Kangwook went quiet as he listened to Yunjoo. She smiled placidly as she asked him something like that. It made him angry. No matter that he was a husband in name only, she had asked whether he had a girlfriend and showed not a trace of discomfort about it. Kangwook could feel exactly where he stood with Yunjoo. He set down his coffee cup.

“Cha Yunjoo.”

At the low call of her name, Yunjoo looked up at Kangwook, still chewing her bread. She had tossed out the words without much thought and was chewing her bread and thinking about what she had to do today. Her mind was entirely occupied with the stage. Not on a computer but inside her own head, the stage was turning in three dimensions. When Kangwook called her name, that Yunjoo lifted her composed face and looked at him.

“…….”

“Cha Yunjoo, would you prefer that I had a girlfriend?”

“What?”

“Am I even a husband to Cha Yunjoo?”

Watching Kangwook ask with such seriousness, Yunjoo suddenly realized what she had said. She had been talking so freely with him lately that the words had slipped out without her noticing, and she understood now that she had asked something she shouldn’t have. But she didn’t know why he had been looking at her and calling her name like this lately. Yunjoo forced a laugh, a little louder than natural, trying to clear the awkward air.

“Ahahaha, sorry. We don’t ask about each other’s personal lives. I momentarily forgot the contract.”

“Cha Yunjoo, you still haven’t answered my question.”

“On paper, Choi Kangwook is the husband, not the wife. Ask something worth asking.”

“Cha Yunjoo.”

“Why do you keep calling my name? Didn’t you say you have a breakfast meeting? Won’t you be late?”

He looked at her face, then glanced at his watch and stood up. She called out a loud goodbye at his back as he headed toward the front door. That too was something that had changed. Before, she had always quietly followed him to the door. Come to think of it, she had never once told him to have a good day.

“Take care. I only said something because you’re always here and it seemed a little sad, and you’re making such a serious face about it, embarrassing me. It’s not like I said anything untrue.”

“What!”

But the farewell she had thrown from a distance had scratched right at his nerves. He spun around sharply and raised his voice, but then watched the woman bolt straight up to the second floor, and the absurdity of it left him speechless. He could only glare up at the second floor she had disappeared into.

He was angry, but he didn’t have time to follow Yunjoo upstairs right now. He was the one who had arranged the breakfast meeting, so he couldn’t be late. Even on the drive to the office, thinking it over in the car, he found it absurd. Yunjoo had said everything she wanted to say and then fled, and Kangwook couldn’t get her out of his head the entire way to work. On his morning commute he would normally be reviewing his schedule and working ahead.

‘Ha. Cha Yunjoo, now you’re handing me off to another woman.’

Even during the breakfast meeting at the office, her last words kept circling in his head and he couldn’t focus. His responses to the directors grew delayed, and eventually, when things stopped moving forward, everyone started looking at Kangwook. Deciding he couldn’t push through any further, he offered an apology and left the room, returning to the president’s office.

“To Cha Yunjoo, neither Juon nor Choi Kangwook means anything. We hold no value.”

Kangwook sat at his desk, thinking of Yunjoo, and let out a long breath to ease the heaviness settling in his chest. The woman had no desire for money or status. Her work alone was enough for her. He couldn’t decide anything right now.

Even if Yunjoo walked out tomorrow, Kangwook still had to work. That was what his upbringing had prepared him for, and it was how he had survived in this position. So right now was a time for work. He shook his head to clear it, turned his eyes to the pile of documents stacked up, and got started.

* * *

In the house after Kangwook left, Yunjoo finished up the final revisions on her work and sat down for a moment with a cup of coffee, and Kangwook drifted into her thoughts. The Kangwook she saw these days was different from before. The way he looked at her sometimes, the sound of his voice when he called her name. That side of Kangwook felt very unfamiliar. 

They had lived in the same house, but they had never once been a couple. He was someone who had never held her hand unless it was to escort her to a social engagement, and yet he had carried her and called her name with a deep, searching look in his eyes.

She sat in the same spot in a daze until the coffee in her cup went completely cold, then snapped back to herself at the sound of her phone ringing.

“Hello?”

“Ms. Yunjoo.”

“Director, I was actually about to call you.”

“How are the drawings coming along?”

“The basic work is done for now. I was planning to come out so we could look at them together and talk things over.”

“Good timing. I’m on my way to the theater company now, so come on over.”

“Then I’ll see you there.”

She poured out the cold coffee, changed her clothes, left the house, and headed to the theater company. She went in and looked for Sangyun’s office first, but he wasn’t at his desk yet, so she went to her own room. She had just sat down and spread out the drawings when a knock came and Sangyun walked in.

“Ms. Yunjoo, it’s been a while.”

“It has. Take a look at this first.”

The moment Sangyun greeted her, Yunjoo slid the drawings she had made across to him.

“Give me just a second to catch my breath.”

“Did you rush here because of me?”

“No, today’s just a bit busy. Let’s have a look.”

She and Sangyun spent a good while going over the drawings together, discussing what needed to be revised and what needed to be added. They wrapped up by deciding she would come in starting tomorrow to work, and on her way home, Yunjoo briefly considered her options. Should she pick up something simple for dinner on the way, or just eat at home?

She was still mulling it over when she remembered that today was the day the housekeeper came and went, and her steps toward home quickened. The housekeeper worked at Kangwook’s family home, so Yunjoo had always been a little on edge around her. Yunjoo was just stepping into the villa entrance when she ran into the housekeeper on her way out and they exchanged greetings. The fact that she had been going out to work made her anxious that the woman might pick up on the fact that they were living separate lives.

The housekeeper mentioned that she had left dinner ready, and Yunjoo thanked her, went inside, and flopped down flat on the sofa. She really hated living like this.

“Ugh, I really hate this. This way of living, and myself for going along with it.”

She let out a sigh, got up, and went into the kitchen without even changing her clothes to get dinner ready. She had to move quickly if she wanted to get back upstairs before running into Kangwook. When her head was this cluttered, running into Kangwook wasn’t going to do her any good.

That night, Kangwook came home late. He stepped into the dark house, stood in the unlit living room staring hard at the second floor for a long moment, then went into his room and lay down on the bed without even taking off his clothes. 

Before, coming home late to a dark house and walking alone into his room had meant nothing to him. In fact, it had been comfortable and pleasant to have no one pestering him with conversation. But now he was starting to dislike this kind of life. Kangwook raised an arm to cover his eyes and let out a long breath.

And so the two of them went several days without seeing each other, both caught up in their own busy lives. Yunjoo had started going back to the theater company, since she had begun the SketchUp work and there was quite a bit she needed to review and coordinate with Sangyun.

For a while, the CAD work had been easier to do alone at home, but now that there was so much to coordinate, working side by side was the practical choice. By the time all the work over those few days was nearly finished, it was time to select the people who would handle the on-site work and meet with them.

Working with people whose rhythm matched hers was simply easier, and there were things they could handle between themselves without needing to spell everything out. But she had been away from the field for three years, and she needed to track down her old connections.

There was someone who had come to mind from the moment she started thinking about the on-site work. Uncle Seok. She called him uncle casually, but very few people did. He was not someone you could call that unless you were on genuinely close terms with him.

He was the one who had said he was a carpenter and hated being called anything else, so just call him uncle. His skill was second to none in the country, but his personality was so difficult that everyone tended to avoid working with him.