Yunjoo’s laugh rang warmly through Sangyun’s chest too. Cha Yunjoo was a strange woman. The first day he saw her, she surprised him with a face that could have belonged to an actress. Then her designs caught his eye for being fresh and original. After that, she surprised him again by blending in with everyone around her without a single rough edge, and now she had gotten along wonderfully with the people at the worksite.

Keeping the worksite crew comfortable while managing everything without gaps was no easy thing. When she first said she was going out to the worksite, he had assumed she would last a day and quit. When he heard she had been going for a week straight, he called to say he would come by with snacks, and she told him to make sure he brought makgeolli. Seeing her sprawled out on the floor with the crew, drinking makgeolli together, had genuinely surprised him.

He had expected something like it, given how easygoing she was, but that had been beyond his expectations. In a place where no one ranked below her, not a single person had a complaint about Yunjoo. That was probably partly thanks to Mr. Seok, but it was Yunjoo who had brought Mr. Seok on board in the first place.

A woman who was something like a daughter and something like a friend to the notoriously difficult Mr. Seok. He had started to wonder what had kept a woman like her from working for three years, and then, in the middle of a conversation with him, she had mentioned almost in passing that she wanted to study abroad and needed to save money for it, and said she wanted to be real friends. She had laughed and said she had told him something that was still a secret, and asked him to keep it, then looked him in the eye and smiled.

‘Let’s be friends.’

Watching Yunjoo propose friendship with him, a thought had crossed Sangyun’s mind for just a moment. Was it really fine to be only friends with a woman this dazzlingly magnetic?

That image of Yunjoo came back to him from time to time. As he sat across from her now, Yunjoo’s phone rang. She glanced at the screen and answered with a small smile.

“Uncle, did you miss me already?”

“Yunjoo, it’s…….”

“What? Don’t joke around.”

“Yunjoo, there’s been an accident at the worksite.”

“What kind of accident? Everything was fine until yesterday evening.”

“The set that was standing collapsed.”

“I’m on my way!”

There was nothing more to hear. Getting to the worksite was faster than standing there listening to an explanation. Sangyun followed Yunjoo as she rushed out of Art Entertainment and ran to the worksite with her.

The site was in chaos, wreckage scattered everywhere, people moving frantically through the mess.

Yunjoo stood still for a moment, the sound seeming to drop away entirely, then snapped back to herself and moved quickly to start dealing with the accident. Uncle Seok explained that a new worker had been carrying a long steel beam when it caught on the standing set, and when he tried to force it free, it had caused the whole thing to come down. It was a set they had barely managed to build and get standing just the night before, working late.

She was furious, but dealing with it came before showing it. There was no time to waste. Her mind shifted into high gear, focused entirely on clearing the site and getting things back up as fast as possible. What could be repaired would be repaired, and what couldn’t would have to be rebuilt from scratch. In moments like this, Yunjoo was fearless.

“Uncle, we have to redo it. There’s no time.”

“Right, let’s do it. A few nights without sleep and we’ll get there.”

“Exactly, Uncle.”

Yunjoo moved through the worksite explaining everything again from the beginning, and a hammer found its way into her hands too. Sangyun watched her pick up the hammer for the first time, then couldn’t hide his wide eyes as her hammering and sawing proved every bit as capable as the seasoned workers around her. Uncle Seok gave a quiet smile.

“She’s better than most beginners. I told Yunjoo to follow me around as my assistant, but she said she wouldn’t work under me, so I had to let that go reluctantly.”

“Mr. Sangyun, you should head back.”

“I came all this way, let me help with something. What can I do?”

“Do you know how to do anything?”

“I’m still a man. Isn’t that a bit much?”

“Then the director over there can grab that hammer and drive these in.”

“Yes, sir.”

* * *

On the first night, Kangwook waited for Yunjoo until she didn’t come home, and finally drifted off near dawn. He called from the office the next day out of worry, but she didn’t pick up. He let out a sigh at being ignored by a woman too busy to answer her phone or come home. Another day passed, and after calling several times with no answer, he was now getting a message that her phone was switched off entirely, and he was starting to feel genuinely exasperated.

He had thought he had gotten a little closer to her, and Yunjoo had landed a solid blow to the back of his head. This was now the third day. Kangwook sat at the office calling Yunjoo and regretting pulling her guard. He was worried about Yunjoo, who hadn’t come home in two days and wasn’t picking up, but he genuinely hadn’t had a free moment, and more than that, he trusted her enough that he hadn’t been able to bring himself to go running to her either.

But by the third day, he could no longer sit still. The last he had heard, the work was nearly finished. Only then did it occur to him that something might have happened at Art Entertainment, and the moment it did, Sihyeong’s face surfaced out of nowhere, and he couldn’t shake the unpleasant feeling.

The thought that she might have been seeing Sihyeong during the hours she wasn’t home made him uneasy, and after two days of that, his patience ran out. It wasn’t a matter of trust or no trust. He wanted to see Yunjoo. The frustration became unbearable, and the moment he arrived at the office he called the foundation to ask around. The report that came back said there had been an accident, and the worksite was running at full tilt with no room to look up.

Knowing Yunjoo’s nature, it seemed she had been pulling all-nighters there for the past few days. The thought of Yunjoo staying up through the night doing rough work at the site made him feel for her, but his brow furrowed all the same, and he stood up and walked to the window.

‘Even if it’s work, what is she thinking, spending nights in a place full of men.’

From the moment he received the report about Yunjoo, he couldn’t focus on anything. Two nights in a row he had waited thinking she would surely come home today, and only fallen asleep near dawn. Kangwook could not hold back the slow rise of anger at Yunjoo for not sending even a single call, accident or no, urgent situation or not.

It left him feeling hurt, wondering if he was truly nothing to her. He had thought she was starting to look at him a little, but maybe that wasn’t the case after all. The anger that had risen refused to cool, and he reached a point where he could not sit at his desk and get any work done. He called Team Leader Moon.

“Come in for a moment.”

Team Leader Moon walked into Kangwook’s office and waited for instructions, visibly tense at the sudden summons.

“Clear my schedule for today.”

“President, what do you mean……?”

“I’m clearing the whole day.”

“Yes, sir!”

“Then I’ll take that as settled and head out.”

“President, you can’t. There are things on the schedule today that can’t be moved.”

“That’s exactly why I pay Team Leader Moon well.”

“President!”

Kangwook pushed Team Leader Moon aside as he stood blocking the way with an absolute refusal, and walked out of the office. Schedules and everything else could wait. The woman filling his head needed to be dealt with first. He felt like he could only get back to work once that was handled.

“Team Leader Moon, if you’re lucky I might be back in the afternoon. Good luck.”

Team Leader Moon’s flustered voice called after him as he left the room, but none of it reached Kangwook’s ears. Team Leader Moon and the secretarial staff stood frozen in disbelief at a side of Kangwook they had never once seen, exchanging glances before rushing after him, but Kangwook was already gone.

By the time Team Leader Moon’s voice rang out, Kangwook was already inside the elevator. It struck him as remarkable that the first impulsive break from routine he had ever taken in his life was because of Yunjoo. Walking out of the office like this with the intention of going to her didn’t feel bad at all.

During work hours he had never left his seat, working and meeting and seeing people, and none of it had ever been for himself. It was all for the job. The only thing he ever did for himself was his early morning workout. He had lived that tightly, that hard, and had thought it was simply how things were. Kangwook got into the car, leaned his head back, and closed his eyes for a moment.

The things this woman was making him do were absurd. It was remarkable, and not entirely unpleasant, but the gap between that and reality was a separate problem.

‘Cha Yunjoo, what a troublesome woman. But I can’t see her and I can’t focus on a thing.’

A low murmur left Kangwook’s lips along with a quiet sigh. His feelings were tangled, his thoughts no clearer, and nothing was sorting itself out. The feelings were one thing, but his head had room for only one thought: he was curious about her, and he wanted to see her.

“Ha…… what am I going to do with you?”