How Exactly Did You Know About the Lawyer?

"Dad, don't pack your things for the hospital yet. We've still got a few days, so take your time packing with me."

"All right. But why are you leaving for work so early?"

"I have debts to pay."

"Debts?"

"I'll explain later. I'm off."

She waved to her father and stepped out the front door.

Seol-hee slipped through the shared entrance on the first floor of the villa, where—as always at exactly this hour—she ran into the Villa Landlady, broom in hand, sweeping the fourth-floor landing.

"Good morning."

The woman, who had been glaring with evident displeasure at cigarette butts tossed into the flower bed, looked up.

"Off to work?"

The landlady still pinned the hair beside both her ears with bobby pins, insisting on a tidy style without a single strand escaping loose.

"Yes, I am. Thank you for the bobby pin, by the way."

Seol-hee held out a plastic bag containing the bobby pin she'd borrowed from her on the day of her interview, along with two pairs of small mini hair clips.

The unexpected gift seemed to catch the woman off guard.

"I only lent you one bobby pin."

"An account has to be settled precisely. Consider the rest the interest."

The clips were set with three cubic zirconia stones apiece, each no bigger than a finger's knuckle—and in brown, the color she favored.

Whether she minded or not, the corner of the landlady's mouth twitched.

"Well, I must say, you keep a fine ledger."

Pretending to be swayed, the woman accepted the gift.

"Then, I'll be going."

She was just about to turn away when—

"Don't stay out too late. Be careful."

"I'm sorry?"

The landlady glanced around and lowered her voice to a whisper.

"There's been a suspicious man hanging around the building lately."

"A man?"

"Just yesterday, I was coming back from walking Mija, and he was loitering right up ahead, sneaking glances at your place."

Mija was the Maltese the landlady doted on.

"Our place?"

"Yes—third floor, on the right. He stood right there and kept looking up like this."

The landlady tilted her eyes upward, mimicking the man's gaze.

"Anyway, be careful. Keep an eye on your surroundings at all times."

"I will. Thank you."

The woman waved as she offered her parting warning.

Hyper-vigilant about whether someone might be watching her, Seol-hee made her way to the bus stop.

Once at work, she tried to guess who the man the landlady had described might be.

Could it be Jjin-ddong-cha?

There was no way that bastard would simply let things go.

And surely, if he'd come all the way to her building, he would have contacted her.

Then who on earth could it be?

Just then, a memory from before her regression flickered across her mind—the moment the tanker truck had come barreling down on her, and the cruel conversation she'd overheard with death right before her eyes.

'Looks like she's dead?'

'F***, I told you we couldn't let her die!'

Recalling that memory made her heart pound for no good reason.

She shook her head, determined to focus on work.

"Mmph."

A shallow groan drifted over the partition beside her. Mouse still in hand, Seol-hee leaned her head back just enough to peek.

Da-yoon was hunched halfway over her desk, clutching her stomach.

Is she sick somewhere?

A glance at the desk told the story: the lid of her tumbler sat open, and painkiller wrappers were scattered about.

The pain must have been severe, because her gaunt shoulders were trembling.

Looks like period cramps.

Seol-hee knew that time of month well herself; at its worst, she could barely even stand.

As she watched with worry, Im Team Leader pressed his nose against his monitor and called for Da-yoon.

"Assistant Manager Kang. Come over here for a second. There's a function that only sums up the entries matching these conditions, isn't there?"

Groaning, Da-yoon forced herself to straighten her back.

That was when Seol-hee's hand shot up.

"I-I'll do it!"

"Oh, Seol-hee. Can you handle Excel?"

Im Team Leader narrowed his eyes doubtfully.

Seol-hee rose from her seat.

"I have a computer literacy certification. What do you need done?"

"Then would you take a look at this for me, Seol-hee?"

She hurried over to Im Team Leader and studied his monitor. It was a perfectly solvable problem.

"For multiple conditions like this, you'd use SUMIFS."

She wrote out the formula with the function, matched the conditions—and the result appeared immediately.

"Oh, would you look at that. Wow. Thanks."

It was a certification she'd earned back in college to prepare for job hunting. She'd let it gather dust for years, but her recent restudying had paid off.

As she made her way back to her desk, Da-yoon was still clutching her stomach and groaning.

Seol-hee sat down and rummaged through her handbag. She peeled the packaging off a disposable heat pack, shook it vigorously until she could feel the warmth blooming to life, then slyly slid it over the partition.

Da-yoon poked her head up, puzzled—and their eyes met.

The two eyes half-hidden behind her bangs held curiosity and wariness in equal measure.

Seol-hee whispered softly.

"I just finished mine a few days ago. It's a spare, so feel free to use it. Oh, and this, too."

She emptied her snack pouch from her bag, generously offering apple-flavored candies and mini chocolates.

Da-yoon reflexively took them in both hands.

"If the painkillers you take aren't working well, try these. They'll calm the pain right down. Effectiveness guaranteed!"

She gently placed two of the painkillers she usually took herself on top of the snacks Da-yoon was holding.

Da-yoon blinked a couple of times, gave a barely perceptible nod, and slipped quietly back behind the partition.

I hope the medicine works for her.

Perhaps because of the two of them whispering back and forth, Ye-jun, seated across from Seol-hee, glanced their way.

She curved her eyes into a smile as if it were nothing, then threw herself back into work.

The morning hours passed, and lunchtime arrived right on schedule.

The moment the clock struck twelve, Da-yoon vanished.

The relief was that she'd slipped out of the office as fluidly and swiftly as ever.

Thank goodness. Looks like she's back on her feet.

Seol-hee picked up her wallet and stood as well.

"Sorry to keep leaving you to eat alone. I have a lunch appointment with the department head…"

They had all planned to go to the Italian Restaurant together yesterday, but the planning director's usual lunch companion had gone off on a business trip, so Im Team Leader and Ye-jun had been drafted as substitutes and the group lunch was postponed.

If anything, Seol-hee was glad of it.

"No problem at all. I like eating alone."

It was even better this way—eating solo let her organize her thoughts.

"Well then, enjoy your lunch."

Seol-hee hurried out of the office and headed for the convenience store three blocks away—a distance she'd deliberately chosen.

Nearly every restaurant nearby was packed with office workers, and the wait could stretch on and on. Better to grab something quick at the convenience store and make good use of the rest of the hour, she'd calculated.

Settling into a seat by the window, Seol-hee finished off a triangular gimbap and a cup of ramen, then pulled out her planner.

Bzzt—

The phone on the table gave a short buzz. Assuming it was her father, she checked—only to find it was Dong-chan.

"And they say even a stray dog comes when it's called."

With a sigh, she read through the nonsense he'd sent with listless, indifferent eyes.

Seol-hee was dumbfounded.

"Father, he says. Where does he get off."

She clicked her tongue.

"Anyone watching would think he actually cared."

Not worth a reply, she flipped her phone face-down.

She bent back over her planner, scribbling out her plans for the days ahead.

Chime—

At the sound of the door chime, Seol-hee glanced up absently.

"Huh?"

The person walking into the convenience store was Da-yoon.

She forcibly suppressed the urge to raise her hand in a friendly greeting, and gave only a small nod instead.

Da-yoon's eyes went round, and she scurried off into the aisles. Having expected exactly that reaction, Seol-hee returned to her planner.

So far, everything had been unfolding smoothly, right on plan.

But there was one problem.

"I need more money."

Her father's cancer was located close to the esophagus.

The doctor had explained that lymph node metastasis couldn't be ruled out, and that scar tissue from his past surgery raised the possibility of adhesions.

The scope of the operation might have to expand depending on what they found mid-surgery, the doctor continued—and while robotic surgery might offer better outcomes, it wasn't covered by insurance, so it would be costly.

She wanted to choose the safest option.

The problem was money.

With the purchase price of their new home stacked on top, the amount she had to shoulder had already pushed past her limits.

In the end, she would have to make a decision.

The time had come to go and find her father's relatives.

Back before her father's death—when he was barely clinging to life on palliative care in his hospital room—distant relatives had come to visit.

It was because of the land her late grandmother had left him.

It sat near the family burial grounds, a plot that the whole extended family had farmed and tended together for years.

At the time, her father—unable to care for his own mother and forced to live apart from her, his health already failing—hadn't been in any position to press his claims to the inheritance.

Only much later did Seol-hee learn the truth: in the end, he had written them a memorandum renouncing his inheritance.

"Filthy people."

It was a story she'd pried out of the nurses, piece by piece. They'd come to his room and forced the memorandum out of a man who could barely speak.

Seol-hee remembered the address and mobile number of one of those relatives with perfect clarity.

It was thanks to In-ok's investigation back when she was her mother-in-law. The background checks before the marriage had been an outrage at the time—but looking back now, she could only be grateful. The woman had saved her the time and money of hunting a person down.

"Will it really have to go all the way to a lawsuit?"

They'd called it a modest sum, but these days she couldn't afford to lose a single won.

Seol-hee wrote the word lawyer in her planner and circled it twice, emphatically.

In the meantime, customers drifted in and out of the store buying cigarettes, coffee, and the like, and the chime above the door rang without pause.

Against the backdrop of that endless chiming, Seol-hee chewed absently on the end of her pen.

It couldn't hurt to prepare thoroughly before meeting the relatives. Add a consultation with a lawyer to advise her on the inheritance dispute, and her position would be beyond reproach.

"Being sued, are we?"

"AAH!"

Startled by the voice that seemed to come out of nowhere, Seol-hee jerked her head up.

Seated in a chair he'd pulled up beside her was Do Yi-hyuk.

A candy on a stick dangling from his mouth, he glanced down at the word lawyer in her planner and smiled.

Seol-hee's brow twitched.

What is with this man?