‘Eun Soo. What do you think if I have to go to America?’

At twenty-six, Eun Soo was a job seeker doing short-term part-time jobs and freelance work while looking for a place to settle as a full-time employee.

On the other hand, Joo Han entered his grandfather’s business consulting company a few months before graduation. It was a fairly large company with headquarters in Boston, USA.

Eun Soo knew that Joo Han’s mother, who was the representative there, had wanted him to come and learn the work from the beginning, but Joo Han was stubborn and stayed in the Korean office.

Joo Han had never told Eun Soo about such circumstances, and he didn’t know that Eun Soo knew, but she knew everything.

‘You should go. Others are desperate to get jobs overseas.’

‘Then what about you?’

‘I like it here. I’ve never thought about living abroad.’

‘Then what about us?’

‘…’

‘Long-distance relationships are okay, right?’

‘We’ll figure something out when it comes to that, I guess.’

She knew Joo Han was secretly disappointed by such a response, but she couldn’t say anything more.

Even though she kept avoiding it, Joo Han tried to make eye contact and said:

‘Marriage… is it too early?’

What did I answer to that?

That’s when she was thinking.

“Sun Eun Soo?”

Startled by someone’s call, Eun Soo came to her senses. And as soon as she turned around, she clenched her molars.

Why is that bastard here.

Team Leader Gye, who was in charge of ‘him’ in ‘Look at everyone else but just don’t look at him’, approached with a smile.

“Wow, it’s been a while.”

“Hello.”

“I heard the rumor. You’re working at now?”

When Eun Soo didn’t particularly answer, Team Leader Gye smirked.

“So that’s why you did that to me back then? You were already planning to move there and told me to go get an interview there.”

“…”

“Well, I guess you had to make a better impression on the place you were moving to rather than the place that was about to take off. But still, I felt a bit hurt? I thought there was such a thing as finishing well, did you really have to make such a mess before leaving?”

Eun Soo raised just the corners of her mouth in something resembling a smile. One side was subtly raised higher.

“Is finishing well something I could achieve alone even if I wanted to?”

Team Leader Gye’s expression slightly contorted. He cleared his throat and scratched his cheek, then abruptly said:

“Give me one of your business cards. I saw you handing them out earlier.”

How long have you been watching? Eun Soo’s eyes narrowed in displeasure.

“Who knows? I might write a good line or two about you.”

It was too unpleasant to ignore, but the interior magazine company she had quit was quite large in scale. However, it was obvious at a glance that he wasn’t really asking for her business card to help her work-wise.

After pondering for a moment, Eun Soo smiled brightly and held out a business card.

Receiving it with a look that said ‘I knew it’, Team Leader Gye paused.

“What’s this? This isn’t Sun Eun Soo’s business card.”

“It’s our CEO’s business card. I ran out of my own cards, so I prepared a better one. Well then.”

Eun Soo smiled and quickly turned around. The wedding ceremony had just ended, and the newlyweds’ exit music was playing.

Taking advantage of everyone’s boisterous cheering, Eun Soo quickly slipped out of the hall.

“…Ah, how annoying.”

She was frustrated that she couldn’t freely express her anger, afraid that he might write a bad article, even though she didn’t really expect or want him to write a good one.

Although she thought she had avoided it well, considering he was a petty person who could easily do such things and it was someone else’s wedding venue, she still felt uneasy about not confronting him properly.

Eun Soo headed straight home by bus. After dozing for about 30 minutes on the bus and getting off to walk home, she belatedly felt regretful.

‘Maybe I should have stopped by somewhere since I already made the effort to dress up and go out.’

Eun Soo slowed her steps and cast her gaze into the distance. The wind carrying the fresh air of late spring and early summer suddenly felt ticklish.

It was a shame to think about going straight home after dressing up, doing makeup, and even curling her hair for once. She had become too accustomed to the life of a homebody office worker…

That’s when a familiar voice was heard from behind Eun Soo.

“What are you doing standing in the middle of the street?”

Eun Soo turned around with a start.

Wearing a loose hoodie and shorts, looking every bit like a local resident, Joo Han was standing crookedly with a suspicious look. He was holding a convenience store bag in one hand.

Eun Soo clicked her tongue.

“I didn’t want to meet work people on the one day off I have in a week.”

“Same here. Who told you to move near the workplace?”

Joo Han was right. When her jeonse contract ended last year, she found a place within walking distance to to save on commute costs and time, only to end up becoming neighbors with Joo Han.

After carefully examining Eun Soo’s quite different concept from usual, Joo Han casually remarked:

“Looks like you went to a wedding.”

Feeling oddly mischievous, Eun Soo replied without changing her expression:

“No, a blind date.”

Joo Han’s eyes changed slightly. He glanced at the straight, white legs under the fluttering skirt and quickly averted his gaze.

“Looking at you going home alone at this ambiguous time, it must have been a failed blind date without even seeing it.”

Eun Soo was taken aback, but she tried to bluff it out to the end.

“Yeah. It was so terrible that I gave him your number.”

“Why would my number come up there? Did you drink during the day?”

“Why would I drink when it failed?”

Shrugging her shoulders, Eun Soo waved her hand and passed by Joo Han. Joo Han turned to watch Eun Soo’s retreating figure with bewildered eyes.

A blind date? He knew that with Eun Soo’s personality, she wouldn’t willingly go on such a thing, and even if she did, she wouldn’t dress up like that for a first meeting.

Still, with a lingering uneasiness, Joo Han fiddled with his phone in his pocket.

Don’t worry about it. What does it matter to me? Whether it’s a lie or the truth.

‘…It really failed, right?’

The next day, Eun Soo arrived at work, sat down, turned on her laptop, and immediately entered work mode.

She started by picking out a few keywords like mid-century modern, beyond Nordic to American and Western European, unique textures, color sense, etc., to grasp the trends and think about any new plans.

She usually works hard, but today she was especially fired up due to certain stimuli received yesterday.

When she used to hand out business cards from the interior design magazine, people would usually say things like “Wow, you work there?”, but when she said she worked at , the reactions were ambiguous, which bothered her.

It also bothered her that she couldn’t cleanly ignore Team Leader Gye’s threat or sarcasm or whatever it was. If had been a successful place, she could have brushed him off saying they had plenty of people to write good articles about them even without him.

‘Anyway, I’m going to make this place bigger.’

Eun Soo was originally interested in things that create aesthetic beauty, like architecture, furniture, and interior design. At one point, she even dreamed of becoming a furniture designer, but quickly gave up for economic and practical reasons.

Then she got into an interior design magazine company, and not long after joining, the first solo assignment she got was an interview with CEO Kim Kyung Hoon.

Before meeting him, she remembered studying hard about vintage furniture for days, determined to know as much as possible. She also remembered how the interview went smoothly and enjoyably as he answered each question sincerely, as if appreciating her effort.

‘Vintage refers to the year the grapes used to make wine were harvested. It’s also used to mean something that has become valuable with age, like well-aged wine. It means something that remains attractive and not outdated or boring despite the passage of time, even to the point of meaning the best. That’s what I love.’

CEO Kim Kyung Hoon’s words left a strong impression, and she started to take a serious interest in vintage furniture. The more she learned, the more fascinating it became.

Back then, her only ambition was to earn a lot of money someday and buy this and that. She never dreamed it would become her profession.

As Eun Soo was searching to see how other vintage furniture shops were doing these days, she frowned. An unwelcome name, .

A huge feature article was published in one of the top 3 fashion magazines. The title read ‘Places Ko Ji Yeon Loves’. Ko Ji Yeon was currently the hottest top actress, famous for making anything she touched sell out.

“Oh my, I’m envious. Oh my, it’s annoying.”

I wonder why Director Sun is like that again today.

Unaware that Sun Kyung was looking at her with such eyes, Eun Soo muttered complaints to herself and searched for .

When she entered the homepage, the design was terribly awful. Looking at the densely written list of celebrities who had bought items from there and places they had sponsored, she felt stuffy, as if looking at a poorly made PPT screen.

“Objectively speaking, our side is dozens of times better.”

The blog and Instagram of , which the sensible and diligent Jae Rim had worked hard to cultivate, were honestly admirable to anyone who saw them. They had many followers and visitors. It just didn’t translate into as much sales.

“I wonder how much of an effect Ko Ji Yeon has…”

As Eun Soo was imagining a celebrity even more famous than Ko Ji Yeon dropping by , saying ‘I’ll take everything from here to here’, and then widely publicizing that fact through their own SNS… she suddenly remembered someone.

But she immediately shook her head to shake off the thought.

Just then, Eun Soo’s phone rang. It was Jae Rim.

― Director! Director!

“What is it? Did something happen?”

― A customer came to the first floor. They’re looking for you. Hurry!

“A customer?”

Jae Rim, in an extremely excited voice, lowered her voice and added:

― It’s Choi Yoon Bin, Choi Yoon Bin!

“What? Yoon Bin oppa? Now?”

― Director, were you really acquainted with Choi Yoon Bin? Unbelievable!

Eun Soo immediately stood up from her seat. She told Sun Kyung, whose eyes had widened, that she would be going down for a moment and headed to the first-floor showroom.

She saw the side profile of a man looking at the fabric armchairs displayed side by side near the entrance. A slightly thin yet well-proportioned body, an exceptionally small face, and a unique aura that made one think ‘ah, a celebrity’ at a glance.

“Oppa.”

Yoon Bin, who raised his head at Eun Soo’s call, smiled brightly.

“It’s been a while since I’ve seen your face. Have you been well?”

Eun Soo, who approached with quick steps, stood in front of Yoon Bin and smiled back.

“It’s really been a long time. How did you come when you must be busy? Without any notice.”

“How else, I came to see you.”

Yoon Bin’s tone was as soft as his nicely curved eyes.

“If I had more time, I would have contacted you in advance to have a meal together, but my schedule suddenly got pushed back so I just dropped by. Fortunately, you were here.”

“Well, I’m almost always here unless it’s my day off.”

Yoon Bin was a top star who debuted as a member of the idol group at seventeen and continued to enjoy popularity, renewing his prime several times until now at thirty.

He was now more famous as an actor, and this year in January, right after finishing his military service, he immediately started filming a drama.

That’s why he and Eun Soo had only occasionally exchanged messages apart from having a meal together right after his discharge.

“Let’s go upstairs and have a cup of tea before you leave. I’ll brew you some coffee.”

“No, I’ll get the coffee… Ah, here he comes.”

Just then, Yoon Bin’s manager entered through the door. He was holding a carrier with several takeout coffees and lots of cookies.

“You must have had a hard time carrying all that alone. Thank you.”

Yoon Bin received about half of the coffee from the manager’s hands with apologetic eyes. Then he turned to Jae Rim, who was peeking curiously.

“I asked the employee here how many people there were. Here, please have some.”

“Oh my, thank you.”

Jae Rim received the coffee Yoon Bin handed her with great appreciation.

“For the other people…”

“I’ll deliver it to those in the workshop downstairs.”

Jae Rim also took the coffee for Joo Han and So Min. Eun Soo also tried to take the things in the manager’s hands, but the manager smiled and said it was okay.

“Why did you buy all these things when you just came casually. Let’s go up first. You have time to sit and talk for a bit, right?”

“Of course.”

Eun Soo, Yoon Bin, and the manager went up to the second-floor office. Jae Rim, who had been watching their backs for a while longer, rushed down to the basement.

“CEO!”