A Knife, a Leak, and a Rooftop
I know someone high up inside the company.
Since I heard it straight from them, it's probably solid info.
An outsider forced their way in? Come on, you can tell they're hiding a mountain of stuff behind this.
That's right — the company wants this to stay quiet. It was a knife attack.
More precisely, a knife attack targeting Division Head Kang Dohyun. And the place the outsider broke into was the Planning Strategy Division Head's office.
An employee who happened to walk in saw the Division Head and the attacker grappling, and the attacker escaped through the door the employee opened.
That's why everyone got sent home — the intruder might still be hiding somewhere in the building.
Naturally, the company is trying to bury the truth. Can't have the scandal spreading, after all.
Sojin's eyes went wide. A knife attack in Dohyun's office? She scrolled down rapidly.
So according to this post, Dohyun had nearly been murdered by someone.
There was nothing like that in the original.
The only villain in this drama had been Lee Sera — her. Was there something in this drama she didn't know about?
Then again, I'm an outsider too, so maybe it's not so strange that the drama has hidden settings even I don't know.
Sojin set her phone down on the desk.
Whatever it was — the knife attack, a hidden villain, none of it mattered right now. The only problem demanding her attention was this: Sojin could no longer quit her job.
"I can't leave the company. No matter what I do."
It was a dog's conclusion — the sorry prize she'd earned after all that shameless theatrics. She regretted acting like she had nothing left to lose. If this was how it would end, she should have behaved like a normal, functioning person (questionable) from the start.
"I'm already branded a parachute hire…… What am I supposed to do now?"
Sojin paced restlessly around the room. Try as she might, no solution came to her except getting out of the company. She had to resolve this before the original story kicked off in earnest — and fast.
"Come on, think. Think of something……"
Just then, a breeze drifting in through the open window brushed against her cheek. Her gaze slid toward it.
The window……
Sojin approached it slowly and pushed it open wider. She leaned her head out and looked down.
Right. In transmigration stories, sometimes dying sends you back to your original world.
It was a height where she'd probably walk away with, at worst, a broken leg.
But what if I went up somewhere higher and jumped from there?
Sojin scrambled back from the window. Just glancing down had set her heart pounding so violently it climbed into her throat. She was afraid of dying. Naturally — she didn't want to die. She just…… wanted to go home.
Maybe that was why.
Little by little, an absurd thought began to consume her. She knew exactly how inefficient this death-staked Russian roulette was, how utterly insane. And still, the need to know got there first.
Jihwan burst into the Division Head's office, breathless.
"Hey! Kang Dohyun!"
The office was, quite literally, a scene of carnage. A chair lay toppled at an angle on the floor, documents scattered in disarray around it. Something crunched under Jihwan's foot the moment he stepped inside — a cable tie. A small syringe lay rolling nearby. It was not empty.
Jihwan's face went rigid in an instant. The word abduction flashed through his mind.
"Close the door."
Jihwan flinched, snapping out of his dazed stare at the syringe. He turned to see Dohyun seated on the guest sofa, clutching his shoulder. Jihwan shut the door quickly and hurried over to him.
Dohyun's face was pale, but his eyes were colder than ever.
"The man?"
Jihwan hesitated, then said gloomily, "……We didn't get him."
"Put people on it now. We have to catch him, whatever it takes."
They had to seize him before he was quietly written off as a suicide — there was no time to lose. Jihwan pulled out his phone and swiftly ordered his covert security detail to track the man down.
Dohyun shrugged off his black suit jacket and shirt, revealing a knife wound carved into his right shoulder. Blood from the gash traced a line down the sculpted muscle of his arm, and droplets fell, one by one, onto the office floor.
Jihwan's eyes went round.
"A-at least a hospital—!"
"Don't bother. You want a headline saying I got stabbed?"
Jihwan's mouth snapped shut. The moment Dohyun set foot in a hospital, an article would break at the speed of light.
"Wait here. I'll run to the pharmacy."
Jihwan rushed out of the office, returning shortly with a plastic bag packed full of something.
"……I can do a rough job of patching you up—"
"That's fine. Hand it over."
Dohyun roughly pulled a styptic agent and bandages from the bag. He wiped away the blood with his shirt, pressed the styptic against the wound, and bound it. It had to have hurt like hell, yet not a single muscle in his face so much as twitched. He wrapped the injury in bandages and worked his arm back into his shirt.
He was fastening the buttons when he noticed the blood on his fingers and clicked his tongue low.
"Bring me another shirt."
"……Got it."
Dohyun stripped off the bloodstained shirt again. Under the yellow glow of the lights, the hard lines of his body stood out all the more starkly.
"Bring that man to me."
"Understood. We'll move immediately."
"And collect anything in here that could serve as evidence. You do it yourself — the police can't be trusted."
"……I'll call in more of the security detail and get started right away. But are you—"
Dohyun pulled on the clean white shirt Jihwan had brought.
"I expected this."
Jihwan fell silent at that. He had. Of course he'd expected it. But expecting something and actually believing it would happen were two different things.
……You really are a cruel man.
Dohyun rose from the sofa and started toward his desk. Just then, the office phone rang. He picked up the receiver.
"Hello, this is the security office."
"Yes, this is Division Head Kang Dohyun. What is it?"
"Ah. D-Division Head, sir. I was trying to reach Secretary Ahn — I must have dialed the wrong extension. I'm sorry……"
"Then tell me. It would reach me through Secretary Ahn anyway."
"Understood, sir. It's just that everyone entering the building has been instructed to report directly to us."
"And?"
"There's an employee who just came in. I believe you know her well, sir……"
"I know her well, do I? Who is it?"
"Team Leader Lee Sojin of Planning Team 2, sir."
Dohyun's brow furrowed hard. There was no other woman this insane. Had she not heard there'd been a security breach?
"Don't tell me you let her through."
"The building sweep had already been completed, so……"
The guard's flustered embarrassment came through the receiver loud and clear. Dohyun exhaled a long sigh.
"So where did she go?"
"She said she was heading to the Planning Team 2 office. Huh? It looks like she's gone up to the rooftop. The elevator's stopped on the top floor, sir."
"The rooftop?"
The rooftop, out of nowhere? Dohyun told him he'd take care of it and hung up. Jihwan was watching him with a puzzled look.
"Secretary Ahn, you handle the roof—"
Then Dohyun stopped mid-sentence. She was still his fiancée, after all. It seemed better that he go himself. He changed course and spoke again.
"Never mind. Clean up the office while I'm out. I have somewhere to be."
"Where are you—"
"Nearby. There's somewhere I need to go."
He snatched up his suit jacket, threw it over his shoulders, and strode out of the Division Head's office.