Unanswered Messages
Ye-seo did not want to leave scars on anyone's life because of something connected to her. Choi Yeon-jun had merely shown a little polite interest; there was no reason for him to suffer such unfair treatment. The whole thing left her desperately uncomfortable.
"Executive Director. Please…."
When Ye-seo begged, Kang-hyun's brow lifted for a fleeting moment. Without answering, he simply studied her anxious face. Today's Jin Ye-seo was rather refreshing.
What's gotten into this woman? The one who always fretted over staying detached actually knew how to plead this openly.
Seeing her piteous look for once, the corner of Kang-hyun's mouth rose of its own accord.
That vulnerable expression of hers looked endlessly soft, full of openings. Enough to make him want to push straight in and dig deep.
Deputy Choi was hardly the issue right now. The woman had no idea how hard she was making the man in front of her, fretting instead over something as trivial as Choi Yeon-jun.
Really, waiting is getting difficult.
The fortunate part was that he would soon be able to taste this woman. Kang-hyun could tell the time was drawing near.
Not understanding why he was smiling, Ye-seo blinked several times in quick succession.
A man and a woman sharing the same space, yet they seemed to belong to entirely different worlds, each lost in their own thoughts.
"He's a capable guy, so there's no need to worry. He'll do just fine somewhere else."
Kang-hyun pulled himself out of his own world long enough to tell her.
"……."
The woman looked up at him with an innocent face, as if she truly hoped it was so.
"Is that right. Then I suppose it's all right…."
In the end Ye-seo lowered her head and murmured as though resigning herself. In front of Do Kang-hyun she seemed to learn only how to give up. Once he had made a decision, he never budged.
"I already got rid of him because he got on my nerves, so he can't stay here anymore."
For someone who had cast an innocent employee into the abyss, Do Kang-hyun showed not a shred of guilt. His face was casually at ease, yet at the same time as lofty and unyielding as a high iron wall.
"No matter how capable the bastard is, to me he's become like a dog."
Faced with Do Kang-hyun driving the nail in with that extreme phrasing, Ye-seo had nothing left to say. From the start, speaking up in front of a superior so far above her had been overstepping her bounds.
I should have listened to Deputy General Manager Yoon Tae-seok. I should have just kept quiet.
"You can go now."
Do Kang-hyun turned his eyes back to his laptop screen and spoke in a hard voice. It meant she was not to bring up the subject again.
"Yes…."
Ye-seo had no choice but to close her mouth. Bowing respectfully to her boss, she quietly left his office.
Once Ye-seo was gone, Kang-hyun stared at the closed door for a moment. After a brief pause he immediately messaged Yoon Tae-seok through the work messenger.
Knock, knock, knock. Three knocks soon sounded, and Yoon Tae-seok entered.
"You called for me, Executive Director."
The uneasy atmosphere stirred up by Executive Director Do's ruthless dismissal of Choi Yeon-jun vanished as if it had never existed; in front of him, Yoon Tae-seok had already slipped on a mild mask.
"How far has it progressed?"
Kang-hyun threw out the question without any preamble, and Yoon Tae-seok answered without hesitation.
"We've confirmed that the couple went to the United States. We're now checking whether they proceeded to Rochester and settled there."
Kang-hyun nodded with a calm face.
"If it's certain they went to America, then it's certain they went to Rochester as well."
"Yes, I think so too."
Even before everything had unfolded, Deputy General Manager Yoon had once spotted Jin Jae-hwan looking into a hospital in Rochester and had reported it to Do Kang-hyun.
"I expect he'll try to contact his daughter before long."
"Yes, I had the same feeling, so I've been watching carefully."
"I'm looking forward to it."
Kang-hyun's lips curved faintly. Even as he spoke, the thought was a pleasant one.
"I'll report the moment any news comes in."
"The moment there's news, report it immediately. Day or night doesn't matter."
Even if it was the middle of the night, it made no difference. It was welcome enough news that he would gladly lose sleep over it.
Yoon Tae-seok paused, a little startled. Even he, a long-time personal secretary, found Executive Director Do's relentless fixation freshly astonishing.
"Yes, understood."
Still, without questioning the reason, Yoon Tae-seok simply promised absolute obedience and turned away.
When he opened the door and stepped out, the atmosphere in the outer office attached to the executive director's suite hung heavy and subdued.
In stark contrast to the seemingly pleased Executive Director Do Kang-hyun, Jin Ye-seo was letting out a sigh. Without letting anything show further, Yoon Tae-seok went to his own desk and sat down.
It was not as if Yoon Tae-seok felt no concern about the situation either. But what worried him more right now was not Choi Yeon-jun so much as Executive Director Do Kang-hyun.
He was following every order required for this strange hostage game, yet his unease only grew. It was something he naturally had to keep hidden from Chairman Do and his wife.
They believed only that Chief of Staff Jin Jae-hwan had resigned because his wife's illness had worsened; they had never even suspected that he had stolen their son's money and disappeared.
And no wonder—Jin Jae-hwan had been Chairman Do's loyal hound for so long. Yet if they ever learned that Jin Jae-hwan and his daughter were entangled with their second son in this way….
Moreover, Chairman Do and his wife favored their younger son Do Kang-hyun over the eldest, Do Woo-jin. The model elder son had always fretted over winning his parents' approval, yet he was constantly outshone by a younger brother who paid such things no mind at all.
And lately Chairman Do and his wife had been desperate to force through a marriage for that cherished second son.
If, at a time like this, the fact that their son was hiding Jin Jae-hwan's daughter in his villa ever came to light, just imagining it made Yoon Tae-seok dizzy.
Since he was currently providing close support to Executive Director Do while also covering Jin Jae-hwan's former duties, it was obvious that if things went wrong the sparks would fly his way as well, and he truly did not know what to do.
He could not begin to guess what Executive Director Do Kang-hyun ultimately intended, or where this path would end.
This week had felt especially long. Probably because he had been lost in so many thoughts.
As on any other weekend, Do Kang-hyun had gone out. Today Ye-seo seized the chance to open her laptop and log into the messenger.
After her life had changed overnight, contact with her acquaintances had been cut off at the same time, so she had never even had a chance to explain her situation to each of them one by one.
Her close friends must have been terribly worried. It weighed on her so much that she intended only to read the messages that had piled up.
Once she logged in, the chat messages were, as expected, overflowing. Messages from close friends, and even from relatives, no doubt because her parents had gone missing.
Since she had not been able to answer the phone, the messenger had been flooding even more. Pressing a hand to her forehead, Ye-seo calmly read through the messages one by one.
From the high-school friend she had always stuck to like a pair to her university classmates, everyone was sick with worry. After hesitating, Ye-seo began typing a simple one-line reply into her friends' chat windows.
After sending replies across several windows, she scrolled farther down to check the messages she still had not read. Among them, her gaze stopped on one man's name.
Yoo Eun-chan. A university senior two years older than her. Throughout college they had gotten along easily, and before long he had become something like a male friend she was even closer to than the guys in her own year.
She had thought they would simply stay that comfortably forever. The last time they had met, he….
The number outside the chat window showed just how many messages Eun-chan had sent. With a sigh, Ye-seo opened the window and looked at the stream of messages that followed.
Messages spaced out over time. Even just looking at the words, Eun-chan's expression and tone rose vividly before her eyes. In the next message she felt even deeper concern.
The last time they had met, Eun-chan had, to her surprise, confessed. After acting so easygoing and teasing her endlessly, he had claimed he had fallen for her at first sight, and at first she had thought even that was a joke.
It had not been the kind of feeling that seeped in after becoming close; he had confessed that from the beginning she had been a woman to him, and she had felt endlessly strange hearing it from Eun-chan. Back then she had thought his confession would remain the most shocking event of the year.
But then her parents' disappearance had shocked her even more, and becoming Do Kang-hyun's hostage had shocked her still further. The more she thought about it, the more absurd the whole chain of events became.