After telling the name of her mother and the name of the staff member her mother had informed her about at the reception desk on the first floor, she conveyed her business, and permission to enter was granted immediately.

The staff member who had been contacted said that they were too busy with work to bring it down, so she should come up and find it herself. Na Eun quickly got into the elevator and pressed the 9th floor button as she had been told.

Eventually, the elevator arrived at the 9th floor, and as Na Eun came out into the hallway and was carefully looking around for the conference room the staff member had mentioned,

“What brings you here?”

A friendly-looking employee approached Na Eun, who looked like a college student to anyone, and spoke to her first.

Na Eun brightened up and her eyes sparkled.

“My mother was here talking and left her phone behind when she left. I came to get it instead. Could you tell me where the conference room is?”

When she asked politely, the employee smiled and guided her to the left side of the hallway.

Thanks to this, Na Eun smoothly found the conference room and quickly picked up her mother’s phone that she discovered inside.

As she was waiting in front of the elevator doors to go back down after successfully completing her mission of retrieving the lost item,

“Lee Seo, did you hear about the meeting at 4 o’clock today?”

“Yes. I just prepared the materials and put them on your desk, sir.”

“I should have done it myself. Sorry about that. I’ll treat you to a meal next time.”

“Can I eat something expensive?”

“Come on, that’s too much. How much do you think an assistant manager’s salary is?”

Conversations mixing work and small talk could be heard from behind.

The hallway of what seemed to be a large company was wide, and so there were some employees out in the hallway talking among themselves.

There was no need to pay attention to other people’s conversations, so she could have just waited blankly for the elevator, but Na Eun couldn’t do that.

The voice she wanted to forget but couldn’t, that gentle tone that absolutely shouldn’t be heard now, came from behind, and Na Eun stiffened her shoulders.

She gripped the strap of her cross-body bag tightly as if it were a lifeline.

That way, her trembling hands were less noticeable.

Quickly, quickly. As she bit her lips hard, wanting to escape this place by any means necessary, she felt someone quietly come and stand next to her.

Na Eun closed her eyes. A sense of despair enveloped her entire body.

“Then I’ll go down first. I’ll see you on the first floor when you’re done with work, sir.”

“Alright, Lee Seo. See you later!”

The man, called by a name completely different from what she remembered, calmly stood next to Na Eun, greeted his superior, and then checked his wristwatch.

To anyone watching, he looked like an office worker hurrying not to waste his lunch break.

Na Eun hurriedly rolled her eyes and looked around. The hallway, which had been somewhat busy with people passing by until just now, was now quiet as if it had never been otherwise.

Just as Na Eun, having confirmed that there was no one nearby to ask for help (though in reality, there probably wasn’t anyone here who could help), instinctively reached into her bag to grab her phone,

“It’s here. Aren’t you getting in?”

The elevator arrived at the 9th floor and opened, and the man, with his finger on the button, looked down at her with a kind smile.

Na Eun didn’t move. She just tensed up, trying to understand the other’s intentions.

She inevitably ended up staring at the man standing next to her, waiting for her to get in, and bit her lip.

From head to toe, he looked like a different person.

His hairstyle, the semi-formal suit he was wearing, the glasses he had on.

If it weren’t for those terribly engraved memories in her mind, and thus the face imprinted there, even she might not have recognized him, so different was his entire demeanor.

No. Think. Don’t go blank.

As she tried to somehow return her thought process, which had stopped due to shock and fear, to normal, and was about to move her hand to turn on her phone in her bag,

“−What would be faster, Seo Hee Won arriving after being contacted with that, or me who’s already here.”

“……”

Na Eun’s hand hesitated at the lowly thrown warning. The voice she remembered, the content of the words, and this oppressive feeling pressing down on her.

As the conclusion that there was not a shred of misunderstanding about any of it came to her, her body’s trembling became increasingly severe.

Just as she began to feel cold sweat soaking her spine, the black eyes from her memory, visible through the glasses, scanned her and whispered to Na Eun as kindly as before.

“You should get in quickly, Na Eun.”

−I can do a lot more in front of you now. Right?

The voice that was always terribly kind, just like before, coiled around her like a snake.

Jae Kyung’s black pupils, filled with false kindness, were capturing Na Eun without a gap, as if about to devour her.

Is this how prey feels when crawling into a lion’s den of its own accord?

Each second of the elevator ride from the 9th floor to the 1st floor felt longer than a minute.

Her shoulders were shaking violently, and cold sweat ran down her spine.

Na Eun, who had been frozen, unable to do anything but stare ahead, turned pale as the elevator stopped with a jolt around the 3rd floor.

The elevator, which had stopped arbitrarily before reaching its destination floor, showed no intention of moving further.

Next to Na Eun, who was too stiff to say anything, Jae Kyung reached out and pressed the emergency call button.

The elevator has stopped here. Please come and repair it.

After briefly talking with the person in charge through the machine, Jae Kyung calmly straightened up from where he had been leaning towards the emergency call button.

Grip. Na Eun clutched her bag strap as if it were a lifeline.

She was certain now that the elevator stopping was not a coincidence.

Because Jae Kyung wasn’t flustered at all, and the voice of the person on the other side of the call button had been rather nonchalant.

And even from the side, the current situation couldn’t be assumed to be a coincidence. She unconsciously looked around to see if there were any CCTVs inside.

Feeling her gaze, Jae Kyung laughed softly.

“Even if there were, what could you do?”

“……”

“The short hair suits you well. Pretty.”

As if they were old friends who had lost contact and met by chance, he was natural.

But Na Eun felt beyond discomfort, to the point of fear, towards the man in front of her who no longer bore any resemblance to the kind boyfriend in her memories.

She finally gave up on ignoring him and squeezed her eyes shut, then turned her body towards Jae Kyung.

The man in front of her was looking down at her with a smile, but an oppressive aura that overwhelmed the other person emanated from him even as he stood still.

Except for that last day they met, Jae Kyung, who had always been warm, now seemed to be enjoying his position of being able to strangle her at any moment.

So this is his true face. Newly realizing this, she bit her lip.

“Why are you shaking so much.”

Jae Kyung’s low voice contained a hint of annoyance.

Only then did she realize that she had been trembling continuously like a herbivore in front of a predator.

Since the trembling from fear wouldn’t disappear even if scolded, Na Eun answered by simply averting her gaze without saying anything.

In her lowered line of sight, the employee ID card Jae Kyung was wearing around his neck caught her eye.

‘Han Lee Seo’ He was a normal office worker by all appearances, with a name she had never heard before.

He must be living a false life even now. ……Just like he did by my side before.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost. As if you thought I was dead.”

“……”

“There were no fatalities that day. Not me, not you guys. ……I thought your precious friends would have already told you.”

Wasn’t that the case? A sneer coated Jae Kyung’s smiling lips.

Displeased by Na Eun’s lack of response, he grabbed her lowered chin with one hand and forcibly made her meet his eyes.

“Na Eun, I’m asking you.”

You didn’t know I was alive? To his mocking question, as gentle as before, Na Eun forced herself to move her mouth to answer for the first time.

Unexpectedly, what came out first was a faint sneer.

With reddened eyes from trembling so much, she met Jae Kyung’s gaze and answered with a slight laugh.

“……Do I need to know?”

“……”

A suffocating silence fell between the two.

Jae Kyung’s eyes, looking down at Na Eun, sank with an even darker darkness.

Meanwhile, Na Eun, forced to witness the unwanted fact that Han Jae Kyung was alive right in front of her, was trying to figure out how to escape this situation.

But no matter how hard she tried, there was no escape route, making her think that maybe she should just die here like before, or wishing that the elevator had really malfunctioned and would just crash altogether.

Jae Kyung, as if not wanting to give her even the luxury of such thoughts, pressed on.

Somewhat roughly releasing his hold on her chin, Jae Kyung said,

“You running into me here today was, fortunately for you, just a coincidence.”

“……”

“So if you happen to tell those friends you love that you met me…… wouldn’t that be troublesome for both of us?”

Na Eun’s eyes hardened with tension as she quickly grasped the situation from the brief warning.

Although she wasn’t sure, Han Jae Kyung probably wasn’t working at this company just to make money, and whatever he was plotting, it wouldn’t be anything good.

So if she were to tell Seung Joo or Sun Jin even a little bit about this fact, he wouldn’t leave her alone either – it was a kind of threat.

“You should think about your mother too.”

She’s your only precious family left, right? Grasping her trembling shoulders with both hands as if to embrace her, Jae Kyung whispered lowly.

Na Eun squeezed her eyes shut and lowered her head. Jae Kyung, who had been holding her shoulders, furrowed his brow at her increasingly trembling body.

Her deeply bowed head was no longer looking at Jae Kyung, and her body, shaking like an aspen tree in midwinter, seemed about to collapse at any moment.

Jae Kyung muttered a curse under his breath.

“Stop shaking already.”

What have I done to you here right now? Despite his warning through gritted teeth, the trembling didn’t stop.

Eventually, Na Eun grasped her own neck with her quivering hands. Jae Kyung’s expression hardened.

“Yoon Na Eun.”

Cough, cough. As if someone choking on water, Na Eun started coughing dryly while clutching her throat.

Her gasping appearance looked as if she might lose consciousness at any moment.

Her pale complexion and reddened eyes indicated that she was not in a normal state right now.

What should I do.

I can’t breathe.

Grasping her neck with both hands and bending at the waist, Na Eun squeezed her eyes shut.

The symptoms that had recurred several times before manifested most strongly outside her body today.

As Na Eun, who had now almost collapsed to the floor as if about to die, continued coughing uncontrollably and finally seemed unable to breathe, choking and gasping, another curse escaped from Jae Kyung’s mouth as he stood looking down at her.