A Place Their Hands Cannot Reach

"Seol-hee made me porridge?"

Song-geun's face lit up.

The man who had been refusing to eat because nothing stayed down finished a whole bowl of the porridge his daughter had made for him, savoring every spoonful.

"It's delicious. With porridge like this, my daughter's going to make me hate hospital food."

He smiled awkwardly.

The surgery fee was still unresolved. That was why Seol-hee's heart ached watching her father dance around the fact that he wanted to postpone his hospitalization.

He had spent his entire life grinding away at construction sites. He was bound to fall short of what a loan required. A modest jeonse apartment on the outskirts of Seoul, scraped together with whatever he could save from hand-to-mouth daily wages, was the sum total of everything he'd built in his life.

Seol-hee set down her spoon.

"Dad, about the hospital bills."

Dong-chan had promised to lend them the money for her father's treatment the moment they married. Naturally, the agreement was that Seol-hee would pay it back by working after the wedding.

The truth, of course, was that she hadn't been allowed to take a single step outside the house — the loan had been nothing but a leash.

"Let's get out of this apartment. We'll pull the jeonse deposit and use it for your surgery."

"That's…."

"I know it's hard to let go. And I know you were saving it to pass on to me."

Seol-hee pressed on, persuading him.

What needed protecting wasn't this apartment. It was the precious person sitting in front of her.

"And we're changing hospitals, too."

Song-geun's eyes went wide with surprise.

"Why the hospital?"

"Dong-chan's the one who introduced this one in the first place. It's famous, sure, but honestly, I don't trust it. There's a hospital called Naum instead. They have an excellent gastroenterologist there."

"We barely managed to book a surgery date here as it is."

"Trust me."

He was a doctor who would one day make his name in gastric cancer surgery.

"They say he's extraordinarily skilled."

At the firm resolve in her voice, Song-geun fell silent for a moment, then nodded.

"If you say so… all right, then."

His words settled some of the anxiety knotted inside her.

"But if we pull out of this place for the surgery money, there won't be anywhere for us to live."

Song-geun let out a sigh, as if blaming himself.

"We're moving to Songhyeon-dong."

Seol-hee answered with absolute certainty. But her father's expression only darkened.

"That's an industrial district with crooked roads and terrible public safety."

It was an undesirable area — now. But Seol-hee knew.

She knew that this neighborhood would one day transform into a place of staggering value.

"That's exactly why we're going. With the jeonse deposit here and my income once I get a job, we can qualify for a loan. Even if it's a stretch, let's buy the place outright."

Picking up her chopsticks again, Seol-hee deftly deboned a piece of croaker and held it out to Song-geun.

Seeing his daughter, eyes crinkled as if to say just trust me, an awkward bewilderment crept across his face.

The croaker in his throat felt like it might catch there for good.

One week later.

Seol-hee accompanied her father to Naum Hospital.

Song-geun headed to the CT suite for his scans, and she sat in a chair in the waiting room, checking her email inbox on her phone.

"Am I getting rejected at the document screening stage on all of them?"

A sigh escaped her unbidden.

She had sent out resumes everywhere she hoped to work. And time after time, she'd come up empty.

"How is there not a single place willing to even give me an interview?"

Something felt off.

Then, this very morning — her third day back working at the convenience store she'd quit over the wedding — a text had arrived.

It was obvious who had done this.

Seol-hee let out a long breath.

It has to be Madam Yeo In-ok.

She had suspected as much when her applications kept dying at the document stage. But now that even her part-time job had been cut, she was certain.

She honestly hadn't expected them to block even a convenience store job.

"So they're cutting off every last source of money I have, huh?"

To the boss, who kept messaging apologies, Seol-hee sent reassurance after reassurance that it was fine.

She'd worked there all four years of university. They were close enough that he'd lent her money in emergencies. If anything, she was the one who owed him more.

Weariness suddenly crashed over her.

What do I do?

A jolt of fear shot through her — what if she never got hired, ever again?

Her throat was dry. She filled a cup with cold water at the water purifier and walked out into the lobby.

Think, Woo Seol-hee!

How on earth did Dong-chan find out every place she sent a resume?

Just then, something flashed through her mind.

"No way."

She stopped dead and quickly pulled up the login history on her email account.

Her brow slowly twisted.

"You absolute piece-of-trash ex!"

Her grip tightened around her phone.

Among the login records were traces of access from devices she had never used.

Every one of them belonged to Dong-chan.

Everything clicked into place.

Dong-chan had tracked down every company she'd applied to by email and told In-ok, and she had pulled every string in her considerable network to make sure Seol-hee's applications died in the screening pile.

"These people. Unbelievable."

It was outright criminal.

Her heart slammed down hard, once.

Seol-hee breathed out slowly, steadying herself.

First, she took screenshots of everything. Then she logged out of all sessions at once and changed her password to something completely new.

I have to find a place.

A place their hands couldn't reach — somewhere beyond the influence of In-ok and Dong-chan.

They might even contact a company she was applying to through some channel she didn't know about.

Just then, her gaze, sweeping the hospital lobby bulletin board, snagged on one corner. She strode over and studied a poster intently.

"The Shinwol Foundation…."

Dong-chan's irritable voice wormed its way back into her ears.

Son of a— those Shinwol Foundation people!

She remembered.

The district where Dong-chan had run in the local election lay squarely within the Shinwol Foundation's sphere of influence.

It was the largest public-interest foundation in the country, providing most of the region's medical benefits and scholarships and maintaining deep bonds with local residents.

"The Shinwol Foundation's original founder was in opposition to the very party Dong-chan belongs to."

Dong-chan had blamed the Shinwol Foundation for his first electoral defeat.

Which meant it might be the one place in all of Korea where the power of Dong-chan and In-ok simply couldn't reach.

"It's more than worth a try."

The Shinwol Foundation meant safety. Pass the document screening, and she'd get an interview. Done well, she might actually land the job.

Seol-hee immediately pulled up the Shinwol Foundation website on her phone and tapped the recruitment section.

"Please, please… Ah! There it is."

It was a job posting for the External Cooperation Team and the HR Team.

She calmed herself and read slowly down the list of qualifications.

And one line stood out.

Seol-hee searched her memory for any professor who had been kind to her. And one face surfaced.

"If it's Professor Kim…"

The application deadline was barely days away.

Her heart began to race.

The next day.

Seol-hee headed to the university to get her letter of recommendation.

It happened to be festival season, and the campus was teeming with students.

Rain had fallen until dawn, leaving puddles everywhere, but the students busy pitching tents and manning booths and hawking passersby were so full of life that just watching them was a joy.

"Ah, I've missed this. This familiar air."

Her part-time jobs had kept her so busy that she'd barely joined any campus activities beyond her studies, but the energy here was exactly as she remembered it from ten years ago.

Walking toward the main academic building, Seol-hee replayed yesterday's phone call with Professor Kim Seok-joon.

Fortunately, he had recognized her at once.

After all, she'd been the only student in his course to earn an A+.

From business plans to performance metrics to the logic of budget allocation, his assignments and exams had been brutal even for her.

But that was exactly what had made her memorable to such a demanding professor.

He had readily agreed to write the recommendation.

"Can't have my only A+ student crashing and burning, can I."

Carrying a plastic bag in one hand — an iced sweet potato latte, the professor's usual, alongside the chocolate latte piled high with whipped cream that she loved — she hummed to herself as she stepped into the main building.

Perhaps because of the festival, the building was quiet.

For a moment, the black derby shoes of a man descending the central staircase flickered into her field of view.

"Ah! What room was the professor's office again?"

She rummaged through her bag, pulled out her phone, and walked along reading their text exchange.

The spotless derby shoes of the man who had just brushed past her caught her eye.

"Hmm, the office is… 201… ah!"

It happened in an instant.

The place students called the threshold of the afterlife.

The infamous step that claimed at least one victim a day — and her toe caught it dead on.

Dammit, I forgot you existed.

Ten years had passed, and she'd assumed everything would be easy now. But that step, unchanged, mercilessly toppled anyone careless enough to forget it.

Seol-hee squeezed her eyes shut. She was being flung helplessly toward the cold concrete floor when the fall simply — stopped.

Someone had seized her arm and pulled, hard.

Effortlessly, as if she weighed nothing at all.

"Are you all right?"

A low voice invaded her ear without warning.

Reflexively, Seol-hee raised her head.

Her eyes had to climb far above her own eye level before they met his gaze.

Can a person actually look like this?

For a moment, her mind went blank.

The world was full of handsome men. But a face where refined, clean-cut features matched a gaze of such depth was rare indeed.

A pair of dark eyes tinged with slate gray fixed directly on hers.

She dropped her head instinctively.

"Ah — thank you."

The man slowly released the wrist he'd been holding.

He gave a short nod, said nothing more, and walked away.

"Well, that was a scare."

She'd nearly been badly hurt. Her heart was pounding hard from it, and her breath came short.

She climbed a few more steps — then froze.

Only now did the lingering scent register at the tip of her nose.

It was a fragrance she'd smelled somewhere before.

Suddenly, she remembered the hooded jacket a student had once lent her.

It had carried a similar scent back then, too.

"That cologne… is it in fashion these days?"

Rubbing the warmth still lingering on the arm the man had gripped, Seol-hee climbed the rest of the stairs.