Gone Without a Word

Ever since the day she had half fallen into Ji-hoon's arms, I-eum felt as though she'd been placed under a spell.

She had only to look up at the clear blue sky and his face appeared in it; the fallen leaves rustling in the wind carried his scent. Even the listening tracks in her English practice seemed to speak in his voice.

To her, the entire world had become one vast Sung Ji-hoon.

I-eum recognized it for what it was — lovesickness — but having made the diagnosis, she could find no cure. And so the symptoms only deepened, which was perhaps why, by some twist of fate, every chance encounter with Ji-hoon abruptly dried up around that time.

Before she knew it, the college entrance exam was a month away. The final countdown had truly begun.

"All right, one month to go. From here on out, the goal isn't to try anything new — it's to hold steady on everything you've already done. Everyone understands, right?"

"Yes, sir!"

True to its reputation as the school that produced the most elite university acceptances in the country, the entire atmosphere at Haeseong High School shifted. The playing fields were off-limits to every grade outside of class hours; anyone who made a ruckus in the cafeteria or the school store earned demerits. The latest pop songs that had once drifted through the lunch hour were replaced with classical music said to aid concentration.

The whole school was rallying around its exam students — and not one bit of it helped I-eum at all.

Couldn't run into him today, either.

Because Ji-hoon had vanished without a trace these past several days.

She called at the Board Chairman's office every day, but each time there was no sign of life inside. Not even his shadow crossed the courtyard or the hallways.

At this point, she would have believed it if someone told him he'd ascended into the sky or sunk into the earth. She was just debating whether she ought to ask his homeroom teacher where he'd gone when someone came looking for her.

"Yeon I-eum."

She looked up to find Koo Sung-joon.

"I've got something to say. Can you come out for a minute?"

"I've got nothing to say to you."

"It'll only take a second."

She wasn't happy about it, but she couldn't simply keep ignoring him either. Besides, curiosity got the better of her — he was leaving to study abroad soon, and she couldn't imagine he'd come back to torment her at this point.

"Here."

And then, having led her all the way to a deserted stairwell, what he held out was an adorably patterned pouch.

"What's this?"

"For good luck on your exam."

"…What?"

When I-eum's face registered sheer astonishment, the rims of Sung-joon's ears flushed a deep red.

"Don't make such a big deal out of it. I want you to get into the college you want. You're smart, aren't you?"

I-eum squeezed the pouch, probing it with her fingers. Something hard, something crinkly — chocolate, probably, and a letter or two.

"Did the teacher… no, did the Chairman put you up to this?"

"Hey, do I seriously look like that much of a piece of garbage to you?"

"You look exactly that much, which is why I'm asking."

Sung-joon pulled an aggrieved face.

"This is from me. For real. I already got down on my knees and apologized, remember? And the Chairman isn't even at the school anymore."

At that, a single sentence hooked itself into her attention and yanked.

"What do you mean, he's not at the school?"

"You didn't know? Word is he went back to the company he used to work at. The whole class freaked out about it for a while."

For a moment, the air refused to enter her lungs. It felt as though something heavy had swung hard into the back of her head.

When?

All this time, Ji-hoon hadn't said a single word to her about it.

"Anyway, this is a hundred percent pure sincerity from me. Honestly, I picked on you before because getting turned down in front of everyone was humiliating. But liking you — that part was real. So here's the thing. After we graduate, keep in touch with me, and—"

Sung-joon never got to finish. I-eum was already tearing down the stairs like an arrow loosed from a bow.

Her heart pounded. Her feet slipped on the steps and she nearly toppled head over heels more than once, but she didn't stop.

She sprinted the length of the long corridor and at last stood before the Chairman's office — the door she had knocked on every day to no answer, the door that had always sent her away. She flung it open with all her strength.

Clunk.

It wouldn't open.

As I-eum stood frozen with her hand still gripping the handle, a passing teacher spotted her.

"What are you doing over there?"

"Where's the Chairman? Is he somewhere else?"

But the teacher's eyes dropped to the color of I-eum's name tag, and he clicked his tongue.

"A third-year, hanging around here? Get back to your classroom."

I-eum couldn't believe it. The thought that she might never see Ji-hoon again brought tears surging up out of nowhere.

At that very moment, Ji-hoon was sitting across from his father, Sung Gil-joon.

A few days earlier, he had been summoned without warning to the head office. The scene he'd caused at that hotel restaurant over the weekend had reached the Chairman's ears.

"What exactly do you think you're doing?"

Gil-joon asked the question with a hand pressed to his forehead.

"Is it really that hard to live the way the Chairman tells you to?"

"You think that's easy?"

At the shameless retort, Gil-joon slowly lifted his head. His face said he had all but given up on his one and only son.

The order his own father had handed down to his grandson had been simple: stay out of the company, keep a low profile, and while you're at it, pick yourself a woman to marry. Ji-hoon should have been grateful the punishment was so light given the scale of the incident — instead, he'd gone and beaten a sitting National Assembly member to a pulp. This was the kind of affair where no one could complain if the old man struck his name from the family register on the spot.

"Assemblyman Park is throwing a fit, swearing he'll press charges."

"That bastard can't."

"And how would you know that?"

"He offered a girl alcohol laced with sleeping pills. To a minor, no less."

Ji-hoon's jaw clenched hard as the memory of that day came back to him. He should have snapped the man's neck right there. He regretted letting him live, if only because Min-jae had grabbed his arm and begged him not to.

Of course, I-eum squeezing her eyes shut like a terrified baby chick had been on his mind too.

"Fine, say that's what happened. What business was it of yours?"

"The way you put it, sir, it sounds like you're telling me to give up on being human."

"How did you even know which room to walk into?"

It had been a private suite. Anyone could have already reported how he'd ransacked the place like a madman, kicking open every last door until he found the right one.

"She was Assemblyman Yeon Ho-nam's granddaughter."

Truthfully, Ji-hoon hated hearing about I-eum out of Gil-joon's mouth more than anything.

"What exactly is she to you?"

"To me? Nothing. She's just a student at my school."

"Since when did you care so much about that school?"

This was the boy who used to whine that school was boring and he didn't want to go, who grumbled all the way to the moment they threw him out of the head office, begging to be shipped off to some provincial branch instead. And now, of all things, my school.

"I asked Director Joo. She says you walked the girl all the way home yourself."

"And in that rain, should I have just left her there? I couldn't even tell if she was dressed or undressed."

"What matters is that keeping that appointment mattered more to you than meeting Ri-won. That dinner was arranged by the Chairman so you could apologize to her."

Restless, Ji-hoon tipped his head back against the chair. His trapezius muscles had been stiff and aching ever since he returned to the head office — an unmistakable sign of stress.

"Father. Whatever you're thinking right now, I don't know — but that girl is a minor."

"She'll be twenty in less than two months."

Gil-joon narrowed his eyes, as if to say he had no idea what Ji-hoon was driving at, then let out a low sigh and spoke.

"That child is going to marry Assemblyman Park. As it turns out, that dinner was arranged so the two of them could discuss the match."

"…"

"If you block that too, they won't sit still for it. So stop. How far down do you intend to be demoted?"

Ji-hoon had crushed a man — a sitting assemblyman, no less — into absolute ruin, and yet the incident still hadn't appeared in a single news outlet. That alone was proof of how relentlessly the company had been flexing its power behind the scenes.

But from the moment the word marry left Gil-joon's lips, Ji-hoon stopped hearing his father's voice entirely.

"Am I supposed to pretend I don't know what happened that day?"

"You're asking me to hide behind that man?"

Ji-hoon, the memory of I-eum from that day rising before his eyes, quietly clenched his fist and asked.

"Does she want it? Does that girl actually want to be sold off to some middle-aged bastard thirty years older than her? Just like Mother was."

"What did you say?"

Ji-hoon didn't wait for an answer. He shoved back his chair and was on his feet.

"Sung Ji-hoon!"

Gil-joon's furious shout rang out behind him, but he didn't stop — he strode straight out of the Vice Chairman's office. The secretaries on standby sprang to their feet with a flurry of bows as he blew past, and without so much as a glance, Ji-hoon hurled his car keys at Min-jae, who came tumbling out after him.

"You drive."

"Sir?"

Oblivious to Min-jae's bewilderment, Ji-hoon stepped into the elevator, dragging in hot, ragged breaths.

The world had gone completely insane.

I-eum is going to marry Assemblyman Park. The words spun round and round in his skull, refusing to stop.