CHAPTER 3
A small glimmer of hope appeared in Yoo Seola’s clear eyes.
“Really?”
“Wait and see.”
He took his phone out of his pocket and made a call to someone.
After exchanging a few words, he hung up as though nothing had happened.
“Now go back and try asking again.”
“Yes…?”
“Good grief, have you been deceived all your life?”
“Go on.”
“Let’s consider this my way of repaying the favor.”
With a light chuckle, he turned around.
Chairman Kang slowly walked toward the lobby doors and soon disappeared into the crowd.
Unsure whether to believe him, Yoo Seola headed back to the reception desk.
“Excuse me… I’m here to see the representative.”
The employee stood up with a bright smile, behaving completely differently from before.
“I’ll show you the way.”
Yoo Seola hesitated, unable to believe how drastically the situation had changed.
The employee politely extended an arm forward as if urging her to follow and headed toward the elevator.
Yoo Seola stepped forward with a determined expression.
When she looked back, the old man was already nowhere to be seen.
‘I wanted to thank him.’
Yoo Seola stepped into the elevator the receptionist had called for her.
The moment the elevator doors closed, her heart began pounding violently.
When the elevator reached the top floor, its doors slowly opened.
A rush of cold air pierced straight into her heart.
The heavy tension seemed to tighten around her throat.
Yoo Seola clenched her fingertips so tightly that the veins stood out.
‘Get a grip, and put your pride aside.’
Fear and grim determination mixed together as her heart pounded fiercely.
With every step she took down the hallway, the click of her heels echoed rhythmically across the cold marble floor, yet somehow eerily.
It sounded almost like a countdown.
As Yoo Seola approached, a female secretary smoothly rose from her seat.
With neat, composed steps, she approached and escorted Yoo Seola to the entrance of Ijun’s office.
“Please go inside.”
Seokhun opened the door for her.
The soft sound of the door opening sent a strange tension skittering across her ears.
In that breathless moment, Yoo Seola took her first step into the office.
And then, she stopped.
Kang Ijun’s figure, illuminated by the sunlight, began to imprint itself upon her eyes.
Ijun had been standing by the window, and as though he had been waiting for her, he slowly turned his head.
The golden afternoon sunlight seemed to drift delicately around him.
His dark-gray suit fell perfectly without a single unnecessary crease, revealing flawlessly tailored shoulders beneath it.
His features, exposed beneath his neatly swept-back hair, looked less like those of a human being and more like those of a sculpture.
Her heart pounded so hard that she found it difficult to breathe.
‘Is that… really a human face?’
She had already encountered him once at the entrance to the banquet hall, but seeing him up close made him seem far more unreal than before.
His cool gaze, emotionless lips, and perfectly straight nose formed a face so cold and beautiful that she had never even seen anything like it in a movie.
His dark eyes turned toward Yoo Seola.
Their gazes met.
That brief exchange alone seemed to make all the air in the office condense into an icy stillness.
“Who are you?”
Yoo Seola neatly clasped her trembling hands together and lowered her head.
Slowly and clearly, she uttered the excuse she had practiced dozens of times throughout the night.
“Hello, my name is Yoo Seola.”
“I came to apologize for my rudeness yesterday, and I’m sorry for coming here uninvited.”
Ijun lowered his gaze slightly without the slightest trace of emotion.
Beneath his perfectly composed expression, his cold, discerning eyes slowly swept over Yoo Seola as though scanning every aspect of her.
‘Yoo Seola?’
It was the name that had refused to leave his mind since yesterday’s banquet.
The bold woman who had met his eyes and then simply turned around and walked away.
The straightforward woman who had never returned to the banquet hall was now standing before him.
‘She was an interesting woman for once.’
The banquet hall had been crowded with women desperate to claim the seat beside him, or at the very least hoping to build connections within the business world.
Yet she had been the one woman who had walked away from all of it.
That was why she had intrigued him.
Among the list of names reported by his secretary, hers was the only one marked, “Absent,” so he had remembered it.
But now, the fact that she had come all the way here of her own accord meant…
‘In the end, she’s just another materialistic woman like all the rest.’
The greater his disappointment was because he had unconsciously expected something more from her.
A deep, cold cynicism bloomed somewhere inside his heart and twisted the corners of his lips ominously.
“So, why have you come here?”
Along with Ijun’s cold, firm voice, an even more formidable authority and an even colder chill were directed at Yoo Seola like a sharp blade.
“Since you didn’t even enter the banquet hall yesterday, isn’t the matter already over?”
Yoo Seola barely swallowed the breath rising to her chin and tightly interlaced her fingers.
Her trembling fingertips carried the courage of a lifetime.
“Have you perhaps decided on your wife candidate yet?”
Ijun’s sharply angled eyebrow twitched ever so slightly, but unmistakably.
“Do I have any reason to explain that to you personally?”
His tone was dry and indifferent.
Yoo Seola faltered for a moment, but she did not back down.
She knew as well as anyone that what she was doing was absurd.
Still, this was the only way she could make up for throwing away the opportunity her adoptive parents had created by scraping together every last bit of their remaining money.
“If you haven’t decided yet, I know I have no right to ask this, but I would like to ask if you could consider me as one of the candidates as well.”
A tense silence surrounded them like a glass wall.
A brief stillness filled the room, making it difficult to breathe.
Ijun slowly lowered his gaze, as though weighing Yoo Seola’s worth one final time, before fixing her with eyes that had grown as cold as the abyss of hell.
Then a single sentence fell from his cold lips.
“You’ve already been eliminated.”
His words were as decisive as a blade.
“After leaving that place without permission yesterday, you should have expected this much.”
Yoo Seola did not lower her head in the end.
Even if she lost everything, she seemed determined to protect her pride, and an unbreakable resolve still burned in her stubbornly raised eyes.
“I was thoughtless yesterday.”
Ijun’s gaze stopped on Yoo Seola’s face.
His sharp eyes traced her expression.
It did not sound like a simple excuse.
Yoo Seola did not look away.
Like someone standing at the edge of a cliff, she faced him as though there were nowhere left for her to retreat.
Ijun remained silent for a moment.
The firm resolve flickering in her eyes irritated him strangely.
His icy gaze shifted ever so slightly.
“Ms. Yoo Seola.”
His voice was low but clear.
“In this world, opportunities aren’t something you create for yourself.”
“They are privileges that are granted to you.”
“And you’ve already let yours slip away.”
He lowered his gaze coldly once more.
“There is nothing more to discuss, so please leave.”
Yoo Seola could not get up immediately.
The strength in her fingertips tightened and loosened as the time it had taken her to get here flashed through her mind.
For a moment, she wondered whether she truly had to retreat in the face of those words.
Only after a brief while did she finally rise.
It was not because she had accepted defeat, but because there was nothing left for her to say.
For a moment, she thought that perhaps she had been foolish to come.
But she quickly erased the thought.
She did not want to create an excuse for herself to run away.
The faces of her adoptive parents came to mind.
All that remained was the thought of what she would say when she returned and how she would bear the consequences of this choice.
After making her decision, Yoo Seola took a short breath and lowered her head.
“I’m sorry for taking up your time and causing you so much trouble.”
“Thank you for giving me your valuable time.”
She was just about to turn around as though she had no lingering attachment to the matter.
“Wait.”
Ijun’s low, heavy voice brushed against her delicate back.
Yoo Seola stopped in her tracks.
“But…”
He rested an elbow on the armrest and slowly leaned forward.
“How do you know the old man who called me?”
‘He called that elderly gentleman an old man?’
Momentarily flustered by his unexpected rudeness, Yoo Seola soon regained her composure and answered calmly.
“I’ve only met him twice by coincidence.”
Ijun’s gaze paused for a moment.
“When?”
“Yesterday, in the hotel lobby where the banquet was held.”
“Today, I happened to see him again in this company’s lobby when I came here.”
Ijun’s well-shaped lips twisted slightly.
“Is that really all?”
“Yes.”
He slowly leaned back against the chair.
Then, as though lost in thought, he rubbed his chin with his fingertips.
“Representative, if you happen to see him…”
Yoo Seola hesitated for a moment before raising her head and speaking in a careful but distinct voice.
“Please tell him I thanked him for what he did today.”
“If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t have gotten another chance to meet you.”
She lowered her head once more before walking toward the door.
What remained behind was a quiet yet strangely lingering aftertaste.
Ijun frowned.
It was the first time.
A woman had never once behaved outside his expectations like this.
He had expected her to beg him to consider her as a wife candidate.
That was why he had treated her even more coldly, as though testing her.
Yet despite being in a situation where she should have been desperate to cling to him, she had walked away without making a single excuse, saying only what she had come to say.
With an unwavering gaze, she had said, “I’m sorry for causing so much trouble,” and turned her back on him.
That impeccably clean departure had not faded from Ijun’s mind.
Instead, it had carved the existence of Yoo Seola into his memory even more vividly.
He absentmindedly tapped his fingers lightly against the desk, as though possessed by some inexplicable turmoil.
‘What is with this woman?’
‘Seriously, what the hell?’
This should have been the moment when irritation surged through him.
He should have despised her and laughed at her.
For a woman who had left the banquet hall on her own terms, come to his office on her own terms, and then walked away after saying her piece without properly clinging to him, that reaction would have been entirely appropriate.
And yet, strangely, he could not forget her remarkable composure and resolute gaze.
They had burrowed so deeply into his mind that they lingered for an unbearably long time.
From the very beginning, Yoo Seola had been someone who did not fit into any of the ordinary categories he had created.
The presence of Yoo Seola had begun to penetrate Kang Ijun’s heart—
deeper than he could possibly handle.
