Chapter 9

Raine was startled.

The front door of this house was the kind of door that someone could easily break down if they really put their mind to it.

At first glance, the reason Hayden was being so obsessive seemed to be the contract. He had clearly said there was still something they needed to discuss regarding it.

Even if we did see each other naked after a one-night stand, this is still too much.

When she thought about the mysterious contract, she felt as though she should open the door. But the sight of Hayden looking at her through the window earlier had been far too shocking.

The more she thought about his intrusion, the more absurd it seemed, and she really did not want to have a conversation with him in this shabby room.

Should I just scream for someone to save me?

Then perhaps someone would call the police.

Or should I tell him to go for today and say I’ll come see him again later?

Judging by what Hayden had done, even calling the police would not have been excessive. But perhaps it would be best to send him away for now and talk about it again later.

“Open up. I’m seriously going to rip the door off.”

“Why would you rip someone else’s door off?!”

“You said you wanted to see my face.”

“If you break the door, are you going to fix it?”

“Don’t worry. I’ll replace it with something much sturdier than this.”

Raine was speechless at Hayden’s shamelessness.

“Open it already. If you don’t open it by the time I count to three, I’m really going to tear it off. One, two….”

That was when it happened.

Bang!

Along with the sound of something striking, another man’s angry shout rang out.

“Hey! You crazy bastard! I’ve been watching this long enough, and I seriously can’t let it go anymore!”

Raine wondered if she had heard correctly.

It wasn’t Hayden’s voice.

So Hayden’s earlier mention of “us” really did mean there was someone else besides himself.

Hayden’s irritated retort soon followed.

“How old am I that you can just hit me on the back of the head like that?!”

“Good question! You crazy bastard! How old are you that you’re acting like some clueless kid? Do you want to get dragged to the police station?”

Outside, Hayden and some stranger Raine didn’t know began bickering.

“I’m just saying it like that. Lee Raine won’t open the door.”

“Whether she opens it or not is up to the homeowner! If she doesn’t want to, she doesn’t want to! Why are you forcing her?”

“I’m just following the contract!”

“Even if you have a contract, this isn’t okay! Using force and trying to rip someone else’s door off is a crime!”

“When did I use force? You just don’t know the situation. Actually, Raine and I are really close.”

“Close, my ass! You suddenly showed up here, and it’s obvious she doesn’t want to see you! And the way you’re talking and behaving right now is obviously a problem!”

“No, she isn’t! Raine is only acting like that because she’s shy!”

“Don’t make me laugh! If you keep acting like this, you’ll be on the news wearing handcuffs before you even get to operate the center!”

A brief scuffle broke out outside.

“Let go of me! Ji Cheon-myeong! Anyway, that’s not the important part! I’m telling you, I need to see Raine’s face!”

Raine realized that the other man’s name was Ji Cheon-myeong.

Hayden. Ji Cheon-myeong.

The two names did not immediately ring a bell, but Raine felt a strange sense of déjà vu, as though she had heard them somewhere before.

Soon, she heard the sound of something being dragged along the floor.

“Ah, forget it! Hayden! Stop resisting and come over here for a second!”

It seemed that the man named Ji Cheon-myeong was forcibly dragging Hayden away.

Their voices gradually grew more distant.

Then, from somewhere farther away, Cheon-myeong’s commanding voice could be heard.

“Stand right here and don’t move! This is the representative’s order!”

Hayden’s voice abruptly fell silent.

A moment later, the sound of footsteps approached, and Cheon-myeong’s apologetic voice came from the other side of the door.

“Ms. Raine. I’m sorry. That crazy bastard must have really frightened you, huh?”

His sweet voice was calm and gentle.

“I’ll leave your bag here for now.”

Cheon-myeong continued in an extremely careful tone.

“I understand that you don’t want to see us. I really do. But I’ll wait down by the road, so if you calm down a little, would you be willing to meet with me?”

“……”

Raine did not respond to Cheon-myeong.

Of course, she had no intention of facing them.

But perhaps realizing that Raine was listening, Cheon-myeong continued.

“Do you remember Ji Cheon-myeong and Hayden? It was a very long time ago, so you might have forgotten, but we were in the same class until second grade at Yujeong Elementary School, and we were very close.”

“?”

At the mention of her elementary-school classmates, Raine’s eyes widened.

“Hayden, the one who played the violin. And Ji Cheon-myeong, whose nickname was Princess.”

At that moment, the face of a boy she had known a very long time ago flashed through Raine’s mind.

In the depths of darkness, nine-year-old Hayden had looked at Raine, who was the same age as him, with tear-filled eyes and held out his little finger.

[It’s a promise. You must never forget it.]

Something must have happened to Hayden back then. His voice had been thick and damp, as though he had been crying for a long time.

That boy had hooked his little finger with Raine’s and insisted that she must never forget.

But Raine could not remember what she had promised him.

Oh my God.

It was hard to believe.

That fragile little boy from back then was the same man who had enjoyed such a passionate night with Raine just yesterday.

And there was something else.

Back then, Hayden’s hair had not been silver like it was now.

It had been black.

Thinking of Hayden also brought Ji Cheon-myeong vaguely back to mind.

In Raine’s faded memories, there had been a boy more beautiful than flowers, neat and handsome like a prince.

He had been so pretty that his nickname was Princess.

Sitting in front of a campfire, that boy had smiled shyly and told Raine and Hayden:

[You have to remember.]

Raine could not immediately recall what had prompted those words.

But when she managed to grasp the very edge of that memory, her breath caught in her throat.

Her hands trembled violently, and she could not say a word.

“I guess you don’t remember. It was so long ago, after all, so I thought that might be the case.”

Cheon-myeong did not seem to be expecting an answer.

He simply spoke in a soothing voice.

“I put our business cards and a note in your bag, so please take a look and at least give us a call. I’ll be waiting.”

His footsteps moved away from the front door.

Soon, the sound of Hayden and Cheon-myeong bickering could once again be heard from a little farther away.

“I told you to let go!”

In response to Hayden’s resistance, Cheon-myeong shouted angrily.

“Ah! Seriously, this lunatic!”

“Why am I a lunatic?!”

“Shut up! Just come with me already!”

“Where are you going?! I have to take Lee Raine with me!”

“Are you coming right now or not? If Ms. Raine wants to contact us, she’ll do it herself!”

The commotion outside soon died down.

Judging that both men had left the building, Raine cautiously opened the door.

There was no one on the rooftop.

Just as Cheon-myeong had said, her bag was quietly sitting in front of the door.

Raine walked over to the rooftop railing and looked down.

The streetlamp on the utility pole flickered, as though its lifespan was coming to an end.

Through the intermittent light, she could just make out two tall men walking down the alley.

It seemed she no longer had to worry about them suddenly barging in.

Raine picked up her bag and returned to her room.

She opened the window to circulate the hot air inside the room.

It was still unbearably hot, but at least having the window open made it feel a little better.

“Hayden and Ji Cheon-myeong….”

Now that she realized who the two men were, memories of the past she had tried so hard to forget came flooding back.

Eighteen years ago.

At the time, the Inju Corporation had been growing at a rapid pace.

Then its major core technologies were leaked by an industrial spy, and after coming under concentrated attack from corporate raiders, the company collapsed almost overnight.

No one explained to ten-year-old Lee Raine what the delisting of Inju Corporation meant.

But even as a child, Raine could roughly understand that something terrible had happened to her family from the newspaper headlines and television news.

Not long afterward, Raine’s parents died from the severe stress and shock they had suffered.

Acute myocardial infarction and cerebral hemorrhage.

Raine was left alone, and she was told that all her parents had left behind for her were debts whose origins she did not even understand.

Her greedy relatives came rushing in one after another.

They caused a scene even at Raine’s parents’ funeral, grabbing each other by the collars and fighting.

And instead of paying off the debts, they relentlessly pressured Raine to give up her rights.

At the time, Raine, the only daughter of Inju Corporation, was caught up in a whirlwind she did not understand.

There should have been a lawyer to protect a minor, but for some reason, no one ever appeared.

Eventually, she heard that the situation had more or less been settled after Inju Corporation went out of business.

After all the lawsuits, Raine was placed in the care of a distant relative in the countryside, along with the 500 million won in assets that supposedly remained.

Looking back now that she was an adult, even the fact that the lawsuits had ended so quickly seemed strange.

Everything was strange from beginning to end.

Nothing had been normal.

In any case, her new guardian was a distant relative who lived in extreme poverty.

He welcomed Raine when she arrived.

More precisely, he welcomed the property that came with her.

Of course, it was not used for Raine’s living expenses.

It was spent on alcohol and gambling.

Naturally, he lost everything.

He was drunk almost every day, and whenever he lost at gambling, he blamed Raine and beat her.

[Ever since you came here, nothing has gone right for me!]

Every time the leather belt sliced sharply through the air before striking her, Raine would curl herself into a ball, crying, apologizing, and begging for forgiveness.

Fortunately, the woman living next door was a righteous person.

She refused to simply stand by and watch a child being abused.

Whenever Raine was beaten and cried, the woman called the police.

Whenever the police arrived, Raine’s relative would instantly sober up, as though he had never been drunk.

[Ah, but the kid needs to listen to me first, doesn’t she? And when you’re raising a child, isn’t it normal to use a switch sometimes?]

The police came out several times and warned him repeatedly.

But when his behavior failed to improve, they eventually gave him an ultimatum.

[How many times is this now? If you do this even once more, we’ll take serious action against you in accordance with the law.]

Perhaps the police’s firm warning finally got through to him.

Fortunately, the beatings gradually stopped.

But Raine’s peace lasted only a very short time.

Soon, her relative’s creditors began showing up at the house every day.

Eventually, he abandoned young Raine alone in the dilapidated house and disappeared with his wife.

After that, none of her relatives came looking for Raine.

No one wanted to take responsibility for the child left alone, and no one was willing to legally take her in.

In the end, just after turning twelve, Raine was sent to an orphanage.

She grew up there until she graduated from high school.

Perhaps because she had lived so frantically ever since.

Or perhaps because remembering the sweetness of her childhood only made her misery feel even more profound.

Until she heard that the two men had been her friends, Raine had completely forgotten their names.

Raine thought about her current state and the two men who had been standing outside her door moments ago.

Lee Raine.

Female.

Twenty-eight years old.

If she had to summarize her life, her family had gone bankrupt, her parents had died, and the man she had devoted herself to had abandoned her.

Hayden and Ji Cheon-myeong.

The two people who had been Raine’s closest friends as a child had originally been children of chaebol families.

They seemed to have grown into such polished, impressive men.

And today, they had come here.

They had come to see Lee Raine in this pitiful state—with dry, rough skin, damaged hair, an overweight body, and clothes she had simply grabbed and thrown on.

And Hayden had even discovered the suicide note that described in detail how Raine had lived all this time.

“What kind of situation is this?”

Overcome with shame, Raine covered her face with both hands, feeling as though all the blood had drained from her body.

“Phew.”

After crouching there for a long while and taking a deep breath, Raine opened her bag.

Since Ji Cheon-myeong had said he had put a note inside, she decided to check it.