Feeling as though he’d been struck by an unexpected blow, he felt heat rising. He wiped the sweat trickling down his forehead with the back of his hand, rose from his seat, and picked up his mobile phone that was on his desk.
“It’s me.”
— Oh my, what brings you to call at this hour?
“You know, that thing you mentioned last time.”
— If you cut off the beginning and the end and just say ‘that thing’, how am I supposed to know what you’re talking about? Ho ho ho.
At the hearty laughter of his partner, Joo Hwan lowered his voice and spoke almost in a whisper.
“The person tailing Moon.”
— Ah, that?
“What’s the progress?”
— There’s nothing yet. Just home, work, hospital, stuff like that.
“Ha….”
Joo Hwan let out a long sigh of disappointment.
When Eun Soo mentioned that she was slightly more sensitive these days, his partner suggested that the soninlaw might have another woman.
He mentioned that there was a woman who he loved to death even before they got married, and that woman might have returned or he might have met a similar woman. At this, Joo Hwan thought of his own trick.
He couldn’t always rely on his daughter for his own safety.
Moreover, the soninlaw had such a sharp personality that regardless of the relationship, if he thought he was harmful to the company, he was the kind of person who would immediately cut off his head.
So Joo Hwan desperately needed a solid insurance.
The insurance he had in mind was the private life of his soninlaw, Moon Hyuk Joo.
The soninlaw must have found the woman he broke up with against his family’s will in some way. He knew his soninlaw to have a very stubborn personality.
He planned to capture evidence of the soninlaw and that woman meeting, and use it as his secret weapon in case of any contingency.
— Please wait. This kind of thing usually takes a long time to observe.
“I understand. Let me know as soon as you hear anything.”
— Got it. By the way, when are you coming today?
“I’ll be leaving work soon.”
— Okay. See you later.
Joo Hwan hung up the phone and put it back on his desk. Then he leaned his hands on his waist and took a slow breath.
What does she mean by breaking up?
Where else would he find a woman who would do anything for him?
She was as frustrating as his own mother.
“They’re like burns!”
He cleared his throat with a raspy sound.
Hyuk Joo pressed hard between his eyes with his fingertips.
Perhaps because he didn’t sleep well last night, his eyes felt heavy.
The fact that Eun Soo had suddenly organized her motherinlaw’s hospital bills didn’t feel trivial to Hyuk Joo. He was taking care of his motherinlaw using every possible treatment method.
But the hospital bill details that Eun Soo had were strange.
It was not only the monthly outgoings, but also the cost of excluding several treatments.
Eun Soo’s words that she did it just out of curiosity kept circling in Hyuk Joo’s head.
Knock, knock, knock.
“Come in.”
At the sound of the knock, the door opened and Director Song came in. He was holding his usual thick diary and a bag.
“Vice President.”
At the sound of his name, Hyuk Joo looked at Director Song. Director Song put a bag on Hyuk Joo’s desk.
“What’s this?”
“It’s the background information on Mr. Hwang In Woo that you requested.”
“Ah……”
He remembered he had made such a request.
Hyuk Joo recalled the directive he had given belatedly.
From the first meeting, something about him was oddly irksome. So, as soon as he came to work the next day, Hyuk Joo had asked Director Song to look into the background of Hwang In Woo, who had temporarily become his motherinlaw’s primary doctor.
It was rare for Hyuk Joo to ask for someone’s background check, so Director Song had taken some time to report back, crosschecking via several methods.
As Hyuk Joo opened the bag, Director Song spoke in his unvarying tone.
“There are no particular peculiarities.”
“……I figured.”
It was the first time he had seen Eun Soo happily meeting someone.
They had been close friends since childhood.
Even though they met again after a considerable gap, it was clear that he was a good person by the way Eun Soo quickly accepted him by her side.
Eun Soo is a good person, so the people around her would be too.
Still, Hyuk Joo wanted to find out who Hwang In Woo was.
“His parents divorced when he was young, and his father passed away last year while engaged in medical volunteer work.”
“I see.”
“It seems that his parents maintained a good relationship even after the divorce. When his father was scouted by a medical foundation, they moved to the United States together, and he attended middle school there.”
Hyuk Joo flipped through the documents handed by Director Song one by one. He had never caused a major problem, and his relationships with his classmates were good until he graduated from medical school.
His personal life was exceptionally clean, almost to the point of being overly so.
That fact bothered Hyuk Joo even more. As if he had harbored someone in his heart for his entire life, Hwang In Woo had never experienced a common romance.
“Did his father work at a place called Seongshim Hospital?”
“Yes. It’s a hospital located in the provinces where he worked for about 5 years before leaving for the United States. At that time, Seongshim Hospital was selected for a pediatric cancer treatment center support project, and the hospital director brought Mr. Hwang In Woo’s father in as the center director. It seems the director, being a university benefactor, found it hard to refuse a fervent request.”
“I see. You can go now.”
“Yes.”
As Director Song left, Hyuk Joo leaned his head back fully on the chair’s headrest.
“Seongshim Hospital……”
He murmured softly, left alone.
He ran his dry hand over his face.
The image of Seongshim Hospital he had seen in his childhood rose vividly in his mind.
It was a hospital located where one could look down at the river that cut across the middle of a small city. It was the way to meet his mother who was recuperating from pneumonia after a year.
He detected the strangeness when he entered the hospice ward.
Standing in front of the patient’s room, the piano music of Liszt, which his mother loved to listen to, flowed out.
“Ha……”
As the melody he had heard then circulated around his ears like tinnitus, Hyuk Joo sat up and opened his eyes.
While his eyes were closed for a moment, memories from a long time ago surfaced. Perhaps it was because that incident was deeply engraved in his heart.
Unexpectedly, his eyes were already moist.
Turns Out He’s Been Secretly in Love with Me
One-line summary: He acts like he doesn’t like her but is actually playing hard to get.
Synopsis:
Xu Muzhou like her. He has liked her for a very long time, and through repeated schemes, he finally closed the distance with her.
But this is still far from enough.
He wants to be the one who stands out among her many suitors, to fight for her attention, and to make her take the initiative to pursue him.
_____
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