A Trap With No Escape

"A 'secretary for entertaining clients,' was it. Now why might my wife be in such a foul mood, I wonder. Is the tantrum part of the act?"

An act? Ha.

She had no reason to sit through another word of this, and Jae-kyung was half out of her chair when Yu-gam thrust yet another document in front of her.

"Someone took it upon themselves to put my wife out of a job. So I drew this up."

So that was it—she'd been dismissed on the vice principal's notification after all. Was this what he'd called a change of position?

With the unexpected raining down on her from every direction, even Jae-kyung—who did not rattle easily—could no longer piece together what was happening.

"So the chairman comes all this way in person, just to deliver a termination notice."

"Only Seo Jae-kyung gets the special treatment."

"And I'm not grateful for a shred of it."

"Your dismissal is on hold. I'll defer the penalty fee as well. You'll start by accompanying me to the foundation dinner."

"The offer is declined."

"Money—Seo Jae-kyung's favorite thing. I've prepared it as a reunion gift. The principal spoke well of you, said Teacher Seo had an excellent attitude, and gave you his recommendation."

As if she had never had a choice to begin with, Yu-gam curled the corner of his mouth and leaned back in his chair at his leisure.

"We've spent five years living apart, so I find myself wanting to keep my wife at my side from now on. It works out well for both of us, doesn't it?"

Separated. Wife. At the absurd words, Jae-kyung ground her lips together.

"Everything coming out of your mouth right now sounds like the ramblings of a madman."

"You think so? My doctor said the same. Asked why I keep obsessing over a wife who ran off. Took the money and bolted—how could I stay sane? That's just it, I am mad. So the sane one, Seo Jae-kyung, had better start grasping reality."

Expressionless, Yu-gam gave off a chill cold enough to raise gooseflesh.

…

"Accept the terms and everything becomes simple. Could you walk out on me this instant and go up against a major law firm on your own? You're clever, Seo Jae-kyung—reach your own verdict. Those defamatory posts about the foundation? Tack damages for defamation of character on top of the penalty fee, and the bill would come to quite a pretty sum."

The moment the elevator doors closed, reality came home to Jae-kyung.

She opened eyes she had screwed shut and fixed Yu-gam with a look of resolve.

"...Wait. I'll manage the contract penalty somehow, so just drop the additional damages you said you'd charge."

"Give me one reason I should."

"Doing this to a private individual—that's going too far."

Yu-gam turned his head with languid indifference.

"Going too far is what you've done. I said if you worked as my secretary and poured yourself into it, I'd shave down the penalty and the damages. Did that fail to get through?"

"I told you I won't be a secretary."

"If you followed me in here, haven't you already made your intent to sign clear?"

"I didn't follow you. I'm on my way home."

"Anyone who boards the same elevator has, by common sense, followed you."

"That's the chairman's standard, not mine."

A slight crease formed between Yu-gam's brows as he studied Jae-kyung, who refused to concede a single point.

"Seo Jae-kyung. What is it you want?"

Caught in his unrelenting gaze, Jae-kyung faltered. Untangling the snarl in her head would take time.

This was her own doing. When she had applied for the teaching post, she'd had her misgivings—yet she'd brushed them aside, thinking a one-semester contract job could hardly cause trouble.

"What I want is…"

Jae-kyung let the words die.

Before this man—bandying about phrases like major law firm—swept her off her feet entirely, she had to judge this with a clear head.

"If you don't know, then we'll go by the standard I just made up. I won't demand we share a bed as husband and wife. Not right away."

Share a bed? He really wasn't in his right mind.

He flustered her and rubbed her the wrong way, but there was no mistaking who held the hilt of the knife now: Yu-gam, the chairman.

Jae-kyung looked up at him through weary eyes.

"And what exactly is this standard you just invented?"

"If what you want is for us to get back together as lovers, then we start with an office romance."

Reflected in the steel of the elevator doors, the corner of Yu-gam's mouth curved upward, ever so slightly.

"Excuse me. Are you actually my husband? Because a husband is precisely the person with no reason to ever show up. You know that perfectly well."

The suspicion would not dissolve. To Jae-kyung, the word wife felt like a stranger's name.

And small wonder—though they had once shared a night of heat, beyond a single gasp the two of them had never even laid eyes on each other. They were a couple in name alone.

Remaining in this confined box of a space with Yu-gam was pushing her patience to its very limit.

Fortunately, the elevator opened right on cue, and Jae-kyung slipped out at a brisk pace.

"Is running away a habit of yours? Like it was back then."

Yu-gam's iron grip closed around her and held her fast.

"Who said anything about running away?"

She wanted to spit the truth out then and there, but the secret clause she had signed with Managing Director Jin forced her to swallow it.

He closed the distance by one more step and stared down into her, unblinking. A scent brushed past—neither familiar nor strange, something ambiguous in between that shook her chest.

"Let go of me."

"I'll let go—so come be my secretary."

"I already refused."

"The chairman's personal secretary. Term of three months. And this time, we'll put the family register in order while we're at it."

Paying her flat refusal no heed whatsoever, Yu-gam calmly delivered notice of a decision he had made entirely on his own.

"This time, whichever one of us runs pays a very steep fine."

It was a trap that left Jae-kyung unable to take a single step.

The car carrying Jae-kyung and Yu-gam moved off in silence. From the moment it pulled away from the restaurant, gliding beneath rows of cherry trees in riotous bloom, neither of them spoke.

Jae-kyung refused to the very end to attend the company dinner, and Yu-gam did not press her again.

Before she knew it, they had turned into Mugeum-dong, where Jae-kyung lived—a neighborhood strung with torn redevelopment banners at every corner.

"We won't be running into each other again."

"I'm afraid it won't go the way you want."

She stepped out of the car, and the weight of Yu-gam's stare made the back of her head burn.

Across the old door, yellow tape had been stuck in an X, like a seal.

No. It couldn't be. They'd warned her a provisional attachment was only a possibility—hadn't the money she wired settled everything?

"His phone's switched off…"

She dialed her father in a rush, but the call would not go through.

She whipped around—and there was the window of the black car gliding down, Yu-gam inside watching her every move as though he had witnessed all of it.

"Doesn't look like you have anywhere to go. Might as well finish what we were saying about the contract."

"I'll pass."

"You look like you're coming down with a cold. Don't let pride get in the way."

"…Ha."

Barely a minute had passed since she had sworn, with such conviction, that their paths would never cross again. Left with no alternative, she climbed back into Yu-gam's car.

In a cramped neighborhood with no walls to hide anything, the last thing she wanted was to wrestle with him in the street and hand the neighbors a story.

"Just let me out up ahead, please."

But the car did not stop. It drove straight on, into an upscale villa complex.

"Get out."

"I'll be going now."

"For security reasons, you can't leave this building by yourself. Tonight you're staying with me."

"Open this door before I call the police. Or do you actually want to be hauled away as the foundation chairman who abducted and unlawfully confined a contract teacher?"

"Who's to say? If it comes out that Seo Jae-kyung and I are husband and wife, that suits me just fine."

By his own admission, the man was plainly insane.

Jae-kyung's old phone—the one she had bought when she entered university—had long since drained its battery and gone dark.

"Touch that and you'll be sorry."

Jae-kyung lifted her chin and glared at him.

"I'd like to see you try."

Following Yu-gam's leisurely, unhurried stride upstairs, she arrived at a home whose entryway was more spacious than her entire room, its living room stretching out like several offices knocked through into one.

It was nothing compared to the old Pyeongchang-dong mansion, but faced with a hotel of a house straight out of a drama, her feet refused to carry her forward.

"Take this room."

Yu-gam pointed to a door off the left corridor, past the living room.

Did he live here alone? If so, that made it all the more dangerous.

Jae-kyung swept past Yu-gam and shut the door.

Slam.

Her plan was to slip out of the house the moment he fell asleep.

Door locked behind her, Jae-kyung looked around a room kept as immaculate as a hotel suite.

No charger, either. Ha… Surely he wouldn't actually come into the room.

The day had wrung her out completely.

She stretched out on the bed and tossed and turned, but her throbbing head and the chills running through her body kept sleep at bay.

Stepping into the en suite bathroom, wrapped in its luxurious fragrance, she found herself wanting nothing more than to wash the grimy feeling from her skin.

She ran water into the tub and dropped in one of the bath bombs, each the size of a baseball, that sat in a row along the side.

Amid the fizzing bubbles, Jae-kyung sank her weary body in deep. Perhaps it was the fragrant water closing over even her hair, but only now did she feel as though she were coming back to life.

Charger, cold medicine, and warm soup in hand, Yu-gam knocked at the room where Jae-kyung had shut herself away.

Her poor health made a convenient pretext to see her just one more time.

She had looked so utterly out of options that he'd brought her home—and in return, his proud wife treated him like some molester and threw around words like abduction and unlawful confinement. A hollow laugh slipped out of him.

Had she fallen asleep?

Knock, knock.

He rapped on the door again and again, but nothing stirred within.

'Touch my things and you'll be sorry. Even a rat backed into a corner doesn't know what it might do.'

She wouldn't. This woman—

Yu-gam opened the door with the emergency key. Better, far better, if she had simply fallen asleep.

Jae-kyung was not on the rumpled bed. He knocked on the bathroom door—still, not a sound.

He wrenched it open.

There was Jae-kyung, slumped against the tub, crimson lips parting sweetly in stark contrast to her fever-flushed face.

"Jae-i!"

Her porcelain skin gleamed through the white foam, and where her bare form shifted, the side of her right breast lay exposed without a shred of defense.

And there, on that snow-white flesh, sat a single plump mole.

'That mole—only I know it's there.'

'That tickles. Stop it.'

For one searing instant, Yu-gam's blood boiled.