The Strange Woman
Dohyun rose from his seat and walked over to the desk.
Sojin stared blankly at his back.
Forgot? Forgot what?
Don't tell me he wants another apology.
Sojin spoke up carefully.
"If there's…… anything else I should apologize for……."
"Not that."
Dohyun opened a drawer. He pulled something out of it.
A thin scarf.
The moment she saw it, Sojin's eyes went wide.
"Oh."
Without thinking, her hand flew to her neck.
Everything had been such a blur that day, she'd never gotten around to retrieving it.
Dohyun held the scarf out toward her.
"You left it behind that day."
"Oh……"
Sojin stared at the scarf blankly for a moment before belatedly taking it. The thin fabric settled into her palm.
Suddenly, that day came back to her. The day Dohyun had saved her life.
And with it, the wind of that afternoon, and the terror she'd felt.
Sojin clutched the scarf tightly.
"You kept it safe for me."
"It was lying there, so I picked it up. That's all."
"Still."
Dohyun turned his gaze away as if it were nothing.
"I picked it up because I saw it. If I hadn't seen it, I wouldn't have picked it up."
Typical. Not a single kind word, just that dry, sniping tone.
Sojin's lips fluttered for a moment.
"……Thank you."
Dohyun's eyes came back to her.
Sojin tightened her grip on the scarf.
"On the rooftop. If it hadn't been for you, Director, something truly terrible would have happened."
"It would have been better if you hadn't done it at all."
"……Yes. You're right."
At her meek answer, Dohyun's brow shifted almost imperceptibly.
Sojin lifted her head. His expression was as cold and indifferent as ever.
Then she remembered the face she'd seen on the rooftop that day.
Twisted with rage — but beneath it, unmistakably, fear.
"I'll never do it again. Really."
For the briefest instant, something unreadable flickered across Dohyun's face.
"That day, I…… I made a mistake in judgment."
"Judgment?"
Dohyun's voice dropped low.
"What kind of judgment leads someone to climb over a railing?"
"……I'm sorry."
"I'm not asking for an apology."
Dohyun looked her straight in the eye.
"If something like that happens again, I won't simply settle for catching you."
Sojin's shoulders flinched.
"If necessary, I'll bring it up with Chairman Lee directly."
"With my father?"
"Yes."
"……"
That would be a problem.
She couldn't even imagine the chaos that would erupt if Chairman Lee found out about the rooftop incident.
Sojin nodded hurriedly.
"I won't. I really won't."
"I find that hard to believe."
Sojin felt an odd surge of indignation. Of course he didn't trust her.
Thinking back on how bizarre she'd acted all this time, she had no grounds to complain.
Still, this time I mean it.
"It's…… really not going to happen again."
Forcing herself to look casual, Sojin slipped the scarf into her pocket.
"Anyway, thank you for the scarf. And for the project, too."
She walked toward the door of the executive office. Just as her hand was about to close around the handle, she hesitated.
Then she turned back and added:
"By the way, when does the Replay Project meeting start?"
"After the ten o'clock all-hands, there will be a separate meeting for team leaders only."
"What about the materials?"
"A notice will be sent by email."
"……Planning Team 2 will be receiving the same materials, right?"
Dohyun's eyes narrowed subtly.
"You're asking something that should be obvious."
"I'm just confirming. It would be a problem if my team alone received an incomplete set."
"I'm not petty enough to do something like that."
"Then why did you back then…… ah, no, never mind. You're very reliable when it comes to that sort of thing, Director."
The moment the words left her mouth, Sojin winced.
Dohyun's eyebrow rose.
"Back then?"
"Pretend you didn't hear that."
"I did hear it. How am I supposed to pretend I didn't?"
"Then just forget it, please."
"It seems my restricting your authority bothered you quite a bit."
"……That's not it. I just like clarity, that's why I asked."
I only double-checked because I care about Planning Team 2's future now, that's all!
"Then guarantee it clearly. My authority, I mean."
Dohyun said flatly, "Understood."
Sojin smiled very slightly.
"Then I'll see you at the meeting tomorrow."
With a light bow, she left the executive office.
The door closed, and silence settled over the room once more.
Dohyun stared at the closed door for a long while.
Then he murmured under his breath.
"She really is a strange woman."
She'd always been strange, true.
But the Lee Sojin of these past few days couldn't be explained away by the word strange alone.
The face that had trembled on the verge of tears as someone bled in front of her. The face that had lit up at the news of joining the project, only to fall at the mention of her teammates' promotions.
All of it felt foreign to him.
Even Dohyun was being swayed by her, finding himself increasingly unsettled.
Was the woman secretly scheming behind his back with Chairman Kang the real her?
Or was it the woman who worried about her teammates in front of him, with such earnest eyes?
Dohyun looked down at the project roster on his desk.
Planning Team 2.
His fingertip tapped lightly on the name written beneath it: Lee Sojin.
The moment Sojin stepped out of the executive office, she let out a long breath.
"Haah……"
Talking to Dohyun took so much mental effort that it left her needlessly exhausted.
"Okay, what's next……"
She had to formally apologize to her team for everything she'd pulled as the resident Parachute Hire.
I've basically been dumping my work on them this whole time, after all.
She couldn't rebuild their shattered trust in one fell swoop, but an apology was the foundation that trust would have to be built on.
Sojin stopped in front of the team office door. Low voices drifted out from inside.
"So it's true our team got left out?"
"Then what are we supposed to do?"
"I wonder if the team leader even knows……"
Sojin gripped the door handle. She took a moment to steady her breathing, then opened the door with her face arranged into the calmest expression she could manage.
Every head in the room snapped toward her.
Sojin stood before them. Her teammates' eyes darted around frantically, wondering if she'd overheard them talking.
"Let's gather in the conference room for a moment."
Swallowing hard, the team members filed after her into the conference room.
Everyone took their seats and waited for Sojin to speak.
She opened her mouth slowly.
"The Replay Project."
At those two words, the room went silent. Sojin looked each of them in the eye, one by one.
Anxiety and resentment, hope and resignation, all tangled together in their gazes.
These were eyes she could no longer turn away from.
"Our team has been included."
The air in the room shifted in an instant.
"Really?"
"Is that true?"
"Planning Team 2 too?"
Sojin nodded.
"Yes. I confirmed it with the Director himself. We're joining the team leaders' meeting tomorrow morning at ten."
Relief spread across her teammates' faces.
"And……"
Everyone looked at her.
Sojin spoke, a little awkwardly, but clearly.
"I know that I've behaved wrongly all this time."
A hush fell over the Planning Team 2 conference room.
Sojin endured the silence and pressed on.
"I know you can't bring yourselves to trust me. But I'll do my best — so that our team can achieve real results in this project."
Even after Sojin finished speaking, the silence lingered.
Eunha kept her head down and didn't answer.
Minjun pretended to take notes, but wrote nothing in his notebook.
Only Hyeonju managed a benevolent nod.
Sojin clasped her hands tightly together.
Right. Expecting them to just accept this because I said the words would be strange of them.
Every bit of this is my own doing.
Words alone wouldn't be enough. The only thing left was to prove it through action.
Sojin rose slowly from her seat, then bowed deeply.
"For everything up until now, I apologize once more. I won't ask you to trust me. Instead, please just watch."
Lifting her head, Sojin smiled faintly.
"Because I'm going to show you, without a doubt."
The next morning, at ten o'clock sharp.
The first meeting of the Replay Project convened in the grand conference room on the 27th floor.
From Planning Team 1 through Team 5, each team's leader and key members filled the room.
Team sizes varied — as few as three people, as many as five.
Seated somewhere in the middle of it all, Planning Team 2 felt distinctly out of place.
Sojin glanced down at her wrist.
……So this is where the original story begins.