Chapter 5

Ever since the day she had been half-embraced by Jihoon, Eum felt as though she had been placed under a spell.

Whenever she looked up at the clear blue sky, she saw his face, and the rustling autumn leaves carried his scent. Even when she listened to English listening exercises, she heard Jihoon’s voice.

To her, the entire world was Seong Jihoon.

Eum knew that what she had was lovesickness, but although she had diagnosed herself, she couldn’t find a cure.

In that state, her symptoms only grew worse. And strangely enough, around that time, she suddenly stopped running into Jihoon altogether.

Meanwhile, there was only one month left until the CSAT. The real countdown had begun.

“All right, there’s one month left now. From this point on, rather than thinking about doing something new, you need to maintain what you’ve already been doing. Everyone understands?”

“Yes!”

True to its reputation as Haeseong High School, which produced more successful applicants to prestigious universities than any other school in the country, the atmosphere at school had changed.

Except during classes, students of every grade were prohibited from using the school field, and they received demerits for talking loudly whether in the cafeteria or the school store. The latest pop songs that used to play during lunch were replaced with classical music meant to help students concentrate.

The entire school was doing everything it could to help the exam-takers, but none of it helped Eum.

‘I didn’t see him again today.’

That was because Jihoon had completely disappeared over the past few days.

She went to the chairman’s office every day, but there was never anyone there. She couldn’t see even his shadow anywhere on campus or in the hallways.

At this point, she would have believed it if someone told her he had either shot up into the sky or vanished into the ground.

One day, while she was wondering whether she should at least ask her homeroom teacher where Jihoon was, someone came looking for her.

“Yeon Eum.”

When she looked up, it was Gu Seongjun.

“I have something to say. Can you come outside for a moment?”

“I have nothing to say to you.”

“It’ll only take a moment.”

Eum didn’t want to go, but she couldn’t simply ignore him.

Part of her was also curious about what he wanted to say. He was supposedly leaving to study abroad soon, so it didn’t seem likely that he had come back to bother her again now.

“Here.”

But what he led her to an empty staircase to give her was a cute little pouch.

“What’s this?”

“For your CSAT. I hope you do well.”

“…What?”

When Eum looked genuinely surprised, the rims of Seongjun’s ears turned red.

“Why are you so surprised? I want you to get into the university you want. You’re good at studying.”

Eum felt the pouch.

There was something hard inside and something that rustled, so it was probably chocolate and a letter.

“Did the teacher… no, did the chairman tell you to do this?”

“Hey, do I really look like that much of a piece of trash to you?”

“I’m asking because that’s how you look.”

Seongjun looked wronged.

“This is genuinely from me. I even knelt down and apologized before, remember? And the chairman isn’t at school right now.”

But then one thing he said caught Eum’s attention.

“He isn’t at school?”

“You didn’t know? I heard he went back to the company he used to work for. That’s why the whole class was in an uproar for a while.”

For a moment, she couldn’t breathe. It felt as though something heavy had struck the back of her head.

When?

Jihoon hadn’t said a word to her all this time.

“Anyway, this is one hundred percent sincere. Honestly, I bullied you because I was embarrassed after you rejected me in front of everyone. But I really did like you. So, I was wondering… after graduation, could we keep in touch…?”

But Seongjun never got to finish. Eum had already dashed down the stairs.

Her heart pounded wildly. She nearly stumbled and fell several times, but Eum didn’t stop.

She ran down the long hallway and finally reached the chairman’s office.

She had knocked every day and eventually given up because there had never been any response, but now she threw the office door open with all her strength.

Click.

But it didn’t open.

Eum stood frozen, still gripping the doorknob. After a moment, a teacher passing by noticed her.

“What are you doing there?”

“Where is the chairman?”

But the teacher glanced at the color of Eum’s name tag and clicked their tongue.

“What is a senior doing here? Hurry back to your classroom.”

Eum couldn’t believe it.

The sudden thought that she might never see Jihoon again made her feel like she was about to cry.

At the same time, Jihoon was sitting across from his father, Seong Giljun.

Not long ago, he had been unexpectedly summoned to the headquarters.

The reason was that the chairman had heard about the trouble he had caused at the hotel restaurant over the weekend.

“What the hell are you doing?”

Giljun asked while pressing a hand to his forehead.

“Is it really that difficult to live according to the chairman’s orders?”

“Do you think it’s easy?”

At the shameless reply, Giljun slowly raised his head.

His expression looked like that of a man who had finally given up on his only son.

His grandfather’s order had been to stay out of the company for the time being, keep a low profile, and choose a woman to marry.

Rather than being grateful for such a light punishment considering the trouble he had caused, Jihoon had gone and beaten a member of the National Assembly nearly senseless. At this point, even if his grandfather decided to remove him from the family register, he would have no grounds to complain.

“Assemblyman Park was furious and said he was going to sue you.”

“That bastard can’t sue me.”

“How do you know that?”

“He offered me a drink laced with sleeping pills. And he offered it to a minor.”

As Jihoon recalled that day, his jaw tightened.

He regretted not breaking the man’s wrist or two and simply letting him go because Minjae had strongly stopped him.

Of course, he had also been concerned about Eum, who had kept her eyes tightly shut like a frightened chick.

“Even if that’s true, what does it have to do with you?”

“That sounds like you’re telling me to give up on being human.”

“How did you even know where to find them?”

It had been a private room.

The fact that he had searched every room like a madman until he found them must already have become known through someone’s testimony.

“I hear she’s Assemblyman Yeon Honam’s granddaughter.”

Jihoon didn’t like hearing Eum’s name come out of Giljun’s mouth at all.

“What’s your relationship with her?”

“What relationship? She’s just a student at our school.”

“Since when did you care so much about your school?”

Until the moment he had been kicked out of headquarters, Jihoon had constantly complained that school was boring and that he would rather be sent somewhere far away. And now he was calling it ‘our school.’

“I asked Chief Joo, and he said you even drove her home yourself.”

“Then was I supposed to send a girl who looked like she couldn’t even tell whether she was wearing clothes or not out into the rain alone?”

“The point is that you considered that more important than meeting Ri-won. That meeting was arranged by the chairman so you could apologize to Ri-won.”

Jihoon leaned his head back in frustration.

Ever since returning to headquarters, the muscles around his shoulders had been stiff and sore. It was undoubtedly a sign of stress.

“Father. I don’t know what you’re thinking, but she’s a minor.”

“She’s less than two months away from turning twenty.”

Jihoon narrowed his eyes as if wondering what exactly his father was trying to say. Giljun let out a low sigh before speaking.

“That girl is going to marry Assemblyman Park. Apparently, that was what they were meeting to discuss that day.”

“……”

“If you interfere with that as well, they won’t sit quietly by. So stop. How far down the ladder do you intend to be demoted?”

Despite Jihoon having nearly beaten a man—an assemblyman, no less—to a pulp, the incident still hadn’t been mentioned in the media.

That was proof of how much power the company had exerted behind the scenes.

But from the moment the word ‘marriage’ came out of Giljun’s mouth, Jihoon could no longer hear anything else he was saying.

“Can I pretend I don’t know about what happened today?”

“Can I hide behind you, Teacher?”

Remembering Yeon Eum from that day, Jihoon quietly clenched his fist and asked,

“Does she want that, too?”

Giljun’s eyes moved toward his son’s bloodshot eyes.

“Does she want to be handed over to some old man thirty years older than her? Just like Mother was?”

“What?”

Without waiting for Giljun’s answer, Jihoon abruptly stood up.

“Seong Jihoon!”

Giljun shouted angrily after him, but Jihoon didn’t stop. He left the vice chairman’s office.

The waiting secretaries sprang to their feet when they saw him, and Minjae came rushing out. Jihoon tossed him the car keys.

“You drive.”

“What?”

Ignoring Minjae’s bewilderment, Jihoon stepped into the elevator and breathed heavily.

The world had gone completely insane.

The words ‘Eum is going to marry Assemblyman Park’ kept spinning around inside his head.