What the Shaman Ordered
Mu-young shoved him away and stumbled back. Her heart was pounding so hard it felt bruised, almost crushed. Why did he do something he didn't need to do—and then wear that kind of look on top of it? A wave of emotion surged up, and she had just grabbed the door handle to storm out when Kang-ho's hand proved faster.
"You're hard enough to see as it is. Where do you think you're going?"
His low voice brushed against her ear like something seeping in. Keeping hold of her arm, he drew her closer. Why is he like this? At such a breathless distance, she wanted to fling something sharp at him, but Mu-young steadied her breathing and held it in.
"Then why did you come into a place like this?"
She put weight on her final word, trying to reason through the situation rationally.
"You think I knew there'd be something this gloomy inside the members' office building?"
He shrugged as if none of it were his fault. The word gloomy only made her more exasperated. Yes, he had always been good at this kind of cheap humor. It stung, somehow, to remember how she had once fallen for a man like that.
"So let's stop blaming each other and get to the point. I'm not exactly free, either."
Kang-ho had the gall to act busy. Who was it that had summoned her here in the first place? What could possibly be so urgent that he'd drag her out in front of everyone, then act like this? His insufferable habit of doing exactly as he pleased was clearly incurable. Maybe Chairman Baek Hee-sang had been right when he explained why he'd proposed this marriage to her.
'That grandson of mine—fortune won't turn for him unless we break him of his ways, I tell you.'
The Kingmaker's chosen candidate for the presidency was his own grandson. Who knew how many years of heaven-sent luck it would take to see it through, but with possibility on the table, the old man would clearly try anything. The process just happened to be crude, that was all.
'The shaman says I've got to find him someone from around us. Somebody drawing a state salary. She read his saju, and—here—this aide, Lee Mu-young, matches perfectly. A perfect match, they say. Says she'll bring in the people's hearts. Well then, no need to look any further, is there?'
That was how Chairman Baek had answered, at great and rambling length, when she'd asked why she of all people had been chosen as the bride. Entrusting the marriage of a thirty-something assemblyman grandson to a shaman's reading—the old man's meddling was beyond excessive. And yet she could understand why he felt he simply had to do it. A horse runs only when held in your own hands.
"What did the Chairman offer you?"
Driving straight to the heart of the matter seemed to be both Kang-ho's strength and his flaw. He struck at the opening in his opponent—and earned exactly that much resistance in return.
"Am I obligated to answer that?"
Mu-young retorted with an uncharacteristic edge. Being candid about things that didn't need hiding, never adding excuses or letting emotion carry her—that had been her life's creed. But past and present alike, she kept veering off course in front of Baek Kang-ho, turning into someone else entirely.
"I doubt they tacked on a confidentiality clause. Is it so private you can't even tell me? And how am I supposed to interpret you getting emotional out of nowhere?"
In a matter of seconds he had read her state and her situation with surgical precision and struck back. Why was it so easy for him to notice and pick apart even these microscopic reactions, yet so impossible for him to remember her? Mu-young resented, in some corner of herself, the Kang-ho who had so ruthlessly, so coldly erased everything about her—and her alone.
"Would knowing change anything for you?"
"If it's within my power to grant, I'll hear you out."
With the atmosphere easing a shade, Kang-ho made his intentions explicit. To put it precisely, he meant to take over the deal she'd struck with Chairman Baek and somehow stop this marriage in its tracks.
"Well, I find that odd. It's a marriage of formality anyway. What possible reason could I have to refuse it this hard?"
"Being swayed by someone. That's what I hate most."
Kang-ho's face said he was revolted by nothing so much as that.
"And if it's the old man of our house, I hate it even more."
A hollow laugh escaped her at his reasoning. How very Baek Kang-ho of him. Grandfather and grandson locked in their mirror-image power struggle—and she was the one being held hostage in it. The injustice of it chafed more and more.
"Aren't you a bit past the rebellious age?"
"What does resistance have to do with age?"
He laughed, shamelessly justifying himself—then leaned his body forward. The instant he closed in, strength flashed through the tips of her toes. Retreating would somehow have wounded her pride, so she stood her ground, but the pressure radiating off him seemed to close around her heart and refuse to let go.
"Now. Out with it."
Kang-ho opened his mouth again, coaxing as ever.
"Why you have to go through with this marriage."
At the same time he pressed himself a little more insistently against her.
"I have to be convinced too before I walk into that ceremony, don't I?"
Cornered as if at a dead end, Mu-young couldn't bear any more. Avoid it. Get out of it. That was the only thought left.
"Representative Son Tae-seung's release."
"......"
"That's the condition for this marriage."
She answered simply. Chairman Baek had put that on the table first as the price of the wedding, and she'd had no reason to refuse. No—or perhaps, some part of her had wanted to hold on to that man again, even by a route like this.
The moment he heard her answer, the corner of Kang-ho's mouth curled into something bitter. He gave a small nod, as if to say, so that was it.
"And here I thought it'd be something more—"
Kang-ho found her more pathetic than ever. A mere chief aide, willing to stake her own marriage on Representative Son's release? If there was a motive that big, it had to be an old passion, didn't it? Passion was the easiest thing of all to exploit. It only surprised him a little—that Son Tae-seung should mean so much to her.
"But what exactly are you betting on with our Chairman?"
Uncertain collateral contracts like this always had their cracks. Prying into those cracks to rattle the other side—that was Kang-ho's craft, if you could call it that.
"What power does a washed-up five-term lawmaker have? He lost his grip ages ago. You don't see it yet, do you? In the end, the one actually running on the field is me."
Kang-ho gestured with his eyes to the assemblyman's badge pinned to his coat. Even Mu-young knew that this kind of confidence came from real, living power.
"You know the frontrunner for the next presidency is Kim Jin-soo, the ex-prosecutor turned lawmaker. If I happen to hold several of his cabinets—would you move on my word alone?"
For Representative Son to walk free on bail, a deal with the powers above would have to come first. And depending on whose hand held that knife's hilt, her goal would either be within reach or forever out of it.
"Whichever side I stand on, isn't my risk exactly the same?"
It was another way of saying she trusted no one completely. With a look that said the more trustworthy bet was not the man before her but the Kingmaker who had manufactured the result of five consecutive terms, she held Kang-ho's gaze.
Perhaps he sensed she was a harder opponent than he'd expected, because Kang-ho gave a short nod of grudging acknowledgment. Then his eyes flashed back into combat mode.
"Then let's do this."
Promising a clean resolution, he pressed on.
"How about a double contract? You keep the deal you made with the Chairman, and you shake hands with me as well. Insure yourself on both ends—Ms. Lee Mu-young has nothing to lose."
His persistence, his evident determination to pull her to his side no matter what, made her curious. What was it he actually wanted?
"Then what is it you want from me?"
"Divorce when I decide the time is right."
The answer came as though he'd been waiting for the question. He meant that the last knife's hilt would be held in his own hand, whatever it took. This was a man who'd rather die than be swayed—so of course he'd say that, she thought.
And a chilling premonition crept in: if the negotiation collapsed, he was not a man who would grant her any leniency.
"And if I refuse this? Do your cabinets open up too?"
At her retort, Kang-ho struggled to force down a laugh that threatened to burst out. He didn't seem to find the accusation unfair, so perhaps half her guess had landed true.
"You can't trust me even that much?"
When he asked it with a loose, easy smile, the back of her neck began to sting faintly. Trust you? How? I can't even recognize you anymore. The words rose so close to spilling out that she had to clench her hands shut.
"I'll think about it."
The moment she answered, as though to end the conversation, came the sound of the storage room's door handle turning. Both of them froze and looked toward the entrance. Bright fluorescent light flooded the darkness that had held only the glow of their phones, and a voice rang out.
"Oh my, is someone in here—oh! Aide-nim?"
The person who flicked on the light switch that had eluded them both and stepped inside was the intern who worked under Hee-sook—someone Mu-young knew well enough to grab coffee with at the café nearby or share the occasional lunch. Apparently hunting for supplies, she stood holding an empty paper bag.
"Ah, Yu-jin. Sorry. Startled you, didn't it?"
Mu-young stepped forward to greet her warmly, though she felt like she'd been caught at something suspicious—the heat climbing up the back of her neck. Naturally, Yu-jin's eyes went to the man standing pressed close behind her. There was no way she wouldn't recognize Assemblyman Baek Kang-ho, and Mu-young squeezed her eyes shut.
"What's there to be so embarrassed about?"
Kang-ho leaned down slightly and murmured it near her ear.
"We're getting married anyway."
With that leisurely parting line, he slipped out of the storage room like a man making his escape—leaving Mu-young to be the one whose face went up in flames.