Chapter 7: He Knows
After pressing the Send button on the email, Yoon-kyung stretched her arms high before letting her heavy upper body sink against the back of her chair. She didn’t even have the strength to push her slipping glasses back up.
She had expected Ji-hyun’s harassment the moment they met at the hotel’s front entrance. Still, the nonstop irritation, nitpicking, and complaints from the second she arrived at work…
Thirty years old, yet she’s unbelievably childish.
Taking a sip of her now-cold drink, Yoon-kyung unwrapped her sandwich. Even the glasses sliding down to the tip of her nose felt unbearably heavy, so she took them off and laid them on the table.
She stuffed a large bite of bread into her mouth and chewed slowly.
“We’ve met before, haven’t we?”
“At Kwonseong, perhaps.”
Remembering the conversation she’d had with Do-heon the previous night, a deep sigh escaped her lips.
“If I knew you’d react like this, I wouldn’t have bothered asking HR.”
“Secretary Kim told me you used to work at Kwonseong, Ms. Kang Yoon-kyung.”
The Kyung-min she knew wasn’t someone who went around spreading other people’s business. Even more so, he would never have told Do-heon—his own superior—about the accident while speaking right in front of the man involved.
If he hadn’t been talking about the accident…
As Yoon-kyung considered the possibilities, she remembered Do-heon calling her a “parachute hire.”
“So the rumor that he even looked through everyone’s résumés was true.”
She had dismissed it as idle gossip before. But if he had actually reviewed every employee’s résumé, then it made some sense why he’d referred to her that way.
“Why did you quit?”
The expression on Do-heon’s face at that moment had been filled with certainty.
Why had he looked at her like that while asking why she’d resigned?
“…I don’t know.”
She couldn’t understand what he was thinking or what his intentions were.
The only memories Do-heon had lost were the two years before the accident… and Kang Yoon-kyung.
Even counting the three years he’d spent in America, there was a five-year gap in his memories. Yet the man standing before her now felt nothing like the Do-heon she had once known.
The thing I understand the least is…
What had he been about to say before Ji-hyun interrupted?
She stuffed the rest of the sandwich into her mouth, puffing out her cheeks.
Despite the almost comical expression on her face, her complexion darkened even further.
“I heard your mother is staying here tonight.”
There was no way his memories had returned.
Had he somehow seen her with Seong-hee?
Or…
“…Ha…”
Resting her elbows on the desk, Yoon-kyung let out a weary groan.
It had only been two days.
She hadn’t even had time to process seeing Do-heon again before one bewildering thing after another kept happening.
While absentmindedly fiddling with the sandwich wrapper, she checked a message from Assistant Manager Choi of the marketing team.
It began by saying lunch had been delayed because the menu had taken longer than expected.
Then came the real point.
The meeting originally scheduled for two o’clock had been moved earlier.
It was surprisingly considerate for someone who usually made no secret of excluding Yoon-kyung from the team.
Of course, what she really wanted to say came afterward.
“So in the end, they just want me to greet the client instead of them because they’re eating.”
The message was practically an order.
Since the client had arrived thirty minutes earlier than the scheduled meeting time, all Yoon-kyung had to do was escort them to the meeting room.
Rubbing her face dryly, she muttered,
“Life must be nice.”
Ever since Kwonseong acquired the company, some employees had somehow convinced themselves that Kwonseong was now obligated to take care of them.
Every time she saw that attitude, Yoon-kyung felt as though she was the abnormal one.
The final message from Assistant Manager Choi informed her that she’d already given the client’s side Yoon-kyung’s phone number without asking permission.
Checking the time, Yoon-kyung stood.
“I heard it was a woman.”
Leaving the office, she quietly watched the numbers on the elevator display climb upward.
A moment later, the elevator arrived with a chime.
The doors slid open.
“…Huh?”
Her eyes met those of a woman holding a phone to her ear.
At the same moment, Yoon-kyung’s own phone vibrated in her hand, displaying an unfamiliar eleven-digit number.
“Yoon-kyung?”
Before Yoon-kyung could say the woman’s name after recognizing her, the woman spoke first.
“Wow, it’s really been forever! Do you remember me?”
“You’re Da-hee, right?”
“That’s right!”
The moment she heard her own name, Da-hee broke into a bright smile.
“Secretary Kim told me about you, but I didn’t expect to run into you this quickly. Oh, is this your phone number?”
I was wondering why they didn’t even tell me the name of the person in charge.
Stuffing her phone carelessly into her bag, Da-hee grabbed Yoon-kyung’s hand enthusiastically.
She looked genuinely delighted to see her.
“I can’t believe we’re meeting like this. The world’s really small, isn’t it?”
“It really is. Have you been doing well?”
“Same as always. As you can see, I managed not to get fired and I’m still hanging on at Kwonseong.”
Yoon-kyung laughed at Da-hee’s joke and led her toward the meeting room.
“What about you? Have you been well?”
“I’ve been… getting by.”
When they reached the meeting room and Yoon-kyung opened the door, a lingering smell of food greeted them.
Apparently someone had eaten inside.
“Looks like they had quite the feast.”
Yoon-kyung smiled awkwardly and hurried to open the windows.
The large No Food Allowed sign posted right outside the meeting room seemed visible only to her.
“I’m sorry. I’ll leave the door open until the room airs out.”
“What are you apologizing for?”
Da-hee placed her laptop bag on the table.
“Have you eaten?”
“Yeah. I grabbed something at the office and came straight here.”
“Then at least let me get you some coffee…”
Hearing laughter from across the room, Yoon-kyung checked the time before looking back at Da-hee.
“You haven’t changed at all.”
“Me?”
“Yeah. I always wanted to become really close friends with you. You didn’t know that, did you?”
The two had both started as interns before becoming full-time employees.
In other words, they had entered the company together.
“We were the same age, hired at the same time, and I thought our personalities would get along well.”
“I hardly ever went to the gatherings for our hiring class.”
“You didn’t skip them—you couldn’t go.”
Da-hee snorted.
“That witch from Marketing Team Two who treated you like absolute dirt? She was famous among all of us.”
Yoon-kyung smiled awkwardly.
“Watching you endure all of that made me think you were amazing. You looked so gentle, but I realized you were actually incredibly strong.”
“I cried a lot behind everyone’s backs.”
“I know.”
Da-hee smiled knowingly.
“I saw you crying alone on the rooftop several times.”
Still smiling at each other, Da-hee’s gaze dropped to the employee ID hanging around Yoon-kyung’s neck.
“I don’t know how you feel, but I’m really happy we got to meet again, even if it’s like this.”
“Me too.”
“Actually… three years ago…”
Carefully gauging Yoon-kyung’s reaction, Da-hee cautiously brought up the past.
“I kept wondering whether I should contact you. Over and over.”
“But I hadn’t talked to you regularly before that, so I thought suddenly reaching out might just make things more uncomfortable.”
“So I never did.”
“I’ve regretted it ever since.”
“Just knowing you thought about me is enough. Thank you.”
“It’s really late to ask this, but… are you okay physically? The aftereffects of a car accident can last for years.”
Yoon-kyung simply smiled, reassuring her without words.
There was no need to mention that the accident had left her with less than half the hearing in her left ear.
“You worked so hard there. Weren’t you upset to leave?”
“I know it couldn’t be helped, but I was so frustrated.”
“It wasn’t even your fault.”
“Why should the innocent person have to leave?”
“No one told me to leave.”
Yoon-kyung smiled faintly.
“I just couldn’t endure it anymore.”
“How could anyone?”
Da-hee replied.
“You threw yourself in front of a car to save someone—and it wasn’t even a coworker.”
“It was the owner’s son.”
“And on top of saving him, he was seriously injured because of it and even lost his memory.”
At Da-hee’s words, Yoon-kyung absentmindedly rubbed the phone in her hand.
Three years ago, the entire country had been captivated by the headline:
“Son of Major Conglomerate Owner Hit by Hit-and-Run Vehicle While Saving Female Employee.”
In the end, Yoon-kyung had walked out of Kwonseong on her own.
Being known as the employee who owed the owner’s son her life would have been enough to drown her in whispers and judgment.
But to Yoon-kyung…
Before he was the owner’s son…
He had been the man who confessed that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her.
He had been the man she loved.
The only man she’d ever loved.
The one irreplaceable person in her world.
How could she have imagined that the price of owing him her life…
…would be losing him?
Even so, Yoon-kyung decided to bear it.
When Do-heon lay unconscious…
When she wasn’t even allowed to approach him…
When the people guarding his hospital room wouldn’t even let her see his face…
She had remained trapped outside that room, praying desperately.
Please…
Please, just let Do-heon wake up.
Take my hearing.
Take anything.
Take everything I have.
Just… please save him.
She begged.
Again and again.
“…Who are you?”
Even when the price turned out to be Do-heon himself—the man who had been her entire world—
Yoon-kyung accepted it.
Even when she was left utterly alone.
Even when another woman stood beside him instead of her.
She watched as the past they had built together and the future they had promised each other drifted farther and farther away…
And she let him go.
“I heard you ran into Executive Director Kwon at the company.”
Da-hee hesitated.
“You’ll probably keep seeing him from now on. Are you going to be okay?”
Yoon-kyung simply smiled instead of answering.
Even if they crossed paths at work, how often would someone like the company’s overall executive interact with an ordinary employee like her?
“Besides, the executive director doesn’t remember anything, so I’m the only one who…”
“I don’t think that’s true.”
Da-hee’s expression turned strange.
“The executive director knows.”
Yoon-kyung looked at her.
“He knows that the employee he saved three years ago…”
“…was you, Yoon-kyung.”
