“What time is it?”

“Just past six.”

“Great. Rush hour.”

While the two of them tried to think through it with muddled heads, Jisang was already running the calculations.

It was peak commute time and traffic would be brutal, and the road to the hospital was a stretch that was always congested without fail.

There was no complicated conclusion to reach.

Running would be faster than driving, without question.

With Jungwook’s help, Jisang shifted Hari onto his back and broke into a fast run toward the hospital.

* * *

There was one patient lying in the small emergency room bed, Yoo Hari, and three people gathered around her.

The doctor’s assessment was that she had a high fever from a body ache cold, and on top of that, the severe stress from her claustrophobia had triggered hyperventilation, a form of panic response, which had caused a temporary loss of consciousness.

They had decided to run a quick blood panel just to be safe and were waiting for the results.

Hari was on a drip to help bring the fever down, but she hadn’t woken up yet.

In the meantime, Yeonji was bustling back and forth with a measuring tape, taking Hari’s measurements.

“Honestly. Unnie’s gotten even smaller.”

Already on edge, Jungwook had no patience for this.

“Hey. What are you doing. Stop making a scene in a hospital.”

“Can’t you see I’m working? If I take her measurements now, we can reduce the number of refittings later.”

“Why are you doing that here, right now?”

“Unnie collapsed from overworking herself. If I do this now, she’ll have less to deal with later.”

“Honestly. No sense of occasion.”

“Haah, Hari’s dad is at it again. Starting arguments in a hospital? Really?”

Their bickering voices grew louder, and a nurse with sharp eyes came over and scolded them both.

“What do you two think you’re doing in a hospital? One guardian only. Both of you, out. Now.”

“Ah, I’m sorry. We’ll be quiet.”

“No! You’re being disruptive. Wait outside!”

Jisang found the whole situation just as grating, so he calmly backed up the nurse’s order.

“I’ll stay with her. It would be better if you two waited outside.”

Jungwook and Yeonji were escorted out still shoving each other and blaming one another. Jisang drew the partition curtain closed for good measure, and a welcome quiet finally settled in.

Jisang sat with his arms folded and looked down at Hari.

Tapping something with his index finger, tap, tap, was a habit of his when he was deep in thought.

‘They’re not actually trying to kill her.’

After watching the pattern, it was clear the perpetrator had threatened to kill Hari but had no real intention of following through.

They, or whoever they were, were focused entirely on frightening her.

They had known her home address. They had known her movements well enough to track her wherever she went. Their intelligence was strong.

Given that, if genuine harm had been the goal, they could have handled it easily in the empty bathroom, with no one around. They wouldn’t have simply locked her in, terrified her, and disappeared.

This incident was no different.

Of course, with Jisang posted at the door, directly harming Hari would have been difficult, but it was hard to understand why people capable of cutting power to an entire building would do nothing more than cause a blackout and vanish.

His conclusion was that they were simply making their presence known, sending the message: we are still watching you, and we are still threatening you.

‘Good thing I had her move right away.’

The only people who knew Hari had changed her address were himself, secretary Kim Minsu, and Jungwook and his wife.

Because of that, the new place had remained untouched.

He had expected the perpetrator who had broken into the bathroom on set to be caught during the time her schedule was on hold, but the police investigation had made less progress than he’d hoped.

And the moment she resumed her schedule, the threats had started again as if on cue.

All her previously set schedules had been rearranged, and today’s wardrobe visit hadn’t even been a public appointment.

No matter how good their intelligence was, how could they infiltrate like this, knowing her every move?

「It seems there’s someone inside the company helping the perpetrator.」

That was Jisang’s conclusion, and he sent a message to secretary Kim Minsu, adding a note to start narrowing down which employees might be suspect.

“Ms. Yoo Hari?”

“Ah.”

A doctor came through the curtain, eyes hollow with exhaustion, and Jisang’s thoughts came to a stop.

“Are you the guardian?”

“Something like that.”

The doctor, apparently indifferent to having one of the most famous actresses in the country in front of him, flipped through the test results and spoke in a flat tone.

“The blood work shows mild anemia, but nothing seriously wrong. Once she’s conscious, she can be discharged. For the time being, please make sure she eats well, rests well, and stays somewhere calm.”

Jisang had been watching Hari, waiting for her to wake, and he slowly reached out and rested his hand against her pale cheek.

“How many times a day do you have to give me a scare.”

The skin was so soft that he couldn’t bring himself to pull his hand away.

He brushed aside the hair stuck to her forehead, and even after that his hand stayed, moving gently through her hair.

“Don’t get sick.”

Then, without warning, a sense of alarm rose in him.

Jisang closed his hand into a fist and got up from his seat.

He went to the waiting area, asked Jungwook to take over, and walked out of the hospital.

* * *

When Jungwook came through the curtain, Hari was already awake, blinking slowly.

She was staring at the ceiling with a dazed expression, one hand moving absently over her cheek.

“Feeling better?”

“Oppa?”

“Yeah.”

“Where’s the bodyguard?”

“Not sure. He told me to come in and then disappeared.”

Jisang, who had seemed like he would be right back, didn’t appear even as the discharge paperwork was completed. Jungwook called to check, and the reply came back that something urgent had come up at the company and he was heading in, with a request that Jungwook see Hari safely home.

Back at the apartment, Hari sat on the living room sofa and waited for Jisang without end.

Her fingers kept returning to the cheek and forehead his hand had touched.

‘Why did you touch my face with such a gentle hand?’

Her consciousness had been returning from the moment his hand touched her cheek.

She had been able to feel all of it. The warmth in his voice, the concern in it, the warm hand that had moved from her cheek to her forehead.

And the look in his eyes as he watched her in that moment.

She had only caught a glimpse, but the sense of familiarity was unmistakable.

The look she had seen in his eyes on the day she moved into this apartment, the one she had dismissed as something she’d imagined in a half-dream, she was now certain had not been her imagination at all.

Her mind wouldn’t settle, and the hours drifted past until midnight was drawing close, but Hari kept waiting.

She wanted to look him in the eye and ask directly.

‘Why were you looking at me like that?’

She didn’t call him. She just sat on the sofa and waited. She kept waiting until he came home.

“……Come home soon. Cha Jisang.”

She even lay down on the living room sofa and tried to sleep, fully prepared to jump up the moment the door opened, but that night, Jisang never came home.