The Angry Tangerine

"They're saying no planes can get off the ground — the weather's turned."

Jae-kyung turned toward the back seat. Yu-gam was calmly seeing to his work, as if the news had nothing to do with him.

That couldn't be right. His phone was switched off... So Director Kwon really can't make it?

She pulled up the airport website. Sure enough, torrential rain was hammering both Gimpo and Incheon, and the flights had been grounded. The thought of the night ahead — the two of them left entirely alone — had her thoughts tangling into knots. There was no finishing the whole itinerary today, not even if she ran herself into the ground. Should she claim business had come up in Seoul and head back tonight? Or was Director Kwon going to be stuck there tomorrow, too?

Haah. With even the heavens refusing to help, guarding herself was the only way left.

Jae-kyung fiddled with her phone.

Ping.

Kim Joo-young's father had passed away. Jae-kyung thought of her colleague, who had been glowing only days ago about earning her full teaching license — the friend who had always cheered her on through every hard stretch.

She sent Joo-young a message of condolence.

"Chairman, I... I need to go up to Seoul tonight, even if it's late."

"What for."

"The teacher I'm closest to — her father passed away. You saw the notice, didn't you?"

"Every flight's canceled today."

The sun had already vanished beyond the window. Under a sky sealed over with dark clouds, rain caught by a wind that grew rougher by the minute whipped up like spray from a fountain.

"..."

"To the mandarin farm. Korean desserts made with mandarins — add a traditional tea ceremony to that, and I think we'd have something."

"A mandarin farm, in this rain?"

"So we check into the hotel, rest, and pick it up tomorrow instead."

"We'll... set out now."

Oblivious to Jae-kyung's desperate worry and grim resolve alike, Yu-gam stayed in the back seat with his eyes fixed on the itinerary, attending to nothing but his own tasks.

Having confirmed the carved wooden sign, Jae-kyung pulled into the wide parking lot. Past the farm's own shop and café, she finally located the entrance to the orchard itself — more than eight acres of it, walled in by black volcanic basalt.

"There aren't... any tangerines?"

"It's April. There should be Hallabong and the like over that way."

The mandarin trees were pushing out fresh green leaves, and white flower buds the size of fingernails clung to the branches like beads of dew.

The elderly owner of the orchard, zipped into a rain poncho, came hurrying out the moment he spotted Yu-gam.

"Young Master! How long has it been? You're looking well — better than ever. And who might this be with you? A fine man and a fine woman — you two suit each other beautifully."

"Hello, sir. I'm Seo Jae-kyung, the accompanying secretary."

"Ah, the secretary. I only meant that you two look good together. My apologies, Young Master — I took her for your girlfriend."

The owner brought out a whole basketful: tangerines from the February shipment, and Cheonhyehyang and Hallabong citrus he had picked himself from the greenhouses.

"Thank you. We'll enjoy them."

"Take plenty more with you when you go, too. Every piece of fruit at the Young Master's house, I grew myself."

"Oh... I've actually tried them. They really were delicious."

She'd eaten them without a second thought whenever Yu-gam handed them over, but had she known she'd be dragged all the way out here, she would have refused them no matter how sweet.

Telling them to take their time looking around, the owner gazed at the two of them with a contented smile.

"Secretary Seo, come here."

Umbrella overhead, Yu-gam led her out into the mandarin groves.

"We'll plant a mandarin sapling to mark the beginning. Once it flowers and the small fruit set, we come back in winter to harvest them."

Winter... By then, I won't be here.

"The students will love this."

"This is your tree, so remember it."

Yu-gam held out a small placard. She might never come back, but a marker wasn't such a bad thing. Jae-kyung hung a tag lettered J on one of the trees.

The quiet steadiness of having something that was hers made her think she finally understood why Yu-gam had insisted on coming despite the rain.

"Chairman, it's really coming down — let's get inside."

The building they ducked into to escape the driving rain housed a tea café and a shop, and quite a sizable operation at that, clearly run by the farm itself. One wall was given over to tangerine-character T-shirts, hats, and mascot dolls.

"This one looks just like you, Secretary Seo."

Swinging from Yu-gam's hand was a tangerine keyring — round, plump, and wearing a furious scowl.

"In what way does it look like me? Because I really don't see it."

"The expression. Angry in exactly the same way."

"I'm sorry?"

"Two of these, please."

Yu-gam paid in a flash and held one of the keyrings out to her.

"This one's yours, Secretary Seo."

It was the smiling tangerine mascot.

"I'll keep the angry tangerine that looks exactly like you, and you can have the one that looks like me."

He's the one who's always furious. Calling them look-alikes when they don't share a single feature. It was absurd.

"I don't need one, though..."

"It's a charm. Keep it on you."

He stuffed the keyring into her jacket pocket and was already walking away.

"Um..."

The keyring, squatting in her pocket like an intruder, was cuter than she'd expected — too cute to just throw away. Fine. What had a toy ever done to deserve that?

"Secretary Seo! What are you doing back there?"

"Coming, sir."

Jae-kyung slipped the plump tangerine keyring back into her pocket.

Near midnight, the lobby of the Rosene Hotel was all but deserted. Jeju's sudden downpour and violent winds had thrown everything into disarray, and rainwater dripped steadily from Jae-kyung's hair and the hem of her clothes as she made her way to the front desk.

It had been a forced march worse than any sports festival, and she was utterly spent.

"You'll be in the Presidential Suite, Room 901."

"I'm sorry — what do you mean? We booked two rooms."

"A member of your party canceled one of the two."

Did Director Kwon cancel it by mistake? Drenched clean through by the sudden deluge, Jae-kyung wanted nothing in the world but a shower.

"Then any other floor would do — another building, I don't care. Could you give us any room at all?"

"I'm afraid we're fully booked."

"Fully booked? There has to be some mistake. Let me look into this."

She called Director Kwon. He didn't pick up. The sleeve she'd pressed to her forehead carried dirt and twigs from the palm grove.

After the orchard inspection, they had raced around Seongsan Ilchulbong and the lava tubes. Then — since they were supposedly meant to learn about Jeju's volcanic terrain — he had even gone so far as an on-site drone survey. Famous arboretums here, museums there, a comparison of every hotel where the students might stay. She had wrung out the last of her energy until her legs could barely carry her, and now this enormous hotel had no room?

"He isn't answering right now. Is there truly nowhere — even a room that hasn't been cleaned yet?"

"There's an expo on, so it's the season when buyers fly in from overseas. The VIP suite you reserved has two bedrooms, so you can use them separately."

"Haah..."

The real mistake had been believing Director Kwon when he'd told her not to worry — that lodging was a dime a dozen on Jeju. Attending to a chairman this meticulous and exacting meant sitting on a pincushion every waking moment. All day long, determined to finish the job and be done, she had watched Yu-gam's every mood, photographing every last corner and filling page after page of notes. No — she'd have taken the day's ordeal over this. Whatever the suite held inside, she had not the slightest intention of opening the same door as her ex-husband and sharing one space with him. Even now, the memory of that moment days ago, when they had been pressed dangerously close in the gymnasium, was enough to bring her out in a cold sweat.

"Is there no other hotel nearby?"

"Our grounds are exceptionally large, but with this much rain, any other lodging would be a good twenty minutes' drive."

Midnight was almost upon them. Finding even a guesthouse at this hour would take time, and a secretary of the Uitae Foundation could hardly sleep on the stairs or in the lobby. She'd sweated and been soaked to the skin — skip the shower and she'd reek by morning. Could she stretch a day or so without?

She was still turning over every possibility when—

"Is there a problem? What's taking so long?"

Yu-gam had come over, evidently done with watching her stall at the desk.

"Ah — Chairman. No problem at all. I'll show you to your room."

Explaining would accomplish nothing. Getting Yu-gam into a room first — that was the priority. Jae-kyung snatched up the briefcase she had set down. She had everything by email as well, but the thing was stuffed full of pamphlets gathered at his instruction.

A hand corded with thick tendons swept away the load she was meant to carry.

"Chairman, I can carry—"

He was already striding across the lobby. Jae-kyung pulled her suitcase after him.

Clunk.

The rattle told the story — one wheel had come off and gone rolling away across the floor. It had broken years ago, and she had completely forgotten to have it repaired. Jae-kyung pocketed the wheel and gripped the suitcase handle instead.

"Oh my! It is you, oppa! I saw your name on the reservation list and came straight down."

A woman with strikingly glamorous features beamed at Yu-gam. Dressed in an elegant semiformal suit, she was an executive at a glance.

Yu-gam flicked a glance toward the voice.

"Mom told me you were back in the country. And here you are, staying at our hotel of all places."

Choi Ji-won, Managing Director of the Rosene Hotel under Dawon Group, broke into a wide, delighted smile at the sight of Do Yu-gam — a man famous for how rarely anyone laid eyes on him.

Ji-won had been unusually devoted to Yu-gam since childhood. The families had even exchanged talk of a match between them, half in jest — but then Chairman Do collapsed, and her ties were severed with Yu-gam, a year her senior and just eight years old at the time. The rumor that he had grown mentally unwell after entering high school was the last she ever heard of where he'd gone.

Years later, while studying in the United States, she had run into him by chance on campus — but the boy she'd known had turned glacial. She understood without needing him to meet her eyes. Yu-gam was already the school's legendary Prince of the East.

That towering frame, that face carved like a sculpture — his coldness only made him look sexier. Girls of every nationality fell for him in droves, and every one who worked up the nerve to ask him out was turned down flat. And Yu-gam was always in the company of one particular man.

"They say he's his bodyguard."

"No — I heard the two of them are gay. Living together."