The Piano Man

Whatever explanation she gave, he wouldn't believe a word of it — she was sure of that. With her heart on the verge of bursting and his scent closing around her, a scent she knew far too well, she found she couldn't bring herself to answer.

"Back at the sauna again today?"

"...No."

Earlier, after what Mr. Kim had said, she had peeked into the communal room — and the chatter inside had been all about her and the newly arrived chairman. Nearly all of it unflattering to her.

"Move into my house."

At his words, Jae-kyung nearly jumped out of her skin, though she kept it off her face.

"This isn't a proposal that we live together."

"Oh? Then what would you call it?"

"We're already husband and wife. There's no reason to live apart. Until the paperwork is settled, staying under one roof is only natural."

The instant she opened her mouth to refuse, her phone chimed.

When Jae-kyung looked up, eyes wide with shock, her gaze collided with Yu-gam's — he had been watching from beside her the whole time.

And so, the audit office's text having stripped her of every alternative, Jae-kyung ended up moving into Yu-gam's house. With her assets seized and no residence left to her name, it was less a choice than the only door still open.

Thanks to his consideration, the audit team verified her identity outside the front door and left without crossing the threshold.

"Are you planning to stand in the entryway all night?"

"...No."

"I'm not going to pounce on you. Come in."

She had no idea what might happen once she stepped into this space, and even with her shoes off, her feet refused to carry her forward.

"Wait — what's this?"

"It's Saebom-i. ...My mother's plant."

She couldn't very well leave her late mother's keepsake sitting in an empty house.

"I can't stand animals or plants. Keep it somewhere out of sight."

A crease thin as a thread formed between Yu-gam's brows, plainly displeased by the pot she clutched to her chest.

"I'll keep it where it won't be noticed. Don't worry."

Half afraid the man might wander in and throw it out, she carried the plant into the room and locked the door tight behind her.

She glanced around, then set Saebom-i down in the dressing room. Neglected as it was, the plant had somehow clung to life — a companion as dear to her as a younger sibling.

The bathroom, lavish almost to the point of insult, she rather liked.

Afraid of falling asleep in the tub like last time, she washed up in a hurry and came out, scrubbing roughly at her wet hair with a towel soft enough to belong in a hotel.

"God, this is humiliating."

She flopped face-down onto the bed — plush as any hotel's — and let herself sink into it. Her head was already throbbing at the mere thought of whatever might come next.

Seduce him properly. Unless you'd rather keep being called a flower snake.

"Haah... I really don't want to set foot outside. That man has lost his mind. I never once seduced him, for your information!"

The retort she couldn't fire at the face of the man who'd mistaken her for a flower snake curdled in her chest, and she spent the whole night tossing and turning with it.

She had been barely twenty.

A contract marriage, accepted without a moment's deliberation because her mother's hospital bills wouldn't wait.

The offer had come from a managing director of a major corporation, and she had trusted that no one would put money and a contract in front of her only to do her harm.

The world had never made it easy to honor a dying wish that her only daughter live as ordinary and lovely as anyone else.

And now he had appeared out of nowhere — to start what, exactly? So far there had been nothing but money wielded as a threat and those icy glares, but she couldn't let her guard down.

All she wanted was to throw herself into her work, and he had told her to coast. She couldn't begin to fathom what the man wanted from her.

Then, from the next room, quiet piano music began to seep through the wall. Had he put on music?

Rachmaninoff, Symphony No. 2, third movement.

A solo piano arrangement — a melody Jae-kyung knew by heart.

Clean the principal's office every day.

A scholarship student was in no position to complain about scrubbing the principal's office.

Next door to it was the music room.

Every time she cleaned, beautiful piano music drifted through.

It carried a longing like walking alone through a garden after nightfall. At the tender, warm melody, her mother's face would rise before her, and the corners of her eyes would go damp.

The next day, and the day after that.

At some point, cleaning to that piece had simply become part of the routine.

I'm jealous. He plays beautifully.

Like her friend Ye-seul, who had taken the grand prize at a piano competition — if the chance ever came, she would have loved to learn.

One day, Jae-kyung peered through the music room's small window to see who was playing. A boy — tall, with broad hands and long fingers.

Is he lonely, like me?

Maybe it was the black uniform jacket, but it hardly felt like a student playing — it felt like listening to a real pianist perform.

Piano Man.

She christened him with the name in the privacy of her own head, then hummed the melody she had come to know so well.

The music touched her heart in soft little taps, like footsteps crossing a still lake wrapped in mist.

A mother who had walked out when Jae-kyung was seven, a father who was never there, a girl living alone — the piece cradled all of it in something warm.

She never saw his face, but the profile that flashed past the window, the broad shoulders, the long fingers — he looked terribly impressive.

A month passed of listening to him play.

Then Jae-kyung came down with the flu and missed a week of school — and after that, the boy never appeared in the music room again.

The piece the Piano Man used to play.

Humming the familiar bars, Jae-kyung tossed and turned until dawn.

When the alarm shrieked, she flung out a hand and silenced it.

She slipped out of bed and, up on her toes, eased the door open with all the care she could muster. No sound came from Yu-gam's room — still asleep, perhaps.

She crossed the living room, its lights dimmed low, and let herself into the kitchen, where she filled a glass from the water purifier.

The kitchen alone was bigger than her entire house.

She was halfway through her glass, turning to go, when Yu-gam walked in wearing a dress shirt.

"You're up early."

"Ah... yes."

He paid no attention to the way she instinctively took a step back. He simply went to the coffee machine and brewed two cups, and the scent of finely ground beans filled the kitchen.

"Drink."

"I'm all right, thank you. I'll head to work ahead of you."

"Seo Jae-kyung."

"..."

"Doesn't the chairman's aide know that traveling with him is the bare minimum? We move together so that nothing from the audit office leaks. Go separately, and the rumors only multiply."

It was prison, minus the bars.

He wasn't wrong, and a long sigh escaped her before she could stop it.

Jae-kyung dragged herself into the chairman's office, looking like death warmed over.

It was only her second day on the job, and she hadn't slept a wink, haunted by nightmares of being chased. At this rate, she would collapse before the three months were up — she could feel it.

"Secretary Seo, are you feeling unwell?"

"No. I just couldn't sleep."

Director Kwon had declared that the coffee she brewed suited his palate perfectly, and now he dropped by several times a day to ask for another cup.

Yu-gam had told him to brew his own and drink it himself; that Director Kwon could ignore the order so utterly was a testament to nothing more than the man's truly formidable nerve.

"Working for the chairman is unbelievably stressful, isn't it? He's picky beyond belief, and a complete workaholic. Back when we were roommates studying abroad, I honestly thought his insomnia was going to be contagious."

Director Kwon accepted the cup she handed over and savored the aroma with the contented ease of a connoisseur.

"I take it you two studied abroad together?"

"I was a KE Group scholarship student, you see. He might look cold as ice, but he's a total tsundere. The first time I met him, he was wandering around on no sleep at all — I genuinely thought he was sleepwalking. Honestly, I'm the one who made him into a human being."

But no amount of Director Kwon's praise could chip away at her prejudice. Warm feelings for the man who called her a flower snake? Impossible.

Once she had endured another round of the director's now-familiar chatter, Jae-kyung returned to her desk and bent again over the vice principal's documents she had been reviewing since the day before.

"What is this? The numbers don't add up."

A portion of the temporary teachers' salaries had been converted into administrative expenses, with no clear record of where any of it had gone. On top of that, the supply contracts for school events had been split between exactly two vendors — a monopoly the pair had held for over a decade.

"Then why do both companies list the same address?"

Different names, different phone numbers — but the same place of business.

They say I have to donate a hefty sum if I ever want a full-time post, but I have no idea where I'd find that kind of money right now.

It must have been pure coincidence that Teacher Kim Joo-young's bitter complaint surfaced in her mind — the woman she had worked alongside as an assistant teacher.

No such offer had ever been made to Jae-kyung, so she couldn't begin to guess what full-time positions had to do with donations.

"Um — Vice Principal? This is Secretary Seo, from the chairman's office."

"Teacher Seo. What is it?"

The mere sound of her voice was enough to make the vice principal bristle, wary as if a blade had been drawn.

"Would it be possible to receive additional materials on the supplier companies?"

There were things that didn't sit right, and she intended to request the official paperwork through proper channels — through him.

"I've already handed you hundreds of pages — what could you possibly be curious about now? If you're contract staff, then act like contract staff. Have you still not learned your place, even after moving to the chairman's office? Needlessly oversensitive, honestly..."

Phone pressed to her ear, Jae-kyung racked her brain for a way to pry the documents out of him.

Then Yu-gam plucked the phone from her hand.

"That contract employee is my secretary. Any document the chairman's office requests, you send over. Immediately."

When had he even come in? Looking down at her all the while, he delivered the instruction and cut the call dead.

"Why do you sit there and take that garbage?"