I'll Be Sun Woo-yeon

Silence dropped into the space where the rest of his words should have been, and Yeon faltered, lowering her fork. She was certain his brow had drawn so tight because the sight of her wolfing down her food had turned his stomach.

"It's not that. Eat more."

Everything she thought passed straight across her face. A truly simple nature. Only when Seol-woo felt how hard his own expression had set, and offered her the faintest smile, did Yeon pick up her fork again.

She watched his mood without pause, so constantly he thought of a meerkat, and from that alone he could roughly guess the life she had lived. How suffocating her upbringing must have been. Remembering the years that had surely been horrific for her, Seol-woo clenched his teeth. The most urgent thing was to catch the people who had made Yeon like this and bring them to account.

He had gone quiet because he was torn. Could he really say it, out of nowhere and with no preparation at all—that her name was not Kwon Da-mi, but Sun Woo-yeon? Her aversion to hospitals meant he couldn't even judge her present condition with any accuracy. He was afraid a shock might open into something worse.

Tap, tap. He drummed his fingers on the table, turning it over and over, then straightened as if the decision had finally settled. I'll be keeping her in my arms either way. No need to rush. For now, just the name. Slowly.

"She's a woman I have to find."

"Sun Woo-yeon?"

"Yes. Sun Woo-yeon. She looks a great deal like you."

"Like me?"

Startled by the word, Yeon hid her face behind her fork. Se-hee had always sneered that a mutant like her was surely the only one in the world. To hear that someone resembled even her—she couldn't help but be curious.

"Mm. But she's hidden herself so tightly I can't find her."

"Then you hid me because...?"

"Because you look like Yeon."

Seol-woo smiled bitterly and pushed his bangs back. The Yeon sitting in front of him remembered nothing at all, so it wasn't even a lie.

"So that's what it was."

"I want you to live in my house as Sun Woo-yeon."

At the seriousness on his face, Yeon slowly lowered her hand. It was strange. She had known all along this wasn't her place, and yet, absurdly, she felt hurt. So every kindness had only been because she resembled someone else.

In that instant she felt the necklace clinging to her skin, and she ducked her head as heat surged into her face. A shame washed over her that didn't even compare to what she had felt in the suite a little while ago. She had offered to spread her legs for a man who had a reason this particular—how ridiculous she must have looked.

"What do I have to do?"

"It's very simple. We'll call you Yeon, and you'll throw your name away and live at Felice."

And if she lived that way and her memories returned on their own, she would become the real Sun Woo-yeon.

"But I'm not her."

"Don't think too hard about it. I get to look at the face I want to see, and you get to live here under protection. It suits us both."

"All right. I want to. I'll be Sun Woo-yeon. Me."

In truth, there had been nothing to hesitate over. So it was true that human greed knew no end. She was already being treated far better than she deserved, and still she had felt hurt—she found herself pathetic.

"Good choice."

"My dad might come looking for me. Will it really be all right?"

"It's fine. You may not know it, but I'm a rather frightening person."

He was itching to meet the man she called Dad, and the hunger of it ran all through him. So much force went into the hand cutting the steak that an unpleasant scrape of metal rang out. Even if they don't come looking, I'll have to go find them myself. His cold eyes narrowed further. Now that he knew the name she had been using, finding the person who had kept Yeon in their grip was only a matter of time.

When Seol-woo came out of the private room with the woman in his arms, the startled manager rushed over at once.

"Is something the matter, sir? May I help you?"

"No. I left my card on the table in the room. Charge it and send the receipt to the president's office at Paradise."

"Yes, sir."

Yeon, who had scraped every one of those plates clean and even put away dessert until she was full, had fallen asleep again just before they left the room. Seol-woo, already growing used to the way she dropped off at any hour, didn't startle. He simply carried her out. Closing time had passed, and only the staff remained in the hall.

The manager, who would ordinarily have chattered—had the food suited him, had anything been lacking—followed in silence. Seol-woo liked the courtesy of it: the man pressing the automatic-door button through two sets of doors, then riding the elevator up with them and escorting them without pause.

"How long have you worked in the lounge?"

"Ten years, as of this year. I've been floor manager for two."

"I see. The way the lounge is managed..."

"Mmm."

"Ah. I think we're being too loud."

Whether he was speaking to the manager or to himself was unclear. Yeon stirred, uncomfortable in his hold, and Seol-woo braced her more securely, a smile touching his mouth.

At the chime he had been waiting for, the manager stepped out first and quickly held the door open.

"This is far enough."

"Shall I call the valet?"

"No. They'll be waiting out front."

Seol-woo, who had already called Ethan to confirm he hadn't been drinking, took the manager's send-off and headed for the entrance. The thin arm hanging loose and swinging at his side nagged at him, and his steps quickened.

He cut through the many stares crossing the hotel lobby and stepped outside, and Ethan, waiting with the car, came over.

"What, she's asleep again?"

"Seol-woo? My Seol-woo?"

The familiar voice came from behind him as he turned toward the back seat to lay Yeon down.

"Have you been well?"

"Ethan. It's been a while. Are you still growing? You seem even taller than the last time I saw you."

"Haha, hardly."

"Ah, Uncle. One moment."

Seol-woo laid Yeon through the open car door, rolled his stiff shoulders a couple of times, and turned. Curiosity filled the eyes of Seong-jin, his maternal uncle and president of Hyunjin Hotel.

"Girlfriend?"

"No. My younger sister."

"My sister doesn't have a daughter. Don't tell me your father had another child."

"It isn't like that."

Seong-jin laughed, a low heh heh, and stole a glance into the open back seat. He had seen his nephew come out of the hotel with a woman in his arms; looking away was difficult.

"Your mother should have seen this. She's forever complaining that you take after your father, blunt as a stone. She goes on about her son every single day—have a meal with her."

"Why is she suddenly looking for the son she tossed aside and ignored, whether he grew up or not? I suppose this is why they say hormonal changes are terrifying."

"She was a terrible workaholic when she was young. Your mother's at the age now where she's worn out and getting old. Blood starts to call."

"I'm not in that season yet, so playing the affectionate son doesn't come easily. I'll take it slowly."

"All right. I'm asking you."

This was the uncle who had looked after him more than his own parents had, so Seol-woo nodded despite himself and flicked a glance at Ethan.

"We'll be going, then. This youngest sibling I ended up with after I was already grown is a handful."

Ethan offered a bright, easy smile and his goodbye, then headed for the driver's seat first. Seol-woo moved to follow him into the car, then turned back toward Seong-jin, a face having suddenly come to mind.

"The lounge manager. I think he'd do well if he moved over to HR or management in the dining division."

"Ah, that fellow is good. I'd had my eye on him myself. If even someone as particular as you is praising him, there's no need to watch him any longer."

"We'll head out, then."

"Yes. Let's have a meal soon. Bring your little sister along."

Seong-jin laughed heartily, leaning on the word sister to tease him. Whether the child his nephew had carried out was a woman or a sister, she was clearly someone special to him.

Yeon slept with soft, even breaths, and the three men gathered around her wore grave faces, turning the same problem over and over.

"What do we do?"

"What should we do."

"She's sleeping like the dead, though."

"She slept like the dead yesterday, too."

A black necktie hung from Seol-woo's hand where he stood between Chen and Ethan. The debate was whether to bind Yeon, who moved in her sleep, or leave her free.

"If we tie her and she gets hurt..."

"If we don't tie her and she gets hurt..."

Seol-woo worried over putting a cord around those thin wrists. Chen worried that something dangerous would happen, the way it had the last time she drank.

"What if we don't tie her and just lock the door?"

"And what good is that? The room's full of dangerous things."

Seol-woo frowned at Ethan's simple suggestion.

"Let's just tie her."

"If she thrashes and breaks a wrist..."

"Ah, then don't tie her!"

"If she wanders like yesterday and cracks her head on a corner..."

"Oh, for—!"

Ethan shot a look at Chen, who kept leaping to the worst possible outcome, and raked both hands through his hair. They had been wrestling a problem with no answer for more than thirty minutes.

"Are we going to have to do this every single day from now on?"

Yeon being very cute was one thing. Ethan, who hated troublesome work, muttered it in a grumpy voice. In barely two days since Sun Woo-yeon had appeared, daily life at Felice had begun to turn around her. Ordinarily this would have been the hour for a cold can of beer and a movie, or for shutting himself in the fitness room to work out.

"We need to get her in front of Dr. Jang as soon as we can."

"For tonight, let's just leave her like this. Yesterday might have been a bad one."

"Don't put anything she could hurt herself on in Yeon's room."

"I know, all right? Are the three of us going to stay up all night in here?"

At Ethan's urging, Seol-woo reluctantly turned and opened the door.

"Shall we have a quick drink?"

"Let's."

Ethan eyed him with suspicion—Seol-woo agreeing so readily was unlike him—and paused, glancing back at the sleeping Yeon.

"Should we drink here?"

"She'll wake."

"Then let's just leave the door open. The kid's tiny. Her bones would snap in a second."

For all his grumbling, Ethan seemed worried enough that he couldn't easily leave the room. All three of them were well educated and well experienced, hardly short on what they carried in their heads, but faced with a sleep disorder for the first time, they felt like kindergarteners.

"Let's study."

"You said we were drinking!"

"We do it while we drink."

"I already grabbed mine."

Chen, who had gone ahead, came down to the home bar with a laptop in hand. The sight of him settling rimless glasses on his nose with a devout expression drew a hollow laugh. People said you could study until you died of old age and still never finish. Welcoming a new member of the household required preparation.

A tablet screen, brighter than the yellow-tinged lights, lit the home bar.

"Narcolepsy."

"No, it's sleepwalking."

"It looks like REM Sleep Behavior Disorder."

Ethan, then Chen, then Seol-woo—each of them guessed at the illness Yeon might have.

"She falls asleep out of nowhere. That's narcolepsy!"

"She moved while she was asleep, so it's sleepwalking."

"Be quiet a moment."

Seol-woo waved a hand at the bickering pair and took a mouthful of liquor, and a dull, neither-here-nor-there flatness filled his mouth. The ice in the glass had vanished. It seemed to have melted clean away without anyone noticing.

"This is it! Sleep disorders are generally formed in combination. What the—this tastes awful!"

Ethan, having found the passage that promised an answer, shouted in triumph and then scowled. It was a flavor a devoted drinker like him could not accept. He pushed aside the whiskey that had lost its proper taste and set out a straight-sided glass.

"What was that thing you said, Seol-woo? REM Sleep Behavior Disorder?"

"They say you act out your dreams. It's caused by an abnormality in the brain, and if it isn't managed, it leads to a degenerative disease."

"A degenerative brain disease—Alzheimer's?"

A degenerative brain disease, at an age when she had only just begun to bloom. Chen's voice dropped at once.

"We have to get her to a hospital, even if we force it."

"Agreed."

"I agree."

The playful mood subsided, and for a moment silence settled over them. They hadn't looked into it properly yet, but the way she had first come fleeing into the shop, and a handful of her behaviors, were enough to infer the environment Yeon had lived in. That was exactly why their nerves were drawn so tight.

"It doesn't seem like an ordinary sleep disorder, does it?"

"You said she's been in a hospital all this time. Did she get no treatment at all?"

"I don't think it was that kind of hospital. Chen, you're looking into it?"

"I've got someone on it. We should hear back soon."

Meeting Seol-woo's eyes, Chen nodded.

"Uncle Jae-ho had plenty of money. Grandfather took good care of him. A vacation lodge on Jeju, a building in Gangnam. He wouldn't have been short on cash, either. They took all of it, ate through it, and left the kid like that."

Seol-woo's face twisted. Speaking aloud the things he had only been thinking brought the anger on twice as hard.

"That so-called stepmother is really something. Going so far as to launder an identity, all for the money."

"I found out about the accident far too late."

Seol-woo emptied the harsh glass and wet his dry mouth. Sent abroad by Chairman Cha, he had been cut off from the outside completely. Not looking back until he reached the standard he wanted had also been his own choice. Because the family had vanished along with the Jeju lodge where he had spent three years, he had lived in a panic for a while. How he had resented Chairman Cha for never telling him about their accident.

Chairman Cha, who had lived his whole life as a cold-blooded businessman without a human side, had never looked for the Yeon left behind alone, and for a long time Seol-woo had been unable to find her either.

"What are you going to do when you find Yeon's stepmother?"

"I'm thinking of a way to break her. Very, very slowly. You two offer ideas as well."

"I'm good at that. Tormenting people."

Ethan, thoroughly pleased with the change of subject, answered brightly.

The woman who, in the not-so-distant future, would become the three men's beloved youngest sister lay sunk in a deep sleep without so much as a dream, unaware of the blood-chilling plot they were laying.