Face-to-Face - 1
"Hm-hm~ hm-hm~."
A whole day run off her feet with work while her heart churned, and then a night walk on top of it. By all rights she should have collapsed straight into bed. Yet the pink-haired woman, her fatigue dissolved by an experience far too sweet to forget, was humming to herself instead.
"His hand was even more dependable than I expected."
Simply holding it had set off a fizzy tingle somewhere deep in her chest.
Lim Hayeon gazed at the hand that, until moments ago, had been clasped around a man's, a vaguely wistful look stealing across her face.
Could it have been her imagination? Their intertwined fingers had felt warmer than anything. As though something had been connected—a warmth spreading through her chest, a soft flutter stirring somewhere beneath her ribs.
And when their hands had come apart at the inn, it had felt as though some precious piece of her had been carried away with them.
Lim Hayeon carefully gathered whatever warmth might still linger in her palm and drew it toward her heart.
"He said it was a gift for the person he's always missing, didn't he?"
Having savored the afterglow, a smile spreading across her whole face, Lim Hayeon lifted the flower shoes that had been set down so carefully.
Flower shoes, crafted with loving care by a master artisan. Shoes that Kang Yunho had commissioned specially, just for her.
Judged by the devotion poured into them alone, they could stand beside the prized Gyeomhopil brush Kang Yunho himself had once received.
Jegal Hyang's gift. Lim Hayeon's gift. Which was the finer present?
Both had been made by skilled artisans, yet one crucial difference set them apart.
"That woman gave a gift—but I received one."
A gift is how one heart reaches another. Whose heart his belonged to now needed no asking. Lim Hayeon let herself smile where no one could see.
Why on earth had she spent all those days anxious and stung? He had only been striving, all this time, for her sake.
Holding the token of his heart Kang Yunho had given her, Lim Hayeon could finally shake off the unease she had carried for days.
— Knock, knock.
A knocking sounded at her door from outside.
"Huh?"
Who could that be at this hour? Only one person came to mind. What did he want? Could he have more to say about what had happened today?
He wouldn't be trying to come inside, would he?
For one scandalous instant, the thought flashed through Lim Hayeon's mind.
What would she say if he asked to come in? As a hundred thoughts raced through her head, her gaze suddenly dropped toward her feet.
"Th-they don't smell, right?"
Her feet, scrubbed with particular care tonight. Lim Hayeon actually pressed her nose to one foot just to be sure, confirmed all was well, and carefully approached the door.
He must have come to say how much fun he'd had today. She swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry.
Lim Hayeon smoothed her tense face with her fingertips, put on her coolest expression, and opened the door.
"Hayeon-unni!"
The face on the other side was not the one she'd expected.
"Ah."
"Teehee. Unni, why the long face? You thought you knew who it was, didn't you?"
Grinning until the corners of her eyes curled, Ha Soso beamed at Lim Hayeon as if she knew everything.
"Th-that's not—what is it at this hour?"
"What do you mean, what is it? I came to hear whether my advice worked. Can I come in?"
To think the woman would go out the very day the advice was given. Ha Soso had waited up well into the night, still flabbergasted.
"Come in."
"Oh? Unni, something happened, didn't it!"
That oddly delighted look. She fairly radiated a desire to brag. From Lim Hayeon's expression alone, Ha Soso knew at once that something out of the ordinary had taken place.
"Waaah! A gift that means 'the one I'm always missing,' given at the top of the pavilion! Manager Kang has real romance in him."
Like a girl who had just heard the tale of a dashing hero winning his true love, Ha Soso marveled aloud, pressing both hands to her cheeks.
"It's all thanks to you, Soso."
Lim Hayeon said it with a flush creeping up her cheeks, as if the admission embarrassed her a little.
"Teehee. See, Unni? All the two of you lacked was a little time alone together."
"...I suppose you're right."
It seemed the shackles each of them wore had simply kept them from moving forward. When confirming their feelings could be this easy.
Caressing the flower shoes Kang Yunho had given her, Lim Hayeon spoke.
"But Unni! This is only one step forward, you know!"
Fist clenched, Ha Soso cried out to her.
Today, purely today, she wanted to raise a toast. But Hayeon-unni might decide she was satisfied and stop right there, and then someone would have to kick her onward.
Because this was no time to let her guard down.
"I wouldn't call it one step."
After all the courage that had taken, and it was one step. Lim Hayeon pushed out her lower lip in protest.
"Unni! Of course I know you worked your hardest to get this far. But that sly fox could manage in a single step what took you months!"
"..."
"Honestly, I'd love to spend tonight just singing your praises, but we are talking about the youngest daughter of the Jegal Clan here."
Beauty, wealth, martial prowess—she lacked not one of them. A woman of a house that had everything.
If a woman like that set her mind on winning Manager Kang, even Ha Soso couldn't begin to measure the destructive force she would unleash.
"He only has eyes for me. And she's from the Jegal Clan, so I'm sure he'll tire of her quickly..."
Mixed into Lim Hayeon's words was not prediction but pure, unfiltered wish.
"Unni, trust my eyes! That sly fox! She did not look uninterested in Manager Kang, not one bit. If anything, leave those two alone and I'm telling you, something will happen!"
Ha Soso recalled the pair as she had seen them at the Daseogak branch.
One had watched the other like a doting brother at an adorable little sister. But the other's gaze had been different from the very first glance—unmistakably so.
To Ha Soso, a devoted connoisseur of other people's love affairs, it was a configuration that would seal itself the moment the man tipped over the edge.
"..."
"Unni, think it through. Once Young Master Kang starts working at the branch with that sly fox, she'll be standing in the exact same position you're in. And she's a formal marriage prospect, remember? She'll be making memories with him, just the two of them—exactly like you did today."
Listening closely as Ha Soso laid out her fears, Lim Hayeon nodded along.
Had this been a few days ago, she would surely have sagged in agreement, wilting with every word. Anxious and deflated, she might have sat waiting endlessly for him to come home.
But today was different.
Because the Lim Hayeon of today was a woman who had taken Kang Yunho's hand and leapt a whole step ahead.
"I have no intention of sitting quietly either."
In a tone that brooked no argument, Lim Hayeon began unfolding the plan she had conceived.
"Unni? You've thought of something!"
"In the end, all we have to do is keep those two from making memories at Daseogak. Simple as that."
Trusting him and waiting forever was certainly no bad thing. But wasn't there one better way?
Lim Hayeon called to mind the advice Chef An had given her just hours before.
— Stay where you can keep him in sight.
Lim Hayeon resolved to summon one more measure of courage today.
"I'm going to ask him to let me help run the Daseogak branch."
She could not remain a bystander a moment longer. She had to take the field.
Lim Hayeon resolved to meet Jegal Hyang face to face.
Help run the Daseogak branch, she says.
Lim Hayeon's offer delighted me—no question. There was just one sizable problem.
"Believe me, Miss Hayeon, I'd welcome the help. But there is a problem."
"What problem?"
"This is no food-delivery stand. It's work that means standing face to face with customers, and I don't see it suiting you."
Training the delivery riders, the paperwork, drilling the giosugu pigeons, the client accounts, lessons at the school—Lim Hayeon certainly did her share of everything, but not once since arriving in Wuhan had she stepped out to where the work met the public.
The business of Daseogak, on the other hand, was nothing but facing the public.
Welcome as her offer was, I could hardly put a woman still branded a runaway courtesan in front of an unending parade of strangers.
"I had no intention of going that far. And rather than work that means facing customers, couldn't I simply focus on the work that means facing you?"
"It's true that your help would take a real weight off my shoulders, and that's nothing to sneeze at, but..."
The paperwork, the client dealings, the endless odds and ends outside business hours—those were what truly ground me down, so she had a point.
The original plan, after all, had been to manage it all with Jegal Hyang's help.
"As the person who has worked beside you the longest, I can promise you there will be no shortage of ways for me to help at a new branch."
Someone was fired up today. She even leaned her whole weight on the word longest.
Truthfully, leaning on Lim Hayeon beat relying on Jegal Hyang, who would have to learn every task from the ground up.
"It won't wear you down?"
"Weren't you the one who said we'd share the hardship?"
My own words, from last night.
Lim Hayeon stepped right up to me, looked up into my face, and said it without a flicker of embarrassment.
"Well then."
I hadn't expected to have my own words served straight back to me. Laughing as though I'd just taken a clean hit, I opened my mouth.
"Then we move today. Let's stop by Daseogak and go over what's lacking, together."
She looked ready to march to the branch that very instant. Lim Hayeon turned on a light step.
"Your drive is admirable, but until opening day, Daseogak only opens its doors when Miss Jegal Hyang does."
"...So nothing can move forward unless I discuss it with that woman?"
Genuine shock on her face.
Come to think of it, was throwing the two of them together really the right call? It seemed a fine way to make things awkward all around.
"If it truly bothers you, I could arrange to receive a key of my own and—"
"No. We'll meet. Tomorrow we'll sit down together and talk."
Had last night's walk recharged her spirit, or what? She was proactive to a fault.
Lim Hayeon fixed me with a look of unbounded seriousness.
"Will it really be all right?"
"I'll just have to spend all of today preparing, so I can meet her in absolutely perfect form."
Fist clenched, Lim Hayeon's eyes burned with more resolve than I had seen from her in a long while.
It really is fine to let the two of them meet... right?
The next day. The Mangeum Lord's estate.
"Miss Jegal Hyang. The carriage bound for Daseogak is ready."
Through her chamber door, a servant of the estate announced that all was prepared.
"Yeees! I-I'll come out after one last practice, okayyy!"
"...Beg pardon? I shall wait here."
Not dressing up, not even preparing—practice?
The servant blinked, puzzled for an instant, but he was a man who understood the true trick to an easy posting: never grow too curious about your masters' affairs.
"My practice is nearly finished nooow."
Once the presence beyond the door had faded, Jegal Hyang took her place before the desk once more.
From today on, I'll be running the branch side by side with Young Master Kang, just the two of us. I can't let him see me like thaaat.
The practice she was putting herself through now was, in the end, practice for his sake.
Swallowing drily, face taut with nerves, Jegal Hyang pictured the black-haired young master seated across the desk, then carefully opened her mouth for one final rehearsal.
"Ah... one Americano. N-not a short—a t-tall, with one extra shot, and... and m-make it iced, pleaseeee."
She could not afford to repeat the same mistake twice.
Jegal Hyang, too, was leaving nothing to chance for today's meeting.