Blindsided

"…You're telling me the Hwajin new town project is just sitting there rotting. So what's the status on the Miho District redevelopment?"

"Ah, well, the city hall investigation has been delayed, and with the emergency session since last week, things have been a bit… chaotic."

"Aide Lee Min-soo."

"Yes, Congressman."

When the excuses started piling up, Kang-ho set down the documents he was holding with a quiet thud. The political affairs aide in charge of the district office, reading his mood from his voice alone, bowed his head.

Kang-ho had a habit of checking on work without warning, like a surprise inspection, so his staff had to stay perpetually tense and prepared. Worse, he processed a crushing schedule and workload while still catching every loose thread faster than anyone else, which meant excuses never worked on him. It was no wonder the aide teams called him a ferocious hunting dog behind his back.

And with such a powerful family standing behind him, there was already a line of people angling for a place at his side. But time and again they burned out and dropped away before they ever won his approval. Lately, Min-soo had begun to realize he was on the verge of being one of them.

"Did I not send this aide down there specifically to manage my district?"

Kang-ho asked in a bone-dry voice. If anything, it might have been less frightening if he'd flown into a rage like the hot-tempered lawmakers did. Kang-ho was the exact opposite — the type who, when angry, grew calmer and quietly squeezed the life out of you. It was suddenly easy to understand why suspects before him had confessed so willingly back in his prosecutor days.

"I'm sorry. I wasn't paying enough attention."

"Coveting a Seoul position, are you?"

Kang-ho's blunt remark struck Min-soo without any filter. He stole a glance up at Jeong-pyo, seated beside Kang-ho. By both age and career, he was the one who should rightfully have held the chief aide's seat. Instead, some outsider had sauntered in and installed himself there without a shred of tact.

"That's — no, of course not. Nothing like that."

Min-soo waved his hands in flustered denial, but he already knew his dark little ambition had been laid bare. There was no way a man as sharp as Kang-ho had missed it.

"Then you know better than anyone what it takes to earn one, don't you?"

Min-soo's mouth snapped shut at the rejoinder. It wasn't a rebuke for daring to covet the seat, or a dismissal that he wasn't qualified — it was advice to first learn how to read priorities — and it stung far worse than either.

"I'll keep that in mind."

While Min-soo answered, Kang-ho's phone kept ringing on the table. He checked the screen and flipped it face-down, but whoever was calling refused to give up, and the calls kept coming.

"Then I'll head out to look over the development office."

"Yes. Keep up the good work."

Kang-ho waved the aide out. The phone rang on and on through all of it. Persistent, at least, was something you had to give the caller credit for. He picked up the phone and slipped out of the conference room. Jeong-pyo, who had been waiting in the hall, moved to follow on reflex, but stopped short when Kang-ho held up his cigarette pack.

A few stray drops of rain were falling by the time he reached the smoking area. He had just put a cigarette to his lips and was reaching for his lighter when the phone vibrated again in his suit pocket. Without even glancing at the screen, he pressed the button and brought it to his ear.

"Yes."

"Why is it impossible to reach you?"

"I was in a meeting."

Kang-ho spoke as if soothing a sulking child. There was such a thick layer of irritation in her voice that he could guess the conclusion hadn't gone the way she wanted.

"Your grandfather has ordered the wedding preparations to begin."

Hye-seon laid out the situation in a voice so heavy it sounded like the ground was caving in beneath her. Once the facts were confirmed, the corners of Kang-ho's mouth lifted faintly. He took a drag, and the aftertaste tasted bitterer than usual.

Then, out of nowhere, the woman's face surfaced in his mind. So this was how she stabbed him in the back. He'd thought she was nearly half agreed to it. Really, there was no one in this world you could trust. He had no idea what the old man had cooked up to sway her, but the whole thing had lost its flavor in a single stroke.

Two-faced people were stacked to the rafters around him, yet he'd trusted this woman a little, because he had faced her directly. Now he caught himself wondering if he hadn't simply expected more of her than he had any right to.

"Why aren't you answering?"

"Yes. I understand."

Kang-ho answered as though it were someone else's problem.

"Your own marriage… and you're not even curious who it's with?"

He had no interest in responding to the absurdity in Hye-seon's voice. It wasn't as if anything would change if he did.

"I assume he's already decided. Even if I said I didn't like her, would he change it? Everything goes exactly the way Grandfather wants."

In certain respects, Kang-ho resembled his own father. Hye-seon couldn't stand that about him, and he knew it well.

"You and your father, exactly the same, the both of you. I'm the only one whose stomach is tying itself in knots. I'll send you her number, so contact her and meet up. Your grandfather says to hurry, so move on your own. I've delivered my message — I'm hanging up."

Hye-seon rushed off the call as if to say she'd done her bare minimum duty and was washing her hands of it. Thinking of how worked up the old man must have been, a thin laugh escaped him.

Not her own flesh and blood or not, Hye-seon had never once neglected her role as his mother. Far from abusing or resenting him as a stepmother, she'd clung to him with more attachment than the situation called for. Even if that devotion came bundled with some agenda of her own, from where Kang-ho stood it cost him nothing.

She was an easy woman to appease and win over to his side. Because he knew her nature, Kang-ho assumed this current flare of anger would cool soon enough. In his family, after all, Hee-sang's word was law.

By the time the cigarette had burned down to the filter, Kang-ho ground it out in the trash can. Moments later, the woman's contact information and photo arrived from his mother.

He already knew everything the message contained, so there was no need to look. He skimmed past the photo in passing and slid the phone back into his pocket.

After returning to the district office to exchange greetings with the staff, he came back to his member's building at the National Assembly. His steps quickened as he headed for his office — a packed afternoon schedule left no room for slack. He was checking the next appointment in his head and glancing down at his wristwatch when he saw her — the woman from the photo he'd just looked at, in the flesh, up ahead.

What the hell.

The woman in a tailored suit that fell cleanly from her ankles looked utterly composed, as though she'd just come back from a routine field assignment. It was impossible to believe she'd just met Baek Hee-sang and consented to the marriage.

Why her, of all people? That was the question Kang-ho had turned over from the start. What possible benefit could come to the old man from his grandson marrying the closest aide of an opposition party mired in corruption scandals?

Maybe it was nothing more than a simple desire to hand his grandson a raw deal — to send him walking down a road of thorns. Bloodline aside, Baek Hee-sang, the political kingmaker, was more than capable of it.

Then what had the woman before him gained that made her change her mind? From Kang-ho's position, the question was irresistible.

Above all, that composure of hers — as if she had foreseen this entire situation — grated on him so badly that his feet moved on pure impulse. He marched straight into Representative Min Ji-ae's office. At the appearance of someone utterly unexpected, every pair of eyes snapped to the entrance.

"Oh… h-hello…."

There wasn't an aide in the room who wouldn't recognize Congressman Baek Kang-ho. Startled, they rose from their seats one by one. Kang-ho searched the faces until he found the one he wanted. At the far end of the office, by the window seat that clearly ranked as the head of the room, sat the woman. He strode over without hesitation and planted himself in front of Mu-young.

She had been organizing her bag, and at the sudden disorder in the office she looked up belatedly — straight into Kang-ho's eyes. Even at their first meeting he'd sensed it: there was something about this woman that rejected him on instinct. He knew it was groundless conjecture, and still those eyes somehow got under his skin and stirred him up.

"Do you have a moment?"

Kang-ho spoke without sparing a glance for anyone around them. The office staff, still rattled by his arrival, began murmuring again — this time about the two of them. Mu-young, conscious of the attention, let her gaze sweep past him to the space behind his shoulder, and then her eyes came back to rest on him. Something in her look disapproved of his behavior, and that disapproval satisfied Kang-ho immensely.

"No?"

When she didn't answer, he pressed once more. And now every gaze in the room fixed on her, as if the whole office were waiting on her reply alone. As the corners of Kang-ho's mouth curved — this was exactly what he'd engineered — the line between Mu-young's brows hardened for an instant.

"A moment is fine."

It felt as if the man would do something even worse if she kept stalling, so at last she rose from her seat. A sense of achievement settled over Kang-ho at having moved Mu-young exactly as he intended, and he exited the office with a thoroughly pleased face.

Once he was gone, Mu-young followed straight after him. Watching him walk ahead of her, she still couldn't quite feel the reality of it. Until a few days ago, he had been a man she'd erased from her life. A man she'd decided to live pretending not to know. And overnight, he had become her husband-to-be.

"Outside won't work."

Kang-ho stopped at the mouth of the lounge and turned back — a crowd of people had just poured in through the entrance. His eyes darted to the plan B: the storage room next to the lounge. He pushed the door open, and Mu-young, equally conscious of the onlookers, stepped straight inside after him. The space was pitch dark. Then the iron door clanged shut behind them, and the darkness became total.

"It's — it's too dark in h—"

"Careful—"

He was just pulling out his phone to switch on the flashlight when their paths tangled, and Mu-young stumbled into the stack of boxes. In that instant, a hand reached out on pure reflex, urgent and unthinking. Pulled by that hand, Mu-young fell against his chest — and Kang-ho's eyes went rigid. He was even more startled than she was by his own body, which had wrapped itself around her as if to shield her from harm.