TCBW C48

Chapter 48

“Ah, yes, yes. Ah—pardon? Right now? But at the moment… Madam is waiting. Yes, I’ll relay the message.”

From Hae-eon’s plainly troubled demeanor and the content of the call, Suhoe grasped everything before the line even disconnected, and he put on a light smile first.

“Go ahead.”

Despite Suhoe’s effort to appear nonchalant, Hae-eon couldn’t hide the pained look in his eyes.

“Madam… I’ll be back to escort you shortly, then.”

Seeing him off, Suhoe found himself hoping the weather would at least clear before they returned.

So, knowing well that it would likely do no good, he set a glass of water in a sunny spot, sat before it, and with his head bowed for a long time, he whispered wishes to no one in particular.

Time passed; sunlight shattered over the rim of the clear glass, and the world outside the window sank into darkness.

But even then, Dowoon did not come.

The next day was the same.

Without any word or explanation, he did not come to pick Suhoe up. The weekend, swollen with anticipation and then shattered, ended with Suhoe collapsing under a vicious, burning fever.

“Let’s talk, Director Han.”

The moment he sat, Dowoon checked the time. He skipped even a greeting to Sara; unlike usual, he was visibly pressed.

“Why the formal tone between us? Anyway, what—something urgent?”

“I have a prior engagement.”

His reply was firm and concise, as if to say there would be no further elaboration.

As if used to his indifference and chill, Sara propped her chin on one hand and stared at him unblinkingly. Her eyes were bold, and shone with a tenacious desire for something.

“A prior engagement? With whom?”

“It’s personal.”

“Hmm, personal? That makes me more curious. But if you’re that busy, shall I just get to the point?”

Though he offered no reply, she seemed disinclined to wait for one. After a measured breath, she dropped words like a bomb.

“Marry me.”

At that, for the first time, his head lifted—slowly. A taut tension tightened between them.

Sara spoke first, in a sardonic tone, as if testing his intentions.

“You want the shares I hold. That’s why you came today, why you’ve been seeing me all along—am I wrong, President Lee of Yongseong Finance?”

At her direct yet curiously skewed remark, Dowoon returned a low question, as if to confirm her aim.

“…What do you want?”

“Well now.”

With a languid flick of her hand, she called the distant waiter and, as though prepared for this very moment, ordered another wine with elegant poise.

When the waiter returned and delicately poured red wine into their glasses, she rotated her glass slowly, savoring the bouquet.

At last the waiter withdrew, and when the silence between them settled again, she added, in a voice smooth as silk:

“What if what I want… is you, Mr. Dowoon. Would you believe that?”

Her gaze did not waver in the slightest; her words felt less like a simple question than a trial.

It was a weekend when a fervent prayer, offered with all his heart, dissolved into thin air. The promise to go to the sea with Dowoon had come to nothing; in its place, a searing heat took hold.

After three full days bedridden, Suhoe managed to rise on Monday morning with a head-splitting pain.

The silent house, the cooled meal—each deepened his loneliness.

Through gnawing hunger and vertigo that made the world tilt with every step, he staggered through a shower and headed to the office.

“Suhoe? Are you okay? You look… really unwell.”

As expected, the moment he entered the janitorial break room, Seojun—quickest to notice his precarious state—approached, worried.

“Mm. Think it’s a cold.”

“What? Again?”

Though he forced up the corners of his mouth, the pallor that suggested he might collapse any second, the feverish flush in his cheeks, the shallow breaths—all made his words ring hollow.

Even as Seojun pressed him—Did you take medicine? Did you go to the hospital?—with heartfelt concern, he only repeated that he was fine.

Then, suddenly sensing the unusually crowded feel of the break room, Suhoe changed the subject.

“By the way, Jun, is something happening today? Feels like everyone’s gathered.”

“There’s a company dinner tonight. Tomorrow’s the foundation day or whatever. When the office takes a day off, so do we. So everyone’s planning to drink like there’s no tomorrow.”

“Drink, as in… alcohol?”

For an instant, a strange spark flickered in his empty eyes.

“Yeah. Of course.”

“Can I go, too?”

“What? In your condition, you want to go to a company dinner?”

“Yeah. I’ve wanted to try going.”

Seojun frowned, taken aback, but Suhoe was uncharacteristically resolute.

“Still, today seems… not great…”

He tilted his head, murmuring again. Just then, other coworkers approached upon seeing Suhoe.

“Oh? Isn’t that Mr. Suhoe? What’s this—are you coming tonight too?”

“Cough— I’d like to go too.”

“But you don’t look well.”

“Cough— It’s j-just a cold.”

“Even so, if you’re sick, you should go home.”

“No. I want to come. I want to go.”

Everyone found it odd that he was so unusually firm today, yet no one tried to stop him.

Only Seojun kept asking if he was sure.

“You’re really okay to come?”

“…Yeah.”

For some reason, a rebelliousness deep within him lifted its head.

If he went meekly home and waited, it felt like his husband simply wouldn’t come.

At the very hour when an uncharacteristically bold resolve filled him—something he normally wouldn’t even consider—Dowoon was trapped in the heavy air of a funeral.

On Saturday afternoon, while being called out by Sara and hearing talk of marriage, he received news from Chairman Lee’s secretary that his paternal grandmother had passed. As the eldest son of the Lee family, he was bound to three days of mourning.

By coincidence, it was the same weekend he had planned to take Suhoe to the sea.

Since bringing Suhoe down from Unbang Mountain, the weather had been foul without break—yet, ironically, at the news of his grandmother’s passing, the skies cleared brilliantly, blue to the farthest horizon; the timing felt bitter to him.

He even found himself looking resentfully at his grandmother’s portrait, which had prevented him from taking Suhoe out on such a day.

“I should get going. Work’s busy.”

“You’re always busy, hyung.”

As Dowoon left the funeral hall before the Monday transfer, a gentle-looking man with softly curling black hair stood behind him. An armband was wrapped around his arm as well. The air he gave off was so different from Dowoon’s that first-time onlookers would not immediately guess they were brothers.

Even at the delicate, refined voice behind him, Dowoon didn’t hesitate; he found his shoes and put them on, then headed for the car where Hae-eon waited.

When he tried to leave without seeing the casket transfer or the interment, Hae-eon attempted to stop him.

“The transfer isn’t finished. Are you sure you won’t stay to see her laid to rest?”

“A funeral without a body—this is enough.”

Dowoon insisted on having his way. After all, his grandmother, Chwigyeon—long hospitalized at Yongseong Hospital—was the Lee family’s matriarch, yet not a single article had been published about her death.

Her body had already been taken care of elsewhere, in secret. Which meant the Lee family was holding a peculiar funeral without the deceased’s remains.

As he exited the funeral hall, Dowoon asked Hae-eon carelessly,

“How is he?”

An indirect question about Suhoe.

“I received a report that he went in to work, but I’m not sure whether he’s returned home yet.”

A barbecue joint, thick with smoke and the smell of charring meat. The table where Suhoe sat was particularly noisy.

“What? You still don’t even have a cellphone?”

“Ah, yes…”

“How strict was the household you grew up in?”

Everyone seemed full of curiosity about the quiet Omega new hire, tossing out questions one by one.

Only Gyubeom, eavesdropping from the next table as he flipped the meat, mumbled under his breath in rebuttal:

“A kid raised strict wouldn’t end up someone’s kept lover.”

Of course, he didn’t know the full story either.

But the careful way the president’s secretary, Hae-eon, treated Suhoe, and the fact that only Suhoe had a cleaning assignment exclusively for President Dowoon’s office, pointed to what kind of person he was.

“Taste, huh.”

That the external cleaning contractor, which had come to Yongseong Finance twice a week, now visited almost daily—and only President Dowoon’s office, at that—since Suhoe took over that area, drove the suspicion deeper for Gyubeom.

“Calls in an outside contractor just so the kid won’t get worn out even doing cleaning—what a luxury.”

And in Gyubeom’s muttered aside there was a dose of resentment toward the special treatment Suhoe received.