An Unexpected Company Dinner

The next day.

Harin's mind was half gone, as if she'd lived through a riot the day before.

The world, by contrast, was unbearably calm.

She sat resting her chin on the desk at the front, staring blankly across the sleepy, half-empty gym with an absent expression.

Hot afternoon sunlight streamed in along the glass windows. The air was cool from the air conditioning while the sun beat down warm, and drowsiness came flooding in.

No. I can't fall asleep now.

Harin, who hadn't slept a wink all night, rubbed her bloodshot eyes and leaned back from the desk.

A rustling sound drifted from the office in the back.

The gym director hadn't left yet.

This might actually be the perfect moment to bring up quitting.

Harin fiddled idly with the card terminal.

Deep down, she was hesitating.

The BBQ place was loud, the café was a endless stream of customers. This gym, on the other hand, was relatively quiet — only the people who needed to come ever came, and there was plenty of room to catch her breath.

"I'll sponsor you. Quit the part-time jobs and train here as a fighter."

But the moment Lee-gang's coolly smiling face surfaced in her memory, a chill ran through her.

There had always been something unsettling about him — an aura that seemed to walk a razor's edge between legal and illegal.

And after what happened yesterday, her suspicion that he might be gangster-adjacent had hardened into something close to certainty.

He was a dangerous man. Hadn't she seen it with her own two eyes just yesterday?

Falling for someone like that was no different from tightening a noose around her own neck.

Which meant she needed to keep her distance, starting now.

The only connection between them was the gym.

So quitting the gym is the right call......

Her mind made up, she was just rising from her seat to tell the director when he stepped out of the office and asked,

"Ohh — Harin, how about a company dinner after work today?"

"......What?"

A company dinner? Out of nowhere?

"You've been here a while now, Harin, it's about time we had one. Kang Cheong, you're free tonight too, right?"

At some point the director had already made his way to the shoe racks, jamming his feet into his sneakers as he posed the question to the buzz-cut employee who was keeping an eye on the members.

"Yes."

Kang Cheong answered shortly and plainly, his face as unmoving as ever.

Harin looked back and forth between the director's back and Kang Cheong with bewildered eyes.

Harin stared blankly at the pork ribs Kang Cheong was grilling.

I'm supposed to be quitting.

The director, beaming over how well his new employee was settling in, chuckled heartily as he pushed a glass of soju-and-beer toward Harin.

She accepted it with an awkward smile.

She stole a glance at the director and Kang Cheong. Kang Cheong had taken a nearly done rib straight to his mouth, and the director — who'd already swished three shots of soju — was starting to flush red.

The two of them seemed to suspect nothing. Apparently they hadn't picked up on her decision to quit at all. Which meant this sudden dinner was just... coincidence?

Harin looked down blankly at her glass, blinking at the clear, barley-tea-colored liquor inside.

Her dazed head filled with the sound of people clinking glasses on a weekend evening, laughing and shouting over one another.

"Harin. Do you pour for your elders?"

"Sorry, what?"

"You raise your glass. That's how it's done."

Glass in hand, the director gestured at the drink sitting in front of her. Even the reticent Kang Cheong was waiting on her, his own glass raised.

"Oh — right, sorry."

Flustered, Harin picked up her cold beer glass.

"Come on now, let's toast! Cheers!"

"Cheers."

"Yes...... cheers."

Cupping the glass awkwardly in both hands, Harin tapped it against theirs.

The director and Kang Cheong drained theirs in one smooth, unhesitating motion, and Harin, after a beat of hesitation, brought hers to her lips.

It was the first drink of her life.

In twenty-six years — short if you called it short, long if you called it long — she'd never once touched alcohol, insisting she had to take care of her body as an athlete.

If I'd known it would come to this, I should've started drinking ages ago.

A cold bitterness laced with a sharp, tingling aroma seeped onto her tongue. It stung her nose. It was unpleasant.

She tipped the whole glass back in one go, then furrowed her brow with a small, "Hnngh."

"Ahaha! Look at you, Harin, you can hold your liquor! See? I told you she'd be a drinker!"

The director jabbed Kang Cheong in the ribs with his elbow; Kang Cheong, indifferent, silently picked up more meat and ate it.

Glass after glass went down like that, until at some point she'd lost count entirely.

The heat from the grill ripened her drunkenness, and a flush spread from her forehead down her face, neck, and chest.

It wasn't bad, actually, as the food kept coming. A pleasant buzz, a good mood.

Any thought of quitting had long since been swept to the back burner.

Harin stared blankly at the table, at the beer and soju bottles littering the floor.

All three of them had trained as athletes, so they could drink — but by this point, every one of them was well past tipsy.

If anyone pressed her to name the drunkest of the three... in Harin's opinion, it was the director.

"Back in my day, I took gold at the National Youth Sports Festival......! Opened my own boxing gym in Seoul with my name on it, I did......!"

The director unspooled his past glories in a rich, resonant voice. The first four or five lines were tolerable, but once the same war stories started looping, Harin began itching to cover her ears.

She glanced sideways at Kang Cheong.

His expression never changed once — he refilled the glasses when they emptied, picked off the remaining meat, and let the director's drunken rambling pass in one ear and out the other.

Even after the grill was cleared away, the heat wouldn't fade. Harin kept tipping back her glass, fighting the urge to shed her thin tracksuit jacket.

Then she felt her phone vibrate in her pants pocket and quietly set her glass down.

On the screen, the caller ID read Grandma. It had to be Hayul, calling from their grandmother's phone.

"Harin! Where do you think you're going......!"

The director, who'd been hollering at thin air, barked after her reproachfully as she rose from her seat.

Harin smiled faintly, said she'd just take a call, shot Kang Cheong a look that said please keep him pinned down, and hurried away from the table.

She barely navigated her way out of the restaurant's maze of cramped tables and collapsed onto one of the chairs lined up outside.

Sitting still she hadn't noticed it, but the moment she stood and walked, everything swayed before her eyes and the blood seemed to rush down to her toes. She felt like she might be sick.

Ahem. Clearing her scratchy throat, she raised the phone to her ear — and that was when, across the street in the far distance, she spotted a wall of hulking figures in black.

One of them lodged itself in her sight above all the rest.

That chiseled profile, pale in the glow of a nearby bar's neon sign, was unmistakably Yoon Lee-gang.

Surrounded by the hulking men and a couple of girls, he exchanged a few words — then gave a short, dismissive laugh.

Harin's gaze slid from Lee-gang to the girls.

Short skirts, vertiginous high heels, loose hair, heavy makeup. Anyone could tell they were women selling smiles at the bar down the street.

Her heart plunged like a stone dropped into a lake — then quickly went still.

Frankly, being surprised by a sight like this at this point would have been stranger.

- N-Noona!

Lost in a daze, Harin snapped back to herself at the sound of Hayul's voice through the phone.

"Oh — yeah. Hayul."

- N-Noona, w-when are you coming h-home?

Harin hedged. She wanted to go home right this second, but the dinner looked likely to continue until the director passed out cold.

"Sleep first. Noona's going to be late."

- Okay.......

At the listless reply, Harin smiled a little and asked,

"You and Grandma are doing okay?"

- Yeah. We're, we're fine. G-Grandma even m-made me kimchi pancakes.

"That's nice."

Head bowed, she brushed a weary hand across her eyes with the back of her wrist.

And the moment she leaned back against the chair and lifted her head, a shadow like a wall of black stood before her.

That sweet, heavy scent of his was suffocatingly swallowing the air around her.

Harin stole a look up at the man standing in front of her. She prayed it wasn't him — but of course, it was Yoon Lee-gang.

Both hands jammed into his pants pockets, a suit jacket draped over one arm, his eyes looking down at her with something almost unpleasant in them — for a moment she could only stare, dumbfounded.

"......Noona, you should hang up now. Go to sleep before Grandma."

Avoiding his gaze, she hurried to end the call.

Then, as if she'd seen nothing, as if nothing had happened, she turned naturally back toward the restaurant.

But the moment she stumbled halfway to her feet, her stomach lurched and a wave of dizziness crashed over her.