The Night the Lights Stayed Off
A curious rumor had been making the rounds, but Yu-gam, the man at the center of it, took no interest in anything beyond his classes and the library. A man with a spotless private life who devoted himself to nothing but work. Exactly Ji-won's ideal type.
Endure just one more year rotting away at the Jeju hotel, they said, and headquarters would call her up to a vice-presidential post. Bored stiff and stressed out from night duty, Ji-won fixed Yu-gam with a bright, unblinking stare.
"Right. This is your family's hotel, after all."
As ever, Yu-gam's eyes stayed coolly distant; he didn't even meet her gaze.
"With you here, Oppa, our hotel finally has some sparkle. Do come by often."
Even more handsome than he was a few years ago. Is that a man, or a carved statue?
Sleek and immaculate in his suit, finer than ever, Yu-gam held Ji-won's gaze captive.
And yet his attention was fixed entirely elsewhere.
"Oh, right — you heard I made Managing Director, didn't you? Where's the KE Group holding its events and employee retreats these days? I'll set you up with a special promotional rate. Spare me a little time."
"If it's about headquarters business, contact the office directly. I'm leaving."
"Oppa! Oppa, I'll call you!"
Ji-won stared after him in mute anguish, as though she'd just been dumped.
Jae-kyung, passing behind them, swerved wide to stay out of Ji-won's line of sight, circling the back of an enormous sofa and easing herself against the lobby wall, head bowed. The two families clearly knew each other well. One look at Ji-won's radiant beauty and graceful bearing marked her as the daughter of a formidable house — and there was nothing to be gained from being discovered here.
"Do you have any idea how fast rumors travel among chaebol families? In this world, simply watching your mouth can get you promoted." Words she'd overheard back in her international school days, from classmates born into chaebol households. Even so, an idle fear gnawed at Jae-kyung: what if her presence somehow reached Managing Director Jin's ears? Hunching low, she picked her careful way toward the elevator.
"Seo Jae-kyung. What's keeping you? Can't walk? Want me to carry you?"
Yu-gam's voice, loud enough to ring through the deserted lobby, made her flinch. This, from the man who'd told her to cooperate quietly and stick to her duties until the contract ended. Did he have no sense at all? She was tying herself in knots to keep Managing Director Jin from catching sight of her, and Yu-gam carried on as though none of her efforts existed.
"Coming now."
Afraid someone might hear her voice, she answered barely above a breath. She shielded her face behind the suitcase and hunched over — but hiding was hopeless. Jae-kyung looked so furtive that Ji-won narrowed her eyes and watched.
Seo Jae-kyung, was it? Yu-gam's gaze had been drifting toward that woman for some time now.
The teetering suitcase rose smoothly into the air, and Jae-kyung stood exposed.
"Hand me the bag. Why are you lugging something this heavy?"
She felt like a soldier stripped of her shield. With even the bag she'd been hiding behind gone, Jae-kyung shook out her damp hair and let it fall loose around her face.
"Chairman. Please, go on ahead."
"Since when does a boss carry his secretary's luggage?"
"Give it back, please. I can carry it."
"And the leaf in your hair — is that an accessory?"
Yu-gam plucked the leaf from the crown of her head while she pushed against his chest.
What exactly is going on between those two? I heard he was traveling with an aide. Ji-won studied the woman whose freshly washed hair hung in loose disarray — flawless skin, eyes bright and intelligent yet shadowed with sorrow, fine features above a slender jaw. Even at a glance she was a striking beauty, though her tidy attire had come undone, and the two of them snapped at each other like lovers in a prickly quarrel.
No man spends late nights on business with a woman that pretty. What is this — did the two of them roll around in the grass in the rain or something? This was Do Yu-gam, the man who hadn't spared a single glance at the slim, voluptuous white women who paraded before him in bikinis back on campus. And now he's taking a female employee up to his hotel room at this hour? No — surely they weren't dating.
She wanted a proper look at just how extraordinary this woman was, but Yu-gam's broad shoulder blocked the view. A woman's instincts are never wrong. Something was off; the unease itched at her. She wanted to be introduced to Yu-gam with marriage in mind — and at this rate, dithering, some hanger-on would snatch him up first. Ji-won promptly called her mother, Mrs. Kim.
They reached the very top floor, and the elevator doors slid open. Could they really have taken an entire floor? Floor-to-ceiling glass faced the open sea head-on, and the suite sprawled across well over 1,700 square feet. The two bedrooms stood closer together than she'd hoped, and a sigh escaped Jae-kyung as she looked around.
"Chairman, please get some rest."
"Resting is your first thought? Get settled, Secretary Seo, and come out."
"Pardon? I was just heading to my room."
It was late, but she had meant to start hunting for other lodging right away. Better a safely distant arrangement than an incident born of nothing.
"Do you have any idea what a trip like this costs, and you're planning to sleep easy? Compile the sites we inspected today and put together a comparison report."
"I can manage that on my own."
"So a mere secretary intends to handle it at her own discretion, without hearing the Chairman's opinion?"
Even Yu-gam, who had driven the schedule without a moment's rest since dawn, seemed to have tired; he let out a shallow breath and stared at Jae-kyung in open disbelief.
"No, sir. I intended to organize it neatly for your review at a later date."
"We'll do it together."
She was drawing five times the standard travel allowance; there was nothing left to argue. Krrrrrumble—CRACK! As if setting off fireworks, the sky erupted with thunder and lightning, and the rain came down harder than ever. Going out to look for another room in this weather would be a waste of time. Jae-kyung stared, dumbstruck, at the rain sheeting down the window.
Yu-gam, halfway into the bedroom, turned back and looked at her.
"Enough rain-watching. Wash up and come out."
Looking down at herself, damp with sweat and rain, Jae-kyung knew there was no room left for excuses. It was past midnight. A soft glow filled the spacious VIP suite, and Yu-gam dropped onto the edge of the bed, loosening his tie.
He had known all day that Jae-kyung was keeping her distance, painfully conscious of him. She made it that obvious — startled by the mere brush of a fingertip. How could he not have noticed?
"Chairman, please go on ahead." He'd known she was struggling behind him, and he had walked on ahead anyway, deliberately blind to it.
From the bathroom at the far end of the suite came the patter of falling water, grating on his nerves. The shower cut off. The muffled sound of a towel scrubbing through wet hair, then bare feet brushing the floor, then the soft comfort of slippers sliding on. Each small sound stirred the memory of another night in Yu-gam's mind.
In the days when he was on medication so potent his muscles locked rigid, Yu-gam could not remember everything from before. But after meeting Jae-kyung, the fragmentary afterimages had begun to connect like pieces of a puzzle.
Managing Director Jin, able neither to believe nor to dismiss Monk Godeok's words, lived in constant unease. Chairman Do had collapsed once more, and Yu-gam had lost consciousness in the schoolyard back in his first year of high school. It had been a time when not one person in the family was whole.
Steeped for years in psychiatric prescriptions, too drained even to refuse, Yu-gam had agreed to the marriage.
The wedding night.
He felt no curiosity about the bride Managing Director Jin had brought him. Without a word, the woman drew the covers over herself first.
Dulled by powerful sedatives his body had long since grown tolerant of, his memory hazy to the point of dream, listless, Yu-gam asked into the darkness:
"…Does it hurt?"
It was a relief not to see the woman's face. Neither of them could read the other's expression — just as well. Under the contract, keeping the lights off was the rule between husband and wife.
In the silence, fingertips touched first. Then the backs of hands.
His mysophobia made touching anyone nearly impossible, yet the woman's smooth skin and faint scent were not unpleasant.
Slowly, haltingly, Yu-gam's hand drew the woman's thin garment down. He could see nothing, but her body heat was vivid.
For Yu-gam, whose body had been ravaged by a severe chill — a side effect of the drugs — the woman Monk Godeok had chosen was a furnace, a pit of fire.
The woman's hot breath quickened by degrees, moving in time with the bitter cold of Yu-gam's body.
"Nngh—"
Her body melted Yu-gam's frozen breath. The duvet that had trembled faintly above them had long since slid to the floor beneath their fervor. His hands, wrapped again around the woman's slender waist, had already found those secret places more than once.
Night after night passed. The bedroom light was always off. It suited them both — a contractual arrangement that required no faces and no names. No presence remained between them, only warmth.
The bed was wide, and between them always lay that awkward gap.
On the nights when his cold fingertips and ice-chilled breath met the fever that blazed through her down to her very breath, their bodies melted into one another in an instant, as though they had waited all day for exactly this.
And when dawn came to end the night, they turned their backs on each other without fail, precisely as the contract stipulated.
By the time ten months had nearly filled, Yu-gam at twenty thought of his wife all day long. Feelings piled up inside him like a man in love, and he ached to know what her expressions looked like.
"Here. Touch."
In the darkness, Jae-kyung brought her hand up and drew it down the line of Yu-gam's jaw.
"It's all scratchy."
"My wife ought to shave me, then."
"I don't know how to shave… and it's dark."
"Then turn on the light."
"If I turn on the light… that's a breach of contract."
Even such brief exchanges set his heart racing and left him waiting for the next. It couldn't be love. Surely not.
If he saw her face… would this relationship change? That was why he never looked.
By morning his wife was always gone. He hoped she had looked at his face, but he never asked.
On that one unusually special night, unable to contain the curiosity boiling over inside him, Yu-gam untied the blindfold from his wife's eyes and gazed at her sleeping face for the first time.
"…Beautiful."
The darling bridge of her nose, her full lips. Every feature was exactly as his fingers had memorized it, as though he had sculpted her himself.