Flower Snake

"Hello, Ms. Kim."

Ms. Kim was an easygoing, sunny soul who greeted the sight of Jae-kyung with delight every single time.

"How are you feeling? I know it's been weighing on your mind."

"Thanks to you warning me ahead of time, I wasn't caught off guard. Thank you for the text."

"Oh, don't mention it. Loving your fellow teachers is loving your country. I'm just off to lunch—come with me."

"I'm still on the clock."

Surrounded by contractor staff and the Vice Principal, Yu-gam appeared to be planning an enormous garden for the school grounds, something to stand as a landmark of the Eui-tae Foundation. Absorbed in the work, he had yet to notice Jae-kyung standing a careful distance away.

"Ms. Seo, people are saying you and the Chairman aren't on ordinary terms. Is it true? It's even come up in the other group chats—that's why you got hired as his secretary."

"It's a temporary post. I'm just helping out for a little while."

If it hadn't been for Joo-young, Jae-kyung would never have learned where the rumors sweeping the school had sprung from. Better to know, she supposed.

"Oh, really? You're so capable, Ms. Seo, you might even get converted to a permanent post yourself. It's a secret for now, but—word is I might be hired on as a full-time teacher."

"Really? That's wonderful news."

With a bright smile, Jae-kyung congratulated Ms. Kim, who was unfailingly diligent and kind. With her father's hospital bills weighing on her, this couldn't have come at a better time.

"It's not even confirmed yet. They say there's just the one opening—I'm praying I get it."

"You've worked so hard, Ms. Kim. I think you will."

"I only wish we could both be hired on as permanent teachers. The next time a posting goes up, I'll contact you right away—I know someone in the administrative office."

"Please, don't trouble yourself."

Spending her days with the children suited her better than she had expected—enough that she had let herself dream of becoming a teacher. But she had no intention of working at the Eui-tae Foundation while Do Yu-gam sat as its chairman.

The moment she turned that friendly smile on Joo-young, her eyes collided with Yu-gam's.

"I'll head off first today. Lunch together next time—we must. I'll text you."

With her smile swept away entirely, Jae-kyung bowed her goodbye to Joo-young and walked over to Yu-gam, whose frosty gaze still hadn't left her.

"Distracted again?"

"I'm sorry. If you have any instructions for me, just give them to me."

At her deference, Yu-gam stopped nitpicking and turned his attention back to his own business. The secretary's work was several times harder than teaching had ever been, but she would adapt. She had to, to survive.

Yu-gam and Director Kwon—who had been shadowing her every move with glacial eyes, granting her not a moment's peace—finally left on a business trip for an external meeting.

With classes over and the students' chatter gone from the grounds, Jae-kyung let out the breath she'd been holding as she gazed absently out the window at her alma mater.

The red camellia—the emblem flower of the Eui-tae Foundation, established by KE Group's Chairman Do Eui-tae. Patience. Diligence. Integrity.

A fitting symbol, all things considered, for the business philosophy of a man who had lost his wife and child and still clawed his way up to build an empire with his own two hands.

As she let her gaze linger, half-entranced, on the buds blooming with unusual lavishness that spring day, that day rose unbidden in her memory, as if it had been waiting all along.

They might cross paths by chance someday—so she had told herself back then. She had drifted beneath that camellia tree more times than she could count, but she never once truly searched for him.

A faint old memory, the kind that stirred whenever she saw a camellia tree.

Was he still alive somewhere?

What a pointless thing to wonder. ...Back to work.

Stretching long and slow until her spine cracked, Jae-kyung bent again over her monitor.

Working alone in the chairman's office felt light, almost unburdened, and she glanced up from her screen and out the window. Rain, perhaps—raindrops were drumming softly against the glass, and darkness had closed in from every side.

When she opened the drawer to gather her things for the day, the marriage certificate sat there, bearing her own signature.

It was only her first day on the job. The breath she had held all day long escaped her in a slow, weary sigh.

Finish the work quickly, and she could resign even before the three months were up. And then she could get divorced, too.

"I'll work as your secretary—so, as you promised, settle the penalty and the marriage as if none of it ever happened."

She had snapped at him, she remembered—because Yu-gam kept dangling the penalty and an audit over her head, and because of the Vice Principal. The memory of herself making so bold a declaration with nothing at all behind it made her want to burrow into the nearest mousehole.

Shaking her head at her own embarrassment, she was reaching to shut down the computer when she clicked open the shared folder where the Vice Principal—a man who could barely tolerate her—was listed as the person in charge.

"Check every last document connected to the Vice Principal. Ten years' worth—not one missing."

Among the tasks Yu-gam had assigned her, he had said, there was something in particular to verify about the Vice Principal.

Supply requisitions, faculty rosters, school event tickets—thousands of files spanning years were staggering in volume even as a mere list. Jae-kyung copied only the Vice Principal's documents onto a USB of their own.

"Haa... First, get off work. I'll go through the rest at home."

She finished the security check and stepped out of the building to find a text from her father waiting.

She called, but the line didn't connect. She had gone to the security team at lunchtime to see him, only to be told he was out on field duty and couldn't be met.

Jae-kyung's heated sigh bloomed pale white in the cold air.

The sky had dimmed under rain clouds. She shook out her umbrella and was just stepping toward the stairs when—

"Ah—!"

The instant her foot skidded, a swift, sure hold wrapped around her waist. In that agile embrace, Jae-kyung's breath stopped for an instant.

"You hurt?"

Yu-gam brushed back her rain-damp hair as though they had long been accustomed to each other.

"No. I'm fine... Thank you."

Pushing free of his solid frame, she stepped away.

In the moisture-heavy air, it felt as though her overheated heart, her breath—even time itself—had stopped.

"About yesterday."

Jae-kyung looked up at him where he stood over her, eyes brimming with questions.

"I told you to leave. So tell me—why did you disappear?"

As though they were identical twins, or as though he'd lost his memory, she faltered, unsure what to explain first to a man who seemed to know nothing at all.

"The down payment wasn't exactly small. What did you spend it on, that you're still this obsessed with scraping money together?"

That money had vanished long ago.

She felt no shame at having her poverty laid bare, so his probing after the missing sum left her unmoved.

"Debt. I have a great deal of it."

Whether it was the close press of him, heat climbed through her whole body, and Jae-kyung licked her parched lips.

"A great deal of debt. Enough to go and seduce a doctor boyfriend. And then discard the man who paid you, once you'd collected?"

"...That's—"

A misunderstanding. But where was she even to begin? She didn't trust this man nearly enough to open her mouth and plead.

"A textbook flower snake."

"Hah... A flower snake?"

"So how much do you need this time, I wonder, that you're setting out to lure in another man?"

Jae-kyung's face went stark white.

Her father had been a host in his day—one of the men called "swallows," the male counterparts of flower snakes—and the words alone had always made her skin crawl; she had lived more guarded against men than anyone. Now the insult went past unfair and kindled something closer to rage.

"Who did I seduce, exactly? If I'm that suspicious to you, file the divorce papers right now. Why keep a flower snake at your side at all?"

"I've been burned too unjustly—I can't quite bring myself to let you go."

"And what, exactly, is unjust about it?"

It had been her own oversight, not keeping safe the secret contract she had signed with Managing Director Jin. She was fairly sure she had scanned it, and she ransacked her files, but she must have deleted it—not a single page turned up.

"It would wound my pride if all you managed to skim off me amounted to a few coins."

Theirs had been a marriage contracted over money, each of them trading on what the other needed. Ten months, and she hadn't even seen her husband's face. Even this conversation was absurd. That was the kind of exchange that only happened between people in love.

"We're... not exactly a normal couple, are we."

"Then let's do the normal thing, since that's what Seo Jae-kyung wants."

Yu-gam stood two steps below her; their faces came level, close enough to touch.

"Couples fight and stay together, or they break up. Either would do."

"I came as a secretary, not as a wife. Three months, exactly. Let me go before then and I'll be grateful."

"If your work displeases me, you might not shake off that penalty even when the three months are up."

"I'll work hard."

It was hardly an easy first day, but Jae-kyung answered with bright, steady eyes.

His brow creased as though something displeased him, and as Yu-gam's face drew near—too near—Jae-kyung's body tipped backward.

"That's enough. Work too conspicuously hard and I might find I don't want to send you away."

"Understood. ...I'll take it easy."

"That's a disappointed face. Want me to obsess over you, then? Seems you were hoping I wouldn't let go."

Branded a flower snake, and now she was supposed to look disappointed, too? And on top of it all, to hear him ask whether she'd been hoping for his obsession, hoping he'd never let her go—her pride took the blow, her head throbbed, and a shudder wracked her.

"As if I ever would. Agh—!"

In pulling away from Yu-gam, she came within a hair's breadth of toppling over backward.

Jae-kyung's body crashed straight into him.

"Seduce in moderation. Unless you hate being called a flower snake."

"..."

"And what will you do if the sucker bastard falls for it?"