Chapter 3
Even though the cafeteria menu featured spaghetti and pork cutlets, which were among Hye-joo’s favorites, her chopsticks barely moved. Under normal circumstances, these were foods she would have warmly welcomed into her stomach with absolute love.
Eun-ji, chewing a mouthful of spaghetti, spoke up as she watched Team Leader Cha walk past.
“Wow, look at how clothes fit him. His broad shoulders, his proportions—it’s seriously insane.”
“He’ll hear you, keep your voice down!” Hye-joo whispered back.
This was rich coming from Hye-joo, considering she was the one harboring far more scandalous imaginations about the team leader.
Whenever he brushed past, a scent as crisp and cold as midwinter forest air would waft over. What kind of cologne did he even use? His thick eyebrows, sharply defined eyes, and a cold gaze that looked like it would never warm up for anyone—getting hit by that stoic, emotionless stare was enough to send a chill straight down to the crown of her head.
…Especially when he reprimanded his subordinates. Whenever his expression hardened and his jaw clenched, Hye-joo would find herself watching the scene with her mouth slightly open.
On top of that, his fashion sense was straight out of a modern romance novel male lead. The watch subtly gleaming at the edge of his sleeve and his simple cufflinks spoke volumes about his sophisticated and subtly fastidious taste.
To imagine that sharp gaze ruthlessly piercing right through her…
‘What do you think you’re doing at the company right now?’
Unbuttoning his cufflinks and watch one by one and placing them on the nightstand, his low, stern voice would scold her…
Hye-joo’s face flushed bright red all on its own.
You’re insane, Shin Hye-joo. Hye-joo ducked her head. It seemed her brain automatically rewired itself in a completely different direction the moment she laid eyes on the team leader.
“Are you hot, Hye-joo?”
“Oh, it’s nothing.”
“But why did the team leader act like that earlier? He rarely asks questions. Did you make a mistake or something?”
“Well… I was coming out of the pantry and talking to myself, not knowing Team Leader Cha was there…”
“What did you say?”
“That I wished Team Leader Cha would talk more…”
“Huh? What does that mean?”
“Y-you know, his voice sounds really nice. So I just meant I wished he would speak more often.”
“Well, that’s actually a relief. At least you weren’t talking trash right to his face.”
“I suppose…”
Indeed. Eun-ji had a history of getting caught talking trash in the breakroom about how the team leader was a cold-blooded workaholic. The real issue was that it hadn’t just happened once or twice.
“Anyway, you’re seriously crazy. I told you to watch your mouth, if only for my sake.”
“But I finished the presentation well…”
“Though your choice of words was a bit too ‘high-class,’ don’t you think? ‘Provide a climax’? ‘Exposure’? What are you, an adult toy salesperson?”
“…Did I really say that?”
“Yes, you did, Assistant Manager Shin!”
It really seemed that the sultry imaginations popping into her head whenever she saw Team Leader Cha were eating away at her brain.
Buzz—
The phone resting next to her tray vibrated. She instinctively looked down and saw an email from her publishing editor, causing her to hurriedly flip the phone face down.
“Huh? Who is it that makes you hide your phone so fast?”
“Oh, spam. A spam call.”
“Uh-huh? Your lightning-fast reaction says otherwise. Did you find someone to fling with? I’m going to be hurt if you did.”
“No, really.”
Hye-joo bit her lip hard, feeling beads of sweat forming on her back. Running a second job was a secret she kept even from Eun-ji, her closest friend at the company.
Hye-joo took her frustrations out secretly by aggressively stabbing an innocent pork cutlet with her fork.
…Pork cutlet.
Pork. Gas.
It was because she suddenly felt miserable about this double life she had started just to afford pork, gas bills, and utilities.
Hye-joo shoved the food down, barely tracking whether it was going into her mouth or her nose. After nodding off from a post-lunch food coma, she finally snapped out of it around 4 PM.
She briefly worried that if she didn’t clear her entire workload for the day within two hours, her chances of leaving on time would vanish—but she quickly folded that thought away. Today was the day Team Leader Cha had specifically singled her out, letting her know she would need to work overtime.
The moment the clock hands hit 6 PM, the atmosphere of the entire floor grew restless. Only after watching her smiling colleagues head home one by one did Hye-joo finally begin to touch the work the team leader had left her. By then, it was so late that the lights on all floors of the building were out, and the central heating had been turned off.
“…I thought he would stay behind too.”
Just in case, she lifted herself up slightly, stretching her neck to steal a glance toward Team Leader Cha’s desk, but it was empty.
Even if she had to work overtime, she would have been happy just sharing the same space. A wave of regret washed over her.
Staring at the monitor with hollow, corporate eyes while molding graphs in Excel, her phone screen kept loudly lighting up and turning off repeatedly.
“Who would at this hour… Wait?”
Hye-joo furrowed her brows, staring at the caller ID for a long moment before hurriedly picking up the phone right at her desk. It was a call from Yu-rim, her publishing editor. Under normal circumstances, she would never take an editor’s call at the company to avoid getting caught holding a second job, but since the office was completely empty now, it was basically just a very large phone booth.
“Hello…?”
[Author, I’m so sorry. I startled you at this late hour, didn’t I?]
“No, it’s fine. Did something happen…?”
[It’s a disaster. Author, I think the contents of the chapters got mixed up chronologically. I’m so sorry, I should have checked more closely…]
“What?”
[I’ve been texting and emailing you since this morning, but you didn’t answer. Out of nowhere, an explicit scene is inserted right in the middle of the female lead’s commute to work.]
“What? I’ll check it right away!”
Hye-joo hurriedly hung up and checked her phone screen.
It was true.
When the first email arrived, she had turned her phone to silent out of fear of getting caught if a novel-related notification popped up at work, and that had sparked the disaster. She had accidentally copy-pasted a portion of the next chapter, inserting a completely wildly inappropriate scene right into the middle of a commute scene.
Hye-joo logged into the email account she used for her author pen name, downloaded the attachment she had sent to the editor, and began revising the text.
[“You need to be punished, Assistant Manager Lee.”
Scanning her with a gaze steeped in subtle heat, the corners of Team Leader Cha’s lips curved into a faint arch.
On the office floor where all the lights had been extinguished, the sound of the team leader’s leather shoes approached her at a pace far slower than her own heartbeat.]
Her fingers flew across the keyboard with a possessed speed. Fifteen minutes—no, ten minutes would be more than enough time to fix the scene and resubmit it.
Just a little more, just a little more writing…
“You need to be punished, Assistant Manager Shin.”
She wasn’t even wearing earphones, yet a smooth, melodious voice—the kind she would only hear when playing an audio drama to fall asleep to—echoed right in her ear.
Hye-joo knew exactly who this voice belonged to.
Even so, Hye-joo prayed internally.
Please let it be that my phone was pressed incorrectly and the text-to-speech feature turned on.
Please let it be that an audio drama file of my secret taste accidentally started playing at the office.
However, no such miracle occurred.
“T-Team Leader…!”
Naturally, standing behind her was Team Leader Cha Woo-seok, sporting his striking features and a chilly face. As his sharp, cold eyes swept down her, an unprecedented shudder ran through Hye-joo, leaving her with an intense urge to violently rub both her arms.
Then, her thoughts raced to the manuscript pulled up on the monitor. She could absolutely not let her unrequited crush discover her novel manuscript. Hye-joo hurriedly tried to block the monitor with her palms and her body, but failed. The monitor tipped over to the side with a loud clatter.
“It seems the one who needs to be punished right now isn’t the woman inside that monitor, but Assistant Manager Shin Hye-joo.”
He tapped the LED monitor twice, lightly, with his long, smooth fingers.
Same dialogue, different situation. To think the very first person to discover her double life—a secret never leaked to anyone else—had to be her team leader. She wanted to escape the situation immediately by any means necessary. Hye-joo tightly suppressed the urge to hurl herself out the window like a character in an action movie.
“Ha… I thought you were preparing the TF presentation materials to present to the client tomorrow.”
“Well, about that, this is… what happened is…”
“Since you don’t seem to have thought of an excuse yet, I’ll ask first.”
“I, well… I was just clearing my head for a moment…”
Her brain refused to function properly. On top of that, arguing back with such a trembling voice was never going to work against a man famous for being ice-cold. Woo-seok stood the monitor back upright and questioned Hye-joo.
“‘Assistant Manager Lee’s Secret Taste’… I am rather curious. What kind of taste does she have?”
“Ye-yes?”
“Surely you don’t mean sexual taste.”
“O-of course not. Absolutely not.”
“Looking at it, the male protagonist seems to share my last name. Surely you aren’t releasing grudges built up against me by writing a novel.”
“That’s not it either. Absolutely not. How could I ever do such a thing to a team leader who is like the high heavens to me…”
He then grabbed Hye-joo’s mouse, scrolled down, and began reading aloud from a random spot.
“Let’s see… shall we read a bit of the content? ‘Cha Seok-woo, the marketing team leader, was a perfect man. Whenever the sound of his footsteps echoed on the office floor, Sun-joo’s heart pounded along with it, wanting to be crushed beneath those feet…’ Didn’t you write this?”
“Th-that’s…”
“Is that really not me?”
