, Haeseo would have been six. She had no memory from that far back. Only a few faint, drifting images remained.

'Wh-who are you?'

'Hehe. I'm your noona. Noona.'

Haeseo shook her head briskly, scattering the images that had surfaced unbidden, and answered.

"What I do remember is that outsiders came and went through Baekrimjae constantly."

Day and night, people carrying enormous bags crossed the mansion's threshold several times a day.

So often that even Haeseo, who mostly played alone digging in the dirt in the garden in front of the servants' quarters, couldn't help but notice the commotion.

"Right. Those were all the doctors they brought in from across the country to save Ruby."

"I'm sorry—what?"

This time Haeseo was genuinely startled, her eyes going round.

"He came back from the dead, that boy."

The story, casually summarized as ancient history, went something like this.

The baby had been born perfectly healthy, but from the age when he'd started babbling, he fell ill constantly, and by that point there were many days his fever ran so high it wouldn't have surprised anyone if he simply died.

"I thought I was going out of my mind. You can't imagine what that was like."

"No. That must have been so hard for you."

To think the legendary Ruby had been that sickly as a child. Knowing his face from those days made it all the more heartbreaking, and Haeseo's brow furrowed deeply.

"Never mind. Fix your face, kid. What good does knowing do? Past thirty and still making that exact puckered little mouse face."

Baek Yoon-ah grinned as she scolded, scrunching up her features. That was what it meant to take after someone—like Baek Ruby.

Haeseo closed her mouth, hiding the two front teeth that ran slightly larger than the rest.

"Desperate times, desperate measures—I looked into every powerful shaman I could find. One of them casually demanded tens of billions of won for a single rite. As blinded as I was by my son's illness, did they think I couldn't tell a two-bit con artist from the real thing?"

Baek Yoon-ah was certainly not a woman to be taken so lightly.

"But the Master Kim I met back then—he told me to change the baby's name."

"His name? So you formally renamed him?"

"Of course. You think I'm an idiot? Who names their son Ruby from birth? He's not a dog."

"Oh……"

So that was why. Having never given it much thought, Haeseo scratched her head. She'd half assumed he was named Ruby because his eyes glittered that same light brown.

"Master Kim said his energy was extraordinarily strong. If we gave him a powerful name, it would expose his innate aura and draw every stray spirit around to torment him. So the point was to hide the boy behind something pretty and delicate."

"……"

"I nearly wrote him off as a crank, too. So I asked what offering he wanted, and he said nothing at all. Then he just hung up on me first, if you can believe the nerve."

Grumbling now with feigned toughness, but Baek Yoon-ah had begun the name-change process on the spot. For reasons she couldn't explain, an instinct had urged her to act immediately.

The son reborn as Ruby went about rattling the entire mansion as though he'd never once been sick. All because of a name.

From then on, Baek Yoon-ah made Master Kim her family's reader of fates. Let everyone else call him a fraud—Jesus performed miracles with his own hands, didn't he?

"Master Kim is ruthless, let me tell you. If he blessed any random person with a windfall, wouldn't they be reciting novels' worth of fortune? But if he sees nothing, the man keeps his mouth shut tight. Always has. Then out of nowhere, I ask him to read Ruby's fortune for the new year, and he says this."

"Yes?"

Haeseo, now thoroughly engrossed in the story, leaned forward without realizing it as she answered.

"Ruby is to keep his body pure at all times."

"M-maybe some kind of cleansing ritual……?"

"That's not what he meant."

Baek Yoon-ah recoiled at Haeseo's approach, her features twisting roughly.

"He means not mixing bodies with a woman. Sex."

"……!"

At the blunt word, Haeseo clapped a hand over her mouth.

"He warned me, with the utmost gravity, that if Ruby ever lay with some unclean thing, everything he'd ever built would be stripped from him, all of it at once."

Thud. The mug came down with a bang far too loud to be an ordinary cup meeting a table, and the sound drove straight into Haeseo's ears.

"Everything our Ruby has ever built, all of it…… Hah. I hate even saying it out loud. Am I wrong? That will never happen, not as long as I draw breath."

Baek Yoon-ah was the second of three siblings, and the eldest daughter.

Though that was the only penalty she carried, she still could not become the heir to succeed Chairman Baek at BH Group. Not even at the moment her oh-so-glorious elder brother—the firstborn son—died of illness before their own father.

The youngest, her little brother, declared the moment he came of age that he'd live as a filmmaker, family ties be damned, and struck out on his own. Fine, she'd thought, let him become some legendary director—except when she looked into it, he was apparently doing art. He'd been her polar opposite in temperament from the day he was born.

Chairman Baek had long since stopped regarding him as a son he'd put forward, either. In effect, he quietly endorsed his son's way of living.

Which meant the next heir had to be the son she had carried and borne herself.

Not some bastard of the eldest son's who'd popped up out of nowhere.

Baek Yoon-ah's eyes flashed as she thought of Baek Gi-baek, who made a show of calling her "my aunt" around the office.

"That's why, Haeseo—you, above all, have to be good at fending women off."

"Wh-what do you mean, how……"

"Don't you dare get all dithering and try to judge each situation on its merits. If anyone so much as approaches Ruby, cut them off at the root. Any means necessary. Think of yourself as a boarding-school matron."

"Can I really do that……"

"Oh, please."

Baek Yoon-ah blinked in exaggerated disbelief, as if Haeseo had said something absurd.

"Who on earth knows the radius of Ruby's daily life better than you? Do you have any idea? There isn't one thing he eats, one place he sleeps, that doesn't pass through your hands. If you don't do it, who will?"

Which was, frankly, true.

Never quite certain where the boundaries of a personal secretary's duties began or ended, Haeseo did anything and everything Ruby directed.

If he said he wanted something to eat, she found it and presented it; if he was traveling, she scouted hotels to his taste. It had eventually escalated to the point where she got scolded because his toothbrush at home had run out.

Caregiving would honestly have been easier. At least the patient stays lying still.

"In any case, Ruby remains strictly celibate until he finds a proper marriage partner."

After all, this was a job that would saddle her not just with endless hand-holding, but with missions that defied all reason.

Baek Yoon-ah waved her off dismissively, clearly signaling it was time to go. And as she watched Haeseo rise halfway out of her seat, she added one final, very her-style warning.

"Oh. And if anything happens to Ruby…… Secretary Wi, you won't get off with just your neck. Consider that understood."

Threat—or request—Haeseo had been on high alert ever since. But nothing happened.

Because Ruby, to begin with, had no interest in women whatsoever. Before anyone could close even a single step of distance, he blew them away like a gale. It was practically his signature move.

'Um…… Team Leader, are you, by any chance, a believer in premarital chastity?'

'Uh, obviously. You're only supposed to do it with the person you marry, no?'

His refusal had been so intensely definitive that she'd braved the question—and hit the jackpot. He was actually practicing premarital chastity.

Granted, opinions could change anytime, but if things stayed like this, there might be no situation at all requiring her intervention for the foreseeable future? Thinking that, Haeseo gradually regained color in her face.

But every incident blooms out of complacency.

Summer—when the blazing sun relaxes not just one's vigilance but everything else into mush. Haeseo entered a new chapter of the mission when she followed Ruby on his business trip to Busan.

The purpose was an on-site inspection of the Muscle Beach promotion, held at what was legitimately the most popular beach in South Korea. It was a strength competition event with prizes of laptops and other electronics released by BH. There wasn't much for him to handle personally, but given the distance, he'd booked a hotel for the night as well.

Ruby and Haeseo walked across the packed sand, two figures in office attire among crowds of people freely half-naked.

With every step, the soft sand slid smoothly into her heels.

"Come on, hurry up."

"Ah—Team Leader, just a moment……"

Keeping up was hard enough with the difference in their leg lengths, but walking on sand was a genuine struggle for Haeseo. Unable to even walk in a straight line, she swayed this way and that while Ruby strode briskly ahead as if he were on asphalt.

"Oh, honestly."

Having made up her mind, Haeseo stopped briefly, slipped off her heels, and stood barefoot. Clutching both shoes in her right hand, she was lifting herself back up when a solid mass of flesh appeared before her eyes.

'……A stomach?'

When Haeseo tilted her head and looked all the way up, a man in nothing but swim trunks was holding out his phone toward her.

"Looks like you came here to work on such a gorgeous summer day. You don't seem pressed for time—just give me your number and I'll move."

"No, um, excuse me, could you step aside please?"

"Just the number, that's all I'm asking. It's the fastest way for everyone."

Every time Haeseo, eyebrows slanting in distress, edged sidelong around him, the man mirrored her movement and blocked her path again.

By now Ruby would have long since arrived at the destination, and she could see it plain as day: the scolding she'd get later about why she hadn't hurried to catch up.

Left with no choice, Haeseo took the man's phone. If she gave the number and simply never answered later, no harm done.

Just as she was about to press the next digit after one, zero, one—the man's phone shot up into the air with a sharp smack.

"And here I wondered what was taking you."