The Perfect Secretary
Woo-jin stepped out of the shower and reached for the whiskey bottle on the home-bar console, pouring it into a glass.
“I’ll look into it right away,”
Chief Secretary Choi Jeong-hun lowered his head as if he had personally betrayed the trust the moment Shin Yu-won’s warning about the rat-like informant reached him. But Woo-jin waved him off without a second glance.
“Just keep watching for now.”
A controlled leak at the right level would actually lull Lee Min-gyu into complacency. Cutting off the channel too early would only make the mousehole more cunning, so Woo-jin had decided to tighten the noose thread by thread.
His eyes fell on the amber liquid in the glass and the face of Shin Yu-won from last night’s hotel bar rose unbidden again.
One gesture, and she had been ready to collapse. It was strangely absurd to see the same woman so shattered.
Shin Yu-won was everything that irritated him.
The thought chased its tail, pulling him back a year.
“Hello. Shin Yu-won.”
The woman bowed her head neatly. Her skin was snow-white and nearly transparent; her light-brown eyes were deep and clear. The faint nervousness that spread across her beautifully balanced features made her look fragile in some unspoken way.
The kind of girl who had seen men break.
That had been her first impression. And that was all he needed. He had to pull Moment from the gutter bottom first.
Then one ordinary day.
“Did I not ask you for coffee?”
Woo-jin frowned at the glass Shin Yu-won held out. Instead of coffee, a delicate golden tea had been poured.
He had been staring at monitors since dawn, his sleep nonexistent while he dissected Moment’s five-year sales trends.
“Yes, that’s correct. But I’ve already had seven cups today.”
She did not retreat even when he questioned her. Woo-jin closed his mouth. He had read genuine admiration for him in her eyes.
She wanted to be noticed.
There had been countless women who had tried to approach him this way before.
“…Get out.”
He dismissed her and, pressing heavy eyelids, brought the teacup to his lips as if it were a habit.
“…”
The tea was perfectly steeped—bitter without a trace of astringency, fragrant, neither scalding nor cold. It slid down his throat without issue.
Women who had tried to cross lines with their feelings had grown tiresome, and Woo-jin had dismissed them without mercy each time.
Yet he kept Shin Yu-won exactly as she was.
Her skillfulness satisfied a quiet need in him.
She always had the necessary documents ready before he even issued a directive, or she timed the delivery of the tea with perfect precision.
Her ability to read him was almost frighteningly accurate.
But still, something had begun to interest him.
The way she startled when he accidentally brushed her hand and her ear blushed all the way to the lobe. The subtle shampoo scent that made his head turn. The faint, unexplained thirst that rose in his chest whenever he saw the long, slender column of her neck.
It was a strangely unfamiliar craving in a life he had always kept colorless and odorless.
Yet in her eyes he read nothing but open admiration. She never crossed the line. On the contrary, she stayed just beyond it, prudently cautious and retreating.
The suspicion that she had been trying so hard to impress him was beginning to crumble.
And it grated on his nerves. Terribly.
“Do you have a boyfriend?”
One day, while she was staring at her phone with restless energy, the question slipped out impulsively.
Who was she waiting for so desperately that her nails were biting into her palms?
Disgust crawled up his spine.
Her black pupils trembled violently. Then an answer he had not expected poured out.
“Yes, I do.”
He remembered those trembling black eyes.
Why did a woman who already had a boyfriend become so defenseless when she looked at him? Why did she blush and flee as though burned by a hand she could not touch?
The unknown person living inside Shin Yu-won’s life was deeply unpleasant. And when that same person boldly appeared at the company to prove his existence, Woo-jin could no longer bear it.
Even if it meant the bother of replacing the secretary, he decided he needed to confirm the end of this obsession once and for all.
***
Rrrr—
The quiet that had held Yu-won’s motionless form was shattered by the vibration of her phone. A message demanding today’s report flashed across the screen.
[Meeting with Hanseong Distribution…]
While typing the text, Yu-won paused.
She had to report even the card he held. She knew exactly what he was targeting was more than just a pop-up.
But she did not want to tell him about it.
[There was a minor disturbance at the meeting venue, but the pop-up is proceeding as planned.]
She pressed send before she could overthink her own actions and hailed a passing taxi.
“Hwasung Care Hospital.”
After giving the destination, she turned her face to the window. The glittering night sky flowed past without end.
Four years ago, today had been the day a record-breaking cold wave struck. She remembered the weather clearly not because it had been unusually cold that day, but because the phone call that came that day had rewritten her entire life.
“—This is Gangnam Police Station Traffic Investigation Unit. Are you Shin Jae-ha and Yoon Young-mi’s daughter?”
“…Ah, yes. What is it?”
“—The vehicle you two were in was involved in a traffic accident. Your father passed away at the scene, and your mother is currently in the ICU.”
On the way home, Yu-won could only stare at her own white breath while she remained speechless.
Perhaps it had been a mistake. There was no way. Even on the way to the hospital she kept repeating the same words to herself.
But when she arrived, she finally understood how hollow every hope had been.
“Shin Jae-ha, is that you?”
“……”
The officer lifted the white sheet from the ICU bed. The face beneath, one side sunken, soaked with blood and disfigured, was unmistakably her father’s.
Yu-won’s face twisted in agony, and she let out a sob. The officer interpreted it as confirmation and asked no further questions.
Her father and mother had run a small cosmetics manufacturing company called Ian. A cosmetics OEM that supplied large corporations.
Although the scale was modest, their quality was excellent, and their client base had been steadily growing. Today they had left for the countryside to sign a contract for natural raw materials.
“The cause appears to be excessive speeding by Shin Jae-ha.”
The car her father had been driving had skidded on the icy road and plummeted off a cliff.
That was impossible.
He had always driven carefully. Especially when her mother or Yu-won was in the car; his caution doubled.
She knew that better than anyone—there was no way he would have sped on an icy road like today.
But no one was left to tell the truth. Her father was dead; her mother was unconscious.
There was no time to wallow in despair and grief. She and the police went back and forth between the station and the hospital while she prepared his funeral.
“Yu-won.”
Kim Hak-yeon, the factory manager of Ian, reached out to her at the funeral hall. His bloodshot eyes brimmed with tears.
“Oh my, I never imagined Jae-ha would go like this.”
Before he had become the factory manager, Kim Hak-yeon had been her father’s longtime friend. He had treated her like a niece and was one of the few people she had relied on.
After patting her hand for a long time, he finally spoke with difficulty.
“Yu-won, the factory’s situation is really bad.”
“……Huh?”
This was the first she had heard. If the factory had been in such trouble, her father or mother would have told her.
“You wouldn’t have known. Jae-ha didn’t want you to worry.”
Kim Hak-yeon nodded and continued.
“I can save the factory. Just give me the house as collateral and I’ll guarantee it. You trust me, right?”
Yu-won stared blankly at the memorial photo. In it her father simply smiled.
Kim Hak-yeon let out a long sigh.
“If we leave it like this, the company will go bankrupt. Then how will you pay for your mother’s hospital bills?”
“……”
“You can’t handle all of this alone, right? I’ll cover the hospital bills for now. You can start working later and repay me slowly.”
With no relatives left, and only twenty-two years old, Yu-won had no choice.
She never imagined that this day’s decision would become her nightmare as she took Kim Hak-yeon’s hand.
Using the excuse of saving the factory, the house they had lived in was sold off, and Yu-won was thrown out into an old villa. Ian naturally fell into Kim Hak-yeon’s hands.
The misfortune did not end there. Kim Hak-yeon’s son, Kim Seung-ju, began to hover at her side.
“Since we couldn’t be together as children, you’ve become a real woman now, Yu-won.”