The president, who had finished his lunchbox, patted his stomach and lay down on the sofa. Even Ga Eul, who was smitten with him, found this sight hard to stomach.

“Are you going to sleep here? Aren’t you going to the office?”

“Wherever I am is the office.”

Ga Eul sighed. A leaky bucket at the office wouldn’t stop leaking just because it’s in a hospital.

“Mr. President.”

“What?”

Ga Eul abandoned her plan to delve into the president’s past and bring up the topic of his fiancée. She feared what might come out of the president’s past, given how he goes crazy at the sight of home-cooked meals. It was also questionable whether he would even talk about it.

Instead, she changed her approach. She decided to use ‘word association’.

Since the president’s fiancée’s name was ‘Kang Se Ra’, she thought that if she used words that reminded him of ‘Kang Se Ra’, he might think of his fiancée. Then wouldn’t he want to talk about her?

“The KOSPI is in a ‘strong’ market now. Is it okay to enter now?”

“Do you have money to invest?”

She was shot down in one sentence. This unhelpful president.

“Even in a ‘strong’ market, there are stocks that haven’t risen. I was thinking of buying some good stocks that haven’t risen yet in this ‘strong’ market.”

“Hmph.”

The president snorted. He couldn’t be bothered to respond. No matter how pretty, this wasn’t right. This uncooperative president. Ga Eul was starting to get irritated. But before giving up, she tried one more time.

“If the secondary battery market continues to be ‘strong’, maybe we should buy some stocks in that sector…”

“If it stays strong, you say. If it staaaaays strong.”

Wow, the president said ‘Se Ra’ twice with his own mouth. While Ga Eul was surprised, Dae Un opened his eyes and glared at her.

“Do you know how dangerous ‘debt investment’ is? I mean investing with borrowed money. If you don’t have money, you should think about securing seed money first. Seed money!”

The second strategy ended with the president’s lecture. Ga Eul didn’t dare to probe further about Se Ra. Seeing how he showed no reaction even after saying ‘Se Ra’ himself, it seemed it would be difficult to get him to open up.

“Mr. President, when are you going to India?”

“Tomorrow.”

“You’ll bring back gifts, right? Get something really expensive. I care more about price than sincerity.”

The president, who had closed his eyes after finishing his lecture, opened them again to look at Ga Eul. He seemed curious about what she wanted to say this time.

Ga Eul didn’t particularly have anything she wanted to say. Resigned to the fact that this wonderful man before her could never be hers, she was just blurting things out, trying to distance herself emotionally.

“You know I’m the embodiment of desire, right? I will never like a man without money. The first condition for my man is to be ‘rich’. The richer the better.”

She wasn’t saying this with the president in mind. Even though he was a third-generation chaebol, to Ga Eul, the president was just an empty shell. Of course, he was still much richer than Ga Eul.

Dae Un felt sorry for Ga Eul saying such things. He wondered how hard her life must be to say things like that. Take this incident, for example. If Ga Eul had had a car, if she had had a dedicated bodyguard, would she have been kidnapped so easily?

But he couldn’t show his sympathy. Dae Un’s words came out gruffly.

“Talking about being the embodiment of desire. You’re different from your mother. Your mother gave up her position as a chaebol’s daughter to marry your poor father.”

“Don’t misunderstand. My mom was never poor. After marriage, my dad thrived at Shinhwa Electronics. The company he started after leaving Shinhwa Electronics did so well too, until mom passed away.”

Yes, it did well. Dae Un also knew how well Han Myeong Hun’s company, Han Ga Eul’s father, had done. That’s why his own father had tried to partner with Han Myeong Hun. Because he was enticed by how well Han Myeong Hun’s company was doing.

As thoughts extended to his own father who died miserably, Dae Un’s heart turned cold.

On the contrary, Ga Eul’s heart was on fire. Because she couldn’t say she liked him when the person she liked was right in front of her. Ga Eul’s heart burned as she could only beat around the bush.

* * *

This time, the president really went to India. Ga Eul was also discharged from the hospital.

Before leaving, the president said he had something to tell her after returning from India. Ga Eul grumbled, asking if he couldn’t just say it now, why he had to be so dramatic, but the president just smiled faintly.

The president told her to rest at home while he was away, but Ga Eul came to the office every day without fail.

She also sent messages to the president regularly. Unable to write “I like you” or “I miss you”, she forcibly created things to report.

She wanted to soothe her heart that was waiting for the president in the empty office somehow. And maybe the president would be moved by her messages and bring back an expensive gift.

[I cleaned the stairs going up to the second floor.] [I finished the analysis of trends in the Chinese automotive industry. There were some strange parts, so I highlighted them. I sent it to you by email, so please make sure to check.] [I think it was a good idea to add another microwave in the convenience store in the apartment complex. It reduced the waiting time for kids pouring out during academy break times, and sales have skyrocketed.] [I replaced the sensor light at the entrance to the second floor. By myself. Saved on installation costs.]

This one was a bit difficult. It was a job done on a ladder on the stairs. So, doesn’t this deserve a gift?

At the end of every text message, she attached a gift box sticker. A person with sense would understand without being told.

As Ga Eul, who had finished cleaning the office, was about to go out to check on the convenience store, someone from the law firm APEC came to return several of the president’s SD cards and a laptop.

They said the police had collected them and returned them after finishing the digital forensics. This meant that the returned cards and laptop contained data that the police would use as evidence in the Oh Myeong Se case.

Among them, Ga Eul picked out the SD card from the black box of the president’s car that was always parked next to the office. Since the car was parked facing the convenience store, its black box would have captured the video of the convenience store burning.

Ga Eul inserted the card into the laptop to watch that video. She and the president had consciously avoided mentioning Oh Myeong Se and her kidnapping.

But that didn’t mean she wasn’t curious about what happened that day. Since the president wouldn’t tell her, she had no choice but to find out this way.

She suddenly remembered that the president said he had something to tell her after returning from India. Could it be about the day she was kidnapped? Surely it wouldn’t be about his fiancée?

But an unexpected video came up. It was a video recording the inside of the president’s car. The president and Jung Se Hyun were having a conversation. It seemed to be a conversation they had while waiting for her, when she was taking her English conversation class before meeting Chairman Oh Kyu Baek.

Ga Eul watched that video without blinking. There were words that pierced Ga Eul’s heart.

‘Is this your way of atonement? For pushing Ga Eul into Chairman Oh’s house, which led to her confrontation with Oh Myeong Se?’

‘Are you perhaps worried about what will happen after you return to America? About Han Ga Eul getting involved?’

So the president pushed me into my maternal family’s house? How did the president manage that?

But more than that, what made Ga Eul’s heart pound even more was that the president was trying to atone to her. And also that the president was preparing to return to America.

She had been right to be confused. The president was trying to take responsibility for sending her to her maternal family’s house and making her meet Oh Myeong Se, and because he was going back to America, he wanted to make sure Ga Eul could live on her own. That’s why he had been especially nice to her lately.

She had thought that things had changed a bit between her and the president, that some kind of strong feeling had developed between them, and had been hopeful and excited on her own.

It was a complete misunderstanding. So it was ridiculous that she had been disappointed to hear that the president had a fiancée. What reason did she have to be disappointed? She wasn’t even in a position to be disappointed about such things.

Ga Eul replayed that conversation several times.

‘There are only two things you could demand from Chairman Oh. Information related to your father’s death, or money. It’s a bit weak to demand information about your father for the crime Oh Myeong Se committed this time. So it must be money.’

Jung Se Hyun mentioned information related to the president’s father’s death as one of the things the president might demand from Chairman Oh.

What kind of relationship did the president’s father and her maternal grandfather have that her maternal grandfather would have information about his death?

Was that why the president made her enter her maternal family’s house? To get information about his father?

Ga Eul turned off the laptop and slumped over the desk.

Her thoughts progressed from ‘What kind of person is the president to me?’ to ‘Who exactly is the president?’

It seemed she wouldn’t live out her natural lifespan at this rate. Before watching the video, her heart felt like it would burst, but now after watching the video, her head felt like it would burst too.

That’s when it happened. The office door burst open and someone ran in.

“Ms. Han Ga Eul! Please save me!”

It was Jung Mi O. Ga Eul, who had raised her head to see who had come, put it back down on the desk.

“How can I save anyone? I’m about to die myself.”

“Ms. Ga Eul, please save me.”

Jung Mi O approached Ga Eul’s desk and spoke. Her voice was so desperate that Ga Eul raised her head again. She became slightly curious about what was going on.

“I’ll save you. If I can.”

Ga Eul, who was tired of everything, said languidly. Then she looked at Jung Mi O quietly. Come to think of it, all her worries, conflicts, and wanderings started with Jung Mi O. From the moment Jung Mi O mentioned the president’s fiancée.

“But I wonder if I can. It’s not like I have any power…”

After dealing with Oh Myeong Se, she wasn’t afraid of someone like Jung Mi O at all. Ga Eul put her head back down on the desk.

“Please put in a good word for me with Dae Un oppa. You’re in a relationship with Dae Un oppa, right?”

“Relationship my foot. What relationship with a man who has a fiancée? Actually, I’m in a relationship with your cousin, Attorney Jung Se Hyun.”

Ga Eul blurted out grumpily.

“Fiancée? Dae Un oppa’s fiancée? Kang Se Ra? No. Dae Un oppa doesn’t have a fiancée.”

“What did you say?”

Ga Eul’s head sprang up as if on a spring.

“Please tell your father to put in a good word for me. That I’ll never appear in front of oppa again. You must convey this. Consider it as saving a person.”

“What did you just say? That our president doesn’t have a fiancée?”

“He did, but they broke up. They broke up after arguing about oppa coming back to Korea, with Kang Se Ra.”

“You liar! Get out right now!”

Ga Eul jumped up from her seat and approached Jung Mi O.

“Because of you… Because of you, I…”

What I did to the president. Because of you, I went through a lifetime’s worth of heartache all at once.

“Do you enjoy living like this, telling lies? Is it fun toying with people!”

Ga Eul grabbed Jung Mi O’s arm and dragged her. At first, Jung Mi O was being dragged along, but then she started to resist by grabbing onto the armrest of the sofa.

“I’m sorry. It wasn’t for fun. I was so frustrated and angry then… I came back from America to see oppa, but he wouldn’t even glance at me…”

The strength left Ga Eul’s arms. Hadn’t she also experienced, even if only for a few days, how painful it is when the person you like doesn’t look at you? Besides, she had only recently been discharged from the hospital. It wasn’t time to exert herself yet.

“So until a year ago, he did have a fiancée.”

Ga Eul, her strength gone, slumped down onto the sofa.