“Would it be alright if you handled it for just a few more months? It seems like you’ve caught his eye… and he’s not usually someone whose interest lasts very long.”
“Yes.”
“So just until then, okay? I’m asking you as a favor.”
Section Chief Jo gave Munyeong’s shoulder a pat and made his request one more time. The fact that he was lowering himself this much meant he genuinely felt bad about it. Munyeong gave an awkward smile and slowly nodded.
In the end, it was back to square one. Only a little more complicated, and a little more unsettled than before.
**
He had never wanted to go to work less than he did right now. The moment Munyeong stepped into Yeon Haejeong’s office — a place that felt like a complicated mix of love and hate — he let out a long, heavy sigh. As long as he kept handling this section, he and Haejeong would keep running into each other at work. And now in a state that was more uncomfortable than before, at that.
But Munyeong, who was quick to compromise and quick to let things go, began his work with quiet composure, as if nothing had happened. His body felt sluggish and like a fever was coming on, but this much he could handle. He was the same person who had done delivery work even when central Seoul was flooded under monsoon rain. Working through it stubbornly — that much he was confident in.
Munyeong wiped the cold sweat collecting on his forehead with the back of his hand and started up the vacuum cleaner. Whether his movements had slowed because of how he was feeling, employees began trickling in one by one before he had even finished. Among them, he exchanged a brief greeting with Haejeong’s secretary, who he’d been running into often lately.
“Oh? You’re back?”
Secretary Ju said the moment she saw Munyeong’s face, her tone warm with genuine pleasure. They normally only exchanged light greetings in passing, so the obvious delight at seeing him left him a little flustered as he answered quietly.
“Ah, yes…. Hello.”
“Don’t go anywhere else from now on.”
“Sorry…?”
“Are you by any chance personally acquainted with Senior Managing Director Yeon?”
The abrupt question caught Munyeong off guard and he scratched the back of his neck.
“…Yes, briefly, from before. How did you know?”
“Well, it turns out the person he’s been entrusting his personal matters to is also you, Munyeong.”
“Ah……. Yes.”
“For someone with that personality to hand over personal matters — that’s not something that happens with someone he’s only just met, so I thought I’d ask just in case.”
A crisp way of speaking, a self-assured posture, and a sharp read on every situation. It confirmed what Munyeong had always thought — being a secretary was not something just anyone could do — and he felt a quiet flash of admiration.
“Please continue to take good care of things going forward. Honestly, thanks to you, all I have to deal with at work is actual work, and it’s been such a relief.”
“……I’m really just doing a bit of driving for him, that’s all……”
“I hope you’ll stay on here too and keep at it — for a good long while.”
“Pardon?”
“When you weren’t here, the Senior Managing Director was just……”
Secretary Ju held her words back and forced a wide smile onto her face. The corners of her mouth twitched slightly as she did — and behind that smile she was running through the memories of those days. The spectacular combination of outrageous behavior and full-blown chaos. She turned an even brighter smile on Munyeong. Every unhinged person in the world seemed to come with exactly one person who could rein them in. The moment Secretary Ju had watched Haejeong’s rampage yesterday, she had been completely certain that person was the Munyeong standing in front of her now. Ten years as a secretary, and a childhood spent growing up among six siblings — this was the moment all of that experience paid off.
“Anyway…please keep up the good work going forward.”
Having heard this kind of thing from both Section Chief Jo and now Secretary Ju, Munyeong felt a little dazed. People around Haejeong kept relaying to him that Haejeong needed him. Every time he heard it, the image of Haejeong from the night before — the one that had kept him from sleeping — would flash unbidden into his mind. The face that had acted as though it was nothing but something physical between them, and yet had been somehow desperate, stripped of any trace of composure — that face kept surfacing, and Munyeong kept catching himself falling into a misreading of it without meaning to. Could it be…. Could it be that he……
“You don’t look very well, though.”
As sharp-eyed as she was sharp-witted, Secretary Ju glanced at Munyeong’s somewhat hollowed-out state and asked. The question snapped Munyeong out of his wandering thoughts, and he shook his head with an awkward look.
“…No. I’m just a little tired.”
Truth was, he was feeling slightly dizzy. He thought he’d go downstairs once this was done, skip lunch, and take a quick rest instead.
“Your color’s not great. I think you should go lie down at the medical room.”
“Ah…, thank you.”
The company’s in-house medical room was accessible only to full-time headquarters employees — it wasn’t something that applied to people like him, contract day laborers.
“Can I take some of that for you?”
Secretary Ju, finding him more listless than usual today, gestured toward the recycling bags that filled both his hands.
“Oh — no. I’m fine.”
Munyeong shook his head firmly, startled by the offer. He could never in good conscience ask the office employees to do something like this.
“I really don’t mind. You look like you’re struggling a bit.”
“No. I’m really fine. Th, thank you so much for the thought.”
“We all help each other out—— oh.”
Secretary Ju had been about to take the recycling bag right out of Munyeong’s hands, reaching over cheerfully to do so. But at the very moment her hand moved toward it, she felt a burning gaze fall on her out of nowhere. Her instincts kicked in instantly — she looked up, and there was Yeon Haejeong, standing directly behind Munyeong without a sound. Haejeong’s face loomed a full head above Munyeong’s, appearing from above without warning — and Secretary Ju pulled in a sharp breath.
“Good morning, Senior Managing Director.”
Secretary Ju switched to full professional mode with striking speed. With an appropriately measured, courteous tone, and a face that was neither smiling nor stiff, she received her direct superior.
“What are you two…… doing.”
The strained note in his voice, and the lightning-fast change in Secretary Ju — Munyeong went rigid on the spot. He had planned to head downstairs before Haejeong came in, and now Munyeong pressed his lips tightly together with an expression of pure misfortune.
“Oh — good morning.”
Munyeong turned around clumsily and greeted him. He felt the cool, measuring look of the other person coming down on him from above. But today, the man who always kept himself impeccably put-together had come in wearing a completely wrinkled shirt with a vest thrown hastily over it, jacket not worn at all but dangling from one hand. For just a moment it overlapped with the image of himself — someone who had rushed out without getting properly dressed. And his hair, too, hadn’t been smoothed down, leaving the back of his head sticking out in all directions.
Anyone could tell he’d left in a hurry — and that alone was enough to make last night rush back into Munyeong’s mind, bringing heat with it. He already had a slight fever, and now his face felt even hotter.
“What are you doing, you two. Grinning away at each other like that.”
Haejeong picked a fight out of nowhere. And then without warning, he grabbed Munyeong by the back of the neck and tucked him behind his own back. Munyeong looked up at Haejeong with wide, startled eyes. Unlike Munyeong, who was thoroughly flustered, Secretary Ju — every bit the professional — kept exactly the same expression and replied as if it were nothing.
“We were not grinning. We exchanged a brief, polite greeting.”
“So why are you two doing that with each other.”
“It’s basic etiquette between colleagues at a workplace.”
“Then don’t.”
“Pardon?”
“Etiquette or whatever else — don’t do it.”
Secretary Ju looked genuinely confused and pushed back with a measured response.
“…Greetings as well…?”
“Greetings, whatever — don’t do any of it. Don’t smile either.”
“…I would think that a light bit of small talk between colleagues is… perfectly acceptable……”
“Small or large or whatever — I said don’t, so don’t.”
Secretary Ju continued to respond with polite composure, expression genuinely puzzled — and Haejeong’s face twisted into something even more unpleasant as he gave the instruction again, more clearly and more forcefully. He stared her down as though one more conversation between them would end in a termination — and Secretary Ju, left with no choice, accepted it and nodded.
“……Ah…. Yes.”
“I’ve said it. Don’t do it going forward.”
“…Yes, understood……”
“Do it and you die.”
Haejeong threw in that childish threat and then grabbed Munyeong’s arm without warning. Munyeong, who had been watching all of this in a daze, was dragged along helplessly by the hand on him. Secretary Ju, equally baffled, tilted her head as she watched Haejeong disappear and murmured soundlessly. Why is he throwing a fit first thing in the morning? The absurd string of orders was completely beyond her comprehension — but there was nothing to be done. You do what you’re told. She simply felt sorry for Munyeong, being dragged along like a doll.
