A Woman with Her Own Business, Yet Younger Than Me
Breakfast had been the same, and lunch too—I went with Riyeon to a place well away from the company and ate there.
She'd wanted to drive even for lunch; I barely managed to talk her out of it.
Even so, she didn't park in the company building. She left her car in a nearby elevator-style parking tower instead. I'd kept an eye on it once, half-afraid she might be abusing her position in general affairs to snag company parking support. She wasn't. The number of people eligible for that benefit was fixed—if Riyeon had been quietly claiming one of those spots as her permanent personal share, that would have been embezzlement too. Good thing it wasn't.
"Ah, that parking lot's mine, so leaving it there doesn't cost anything. Nice, right?"
"What?!"
Had I misheard?
That seven-story parking tower belonged to Riyeon?
"That's yours?"
"Yeah. That one and the identical one next to it—both of them."
"Both of those seven-story parking towers are yours?"
"Yep. Acquired them the year before last, added floors, renovated the whole thing. Cost a fortune. Practically building them from scratch. Fought like hell with the construction guys, too."
The greens in the salad I was chewing tasted remarkably bitter. Maybe salads these days tossed in wild bitter herbs without warning.
I ought to have corrected her vocabulary, but the will just wasn't there. I was scraping by on a salary, getting chewed out by an incompetent team leader over things that weren't even my fault, while Riyeon ran her own business and lived without any real want. Driving a Genesis as her personal car, owning her own place—she was clearly making more than enough.
It was fine. I wasn't envious.
My stomach clenched for a second, then I recovered my composure just as fast. She'd bought the places the year before last, renovated them, and only opened last year—she hadn't even recouped her investment yet. From the outside, looking at a finished business and its revenue, it was easy to think money just fell into her lap. Running a business itself, though, usually shredded your nerves. She'd just said she'd fought like a dog with the construction crew. Estimates, double-checks, arguments, redoing the work—mountains of decisions you couldn't offload onto anyone else. You judged and pushed through alone. That was business.
I hated that, which was exactly why I stayed a salaryman. Reminding myself why I'd chosen the path of living off someone else's money settled my heart again. So when Riyeon asked her next question, I didn't so much as sway.
"Aren't you curious how much I make?"
"Not really? As long as it's not in the red."
"It's not in the red."
"Then that's enough. Ah—there is one thing I'm curious about."
"What?"
"If you're running two whole parking towers, do you even need to keep working at the company?"
"There's… reasons for that…"
She looked like she didn't want to say. The model mature adult would have known not to dig here. Unfortunately, I was still far too childish to qualify as an adult.
"Earlier on the rooftop, you said you wanted us to be the kind of people who tell each other everything honestly, didn't you?"
It was also my calculated counterstrike against her real-time sharing bit. Come on. Someday this girl was going to manage me and spill every last secret of mine, yet she got to hide things about herself? Unfair. I knew her feelings for me were sincere, but the mutual agreement and consideration that should have come with them were desperately lacking. Maybe this exact point was why we couldn't move past the will-they-won't-they stage.
It had only just come into sharp focus, but beyond our pasts, Riyeon's overwhelming wealth could also stand as an obstacle between us. Not "could"—I already felt it as a burden. A shame. Looks like I simply wasn't cut out to be a kept man. Even if someone ordered me to, I didn't want it. Owing people money triggered an instinctive rejection.
"Uuuuh…"
Her hand froze over the salad. Riyeon started reading my face. Her eyes drifted through empty air, then flicked back to me now and then—she was clearly in a full-blown crisis mode. This girl could steamroll like a bulldozer when she was the one pushing, yet one modest little attack from me and she panicked, unable even to respond.
Separate from the fact that we couldn't advance past the crush stage, this was exactly why her obsession never felt threatening. When all was said and done, I held the reins. For all her aggressive front, inside she watched my every expression with pitiful intensity. Layered, just like that secret two-tone of hers. So she fretted over every word and reaction of mine. As long as I didn't suddenly cast her off or reject her without any safety net, she would quietly keep letting me hold those reins.
"If it's hard to say right now, tell me later—whenever you feel like it."
I had plenty of things that were hard to say right now, too.
"Okay… thanks…"
Even as she agreed, her dejected look was painful to watch. So I lifted my hand and stroked her head. No special words were needed. Just a gentle stroke and a smile were enough.
"…Ehehe."
Seeing my smile, Riyeon relaxed too.
"When you smile, Oppa, I feel at ease."
"Same here."
"Really?"
"Of course."
"Hearing that makes me happy."
Appetite restored, she stuffed lettuce into her mouth and chewed. Both of us finished our salads. We returned the trays to the shelf and stepped outside the shop. Just as we'd seen from the rooftop, the weather was beautiful. Perfect weather for holding hands.
I knew her gaze had locked onto my hand. She was staring so hard she might burn a hole through it. So I asked her straight out.
"If you don't care about company people spotting us and whispering behind our backs, want to hold hands?"
"…That's why I wanted to go by car."
"So no one would see if we held hands inside the car?"
"Yeah."
"What if they see us getting out together?"
"Just say we carpooled."
"What if they demand you do the same for them?"
"Who the hell do they think they are, demanding that like it's their right?"
Riyeon made a face of pure, unfiltered loathing—past fierce and straight into revulsion.
"Don't hate them so openly."
"They act the exact same way saying they hate me."
"There's more of them. One against many is hard to win. Even if you do win, you need to gather evidence for a long time, or the people around you have to understand what kind of person you actually are."
"I don't care what people around me say. I just need Oppa."
"Don't you need Mizuki's lost purity back?"
"Don't even speak that bitch's name. It's purity that can never come back anyway."
"Jeonhannan might revise the content."
"It's already a worldline observed by me, Oppa, and countless readers. You can't hide it. You can't cover it up."
Absolute. And I agreed with her completely. Once something had been observed, you couldn't just make it vanish with a magical poof and scrub it from people's minds.
"Anyway—don't put up so many thorns against people."
"They started it…!"
"I'm not telling you to bow and scrape either. Smile on the outside while you sharpen the knife inside. Or just don't care and walk your own path. Otherwise, when something unfair happens, no one will take your side. Honestly, if you're okay with it, just handing in your resignation and walking out is the most peaceful option in those cases."
"I'm not handing in a resignation."
Unexpected. Given her temper, I'd expected a fierce "Then just quit!" But Riyeon's shoulders had slumped.
"If I leave the company, I won't be able to see Oppa in the office anymore."
"…Do you like me that much?"
She only nodded, silent. Those eyes that turned so gentle only when they looked at me—I felt like I could get addicted. A childish question, an obvious answer. Even though I wasn't a kid, my shoulders rose like they might take flight. Riding that upward curve, I decided to try a bit of bravado I never usually showed.
"Hand."
"Ueh?"
"Give me your hand. Let's hold hands."
"…Is it okay? You said people might see."
"I want to hold hands."
At my words, joy overflowed from her eyes and lips. Did it make her that happy? Cute. Purely delighted just to hold hands with me—she was cute, and I was grateful.
"I wasn't saying be nice to people. Just put on enough of an act that they can't catch you out."
"Okay!"
"Not that you should give in too much either. Riyeon, you're good at speaking up confidently—just stay on the side of not making the other person feel bad."
"Okay okay!"
The moment our hands joined, her mood rose as vertically as my shoulders had.
"I'll keep that in mind!"
"Riyeon."
"Yeees?"
"I'm grateful, but why are you so completely head over heels for me?"
Aaaaaaah—asking with my own mouth why she liked me was mortifying!
Riyeon smirked and pressed her index finger against my nose.
"How many times are you going to ask the same question?"
"Because you never give a clear answer?"
"Putting human feelings into words is way too hard."
Swinging our joined hands in big arcs as we walked, she pouted her lips a little and scrunched her nose.
"But if I just go by the feeling… maybe it's like this?"
"What?"
The company building was getting closer. There were plenty of cafés nearby that office people frequented. Lunch hour meant plenty of people on the streets. Even so, we didn't let go of each other's hands.
"Oppa is my first, and a good man."
"Calling me a good man is way too self-assured."
"Oppa."
"Yeah."
"If I got treated unfairly at the company and had to resign without even a chance to explain myself—what would you do?"
"Even after I stepped up to help, you still ended up resigning?"
"Yeah. If it came to that?"
No need to think.
"I'd leave too."
"You'd leave?!"
This time Riyeon was the one who looked shocked. There was nothing to debate. This was also the reason that proved why, across five years as an HR person, my tenure at every company had been so short.
"I can put up with incompetence. But I can't work at a place that frames their own people like that and kicks them out to suit their own tastes."
"Even if I try to stop you?"
"That's my decision."
"See?"
Riyeon squeezed my hand tighter.
"You're a good man."
Even though the weather was chilly, sweat beaded between our joined palms. Mine, and hers. Both hot.
"I'll go all out to help if something unfair ever happens to you, Oppa. So just say the word anytime. I'll protect you."
Well now. That was reassuring. Still—protecting people was an HR person's job. I'd prefer she left that part to me.