The Chairman's Visit
It wasn’t as if Seo-won had gotten permission before filing their marriage papers. Hadn’t she already guessed he would look into the person he’d married without a word?
From that moment on, she had known a day like this would come. She had expected him to seek her out long before now — or to summon her. That he had only appeared now was what struck her as strange.
“…….”
Yuju hesitated. Their eyes had already met. Should she pretend not to know him and run, or walk toward a man she could never hope to handle, just as he clearly wanted?
But all of it was wasted fretting. Even if she slipped free of this moment, nothing would be solved.
He had found her here, at this exact hour, without her ever telling him where she would be. He already knew her movements. Evading him now would only delay the next time he appeared before her.
“I’m going to step out for a bit.”
Having decided, Yuju acted at once. She felt her classmates’ puzzled stares trail after her, but she kept her eyes forward and walked.
When she finally reached Chairman Choi, a driver opened the door as if he had been waiting. The moment Yuju stepped into his space, the car pulled away.
They were headed somewhere free of watching eyes. She did not sense any intent to harm her. Even so, her hands began to tremble — a stark contrast to the calm she forced onto her face.
“I’m sorry for coming to your school without a word.”
While Yuju sat unable even to greet him, a gentle voice reached her. Despite his age, his pronunciation was crisp and full of strength. The kindness did nothing to ease the fear that had seized her.
“…It’s fine. Really.”
“I thought it might be hard for a student to free up time.”
“Please, speak comfortably.”
Her father had always claimed he rose as high as he did because he knew how to attach himself to the right people.
But that was never the whole of it. He had spent so many years in that world that retirement was already drawing near — a man with deep roots.
The scars of violence left on his body had only added to his dignity, and his mere presence carried a crushing weight. Yet even her father could not compare to the man before her. An intensity poured off Chairman Choi that no ordinary person could approach.
Yuju sensed a nameless discomfort, a quiet danger. Even as her face drained white, as if she might faint at any second, Chairman Choi kept up his kindly manner.
“I’ve worried for years about that grandson of mine — locked away from every woman on earth for a lifetime. Then suddenly he marries a friend’s little sister. How was I supposed to sit still with my curiosity?”
“…I’m sorry we married without telling you.”
“You’re both grown adults. If you like each other, you can marry. I was more afraid I’d close my eyes without ever seeing my only blood get a wife. You took him off my hands, so I’m grateful — you don’t need to sit there frozen solid.”
He treated her the whole time with a mild voice and a mild expression. Even so, Yuju felt as if someone had forced dense, heavy food down her throat. Her stomach clenched with nausea; she swallowed her breath.
When a suffocating silence filled the car, Chairman Choi held something out.
A credit card. Without a single extra word, she knew at once it was meant for her use — an extravagant thing far beyond her station.
“No, I can’t—”
“It’s all right. I doubt Seo-won has taken proper care of you, so I’m giving you this. There’s no limit. Use it freely whenever you need to.”
Despite Yuju’s refusal, Chairman Choi finally pressed the card into her hands. The skin that brushed hers for an instant was so cold it was hard to believe it belonged to a living person, and a chill raced through her entire body.
Is this the price of pulling me onto his side — of turning me against Seo-won?
A single card set off a thousand thoughts. She had worked hard to keep her face under control, knowing nothing good would come of revealing what she felt — yet worry seemed to register in Chairman Choi’s eyes all the same.
“You don’t need to contact me separately. Just show your face now and then when you and Seo-won come by.”
He sealed off her concerns before she could voice them. In that instant, the unease she had felt from the start hardened into certainty.
All of this courtesy is fake.
Because of her father, she had weathered every storm imaginable. She had clawed her way through situations no different from violence, and her survival instinct was sharper than anyone’s.
Yuju could read the ugly truth Chairman Choi hid beneath that elegant face.
He had come here today to decide whether she was someone he needed to keep in check — or not.
Better a woman whose identity is certain than one who might become Grandfather’s pawn.
A memory she had never fully considered rose to the surface.
When they first decided on this marriage, Seo-won’s purpose had never felt limited to stopping a forced wedding alone.
Back then, he had clearly been checking his grandfather.
One crisis after another had piled up afterward, and she had stopped thinking about it — but at the time it had struck her as strange. The two of them had never seemed like an ordinary grandfather and grandson.
Yuju had no idea what kind of fight Seo-won was waging behind her back even now.
Yuju dragged her feet along the long path from the gate into the house.
That familiar stretch through the vast grounds felt damp and oppressive today.
Watching how hard he worked at the company, she could believe it was the fruit of Seo-won’s own effort. But no matter how she turned it over, that company still bore Chairman Choi’s touch — and so the whole place felt like his, and unsettled her.
“I won’t have any reason to contact you first. If you ever need something, call me.”
With that brief exchange, Chairman Choi — pressed by another appointment — had dropped her back where they first met.
The card was not the only thing he had forced into her hands. There was also a business card carrying his personal number, something no ordinary person would ever hold.
It made her skin crawl, but in the end she could not refuse. Part of it was fear — the instinctive knowledge that he was no ordinary man — but her thoughts were in too much turmoil for anything else.
Something in her gut told her Seo-won had lived a childhood not so different from her own.
I treated him like some young master who’d only ever walked smooth roads.
Looking back, she had witnessed signs so obvious it was strange she had never put them together.
Especially the bruise on his face after her mother’s funeral.
Someone had hit him. And in this world, the only person who could lay a hand on Seo-won was his grandfather. There had been so many unusual signs in him that failing to notice them until now almost defied belief.
One thought led to another. After meeting Chairman Choi and realizing he was no good man, she had been terrified — yet she sank so deep into thinking of Seo-won that she forgot the fear entirely.
Then, all at once, her steps stopped.
“Huh?”
A massive shape dominated the darkened living room.
It did not take her long to recognize the figure sprawled across the sofa as Seo-won.
“What are you doing out here?”
It was the first time in a long while he had come home early. Until now he had only been dropping by to change clothes before heading straight out again.
Seo-won was not the type to be that cowardly — but after that night, even when they had spoken, she had felt so awkward that she had wondered if he was avoiding her on purpose. Watching him now, though, she could feel the exhaustion rolling off him even as he lay still. He really had been busy.
Caught for a moment by the strangely decadent sight of him, Yuju belatedly remembered the one thing she had forgotten.
“Oh. Oppa — today your grandfather came to my schoo—”
She had been about to push the day’s events straight out when her words cut off.
Alcohol?
A faint scent hung in the air, one that did not suit Seo-won at all. Even when they drank together he never came undone, so the sight of him intoxicated felt foreign.
“You’re late.”
Had something gone wrong? She was still turning over her meeting with Chairman Choi, a queasy roll in her stomach, when he finally spoke.
His voice was locked low and rough. Even the breaths he let out between words were heavy. Every sense Yuju had trained on him sharpened past the point of reason.
A sensation she could not name stirred in her chest. While she held her tongue, he moved the arm that had been covering his eyes.
Their gazes collided in the empty air.
“…….”
“…….”
They were only looking at each other. And yet both of them felt the current of the air stop, as if the room itself had halted around them.
The only light was the faint spill through the living-room windows. Even so, he looked as clear as if she had stepped into a brilliantly lit space.
Seo-won’s gaze fixed on Yuju’s vivid red lips.