The Last Room on the First Floor

"I told you somebody went in just now. The door even rattled, but it was such a mess I never got a chance to check."

"Hey, but the boss came by the place today."

"Ah, damn it. We're going to catch hell again."

"The woman I'm looking for seems to have gone this way. I'll have a quiet look around, so let me in. If this turns into a scene, it'll be awkward for both of us."

"Fine. But don't you dare go anywhere near the last room on the first floor."

Hyeon-tae, quick to grasp that the room in question was where the so-called boss was, nodded without hesitation and started down the stairs. If he failed to find Dami, he fully intended to search that room as well. For now, though, getting inside came first.

Seol-woo had let Joo-hee, who insisted she had something important to say and wouldn't let him go, lead the way into a private room at a bar not far from the hotel. Lounge Bar J was a members-only establishment, and it belonged to him. The last room on the first floor was his own.

"They say the elders will decide the betrothal gifts and the ceremonial presents among themselves. We can leave the rest to the wedding planner, but shouldn't we choose the dress and the honeymoon together? Your formalwear, too, Seol-woo."

"I don't have time."

"I know perfectly well how busy you are, but how long are you going to treat this like somebody else's wedding? There's barely three months left."

"I don't care about any of it. Do whatever you want."

Ha. There it is again. You. Was she supposed to be grateful he wasn't picking this and that apart?

Joo-hee let out a sigh edged with resignation and drained the straight glass in front of her in a single swallow. This is why I never get any better at drinking.

"Is the time you spare me really that precious? It's not as if I do this every day. Once every month or two, at most!"

"Miss Han Joo-hee. When you do business, you meet the other party about three times. Once before the contract, once to negotiate the terms, once to sign. Three times, roughly. If the term runs three years, that's three meetings across three years. And us? We've been seeing each other far too often, and we haven't even laid eyes on a contract. It's a thorough nuisance."

Seol-woo's long fingers moved in time with the words. He folded his thumb, then his index finger, then his middle, and as if that weren't enough, at the word us he pointed back and forth between himself and Joo-hee. Joo-hee's eyes followed the slow gesture—the way one might instruct a kindergartener who couldn't catch the point—before she caught herself and shook her head.

She resented a fiancé who made no effort to hide his boredom, but she couldn't let it show. This was the marriage she had begged for. This was the man she clung to because she wanted him.

"Not everything between us is business. If it was only ever going to end as business, why did you sleep with me?"

"Because you wanted to. I don't turn away a woman who comes to me. That much is common knowledge in this world, isn't it? The point is, there wasn't enough merit in you to justify spending my time on you again."

And how I worked my hips on top of him. What? Not enough merit to be worth his time?

Stung, Joo-hee jabbed at the innocent salad. Fury surged up in her, but she couldn't deny him all the way to the end. While they were together, Seol-woo hadn't so much as let a moan slip. His breathing hadn't even faltered. After that single night, the one growing more desperate to have him was her.

She had endured this long. If she fell away now because she couldn't outlast his arrogance and his indifference, the regret would be hers alone.

Cha Seol-woo had always been different. The ideal looks anyone might have dreamed of were only incidental. He was cut from another cloth than the other chaebol sons of similar background—polished to an elegant finish, and yet giving off something raw, a pheromone that left women restless. Even among her own acquaintances, there were plenty itching to throw themselves into his arms.

He was the sort who didn't turn a woman away so long as her standing was roughly suitable, so even while the wedding preparations went on, if someone appeared he would likely spend the night. Still, Joo-hee soothed herself with the thought that she was the winner. She was the one who would set up house with Cha Seol-woo.

Riding the halo of her father, a leading contender for the next presidency, she had come within a breath of having him. At every social gathering, people whispered day after day about her marriage to Seol-woo. The title of Cha Seol-woo's bride-to-be lifted her pride without end, and yet the moment she sat across from that taciturn man and found herself talking alone, she shrank.

Seol-woo scratched at his brow. He was bored past the point of yawning. Time spent with the woman seated in front of him was every bit as tedious as sitting through his grandfather's gatherings. Just as little fun. Today, too, she had claimed there was something important, so he had made the time, and here she was stringing out nonsense. He should have ended it in front of the hotel.

Ah. Do I really have to go through with this marriage?

"I really don't feel like it."

"What?"

Joo-hee's gaze dropped as she asked him to repeat what he had muttered. Even the ordinary habit of circling a finger along the rim of a rocks glass held the eye.

Seol-woo looked at her. Chen and Ethan would be here soon. He was just about to tell her to go.

Into a space no one could enter without knocking, an outsider stepped with a loud rattle.

The blonde hair flying loose caught the eye first. Breathing hard, the woman who had barged into his room shut the door at once. The heavy thud rang through the room, and in the same instant Seol-woo's heart dropped with a thud of its own.

Startled by a meeting he hadn't expected, he jerked upright and knocked his glass over. Ice and whiskey spilled from the glass as it rolled across the table and soaked his trousers, which hadn't held a single crease.

"Seol-woo, are you all right?"

"......I'm fine."

Yeon-ah. The name of the familiar woman who had burst in out of nowhere hovered on the tip of his tongue, but the thought of Han Joo-hee sitting across from him made him harden his expression and look the intruder over.

On skin so white the veins showed through, vivid bruises sat packed together. Her slender wrists and ankles were swollen red, as if thick bands had been cinched around them, and even her small bare feet—no socks at all—were a mess of scratches. As if that weren't shocking enough, her full breasts heaved in the open with every ragged breath. The top, which looked like a hospital gown, had only one button left near her lower belly, and it was doing nothing. There was no bra to give her shape. A white camisole clung on by a thread, and under the bright lights the cloth was far too thin to hide the flesh risen stiff and peach-pink.

For a moment, faced with a getup that resembled a runaway slave, Seol-woo had a stupid thought. Does this country still have a slave market?

Unable to steady his wavering gaze, he covered his mouth with one hand and turned his head. Getting Han Joo-hee out came first, but keeping his composure while looking at Yeon, appearing like this, was not easy.

"What are you? How did you get in here? No—how are you even dressed like that? Get out. Now. This isn't a place women like you come and go."

"I— that's......"

Joo-hee, who had sensed with uncanny speed that the woman had stirred Seol-woo, glared at Dami for walking in uninvited. The longer his eyes lingered on the stranger, the finer the tremor in Joo-hee's red lips. She didn't want to admit it, but the woman who had burst in out of nowhere possessed several qualities that could seize a person's attention at a glance. Once for those strangely atmospheric eyes and the platinum hair. Once for the white skin blotched red from failing to withstand the cold. The shabby state didn't please her in the least, and yet the uninvited guest stirred curiosity even in another woman, and the thought that she had to get her out of Seol-woo's line of sight filled Joo-hee's head at speed.

He wasn't the sort to take in a woman whose gutters no one knew, but his behavior was unusually unsettled. He'd had a glass of strong liquor, and she hadn't heard of him meeting a woman lately, so the fear that he—faithful enough to his appetites—might be tempted cinched her throat.

"What are the guards out front even doing? Get out, this instant!"

"I-I'm sorry. Could you hide me, just for a little while? Only until the men outside leave."

Having stepped, in that pitiful state, into an entirely different world, Dami begged blindly, on the verge of tears. The rush of dress shoes crowding in after her reached her ears, and her shoulders shook. If these people wouldn't hide her, she was already thinking she would have to bite her tongue and die.

"All right."

At the low voice, Dami's aimlessly drifting eyes found Seol-woo. Golden eyes, a blue haze seeming to rise in them. To think the Yeon he had searched for so long would walk in on her own two feet.

"Seol-woo!"

"This way."

Ignoring Joo-hee's cry, he jerked his chin toward the door behind the sofa. Through it lay a space where he sometimes stayed when he was drunk.

"Thank you."

Given a little room to breathe by his permission, Dami bowed so deeply she looked ready to drive her head into the floor. Seol-woo took in, whole, the breasts from which even that thin scrap of cloth had vanished, and his mouth set in a hard line.

Glaring at the back disappearing into the room, Joo-hee drained her straight glass in a fit of nerves. The Cha Seol-woo she knew was not a man who extended a favor that brought him no gain.

"Why are you hiding her?"

"She looked like she'd been held somewhere."

"It's obvious, isn't it? She was selling herself at some place nearby and ran. You're not actually thinking of taking a woman like that, are you?"

"Have you ever seen someone turning tricks in a hospital gown?"

A thin scoff slipped through his teeth.

"That's—!"

"What answer do you want? If you want me to say I hid her because she interested me, then that's the answer. If you're asking whether her bare body got me hard, I'll grant you that too. If we're done talking, go."

"I told them the newlywed house will be the one you're living in now. I'll bring my things in gradually, so keep that in mind."

Seol-woo shut his mouth, his face dry and nothing like a moment ago. She glared at him, got no answer, rose from the sofa, and left the room in a clatter.

Fuming her way down the corridor, Joo-hee took in the noisy hall. Several large men were loitering among the tables and near the rooms. Right. The woman had asked to be hidden only until the men outside were gone.

"The woman you're looking for is in the last room on the first floor."

She snorted at the thought of her, caught one of the men by the arm, pointed out Seol-woo's room, and walked out of the bar.

"Hey, listen! I'm telling you, there's no need to check this side!"

"I'm only saying I'll open the door for a second. Petty, aren't you."

"Huh? Look at these bastards. Let go! I said let go!"

"A woman who just came out of here said so. The person we're looking for is in this room."

Walked out in a rage, and then pulled a nasty little trick.

Listening to the booming, gravelly voices, Seol-woo righted the fallen glass and filled it with whiskey. After a few crashes and a stretch of commotion, the door finally flew open. He raked the employee—head bowed as if he'd committed a capital crime—with a look that called him pathetic, then stared at Hyeon-tae striding in as if he owned the place.

"What a nuisance."

The build and the clothes were pure gangster. What, exactly, were they? Slowly etching into his mind the faces of the men who had chased Yeon, Seol-woo reached into his inner pocket for a cigarette.

"You've seen this woman, haven't you? She's a patient who escaped a psychiatric hospital. Her hallucinations and delusions are severe. If we don't take her back quickly, it's dangerous. You'll need to tell us where she—"

Halfway through burning the cigarette while the explanation dragged on, he curled his fingers and flicked it. The hot ember scattered in every direction.

"Ah, hot!"

"Gah!"

A mental patient. So that's why the hospital gown.

The ember that flew past Hyeon-tae's cheek as if grazing it set fire to the clothes of the other big men standing behind him. Watching Hyeon-tae, too startled even to cry out, Seol-woo twisted the corner of his mouth.

"I haven't seen a patient like that."

Slightly cowed by the air Seol-woo gave off—nothing ordinary about it—Hyeon-tae swallowed dryly and took a step back. A dizzying moment. A fraction off, and it would have left an ugly burn scar on his cheek.

"What's that door?"

"You're running a little late."

Rising with an untroubled face, Seol-woo ignored the question outright and walked toward the door. When Hyeon-tae, flaring at the arrogance, reached out to grab him, a dress shoe came up fast, hooked his ankle, and took him down.

"Keuk!"

Letting out a ridiculous sound, Hyeon-tae was driven into the floor and rolled.

"What the hell are these guys?"

"Get rid of them."

Ethan, arrived with perfect timing, gave a light nod. Seol-woo smiled down at Hyeon-tae, sprawled on the floor and looking up at him, and went straight through the door.

The time it took to drag the intruders up the stairs was far shorter than the time they had spent occupying the bar in search of Dami. Absurdly so.

Hyeon-tae ground out the burned-down butt roughly under his shoe and pulled out his phone. He was long past being rattled by the work of catching runaway patients, but he still couldn't stop the anger from climbing to the crown of his head.

"Ha. Goddamn it."

And this time it wasn't just anyone. It was Kwon Dami. He had lost, when she was right within reach, a special girl who absolutely could not be lost, and the world went dark before his eyes.