She's My Wife
Late-spring sunlight poured in long, slanting shafts down the corridor. As they made their way toward the conference room, Director Myeong gave a brief rundown of the next item on the agenda.
"The clinical trial results have been better than expected."
"Is that so."
"The rare-disease treatment in particular has been generating a lot of interest overseas. We should be hearing from the European side before long."
Director Myeong was more animated than usual. Siheon had been with the company for barely six months, and already the results he'd produced were nothing short of dazzling. He had successfully brought a pipeline from the U.S. branch into the domestic market, and resurrected a rare-disease treatment project that had been on the verge of being scrapped—even securing government funding for it. Across the industry, the name Cha Siheon was already circulating with growing attention.
"Let's try to have something concrete by the board meeting next month."
Director Myeong nodded, his face bright with a smile.
"Understood."
Just then, a group approaching from the opposite direction spotted Siheon and came to a halt. The man at the center of them smiled and called out as if they were old friends.
"Well, well. Look who it is. If it isn't our Executive Director Cha."
The smile was oily, the eyes behind it glittering as if they hid a blade. The man was Cha Taeho—Siheon's uncle, and Vice President of Samjung Pharm.
Siheon stopped as well.
"Uncle."
"Married and already back at the office without so much as a honeymoon. Your passion for the company is something else."
"Hardly comparable to a Vice President who's devoted thirty years to a single company."
Cha Taeho's jaw tightened as he looked at that faint smile. Is this little shit mocking me? Thirty years at Samjung Pharm and still just Vice President?
That inscrutable, taciturn face. That height you always had to look up at, as if it might scrape the ceiling. And now, the performance numbers closing in right under his chin. I thought he was just a kid. When did he get this big?
He was a nephew far younger than himself—someone Taeho had always considered beneath him. But watching Chairman Cha Seong-mok's recent moves, that assumption kept getting shaken. The CEO seat at Samjung Pharm, which Taeho had taken for granted as his, kept being filled by professional managers in rotation, while the cherished grandson was being backed in every way imaginable. At this rate, even his own position could be under threat in a heartbeat.
I should have seen it coming from the start—back when Father used to openly sing Cha Siheon's praises, even as a child. At the time, he'd taken it as a joke. Sitting a seven-year-old on his knee and calling him the talent who'd lead the company someday—how was that supposed to be serious?
Cha Taeho hid the seething in his gut behind a slow smile, then casually brought up the recent wedding.
"...By the way, you've brought a rather interesting little girl into the family."
"......"
"Young, and bold on top of it. They say married couples grow to resemble each other—she takes after you quite a bit, Siheon."
Siheon's expression went ice-cold. He stepped forward with a chilling smile.
"And you, Uncle, still haven't learned the difference between what should and shouldn't be said."
"Wh—what?"
As a shadow fell over his head, Cha Taeho felt the pressure of it and took a step back, stumbling over his words.
Cha Taeho averted his eyes and spoke as if making an excuse.
"She's barely twenty, isn't she? Why on earth would you bring a kid like that into our family..."
"You won't even treat a twenty-year-old as an adult, and yet that's the only age you chase after outside these walls?"
Cha Taeho had already been at the center of more than a few scandals. Remembering that every one of those women had barely been past twenty, the secretaries in his entourage turned their heads to hide their laughter.
"Tsk!"
Cha Taeho clicked his tongue sharply as he glanced back. His attendants snapped into a straight-faced, formal posture, but the look he gave them was still razor-edged.
Still watching them, Siheon spoke in a voice gone cold.
"If you have questions about my wife, come ask me yourself. I'll tell you whatever you'd like to know."
"......"
"And spare yourself the trouble of digging into her background the way you did last time."
The look Siheon fixed on Cha Taeho grew even sharper—as if he already knew exactly who had summoned Jung Dusup last time and staged that whole scene.
It was Cha Taeho who broke first, looking away from the collision of their stares.
"Who said anything about digging around? I was only passing along a word out of concern for my nephew's wife."
He gave a hollow laugh and reached to clap Siheon on the shoulder—then, seeing that Siheon's expression hadn't thawed in the slightest, pulled his hand back midair.
"I've got things to attend to. We'll talk another time."
Cha Taeho cleared his throat for no particular reason, then turned and walked off as if nothing had happened.
"Are you sure it's all right to leave things like this?"
Once the two of them were alone, Director Myeong spoke up carefully. The excitement from before the encounter with Cha Taeho was gone; his face was full of worry.
"All right to leave what?"
At Siheon's question, Director Myeong dropped his voice even lower.
"The Vice President's been making some unusual moves lately. He's been throwing up roadblocks on every project we try to push forward."
Siheon gave a short, dry laugh, as if that were only to be expected.
"That's about all he's capable of, isn't it. He's lived his whole life that way."
He gazed for a moment down the corridor Cha Taeho had disappeared into, then added,
"Don't worry. It'll be fine."
Director Myeong nodded at the certainty in his voice. The Cha Siheon he knew never picked a fight he couldn't win.
"Shall we."
"Yes, sir."
As if the run-in with Cha Taeho had been nothing more than a brief interruption, the two of them recovered their composure and continued down the corridor.
Back in his office, Siheon sat down at his desk. Reports waiting for his review were stacked high once again—familiar work that no longer held any interest or spark. He picked up the document on top, flipped to the first page, and began reading mechanically—until his phone chimed with a short alert.
His gaze drifted to the screen and stayed there. The message was from Dayeon.
The attached photo showed pink roses in full bloom. And in one corner of the frame, Dayeon's face—smiling, throwing up a V-sign, the roses behind her.
The moment he saw that smile, brighter than sunlight, a faint one of his own touched Siheon's lips. He tapped at the screen and sent a reply.
It came with a rabbit emoji scratching its head in embarrassment. Siheon let out a helpless little laugh.
Peanut. When did you get this shameless?
When had it started—Jeong Dayeon's daily texts working their way into his routine like something that had always been there. At first he'd ignored most of them, but once he began answering now and then, the back-and-forth had grown natural, almost without his noticing.
Even after the screen went dark, that smile lingered over it like an afterimage. He reached for the report again, meaning to turn the page, but his hand wouldn't move.
One day wouldn't hurt.
For himself, and for this girl who had so boldly declared she'd take his side no matter what—that much room to breathe would be all right.
Siheon closed the report, closed his hand around his phone, and stood. A loose, unguarded smile sat on his lips as he started walking—to go see Dayeon.
Dayeon walked the lecture-hall corridor with awkward steps. It was a path she took several times a day, but today it felt like a completely different place.
"Hey, look at her."
One of the students passing by spotted Dayeon, stared, then leaned in to whisper something to the person beside them.
Maybe I shouldn't have worn this.
Feeling self-conscious, Dayeon fussed with the hem of her dress over and over. Sangjudaek had gone and thrown out every last piece of clothing Dayeon used to wear. Left with no choice, she'd picked something from the clothes she'd received as wedding gifts: a pale apricot dress that came up above the knee.
Her arms were full of textbooks, but with matching heels and a dainty little bag in her hand, even she had to admit she looked nothing like before. She'd expected people to notice a change in her usual look. She hadn't expected this much.
The excess attention made her uneasy; she kept glancing around—until someone came up and tapped her on the shoulder.
"Crush? What are you doing he—"
It was Seunghyun. He'd called her that with his usual teasing, but the moment he saw her face, the rest of the sentence died in his throat.
"I told you not to call me Crush."
Dayeon frowned, her voice a little sulky—then she caught the look on Seunghyun's face as he stood frozen, and her own expression turned puzzled.