The Problematic Helper (Completed Main Story) - Chapter 9
Memories were hazy and faint.
Even when consciousness barely returned, my feverish, swollen eyelids made my eyes close again all too easily.
Yet even in that state, I could faintly sense someone cautiously checking on me around me.
Tap, tap.
It was the sound of bare feet brushing against the marble floor.
To me, who without exception wore slippers indoors, it was an unfamiliar sound—the presence of the only person in this house who walked barefoot, a woman.
It was that day when I saw her walking unhesitatingly across the marble floor with feet smaller than my palm.
The night I was ambushed by the woman in the pitch-dark living room.
Under the pouring moonlight, before the smooth calves revealed beneath her cotton pajamas, her bushy-white feet caught my eye first.
I kept finding my gaze drawn unconsciously to those neatly aligned, dainty feet, wondering if I unknowingly had a foot fetish.
The woman’s bare feet, without even socks or slippers, were that striking.
Tap, tap.
They slowed a little.
Tap tap tap.
Then grew hurried.
With those same small feet from before, the woman busily went back and forth all day through every corner of the house.
With my eyes closed, all my sharpened senses focused solely on the footsteps Do Um made.
Whenever I was about to grumble about what she was doing that was so annoyingly persistent, and my mouth felt dry, clear water would inevitably flow into it.
Gradually my mind cleared, the heat in my eyelids subsided, and the moment the clammy, sweat-soaked pillowcase made a rustling sound as it was changed, a smile even spread across my lips.
Ah, so this woman changed the pillowcase too.
Eventually, even in my not-fully-awake consciousness, I found myself searching for the sound of Do Um’s footsteps.
I thought I was getting better, but maybe not.
For me, the great Seo Ji Wan, to be seeking someone’s presence in the middle of this.
Yes, I must still be suffering from a terrible cold.
An unprecedentedly, extraordinarily severe one.
As Ji Wan thought this, his right arm rose without fail and settled on his forehead.
*****
The world spread out before my eyes was endlessly low.
That’s how the world looked when I rode on my father’s shoulders.
“Even if you have nothing and nothing to boast about, there are many ways to be useful to the world. Just be that kind of person, understand?”
My father’s deep voice felt like it was flowing through my body.
“Yes, Dad.”
The moment my quietly murmured answer felt strangely hollow, I opened my eyes.
It was a dream.
A dream about Dad after a very long time.
The air floating in the dark surroundings felt unfamiliar, and then I realized it wasn’t my room.
“Why… why am I on the CEO’s bed?”
Startled, Do Um sat up, and her eyes caught sight of the sheet covering her up to her chest.
10 a.m.
Whoosh!!
As she jumped up, warm air swirled beneath her suddenly planted feet.
Only a neatly folded man’s silk pajamas lay alone at the foot of the bed; Ji Wan was nowhere to be seen.
Not in the living room she ran out to check, nor the bathroom, nor the study—nowhere.
“He must have gone to work. Since his fever didn’t come back overnight, he must be feeling better.”
There was no sign of life in the man’s bedroom she had just burst out of, nor in the living room or kitchen, so she was alone again.
The two days the man stayed home sick had been ones where she couldn’t sleep deeply, yet she liked that she wasn’t alone.
Since coming to this house—no, for as long as she could remember from childhood—she had always been alone.
At nine years old, when she came home from school to an empty house, the first thing she did was open the rice cooker to check the rice.
If there was just enough rice to barely close the lid, she would collapse in front of it and cry for a long time.
Because that much rice disappearing meant her mother wouldn’t come home for a while.
The emptiness she felt in front of the steaming rice cooker came rushing back like a tide now that she was a full-grown adult.
An emotion she thought she had forgotten, after so long.
Her chest felt tight, and soon she felt hungry.
Because while taking care of the man, she had completely neglected her own meals.
She had just entered the kitchen and was washing rice for one person when—
Rrrrr.
It was an unknown number.
“Hello.”
– Are you awake.
The low, resonant voice that instantly swallowed the quiet silence was Ji Wan’s.
The moment she confirmed it was the man, her mind went completely dark.
Was it an auditory hallucination, or perhaps a delusion.
“There’s no reason this person would call me. He always relayed everything through Director Han, so why…”
When no answer came, a shallow sigh came from the other end of the line.
– This is Seo Ji Wan.
An unmistakable confirmation.
“Yes, I know. Husband.”
Pfft.
This time it wasn’t a sigh.
What came from the other side was a small but definite laugh.
– Yes, husband.
Only after hearing the man say the word “husband” did she realize.
That she had casually called the man “husband” without thinking twice.
Do Um, whose tension melted at Ji Wan’s laughter, smiled along with him.
– You were sleeping so soundly this morning, so without permission, I lay you on the bed.
“Yes, thanks to you I slept deeply. I didn’t even notice you leaving. How… how is your body?”
– Thanks to you.
The laughter that had been there earlier had long disappeared from his concise voice.
– If nothing comes up, I’ll finish around 7.
“Yes.”
He was a man who never separately reported his work schedule.
Whether he came home late or early, even if he stayed out overnight, she never expected a call, so this was strange.
Suddenly telling her his finishing time.
– I was thinking of having dinner outside.
It probably meant he had a dinner appointment, so she didn’t need to prepare anything.
“Ah, yes. I’ll keep that in mind.”
Silence flowed for a moment.
– If you’re okay with it, I mean let’s go together.
At the suddenly shortened words, she wondered if she had upset the man who hated repeating himself, but at the suggestion of going out, Do Um’s face instantly lit up.
“G-Great!”
She answered enthusiastically without even thinking.
No matter the menu or the time, as long as it was going out, everything was fine.
“7 o’clock. I won’t be late, I’ll be ready on time and wait.”
She had no idea what kind of face Ji Wan made on the other end at her rapid-fire words.
Because no matter what, she was a happy woman just at the thought of going out.
– Alright.
After hanging up, Do Um turned around, took a couple of steps, then sat back down at the dining table where her phone was.
She pressed save on the number that had just called, hesitated for a long time in front of the blinking cursor, then stood up, hiding her flushed cheeks.
Clearly engraved at the top of her call log was the name of the contact she had just saved.
[My Husband.]
*****
Definitely, it was different from other days.
Woo Seok’s eyes narrowed suspiciously as he watched his boss, whose expression remained unusually gentle despite seeing the piled-up documents awaiting approval—wondering what on earth had happened during those two sick days.
The man who used to schedule meetings regardless of finishing time had instructed no meetings after 5 p.m., and sure enough, before six o’clock he picked up his suit jacket.
Beep-.
“CEO. Senior Managing Director Seo Gi Hyuk from Bando Electronics has arrived.”
At Team Leader Yoon’s voice over the intercom, Ji Wan’s previously gentle expression twisted without error.
An unwelcome guest had barged in without notice, and he was not the type to comply meekly.
“Tell him I’m not here.”
Click.
Before Ji Wan could finish speaking.
The representative office door burst open, and Gi Hyuk strode in boldly and confidently.
Wearing a dark gray pinstripe suit with his tie knot loosened, openly showing a vivid sneer.
“I know you’re here, so obvious lies are pointless.”
Because of being the legitimate wife’s child versus the concubine’s, the hierarchy between Gi Hyuk and Ji Wan in the Bando family was clear.
Despite only a one-year difference, Mrs. Jang treated Gi Hyuk as the future head of Bando Group and only held Ji Wan to standards of uprightness.
Everyone, even the dogs raised in Anseo-dong, knew clearly which side to stand on.
It was a tense tug-of-war between a man who wouldn’t be satisfied until the other knelt beneath his feet and a man who would never bow his head even if driven out penniless.
It could never be a fair match from the very beginning.
Because from the start, the scales were heavily tipped toward Gi Hyuk, the legitimate bloodline of Bando.
Whichever side let go of the tightly pulled rope first had to admit foul play, and whichever side was dragged had to admit defeat.
There was nothing to consider in choosing between the two.
Whether foul or defeat, the one who had to admit it was solely Ji Wan, born of the concubine—it had nothing to do with Gi Hyuk.
“You could at least call so I can’t avoid you even with obvious lies.”
“Why is it that every time I try to contact you, you’re always in a meeting? I wondered what kind of CEO spends all day in meetings, so I came to see. Since I’d miss you anyway, I thought a wasted trip wouldn’t matter. Your schemes—I could never figure them out, not when we were kids and not now.”
That story again.
The time when Ji Wan, living in America, briefly stayed in Korea at Mrs. Jang’s summons.
While playing, Gi Hyuk broke one of Mrs. Jang’s cherished orchid pots.
Afraid of Mrs. Jang’s wrath, Gi Hyuk told Ji Wan he’d give him a transforming robot if he took the blame.
Pressed by Mrs. Jang, Ji Wan ultimately never admitted it was his doing. But he didn’t say it was Gi Hyuk either.
Standing the two in front of her, Mrs. Jang called Ji Wan closer and asked.
“I’ll buy you that robot, so how about it—will you tell the truth?”
To both of them back then, Mrs. Jang—who no one in the main family could even meet eyes with properly—was more terrifying than the grim reaper or a goblin.
Everyone expected the young Ji Wan to nod and say yes.
But the child Ji Wan said,
“Grandmother already knows who the culprit is. You’re asking me using the robot as an excuse, aren’t you?”
That was when Gi Hyuk, trembling while standing, wet himself.
Mrs. Jang, who had roared at the crying Gi Hyuk to shut up, snapped at Ji Wan,
“All you had to do was name the culprit to someone who already knew and take the robot.”
Young Ji Wan answered without hesitation,
“I might have gotten the robot, but I would have been punished for snitching on my brother. I don’t want to be punished for something I didn’t do, nor do I want to profit from something dishonest.”
Ji Wan sat down on the sofa opposite where Gi Hyuk was seated.
As if remembering the past, Gi Hyuk’s brow furrowed.
“And yet when you went back to America, you still took a robot from Mrs. Jang in the end, didn’t you?”
It was something from over twenty years ago.
To be precise, it wasn’t one robot but five sets of transforming combination robots.
“What brings you here today.”
“Ah, Mrs. Jang told me to arrange a dinner with you and your wife. The old lady’s demands only increase with age while her mind stays sharp. Ha, being the eldest grandson is really tough.”
Woo Seok, who had been about to bring tea, was waved away by Gi Hyuk at the door.
The quick-witted man knew well that this was not an atmosphere for tea and that he should avoid wasting time.
Ji Wan lifted his left wrist to check the time.
Even accounting for rush hour traffic, it was sufficiently late.
“Fine, set a date and contact me.”
As Ji Wan stood, Gi Hyuk gave a sly smile behind his back.
“You’re not doing this because you’re upset that I didn’t invite your mother to the wedding, right?”
The man who had been about to leave slowly turned around.
“Come on. Avoiding my calls every time, rarely visiting Anseo-dong—it’s all because of that, isn’t it?”
In an instant, his darkened gaze coldly looked down at the seated Gi Hyuk.
“Is this too under Chairwoman Jang’s orders?”
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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