Chapter 5
“Ugh.”
She had a terrible dream, being chased by a dark shadow.
Minho’s proposal.
Her ex-husband suddenly appearing.
Yesterday had been nothing but a nightmare for Jaekyung.
She was still breathing heavily when the alarm went off.
Jaekyung jolted upright and quickly pressed the button on the phone clutched in her hand.
She pulled the towel away from her face and looked around.
A few people were lying in the corner of the jjimjilbang.
Last night, despite the man’s attempts to stop her from leaving the building, Jaekyung had run toward the door leading to the security office.
‘We need to verify your identity before you can leave.’
Perhaps the sight of Jaekyung desperately struggling while being held by two security guards had moved him.
The man watching from the entrance had simply crooked a finger, allowing Jaekyung to leave the building.
‘Seo Jaekyung, go to school in the morning.’
She shuddered at the thought of how she had even managed to get to the jjimjilbang and checked the dozens of messages and calls she had received.
Where is Dad? Why hasn’t he even called?
[Ms. Seo, who was that man? I saw the pictures, and he was seriously handsome. Is he your ex-boyfriend? Or were you seeing two men at once? Pictures of the love triangle from yesterday were posted in the group chat, and everyone’s going crazy.]
Kim Juyoung, another assistant teacher, had sent her screenshots of the conversation from the teachers’ group chat.
Jaekyung was startled when she saw the photos.
“What is this?”
There were several photos of Minho’s back as he stormed out angrily, Jaekyung’s face, and Yugam standing beside her in his suit.
She hurried into the group chat, which had more than a hundred people, but the original photos had already been deleted.
Still, there was no telling whether someone would spread them again.
[He was someone my boyfriend knows.]
Anxious, Jaekyung texted Juyoung.
Rumors spread in an instant, so for now she had to pretend she didn’t know what was going on and brush it off.
When Jaekyung arrived at school, she couldn’t wear the same clothes as yesterday, so she took off her sweater.
Wearing only her blouse and jacket, she quietly slipped through the back door of the conference room.
Since it was the school’s anniversary, the students weren’t coming to school, and the building was quiet with only a teachers’ meeting taking place.
Several teachers whose faces were only vaguely familiar looked at Jaekyung with puzzled expressions.
But the most shocked of all was the vice principal.
“Chairman, you’ve arrived. But how is Ms. Seo arriving with the chairman?”
Whispers spread among the teachers.
Thinking something was wrong, Jaekyung turned around.
Yugam, who had chased her through her nightmares, was looking at her calmly as though nothing had happened.
Unlike Jaekyung, who looked haggard after spending the night at a jjimjilbang and barely sleeping because of nightmares, Yugam looked perfectly neat and composed, like someone who had slept soundly.
“What kind of relationship does she have with the new chairman that they’re arriving together?”
“Did you see the post about Ms. Seo in the group chat?”
At the low murmurs spreading around her, Jaekyung’s face instantly flushed.
Yugam’s cold gaze slowly turned toward the vice principal and the teachers.
“I’m Do Yugam, the chairman. It seems there are many people here whom I’m meeting for the first time.”
The whispers stopped immediately.
Yugam’s hand naturally came to rest against Jaekyung’s back.
“This is Ms. Seo Jaekyung, my secretary directly assigned to the chairman’s office. Her position has been changed, so please assist her with the handover.”
Yugam calmly walked past the teachers.
“From now on, I expect the Uitae Foundation to show an entirely different side of itself.”
The chairman’s greeting from the podium sounded almost like a threat, and the vice principal’s face hardened.
“I hear private school foundations have been making quite a fuss over their budgets lately. Let’s start by auditing the Uitae Foundation and see whether it’s being managed properly.”
Everyone watched the new chairman carefully.
Jaekyung had deliberately taken the seat furthest away from Yugam in an attempt to keep as much distance from him as possible, but she was uncomfortable with the teachers constantly glancing her way.
When the principal finished his anniversary address, Jaekyung stood up.
Once she stepped into the hallway and breathed in the cold air, she finally felt as though she could breathe again.
Rattle.
The door opened behind her.
“Running away again?”
Jaekyung turned around.
It was Yugam.
“Following me all the way here makes you look like a stalker. You’re going too far. And what am I supposed to do when you announce me as your direct secretary?”
Jaekyung looked at Yugam warily and reproachfully.
“Of course I have to announce a personnel appointment.”
Yugam looked at her without a trace of emotion.
“And it’s not stalking. I’m going to recover everything—the reason you left, and the five years I spent abandoned.”
“What are you talking about, recovering things now?”
“I became curious about why you took the money and left. And I thought I might as well uphold justice, too, so you don’t go somewhere else and scam someone.”
Yugam’s pitch-black eyes gleamed intensely.
“I intend to track everything down, one thing at a time, and make you pay for it properly.”
Is he asking me to return the money he gave me back then?
Jaekyung’s head throbbed at his incomprehensible words.
“Then… please let me keep my teaching position on the condition that I work as your secretary.”
“You’re asking to hold two positions? I’ll allow it if you sleep in the same bed as me.”
The same bed?
He really must be insane.
“That’s sexual harassment.”
“I’d just be a loving husband. Asking his wife to sleep in the same bed.”
Jaekyung was so dumbfounded that irritation surged inside her.
Perhaps it would be better not to speak with him at all.
If a staff member hadn’t urgently called Yugam away, Jaekyung might really have lost her patience and fled to her classroom.
Once Yugam disappeared, she could finally breathe a little easier.
After briefly stopping by the restroom, Jaekyung was returning to the conference room when—
“Ms. Seo.”
The vice principal urgently called her from the end of the hallway with a displeased gesture.
“Yes, Vice Principal?”
“You’re not seriously planning to be the secretary, are you? What’s your relationship with the new chairman? There’s already been a formal complaint from a parent this morning. Tsk. I was going to help you, but I don’t think I can anymore.”
“What kind of complaint?”
She didn’t know what he had supposedly been trying to help her with, but the vice principal clearly seemed to have the wrong idea.
“They’re saying an unmarried teacher was with a man late at night, and that it wasn’t just one man.”
“That’s really a misunderstanding.”
Jaekyung tried to explain the situation, but he wouldn’t listen.
“What misunderstanding? There are even pictures. What on earth did you say to the chairman to make him look like that? And was that post on the bulletin board yours, too? I didn’t think you were that kind of person. Looks like you have problems with your conduct and a tendency to stab people in the back.”
First she had been accused of writing a bulletin-board post she hadn’t even written.
Now she was being subjected to another interrogation full of prejudice.
It was absurd.
Jaekyung clenched her fists.
“Yes. ……I’m going to be the chairman’s secretary. And if I’ve genuinely done something wrong, I’ll take responsibility for it.”
If she had no choice anyway, at least she wanted to clear up the suspicion that she was the person who had written the post.
“The foundation is sending an audit team immediately. They’ll be checking whether you’re married, where you live, and your entire personal life, so keep that in mind.”
“An audit team? You’re going to verify where I live? That’s an invasion of privacy.”
“Privacy? If you have a problem with it, pay the penalty and quit.”
The department head took the furious vice principal away.
Pale-faced, Jaekyung returned to the conference room and collapsed into her seat.
The teachers’ eyes subtly flickered toward her.
“Don’t you think the chairman looks like a celebrity? He’s so handsome. And Ms. Seo is the chairman’s secretary? That’s quite the promotion.”
“Isn’t she an assistant teacher? I’ve seen her before. I guess you really have to know how to play your cards and get on the right people’s good side.”
“I never even saw a secretary recruitment notice… Being young and pretty must be a qualification in itself.”
“Looks like the KE Group heir has a thing for that type of woman.”
Someone sitting nearby giggled and made the joke.
Just as Jaekyung awkwardly lowered her gaze, her eyes met Yugam’s.
When had he returned to the conference room?
Sitting at a table some distance away, Yugam set down his glass of water.
Clack.
The sound of glass striking the marble table seemed unusually loud.
“They’re exactly my type.”
Everyone fell silent.
“I personally selected my secretary. To those of you commenting on and objecting to my personnel decision—was my introduction earlier insufficient?”
His low, distinct voice rang clearly through the room, making everyone’s eyes widen.
“Ah, Chairman. That’s not what we meant. We were just….”
“I don’t take comments about someone who belongs to me as jokes. That’s a challenge to me.”
Jaekyung glanced at Yugam’s face, seated diagonally across the table.
He was supposed to be a scammer.
Yet even though his words sounded as though he was taking her side, Jaekyung felt little gratitude.
It had only been two days since she had first seen his face.
‘I’ll protect you.’
The dry look in Yugam’s eyes, which neither smiled nor showed anger, carried a familiarity that brought back memories of their marriage five years ago.
“Ms. Seo Jaekyung, come with me to the chairman’s office.”
For once, Jaekyung was almost grateful for Yugam’s summons.
She stood up.
Yugam, who had been walking ahead of her down the hallway, turned around.
“Seo Jaekyung. If you don’t have the confidence to tell people to shut up, don’t let trashy rumors take up space in your head.”
Jaekyung looked steadily up at him with glass-clear eyes.
“Chairman… am I allowed to tell you to shut up?”
