Drawn by the Sweetness

Drawn by the sweet scent, Yeon flung her door open and ran the length of the hall.

Thud!

"Agh!"

"Yeon!"

"What—what happened!"

She came flying in her slippers and, just short of the dining room, folded bonelessly to the floor. Seol-woo, who had not taken his eyes off her from the moment she left her room, was the first to reach her.

"You all right?"

"Haha. Yes, I'm fine."

"Move your arms and legs—your fingers too! Nothing's broken, is it?"

Ethan arrived a beat later and made a tremendous fuss.

"No."

"Up. Now."

Seol-woo shoved him aside, hauled Yeon to her feet, and turned her this way and that, looking her over.

"I'm sorry. It smelled so good."

"Sorry for what. Come on. It's your breakfast."

Chen soothed her, gentle as ever.

"Don't run again. Understood?"

Yeon had been beaming at the plate in Chen's hands. At Seol-woo's scolding the light went out of her face, and she nodded, crestfallen.

He's just worried. It's all right.

Ethan murmured it under his breath and steered her by the shoulders into the dining room.

She clutched the fork and knife Chen had set out and gazed at the hotcakes for a long, rapt moment, overcome.

"Thank you, Chen. They look so good."

"Pour on as much maple syrup as you like."

"Whoa."

Yeon lifted the tall glass bottle and dumped syrup over the hotcakes. It kept pouring. The three men blinked, eyes traveling from the drowning plate to Yeon and back again.

"That's far too sweet. It's bad for you."

Seol-woo, unable to hold it in, started nagging. Only then did she set the bottle down, her lips parting as if she meant to speak.

"What. Something you want to say?"

Chen and Ethan had gone back to their rooms to get ready for work. Seol-woo, seated across from her and watching her eat, caught the pout.

"May I?"

"Go on."

"Really?"

"I said go on."

He pressed her for it.

"You're a nag, oppa. Just like the nurse auntie at the hospital."

Not that he had imagined, even for a second, that those would be the words.

Afraid of a scolding, Yeon whispered them, then ducked her head and devoted herself to cutting the hotcakes. Seol-woo, still unable to climb out of the shock, sat like a block of wood and stared at the crown of her head until Ethan came back down to the dining room.

Before the wide-open gate, Ethan and Chen dragged their feet as if each step weighed a thousand pounds.

"Hyung, I want to take the day off."

"Quit talking nonsense and get out."

"Then I'll—"

"There's a branch meeting today."

None of them could quite bring himself to step past the gate, not with Yeon there to see them off in her fluttering pajamas. Out in the drive, the engines of the cars they had already pulled from the garage idled, masterless, humming in their ears.

They had grown attached far too quickly. Seol-woo had been with her longer, so that was one thing—but Ethan and Chen were already treating Yeon like a little sister.

"Then you go first, hyung."

Ethan gave Seol-woo a shove. He didn't budge either. Yeon only watched them, wide-eyed and blank.

"When are the people who work here coming?"

"Soon."

"This won't do, kid. You go in first. If you fall asleep walking back in by yourself, we're in real trouble."

Shoo, shoo—Ethan flapped his hands as if scattering birds, then dropped into a crouch right where he stood.

"You've already come all this way, so just go. I'll run back in quick and—"

She couldn't finish. Her eyes slid toward Seol-woo. The scolding came back to her: don't run again.

Was this what it felt like, leaving a puppy that had only just come into the world? Apparently they had come down with a case of the Monday blues, an illness they had gone their whole lives without.

"The ladies will be here any minute. Do not go up and down the stairs. Don't go near anything hard, and if you can help it, just sit. You played that game with Ethan yesterday, didn't you? Do that."

"Okay. I will."

If Yeon had decided he was nothing but a nagging old man, there was nothing to be done about it. A fresh worry surfaced every minute, and until he said it aloud he couldn't stand it.

"Please eat slowly, and don't forget you promised to use the training chopsticks starting today, and also—"

"Go in carefully, Yeon. We really have to leave."

Chen smiled at her as she blinked those big eyes through the lecture, shot Ethan a look, and the two of them hooked Seol-woo's arms from either side.

Was this an occupational hazard too? Not content with hunting company staff like rats, he was trying to play supervisor over Yeon as well. They meant to drag him out.

"Have a good day. I'll be really, really careful."

God. I don't want to go.

Yeon waved, bright and unclouded, and all three men's shoulders sank. It was the moment they understood, with violent clarity, coinages like girl-dad and sister complex—that frantic, consuming fondness for a little sister.

Thud.

With a thunderous groan, Felice's massive gate slid aside.

Hyeon-tae swallowed hard at the barricade, oppressive as a castle gate. The moment the sedan they had been waiting for glided out, he hammered the shutter. In the passenger seat Sang-cheol, busy cramming a hamburger into his mouth, straightened. Expensive foreign cars, each chosen to its owner's taste, followed one after another.

"Can you see who's in them?"

"The tint's too dark. I can't."

"Ha. Damn it. I'm actually going to lose my mind."

Helpless, choked with frustration, Sang-cheol tore at his hair. He had worn the same socks for two straight days; when he yanked them off, a ripe, sickly stink filled the car. Hyeon-tae quietly cracked a window.

"What do we do? Is Pyeongchang-dong still quiet?"

"He says bring her in within the week."

The two of them, playing at a stakeout fit for the police, feared Chang-seok's wrath more than their own stiff bodies.

"Do you really think Da-mi's in there?"

"She never came out, and she wasn't at the shop either! If Cha Seol-woo didn't take her out himself, did that bitch fly up into the sky or sink into the ground? If you hadn't lost her in the first place, we wouldn't be in this mess! Fuck—you were too busy groping Da-mi's tits to pay attention, weren't you?"

"I'm sorry."

When Sang-cheol loomed in, Hyeon-tae ducked his head. Having lost Da-mi and been branded a traitor of the highest order, he was grinding through each miserable day under Sang-cheol's heel.

"You planted people near President Cha's company too?"

"Yes."

"You cannot lose her. Keep watching. Stick to him twenty-four hours and you'll at least catch Da-mi's shadow. If you find her, hold her no matter what. Once we deliver her, the old man will handle the rest."

"But why bring her home? Sure, Da-mi's looks grab you at a glance, but she's hardly the type the young heir of CH would covet, is she? Mentally she's a child, and she isn't even all there. What if he knew her from before?"

Hyeon-tae tilted his head, replaying the moment he had faced Seol-woo himself. The hostility had run too deep for a man merely hiding a woman he had just met. At the time he had taken it for irritation at an outsider trespassing on his territory. The situation had turned strange. Who would have thought he would hide Da-mi inside a vast castle no one could simply walk into.

"Say something that actually makes sense."

Under a look soaked in contempt, Hyeon-tae shut his mouth. Sang-cheol, dismissing the right answer as the wrong one, bit down on a cigarette and lowered the window. It was one of the many moments he would beat the ground and regret, far in the future, when he finally stood before the gates of hell.

Inside Seol-woo's office, the only sound was paper turning.

Back from an outside job, Ethan threw the door open without knocking. Seol-woo closed the last approval folder and looked at the thick envelope in his hand. Ethan shook it twice, loosened his tie, and dropped onto the sofa.

"You brought it back faster than I expected."

Chen, who had come in behind him, and Seol-woo, rising from the desk, both gathered at the sofa. They had found the owner of the name Kwon Da-mi—the one they had sent people to dig up.

"There was plenty that didn't add up."

Ethan twisted the string on the sealed yellow envelope and spilled papers and photographs across the table.

"The parents are Kwon Sang-cheol and Jang Se-hee. Kwon Da-mi is the daughter from Sang-cheol and his former wife, and he remarried Jang Se-hee about ten years ago."

"Kwon Sang-cheol. I've heard that name somewhere."

Chen picked out a photograph and handed it to Seol-woo. The moment he confirmed the familiar face, a hollow laugh slipped out of him.

"The errand boy from Pyeongchang-dong."

"Wild, right?"

His face was bright with interest. The slow, careful setup of a bit of fun he hadn't had in ages had Ethan buzzing. Unlike Chen, who helped Seol-woo run the company, he had a great deal of idle time. Rocking like a child with a new toy, he pushed the bundled stack of documents at Seol-woo.

"Kwon Sang-cheol's daughter, Kwon Da-mi, is an incompetent person."

A person under adult guardianship—someone judged, by reason of a mental disability, to lack the capacity to tell one thing from another or to decide for herself, and therefore unfit to manage property.

So that was how a person very much alive had been hidden without a trace. Because of Sang-cheol, she had been given a new identity.

"Then where's the real Kwon Da-mi? Is she dead?"

"Don't know yet. This is only a surface sweep. We'll have to dig deeper."

"This woman is Jang Se-hee. Yeon's stepmother's name wasn't Jang Se-hee. No wonder we couldn't turn up so much as a hair. We didn't know, so we only ever stirred up the wrong places."

"Does she still live with Kwon Sang-cheol?"

"Same address. There's a building in Jang Se-hee's name—a heavy mortgage, and she's pulled in a lot of money from all over."

"So they've burned through all that wealth."

Seol-woo twisted his mouth in irritation and kneaded the back of his neck. Kwon Sang-cheol and Jang Se-hee. Their photographs lay side by side at the center of the table.

"We should put someone on each of them, shouldn't we?"

"Obviously. Find out where the real Kwon Da-mi is, and what these two want and need most. And what bait will suck them in like idiots."

As if that were enough, Seol-woo tossed the papers he had been holding and stood. It was time for the branch meeting they had put off until today. Ethan watched Chen rise after him and straighten his clothes, sullen, then sprawled across the emptied sofa.

"Hyung."

He called a hyung without a name, and both Chen and Seol-woo, gathering what they needed, turned at once.

"Can I clock out first? I'll go play with Yeon."

"If you're bored, come to the meeting."

"That's no fun. You're not worried about the kid? What if she cracks her head open all alone? The ladies can't catch her."

Ethan kicked both feet in the air as he shouted. Chen headed for the door anyway.

"We work, and you get to play with Yeon? Absolutely not."

He smiled, infuriatingly pleasant, and tapped the legs Ethan had stretched out past the sofa.

I want to go. I want, violently, to go home. To think a day would come when I missed Felice this much.

"Finish the meeting fast so I can leave."

Ethan turned over the idea of bolting while the other two were in the meeting, then gave up and buried his face.

"We will. We're admitting Yeon today."

"Today?"

He shot upright again. Well past six foot three, he thrashed on a sofa that suddenly looked too small.

"Yeah. I spoke with Dr. Jang this morning."

"Right. The tests can't wait."

Remembering the degenerative brain disease they had discussed a few days ago, Ethan nodded, worried.

"How long did he say she has to stay?"

"About a week? Let's get the meeting over with first."

Tablet in hand, Seol-woo lengthened his stride. Even if the minds of everyone in that room shattered like biscuit crumbs, he meant to cut the time as short as he could.

Tap, tap, tap. In the elevator linking the garage to the entry hall, Ethan stabbed the close button again and again. Chen and Seol-woo stood with relative dignity, but inside they were no different.

"Oh my, you're all home early."

A little past five. Hwang Yeo-sa, who rarely crossed paths with the three men because they usually came home so late, greeted them brightly.

"Where's Yeon?"

"In her room. What an appetite that child has. She eats every single thing I set out like it's delicious, so for the first time in ages I actually enjoyed cooking."

Hwang Yeo-sa, who saw to all the meals, kept smiling. Yeon ate so well she made you want to keep bringing out more, and it put her in a fine mood. A veteran who had worked for the family since Chairman Cha's main house, she did not pry into the girl who had appeared so suddenly.

"Nothing unusual happened?"

"No, nothing."

"She'll be in the hospital for about a week starting today, so you don't need to worry about meals."

"All four of you?"

"Yes. We may stop by now and then, but we probably won't eat."

"All right, then..."

"The kid's gone!"

While Chen and Seol-woo were still talking with Hwang Yeo-sa, Ethan—who had gone to Yeon's room—came back with his face twisted.

"What do you mean, gone."

"I'm telling you she isn't there. Not in the room, not in the bathroom."

"That can't be. She was in her room the whole time. I never saw her leave."

Hwang Yeo-sa, who had watched Yeon go in, tried to reassure him. Seol-woo strode over and swept the room. The first thing he saw was the comforter, ownerless and kicked inside out.

"Didn't she go to Seol-woo's room?"

Chen pointed at the passage where the blinds had been drawn up.

Rigid all over, Seol-woo shoved his own door open—and let out a breath of relief. He crossed the room in heavy steps, gathered up the girl who had fallen asleep on the rug with a pillow in her arms, and laid her on the bed.

"She must have come in her sleep."

"She wouldn't have come all the way here to sleep on purpose."

Seol-woo drew the thick comforter over her and looked around the wide room.

"Why did I insist on putting a desk in here when there's already one in the study."

"What?"

He frowned at the desk occupying the middle of the room. The sharp corners of the enormous executive desk grated on him badly.

"Those useless paintings have to go, too."

"Useless? Each one costs a fortune. We're talking six figures."

The image of Yeon walking half-asleep and catching her foot flickered in front of him, and suddenly every painting leaned against the wall felt like clutter.

"Did I buy all these lamps?"

"You've lost it. The one by the bed—you won that yourself at auction. A master twisted every strand by hand, you said. One of a kind on the entire planet. You were thrilled."

"You looked ready to sleep with your arms around it."

Ornaments he had once adored now irritated him, every last one. Any of them was more than enough to hurt Yeon while she wandered around in a daze.

"The bed frame's too high, too."

"So what. You're going to tear the whole room apart and rebuild it?"

"What about sticking corner guards on everything?"

"Not a bad idea."

Ethan put his mind to it in his own way, and Chen agreed. Realistically, it would be easier than hauling every piece of furniture out of the house. The two of them waited for Seol-woo's answer, but his eyes had narrowed into some private thought, and he said nothing.

"He's about to gut the whole house."

"And then some."

While Seol-woo weighed Yeon's safety with grave care, the other two kept up their grumbling.

"Good idea."

"Right? Soft stickers on the corners—"

"We've got a new member of the family. Of course the house has to be redone. And we've got the time, while Yeon's in the hospital."

"You seem to have forgotten, for a second, that our company is extremely busy these days. I'm all for getting the dangerous things out, but maybe when we actually have a free moment?"

"There is someone with free time. Right here."

Seol-woo, standing at a slant, raised his index finger at Ethan.

"Me?"

Ethan pointed at himself with the same finger and swallowed. Why was the arrow suddenly flying this way?

"You said the office bores you. Work off-site for a week. Supervise getting the furniture out, and look after Yeon. That's basically a vacation, isn't it?"

As Ethan turned the words over, color slowly returned to his face. He could leave Felice to the people they had hired and simply plant himself at Yeon's hospital.