When the car arrived at the luxury townhouse in Hannam-dong, Hyunseo turned around and asked, “Hari, you should go in and rest, right?”

“Yes. I should.”

Hyunseo smiled pleasantly and turned to the bodyguard as well.

“And you?”

He was a sharp man. There was no way he had missed the implication that she wanted to talk once Hari was sent off. Whether he had picked up on it or not, Jisang answered without any visible hesitation, giving Hyunseo exactly what she wanted.

“I’ve been called in by the CEO, so I need to go to the company.”

“Perfect timing. We need to stop by the company as well, so we’ll give you a ride.”

“Yes. Let’s do that.”

Jisang went up with Hari to bring her luggage in and came back down without much delay, getting back into the car.

In that brief interval, the man who returned having shed the role of bodyguard radiated the full weight of someone who headed the largest entertainment company in the country.

Hyunseo, not the least bit intimidated by the force he gave off, met his gaze directly and spoke.

“CEO Cha. Shall we talk?”

Hyunseo’s manner of speaking was generally blunt and direct, but it was rare for her to drop all pretense and wear this kind of expression so openly. Jungwook broke into a cold sweat trying to read her mood and tread carefully.

The tension-filled van made its way toward the Chacha Entertainment building.

* * *

Hari had washed away the fatigue of travel in the shower and was now lying stretched out on the wide terrace bench, soaking up the sun.

She felt so light she could float away, and a hum drifted out of her without her even meaning it.

“I miss him already.”

Even the time she spent waiting for Cha Jisang in this house was a happy thing.

He was only a contracted bodyguard, so why did he come and go from the company so often……

Hari did not so much want a precise answer as she found the whole thing vaguely amusing.

Just then, her phone rang.

It was a call from Yoo Nanhee, a singer who had grown up in the same orphanage and was now a colleague in the entertainment industry.

“Well, look who it is. Isn’t this the queen of vocal color, Yoo Nanhee?”

She pressed the answer button and loaded her voice with warmth, but the reply that came through the receiver was irritable.

“Hey. I told you I changed my name.”

“Right. Sorry……”

“You’re so thoughtless.”

Nanhee’s tone was as prickly as ever.

“You sound like you’re in a good mood. Where are you?”

“Me? I just got back from an overseas schedule, so I’m home resting.”

“Home? Didn’t a blackmailer come and scrawl things on your place. And you’re still there?”

“Oh right. I moved. I forgot to tell you.”

“Really? Where to?”

“A townhouse in Hannam-dong.”

“What? You’ve already made that much money?”

“It’s not my place. The company lent it to me because they said it wasn’t safe.”

“Interesting. Can I come visit?”

“Hmm……”

She hesitated briefly because Jisang was staying there with her, but it had been a long time since she had seen Nanhee, so she agreed for now.

“Alright. Come over.”

“I’ll be right there. Send me the address.”

Hari sent Nanhee the address by message, then sent Jisang a message as well.

“A close unnie says she wants to come visit. Is that okay? Her name is Yoo Nanhee, she’s a singer who came from a girl group. Do you know her?”

But there was no reply from him, and Nanhee arrived remarkably fast.

“Have you been well?”

The door opened and Nanhee stepped inside. Hari smiled awkwardly. Coming to a new place, most people would at least bring a roll of paper towels as a gift, but Nanhee walked in empty-handed without a trace of embarrassment.

Children who were brought to the orphanage when they were old enough, like Hari, kept their own names, but children abandoned as infants without names were usually given the director’s surname.

The director of the orphanage where Hari grew up tended to give children names like Jeonghui, Sukhui, Cheolsu, Cheoryong, plain and unremarkable.

Nanhee’s name had been given the same way. The director’s surname happened to be Yoo, which was how she ended up with the distinctive name Yoo Nanhee.

So Nanhee had recently changed her name to Yoo Nari.

She gave the excuse that a fortune teller had told her the carelessly chosen name was the reason her fate had gone awry, but everyone knew she had long been unhappy with the old-fashioned name.

Hari had learned about the name change through an article and had not taken it personally. She had even been pleased, saying that with ‘Hari’ and ‘Nari’ sounding similar, they were like sisters now.

“Hey. I saw your broadcast. You came out as an orphan and even put out an announcement looking for your biological father? Are you out of your mind?”

Nanhee brought up what Hari had said on the talk show not long ago and grumbled about it.

“Aren’t you embarrassed? What’s there to brag about, going around talking about that. You’ve definitely written off any chance of building a sophisticated image.”

“I was just telling the truth. Hiding it would be stranger.”

Unlike Hari, who had revealed herself without hesitation, Nanhee had never once disclosed that she had grown up in an orphanage. She had even gone so far as to invent stories about having parents and told those lies to anyone who would listen.

This was not a matter of who was right. They simply could not understand each other, and Hari let it go.

“Anyway, this place is really nice.”

Nanhee roamed around as though it were her own home, opening the refrigerator and the kitchen cabinets without asking, looking everything over.

“Can I see your room?”

“Oh, um. Over here.”

The way she demanded it so bluntly and without preamble was off-putting, but Nanhee being rude was nothing new, so Hari tried not to let it bother her.

“The bed is really nice too.”

Nanhee sat herself down on Hari’s bed without invitation, enjoying the springy softness, then abruptly held her phone out to Hari.

“Take some pictures of me.”

Before Hari could even say yes, Nanhee was already striking a pose.

She rolled this way and that across the bed as though it were her own, putting on every kind of smoldering expression she could manage, and then after checking the photos Hari had taken, she complained about those too.

“These are terribly shot. Hey. You’re an actress and you can’t even take a decent photo?”

Hari tilted her head and looked at the photos again. Nanhee had come out exactly as she was, and Hari could not understand what was supposedly wrong with them.

“……You’re going to plaster them with filters anyway, so what exactly are you expecting?”

Hari muttered, but Nanhee did not even pretend to care.

She then picked up Hari’s designer handbag from the bedside table, slung it over her shoulder as though it were hers, and began posing in front of the full-length mirror from every angle.

Looking was not enough, so she took out her phone and snapped mirror shots.

When Hari appeared in the reflection, Nanhee waved her away with a shooing gesture.

From the photos alone, it looked exactly like Nanhee’s own room.

“Hey. Crouch down more. That makes my legs look longer. Actually no. Try sitting down and shooting.”

The sight of her bossing Hari around like a handmaid while acting like royalty was quite the spectacle.

It was irritating, but knowing the pain and the emptiness Nanhee carried inside, Hari chose to endure it.

Thinking she would get at least one decent shot if she kept at it, she pressed the shutter diligently, when the screen suddenly changed and the phone began to ring.

“Unnie. You have a call.”

She was about to hand it over without thinking, but then Hari saw the caller ID: ‘Breathe ENT – CEO Gwak Sanggu’ and her heart lurched.

‘All you have to do is sit and have a few drinks. If you just keep him company and go along with what he says, you’ll become the most famous actress in Korea, and you can get rich too.’

‘You said you wanted to get rich so you could help the younger kids at the orphanage.’

A vile man who had tried to set up a sponsorship arrangement with a girl who had only just turned twenty.

It was still a horrifying memory for Hari, one that flared up into a burning rage even now from time to time.

She had sworn to herself that if she ever ran into him at a broadcast station, she would kick him between the legs.

“What is this……? Why is Gwak Sanggu calling Unnie?”

There was no way Nanhee did not know what had nearly happened to her because of Gwak Sanggu. Hari had told Nanhee everything, even the parts she had never shared with Hyunseo.