Someone I Want to Do This For

With openings in three countries at once and the domestic summer rush bearing down, Cha Seol-woo was wound to a razor's edge. He met the eyes of every executive filling the vast conference room, one by one.

The man presenting to the gathered branch presidents and senior officers was the head of Management Headquarters. Whenever the Gangnam branch director's report ran thin, Seol-woo cut down the branch president in the highest seat without a shred of mercy.

"I'm sorry."

The last to present, the division head of Jeju Paradise, bowed until his head nearly struck the floor.

"You people sitting on resorts in vacation towns. Are you even awake? It's already the middle of June. Peak season is right on top of us, and you're telling me you mean to get through the whole summer rush on a single unified event? Why is every proposal stamped from the same mold? President Park Jun-tae."

"Y-yes?"

The Busan branch president, who had been staring blankly at his papers, startled so hard he knocked over his water bottle. Jun-tae sagged with relief when he saw the cap was still on. The Jeju branch president was relieved the target had moved on, and the city presidents, who had no resort land to answer for, were profoundly relieved the subject had drifted away from them.

"Ten percent off resort lodging if a guest spends over a set amount at the department store. How many years have you been milking that? You call that a summer peak-season campaign? What, you can't run it in spring, fall, and winter?"

"Th-that's…"

The branch president looked to the executive vice president, then the managing director, then the division head, begging for help. Not one of them opened his mouth.

"President Park Jun-tae."

Chen, seated at Seol-woo's right, gave a small shake of his head. It was a pitiful thing, watching a middle-aged man get ground underfoot in front of so many spectators.

"Yes, sir."

"I hear your license was revoked this time."

"I'm sorry."

"You must have time to spare. Planning the business like this, then drinking yourself blind and getting behind the wheel on top of it."

Seol-woo set his pen down as if throwing it and raked his bangs back, irritable.

"I'm sorry."

The Busan branch president bowed once more. In that moment the chief executive, a good twenty years his junior, felt more terrifying than tigers and pestilence.

"You have three days. Resubmit every proposal. We reconvene next Monday at two. Eat a solid lunch before you come."

He shoved the stack of documents aside, gathered his tablet, and rose. The men lined up on either side of him got to their feet at once and bowed. The moment he was gone, the conference room filled with the sound of lamentation.

Bang!

"God, you scared me!"

Ethan, stretched the length of the sofa in the president's office with a comic in his hands, bolted upright. The door had flown open hard enough to hit the wall.

"Why would you open the door like—"

"Shut it, Ethan. Poke him now and he'll bite."

Chen, who had followed Seol-woo in, clamped a hand over Ethan's whining mouth. Out in the hall, beyond the door that hadn't latched, the head secretary hovered and shifted from foot to foot, lacking the nerve to face a furious superior.

Seol-woo yanked his tie loose, took his cigarettes, and headed for the terrace. The meeting that had begun at four had ended past six. Turning the wasted, worthless hours over in his mind, he leaned on the railing and lit up.

"Phone."

Chen appeared without warning and held out the cell phone that had been glittering alone on the empty desk. The name filling the rectangular screen was his mother, Park Hwa-jin.

He let her drumming, clanging fuss go in one ear and out the other. Watching the sunset burn red, he exhaled a thin drift of smoke.

The moment the words were out, he pressed end. If he didn't cut her off like this, she was the sort to keep him talking for ten minutes, or twenty. In the years when he had needed a parent's love she had tossed him aside without a backward glance. Playing the warm son for her now was more than he could manage.

"Sir?"

"What."

"Should I cancel the next appointment?"

"Push it back an hour. Ethan, bring Yeon from Felice to Hyunjin Hotel."

Ethan, who had only just picked up the next volume of his comic, got to his feet with a scowl. Moving was an enormous nuisance, but if poking the man meant getting bitten, he meant to save his rebellion for later.

Twenty-four years. Short, if you called it short, and long if you called it long—and this might have been the most peaceful day of all of them. The line between dream and waking had gone soft, and whenever happiness swelled until laughter spilled out of her, Yeon pinched her own cheek to be sure.

She laughed at a television she hadn't been allowed to watch in a long time, ate the fruit the housekeepers set out, slept a sprawling afternoon nap, and walked the wide garden. Then, all at once, she found herself wondering at the reason for a kindness that asked nothing in return. They hadn't even questioned the behavior that wasn't normal.

Her gaze drifted from the screen to the wooden table clock. Eight already. She remembered him saying they would talk properly in the evening.

"Is he coming late?"

She tipped her head and touched the dressing at the edge of her forehead. She had added another wound, catching the corner of the solid-wood table. The housekeepers, assuming she had fallen off the sofa in her sleep, had fussed and stuck the bandage on. They must not have seen her moving while she slept.

"Hey, kid."

"Ah! You scared me!"

She hadn't felt him coming until he was there, and her shoulders jumped.

"Up. We're going out."

"What? Where?"

"You'll know when we get there. No time. I hate making Seol-woo wait."

"Oh—okay!"

The moment his name came up, she shot to her feet. His T-shirt, falling past her thighs, suited her so well she might as well have been wearing a dress; as going-out clothes it left nothing to be desired. The only problem was that she would have to put on indoor slippers again.

"Put them on. We're going straight up from the basement anyway."

Ethan set the slippers in front of her where she hesitated at the shoe cabinet, then took a step back.

"Thank you. I…"

"Ah, call me Ethan. But you really are tiny."

He lifted a hand and measured a height that didn't even reach his shoulder. Tall as a basketball player, he had never met a woman this small. He didn't let women close unless they were someone he meant to be close to, so a stature like this was the first in a very long while.

"You're incredibly tall, Ethan."

Yeon smiled brightly and looked up at him. When she craned her neck all the way back, fine blonde hair spilled over a shoulder and swayed.

"Seol-woo's tall, and Chen's tall too. You're going to have to watch that neck from now on."

Perhaps it was because the words seemed to promise that this day—a day like a lie, a day that could not exist in her life, a daydream she was still inside—would go on.

From now on. There was nothing special in the phrase, and yet it sounded strangely good.

"Thank you."

Cute. So this is why he looks after her.

Ethan flicked the bridge of her nose, scrunched from smiling so hard, and opened the passenger door. Hunting Yeon down had been a nuisance. Chen seemed to take a real interest in finding someone who had vanished without a trace; Ethan never had. Three years of roaming around irritated and grumbling, and still, with the very person who had put him through that ordeal standing in front of him, he couldn't dislike her. Maybe it was only that he had spent so long cramming every fact he could learn about her into his head. She felt familiar instead.

A loveliness like a youngest little sister. Unfamiliar eyes. A shadow hidden behind a clear smile. She had, in even measure, the three things that made a person easy to bewitch.

Cha Seol-woo's going to have his work cut out for him.

An interested smile touched Ethan's mouth as he rounded the hood. She looked more than equal to finding her way into the heart of a man who had waited, carrying his longing.

"We're back! All right, kid, go sit over there. I'm off to drink!"

"Thank you for bringing me."

At Ethan's loud voice Seol-woo waved a hand without answering. Ethan stroked the head of the bowing girl once and walked straight out of the room. Watching him go, Seol-woo's eyes narrowed.

Who said you could put a hand on her.

"Come here."

The presidential suite of Hyunjin Hotel, called the finest in the country. Seol-woo occupied, as if it belonged to him, a room rumored to choose even which distinguished guests it would receive, and he crooked a finger. Yeon's bright, round eyes darted busily. He really did seem to live in a different world from hers. Even if she had to go back to where she had been, she thought she might comfort herself by turning yesterday and today over and over in her mind.

"Where is this?"

She let out a soft breath of wonder and drank in an interior so dazzling she would never see its like again. As she turned her head this way and that, his gaze rested for a moment on her parted red lips.

"A hotel. What are you staring at? Felice is nicer."

"I know. It's just so glamorous. And strange."

A hotel dressed, on purpose, to the height of luxury felt nothing like his house.

"What's this? You're hurt?"

He frowned at a bandage that hadn't been there that morning. When he brushed aside the fine hairs covering the edge of her forehead, a round blot of blood showed clear.

"I—I did it by accident. In my sleep."

Startled by a face that had come right up to hers, she stammered. The distance closed without warning, in a rush, and her cheeks flushed hot. She felt her heartbeat, fierce as if it were knocking against her ribs, with perfect clarity.

"You have to be careful."

A flaw in jade, set on that prettily lifted brow. When he fussed at the skin around the bandage, Yeon held her breath. Her whole body itched; she thought a hiccup might burst out of her.

A handsome, gentle man. How much better it would have been if even one person like this had stood beside her.

He was right here with her, and still he felt terribly far away.

"It isn't a bad injury. The ladies put medicine on it, too."

"I'll treat it again when we get home. The blood's all dried under the bandage."

"Yes. Thank you."

"Funny."

He tapped her brightly smiling cheek, once and then again, and gestured to the shopper waiting at a distance. Yoon Se-in, who had a perfect read on the tastes of the women of the business world and was raising her own stock on the strength of it, also had charge of his mother, Hwa-jin.

"Hello. I'm Yoon Se-in, and I'll be looking after the young lady today. Thank you for having me. We'll begin with House D."

Once the greeting was done and she stepped back, eight models who had already been prepared came down the long anteroom corridor as if it were a runway. Dressed evenly in tops, bottoms, dresses, and loungewear, the women struck light poses in front of the sofa.

"That one's not bad."

For him it was an ordinary way to shop. One of the few things he had learned from Hwa-jin, perhaps. Unlike Seol-woo, long legs crossed and leaning easily into the back of the sofa, Yeon sat with her spine rigid and both fists clenched tight on her thighs. She had been struck dumb, with no idea what any of this was, right up until the tall women came out in a pack; only after he pointed at the dress one of them wore did she understand what they were doing.

"It is pretty, but…"

"That one's fine too."

The bright cherry-blossom dress looked as if it would suit her perfectly.

"No need to show the loungewear. Send everything you brought to Felice."

"Thank you, sir."

Se-in bowed at once.

Like mother, like son. He shopped exactly the way Hwa-jin did.

"Which do you like best?"

"That one."

Perhaps because models were wearing them, everything they had on was beautiful, but Yeon chose the pale pink dress he had pointed to first.

"These three."

"Your eye is excellent, as expected."

Indifferent, Seol-woo stretched his legs onto the glass table. He had no interest in flattery buttered onto the tongue.

"Next is House C."

More women walked out from the inner room. The way they passed one another without so much as a brush, easy and precise, looked striking. How many models were in there? A useless question rose in her. While Yeon sank briefly into the thought, narrowly opened eyes swept the standing row in one horizontal pass, an index finger moving with them.

"All of them."

"I'll have them prepared. Next!"

Se-in clapped and called the next team, her voice a full octave higher. No abuse of rank, no emotional drain, time saved on top of it, and the money came in double. A clean VVIP shopping session like this never failed to lift her mood.

"Will I really be able to wear all of this? I think we could stop now."

Already they were on the seventh change. Each time, he had her choose at least one piece, then added three or four more besides.

"Bored?"

"No—no! That isn't what I meant."

When she flailed her hands in a fluster, he pressed down the laugh that tried to get out. He found her cute, turning that troubled look on him and on the models by turns.

"What's your shoe size?"

"What? Oh, I don't really know that either."

At the answer that she didn't know her own size, the models couldn't hide their puzzlement. Yeon offered an awkward smile and fidgeted her fingers.

Of course they thought it strange. She wasn't a fool.

"Manager Yoon."

"Ah, yes! I'll measure her."

"No. Just leave the tape and go. I'll contact you about the rest, so have it ready."