Seo Hee was lost in thought, her index finger tracing the rim of the empty coffee cup. In truth, she had planned to take a short break upon returning to Korea. She was exhausted both physically and mentally from doing nothing but work in Guam.

However, should she look for a company she could join at her own discretion or was it better to go when a company wanted her? It was a dilemma.

“How much time can you give me to think about it?”

“How much time do you need?”

A smile spilled out. Asking the other party’s intention before giving an answer, it was indeed a stance befitting a negotiator.

“Well… Actually, I do want to rest a bit, but it also seems like a good opportunity.”

“Then it’s a good opportunity. You’ll regret it if you miss this chance.”

Jae Hoon studied Seo Hee’s expression as he swirled the coffee cup in his hand. The sound of melting ice clinking, the gentle pop song flowing from the cafe, and the crunching of ice in his mouth harmonized into a peculiar chord. That’s when Seo Hee asked, her voice still filled with laughter.

“But senior, you do know about my background, right? Why I left my previous company.”

“Of course, I know. Your wife told me quite a bit, didn’t she?”

“No matter where I go again, if the situation is the same, I’ll do exactly the same thing. I can’t turn a blind eye to embezzlement or illegal activities, and I can’t cover it up even if I’m told to.”

Jae Hoon nodded his head, a satisfied smile on his face.

“That’s why I hold you in high regard. I’ve already reported related matters. Should I call this a blessing in disguise? That very point acted as a plus factor.”

Seo Hee responded with an absurd smile, dumbfounded.

“You already reported it even though the person going hasn’t been decided yet?”

“Rather than a report, it came up during a meal. They said it would be perfect if someone like you, a suitable person, came. They told me to bring you right away. Don’t feel pressured and think it over slowly. Wouldn’t this week and up to the holiday be enough time to think?”

Chuseok was approaching soon. Including the holiday, it meant she would be given about ten days to think. That seemed enough time to make a decision either way.

“Alright. I’ll think it over thoroughly.”

“Okay, I’ll be waiting for a positive answer.”

At a time when the moonlight softly draped over the darkened living room, a languid smile lingered on Kang Mo’s lips as he quietly entered the apartment. From the space that was always filled with only tranquility, the very air floating was different from the time he had trembled with longing.

Seo Hee’s faintly lingering fragrance gently permeated his nostrils.

What was this scent like? It reminded him of a peach he had held in his hand one scorching summer day after thoroughly enjoying playing in the water until his back felt like it would burn under the blazing sun.

The juice that had drenched his mouth when he took a big bite of the soft, well-ripened flesh, the sticky juice that had flowed down his hand. Was the fragrance emanating from that juice this sweet?

Seo Hee exuded the sweet scent of the peach he had smelled that summer day. A fragrance so sweet that just brushing past made his head turn, and looking at her made his mouth water, wanting to take a big bite.

Kang Mo took a deep breath in the middle of the living room, filling his lungs to the brim with her scent. It finally felt real that Seo Hee had come to his space. A warm smile naturally spread across his face, and his heart swelled as much as it possibly could.

Seo Hee, to think the day would come when I would face you here again.

After barely composing his surging emotions, Kang Mo went to the kitchen, carefully placing the items he was holding on the table, and headed to the master bedroom he used to use.

He opened the door, expecting the space that had been his to be filled with traces of her.

“…What. Why is there nothing here.”

Everything was the same.

The bedside table, the powder room connected to the bedroom, the mini dressing room, the bathroom. He checked by opening the doors in turn, but her traces weren’t left anywhere.

His brows furrowed. He left the master bedroom, passed the study next door, and even checked the room furnished as a dressing room. The empty storage space was also left in its vacant state.

She must have come. Suppressing his anxious heart, he finally opened the door to the one remaining guest room. A sigh of relief escaped him involuntarily.

“Goodness… Baek Seo Hee. You never listen to me.”

A luggage bag neatly placed on the floor next to the single bed, a few cosmetics on the small vanity, a few outfits hanging in the closet. Her belongings were minimal as if she had come for a short trip.

After roughly scanning the space, Kang Mo checked his wristwatch and without hesitation, began putting Seo Hee’s belongings back into the luggage one by one.

At the same time, Seo Hee, who had taken a taxi, was gazing at the scenery passing by the window with a meaningless look and was lost in her own thoughts, recalling the conversation she had with her elder sister during dinner.

‘You remember Executive Director Kim, right? The executive director who led the embezzlement.’

‘How could I forget him, unnie. He was a real lizard. He was so good at cutting off his tail. Even though he led the embezzlement, he survived quite well. I guess that’s a skill too, if you can call it that.’

Seo Hee, who worked in the finance and accounting team of a large corporation, was also put in charge of destroying expired official documents and files from the finance team among her many duties. Organizing a truly massive amount of files was close to simple labor given to the team’s youngest member.

However, the job of going into the document storage room and taking out documents haphazardly organized in A4 boxes to destroy them was by no means simple yet not simple.

If she just accepted it as a task and destroyed them without thinking, it would indeed be just simple labor, but as the team’s youngest, Seo Hee mainly handled cost processing, budgeting, and statistics work pouring in from all departments, so the documents detailing the budgets and expenses of the past 5 years didn’t look trivial to her.

As Seo Hee looked at the documents meticulously detailing how much each team spent and in what way, she unknowingly fell into the habit of compiling statistics in her head. She passionately tackled what others might consider a self-inflicted hardship with an eye of interest.

As she poured immense attention into the company’s finances, comparing and analyzing the budgets and raise rates set each year, she discovered something suspicious. She tilted her head at statistics that didn’t align with the data comparing the raise rates of the past 5 years in the budget plan she had personally prepared just a few days prior.

Seo Hee immediately left the document room to double-check the budget plan she had written and fell into confusion. The documents in the storage room didn’t match the data in the file she had received from her senior. She instinctively knew it was embezzlement.

For a full month, while others thought Seo Hee was just holed up in the document room every late afternoon, immersed in classifying and organizing files, she silently and powerfully caused a major incident.

Thus, the embezzlement corruption of a company was exposed due to the carelessness of a senior who had left the original files behind when quitting and the keen eye and nosiness of a mere 2nd-year employee.

‘Is that all?’

‘Unnie, don’t say any more. Thinking about it makes me want to throw up.’

When those involved in the embezzlement faced disciplinary action and dismissal one after another, only that executive director was an exception. It seemed he had connections higher up.

He brazenly survived by shifting responsibility to his subordinates, and Seo Hee had to continue her precarious work life like walking a tightrope, trapped in the frame of an internal whistleblower set by the executive director, even after receiving a model employee award.

‘He was so dirty and underhanded. How can such a disgusting person even exist?’

She just nodded her head in agreement with her sister’s words.

The executive director, who appeared to be a gentle, well-mannered, and ideal middle-aged man on the outside, faltered in an unexpected place while enduring well in the embezzlement case. Who would have ever imagined that the executive director, who looked so normal, would have such a nasty habit?

‘Seo Hee, you should have seen him getting fired while you were there, but it had to be exposed after you left.’

Surprisingly, he was a habitual sexual harasser.

The places where the crimes mainly took place were public transportation like the subway and buses. It seemed he used public transportation on weekends to commit vile acts, even though he always commuted by car.

Fortunately, the executive director, who was caught red-handed by a righteous someone, shamelessly denied the harassment. But that righteous someone was not so easily dissuaded.

Whatever the reason, it seemed he was determined to tail the executive director, as he submitted phone footage fully capturing not just one or two incidents, but several rounds of habitual and malicious crimes, completely blocking the executive director’s escape route.

It was only natural that the executive director’s misdeeds became known to the company as well, and as employee testimonies of suffering the same harassment as in the video were posted on the company bulletin board, the executive director eventually had to accept a dishonorable dismissal through termination.

Upon hearing the news, Seo Hee was not particularly surprised. His harassment had already occurred several times within the company, and Seo Hee also had an unpleasant experience.

Following the company’s sexual harassment prevention manual, she reported the incident to her superiors, but the response was vastly different from her expectations. Perhaps because Seo Hee already had a history of being entangled with that executive director over the embezzlement case, her pure intention of demanding prevention of recurrence was neatly ignored, beyond suspicions of it being retaliatory.

Seo Hee felt a great sense of betrayal from the company where the manual existed only as a formality, and anger towards the brazen man who showed no sign of remorse, let alone reflection, even after wrongdoing, causing her focus at work to waver.

Around that time, she was exhausted in body and mind due to the strange signs and changes in attitude from Tae Oh, who had become her stepbrother, and Chairman Kang, who was like a grandfather to Kang Mo, came and made a plea disguised as a request for her to leave for a while for Kang Mo’s sake.

It was also around then that she received a message from her cousin sister, who was living well in the US, asking about her intention to change jobs, hinting that she had acquired a shopping center in Guam and things had gotten big.

The series of events that coincidentally occurred simultaneously in that very period, coupled with the chronic fatigue she had acquired in her 2nd year since joining the company and the disillusionment she felt from work, colleagues, and various relationships, were enough to draw out Seo Hee’s decision.

“We’ve arrived.”

At the call of the taxi driver turning off the meter to announce their arrival, Seo Hee emerged from the unpleasant thoughts. It seemed she needed to return home quickly and get some rest.

Seo Hee arrived at Kang Mo’s apartment, pressed the familiar passcode, and paused as she entered through the front door. A pair of men’s dress shoes were neatly placed in the entryway.

She didn’t need to see to know who it was. As she took off her stiletto heels and opened the inner door, Kang Mo, who was standing by the living room window, approached Seo Hee with a leisurely smile.

“Welcome. You’re late.”