The Chairman's Smile

As a boy, Kang Sa-eon had been pretty rather than handsome. A slender jaw, skin so pale it seemed to glow, and a pair of faintly sharp eyes that caught the attention of anyone, regardless of gender.

The man standing before me now—Chairman Kang Cha-hyun—had bolder features, the kind that still managed to look gentle. I realized, standing there, that the only reason I'd ever thought him kind was the shape of his mouth. That mouth that curved in a perpetual almost-smile.

In my teens and early twenties, I'd registered only the soft way he spoke and the smile at the corners of his lips. Unlike Jeong-i Halmae, I had never noticed the eyes that held not a shred of warmth. The voice reaching my ears was the same one I'd heard more than a decade ago, but the impression it left was entirely different.

At Jeong-i Halmae's funeral, he had offered me sincere condolences. Thinking back, that had been a rather strange arrangement. I should have been the one comforting the son who had lost his mother, not the other way around. And yet he hadn't shed a single tear even at his own mother's funeral, remaining perfectly composed. My grandfather hadn't been particularly close with him either, for all that the man was the son of his old friend.

Kang Sa-eon's face may have grown to resemble his father's as he aged, but it was the temperature of his eyes that he had truly inherited. I realized that despite the chairman's affable manner, he was the type who despised humanity no less than Kang Sa-eon did. And he was looking at me not as the neighbor kid his mother had doted on, but as a stupid woman overreaching for a place she had no business wanting.

Well. That was a fair assessment of my position, I supposed.

It wasn't as if I'd expected him to look kindly on me just because we'd known each other since I was a child. And yet, standing in front of him, my words stuck in my throat. My voice wouldn't come out properly.

"Why are you trying to scare her?"

Kang Sa-eon stepped forward, tucking me behind his shoulder.

I wasn't the only one startled. The chairman's eyes went round and his mouth fell open, just like mine.

"You're shielding her because she's your girlfriend?"

Kang Sa-eon?

He didn't so much as flinch at the astonished tone. He stood there as if there were nothing wrong with it at all. I looked down at the hand gripping my arm.

It wasn't trembling. It wasn't shrinking away from the contact. His hand was simply holding my wrist.

Then it slid down, as if by accident, and covered the back of my hand. His muscles tensed for a moment, going rigid—and that was all. Typical Kang Sa-eon. He'd stepped in front of me like a shield, and yet his eyes never once glanced my way. They stayed locked on his father.

The person Kang Sa-eon hated as much as Jeong-i Halmae was his own father.

"Weren't you glaring at her like you wanted to kill her?"

"When did I glare at anyone? I've known Yoon-i since she was little. I was just glad to see her."

Not Chae-yoon. Yoon-i.

The chairman had borrowed the exact name Jeong-i Halmae used to call me, and now he was looking at me hiding behind his son.

Instead of meeting his gaze, I looked up at Kang Sa-eon. I stared at the set of his jaw for a moment, then huffed a laugh. I laced my fingers through his and faced forward.

The chairman looked thoroughly amused.

"He's right. You are a little overprotective."

"Sa-eon is overprotective? Of you?"

He looked like he was about to die laughing.

I found it a little funny myself.

The only one taking this seriously was Kang Sa-eon. He pulled my hand closer, still wearing that murderous expression, and glared at me. Anyone watching would have thought he was the one threatening me.

"Yes, it's surprising, isn't it? He's like a different person since we started dating."

"I'll have to live a long time, just to see the two of you dating."

Two thirty-three-year-olds were seeing each other, and he talked about it as if it were a middle-school crush. His tone drew a line he'd already decided on.

Stay in the memories.

As long as I didn't step into reality, he would treat me as Jeong-i Halmae's Yoon-i.

"You're not against it?"

I asked, and he looked at me for a few seconds. His unreadable expression could have been taken as affable or indifferent. But it was the unreadability itself that made it frightening.

"Two grown adults are seeing each other. Would either of you listen even if I said something?"

"Shouldn't Sa-eon listen, though?"

"Well... he's my son, but even I don't know what's going on in that head of his."

The chairman let out a hearty laugh.

"I used to worry—all he did as a kid was study or exercise, and even after he grew up all he did was work. Turns out he was getting up to plenty behind my back."

"Oh, come on. You were the only one who didn't know. He's been doing whatever he wanted this whole time."

"Yoon-i seems to know quite a lot, then?"

The nickname was starting to grate. After Jeong-i Halmae passed, the only person who still called me Yoon-i was my grandfather.

"Of course. He was a total player."

"Haha, then our Yoon-i must have a lot to worry about."

"Right? And he's good-looking, too. But once we started seeing each other, he's been treating me well."

"If it's our Yoon-i, I have nothing to worry about."

Kang Sa-eon's grip on my hand tightened. It hurt a little.

His twitching cheek told me he was dying to get a word in.

"I can hardly sit still if the two of you are seeing each other. Shall I get you a gift?"

"That won't be necessary."

Kang Sa-eon cut him off.

"I never said I was giving it to you. I'm offering to get our Yoon-i a little something."

"He's right. He's giving me a gift—why are you turning it down?"

The chairman looked at me as if I were hilarious. Then he said,

"If there's anything you want, just say so. Don't be shy."

"Okay."

I answered with easy cheer. He looked at me for a few seconds, then propped his chin on his hand.

"I thought you two were putting on some clumsy act because of those rumors, but it doesn't seem entirely like a lie."

"Why would we tell a lie like that?"

"That's what I'm wondering. Why would you?"

I looked at Kang Sa-eon.

Honestly, I'd expected his lie to be painfully obvious. My princess almost never hid anything from me. He didn't hesitate to say things that would cause a disaster if they slipped out in front of other people, so I'd assumed that when I wasn't around, he simply kept his mouth shut. But looking at him now, he was actually quite good at lying. His face control was excellent, too.

Then again, Kang Sa-eon wasn't fifteen. He was thirty-three.

We were adults.

I smiled faintly. As if there weren't plenty of relationships these days that had nothing to do with marriage. He wasn't even trying to hide what he meant. I wasn't someone valuable enough for the chairman to bother putting on a polite face. Whether I got hurt or angry, it wouldn't matter to him. An outright warning to know my place would have been too tacky, too unsophisticated.

Even if he didn't bother, there were plenty of mouths ready to tell me to know my place. Plenty of hands ready to pull me back.

The best way to deal with an old fossil was to play the idiot. I smiled innocently, as if I hadn't caught the implication in his words, and he turned his eyes to his son.

"I have something to say, so you stay. Yoon-i, you should head out."

"Okay. I'll see you next time."

I'd wanted to call him Father, just to try it, but I held back. Kang Sa-eon's patience already looked like it was scraping the bottom of the barrel. Whether that was because he was holding my hand or because he could barely tolerate his father's easygoing act, I couldn't tell—but either way, nothing good would come of my princess exploding.

I whispered to him as he walked me to the door of the chairman's office.

"I don't think this is going to work. Not with him."

Other people, maybe. But the chairman didn't seem like the type to be fooled. The distance between a man and a woman was something that showed easily—even at the company, you could spot an affair at a glance. If I could tell, there was no way he couldn't.

He would have Kang Sa-eon's intentions read like the palm of his hand.

It might have been better not to try to deceive him and just come clean, but Kang Sa-eon seemed determined to fool even his own father. After meeting the man, though, that seemed a bit of a stretch. Kang Sa-eon glanced down at me.

"You scared?"

"Hey..."

"Go."

I glanced over Kang Sa-eon's shoulder.

The chairman was beaming at us. Looking at that face, I was even more certain he hadn't bought Kang Sa-eon's lie. And Kang Sa-eon would know that as well as I did.

I made up my mind.

I was going to barge into Kang Sa-eon's house.