Not the flutter of excitement, but something deeper. It felt like meeting a real adult for the very first time.

“Yes. Thank you. Sir.”

He stared at her wiping her tears and smiling softly, and his brow furrowed deeply in disbelief.

“You’re thanking me for that?”

“It was advice from someone who was worried about me.”

“Unbelievable. What a strange girl.”

Hari tried to press the bracelet into his hand again.

“Please take it. If I don’t repay you, it’ll weigh on me for the rest of my life. Please?”

Her persistence prompted him to make an unexpected offer.

“I don’t need that. Make me a promise instead.”

“A promise?”

“Promise me. That you’ll only walk the right path. That you won’t come back to a place like this, and that you’ll succeed on your own, with your head held high.”

“Yes. That I can absolutely promise.”

She answered with bright, shining eyes, and the man smiled faintly and gave her head a gentle pat.

“I’ll be watching.”

She shrank slightly at the touch. The man who had firmly refused the bracelet pressed a hundred-thousand-won check into her hand.

“For the cab.”

Hari called after his back as he turned and walked away.

“I’ll pay you back!”

“Don’t bother.”

“No. I’m going to pay you back!”

“I said don’t.”

He turned back with a quiet smile.

The hardness that had held his face all this time eased away completely, and his handsome face shone with a charm that hadn’t been visible before. Hari’s heart fluttered all over again.

All she wanted was to find some way to keep this thread between them, but he had no such intention, and just like that, he was gone.

“Ugh……”

The moment he disappeared, the cold crept in.

With so much skin exposed, the chill hit her immediately. She wrapped the jacket tightly around herself and hailed a cab.

The moment she got in, she closed her fingers around his handkerchief and repeated the name she had seen on the right chest of his uniform, determined not to forget it.

“Cha Jisang. Cha Jisang. Cha Jisang.”

How could even his name be this good? She liked it even more for being uncommon.

She had also seen the unit patch on his left chest. UDT/SEAL.

With enough searching, she thought she might be able to find the base address and send a letter.

It might look like obsession, but even at the cost of her pride, she had an overwhelming desire to see this man just one more time.

‘I’ll send exactly a hundred letters.’

So please, send back at least one reply. Sir.

* * *

“When did I fall asleep?”

Hari opened her eyes on the living room rug. The blanket she had given Jisang the night before was wrapped warmly around her, but he was nowhere to be seen.

She sat up to find a note on the coffee table.

「Gone to the company. Do not go out alone.」

Hari smiled at the elegant handwriting.

“My bodyguard even has nice penmanship.”

She had slept so deeply and soundly that the exhaustion of the past several sleepless nights seemed to have lifted entirely.

She got up feeling light, tidied the bedding, and opened the kitchen cabinet.

Same as always, she filled a bowl with oatmeal and poured in soy milk. She chewed slowly and opened the news on her phone, and sure enough, her name was plastered everywhere.

「Yoo Hari, death threats continued into the second day. Filming halted.」

「Perpetrator grows bolder. Actress trapped in bathroom.」

「Police suspect organized, premeditated crime and launch investigation.」

「Yoo Hari currently in hiding at her residence.」

Truly something. They barely write articles when there’s good news, but for something like this they come running with remarkable enthusiasm.

Hari read through the most-viewed articles and checked the comments. Given her generally positive public image, most people were expressing genuine concern for her wellbeing.

Though of course, the occasional hateful comment appeared.

「Yoo Hari is such an attention-seeker lol is this not just noise marketing lol」

Hari gave a silent reply to whoever it was.

“……I wish it were noise marketing, too.”

She was in the middle of cursing the unknown culprit, hoping they’d step on gum on their way somewhere, when the doorbell rang.

Thinking it was Jisang returning, Hari rushed to the door without checking who was outside.

“Bodyguard?”

“How can you just open the door without checking who it is!”

It wasn’t the bodyguard she’d been waiting for, but another woman who walked in scolding her like she owned the place.

Her name was Maeng Hyunseo. Manager Choi Jungwook’s wife, and the second person in Yoo Hari’s life who had been a true lifesaver.

She wasn’t the person Hari had been waiting for, but she was just as welcome.

“Unnie! What are you doing here?”

“I was worried. So I came.”

“As you can see, I’m thankfully in one piece.”

“Have you eaten?”

At Hyunseo’s question, Hari held up her half-eaten bowl of cereal.

“You’re eating that again. You really need to take care of your nutrition.”

“It’s too much effort.”

She started shoveling the soggy cereal into her mouth, and Hyunseo smacked her on the back.

“I told you not to eat that!”

The reason Hari ate salad or oatmeal wasn’t for weight management, it was simply because she couldn’t be bothered. Whether it was her natural temperament or the result of growing up without enough food at the orphanage, she had never had much of an appetite.

Hyunseo always nagged her about it, insisting that health mattered more than dieting.

“I brought side dishes. Eat properly.”

While Hyunseo transferred the side dishes onto small plates, Hari naturally reached out and rested her hand on Hyunseo’s rounded belly.

“Wow. Unnie’s belly is so warm.”

“It better be.”

“Little one. Did you know your auntie is saving up a lot of money to buy you toys? Come out soon, I miss you already!”

“Coming out too soon would be a problem.”

Her words were blunt, but the way Hyunseo looked at Hari was not so different from the way a mother looks at her child.

Hari had said cereal was fine, but faced with a proper home-cooked spread, she immediately started eating with enthusiasm, marveling at how long it had been since she’d had a real meal like this.

“Wait. Did someone sleep over?”

Hyunseo spotted the neatly folded blanket on the sofa and asked.

“Oh. The bodyguard.”

“Bodyguard?”

“The company assigned one to me.”

“Jungwook mentioned that. But he actually slept here? Isn’t that person a man?”

“He is, but I asked him to stay. I was a little scared at the thought of being alone.”

“What? Have you lost your mind! You let a bodyguard you’ve known for one day sleep here? What were you thinking!”

Hyunseo was furious, but to Hari it was already in the past, so she remained calm.

“He’s not that kind of person.”

“You say that like you know him.”

“Unnie. You know the soldier I’ve told you about so many times.”

“Yes. I know. Your first love story. I think I’ve heard it a hundred times.”

“That soldier is my bodyguard. Isn’t that incredible?”

“Really?”

“Yes! Really!”

“How did you end up meeting like that?”

“Exactly! That’s why I’m not falling apart even though someone is threatening my life right now.”

Knowing how tenderly Hari had always spoken about him, Hyunseo was briefly swept up in the warmth of it too. But she caught herself and went back to lecturing.

“Even so, a man is a man. Don’t give anyone reason to start rumors. Treat him as your bodyguard and nothing more. Understood?”

“Yes. I’ll be careful.”

Hyunseo rested her chin in her hand across from Hari.

“When our CEO said he’d take good care of you, I thought it was just something people say, but seeing how he’s handled this situation, it seems like he meant it. I’m impressed.”

“You’ve met the CEO, haven’t you, Unnie?”

“Yes. Why?”

Hyunseo was the one who had built Bless You Entertainment and raised Hari to where she was today.

When Chacha Entertainment acquired the company, she received a significant sum, but more than the money, she had seen that Chacha genuinely wanted Hari, and that they could offer things a small company never could. The merger had been decided entirely for Hari’s sake.

“Just curious. I’ve never seen him myself. I even tried searching ‘Cha president’ and got a white-haired grandfather.”

“No, that’s the chairman of the parent company. The CEO is separate. Apparently the succession isn’t fully settled yet.”

The impression had been so striking that Hyunseo still remembered his face vividly.

“Young, handsome, tall. And above all, the physique. Oh my……”

She couldn’t hide the sly smile that crept onto her face, and Hari laughed inwardly.

How handsome could a company CEO possibly be? Whoever he was, standing next to Cha Jisang would make him look like a squid. She thoroughly ridiculed the unknown CEO in her mind.

Then the doorbell rang again.

“The bodyguard must be back!”

This time she was sure it was really Jisang, but contrary to her eager expectation, it was Manager Jungwook who walked in.

“Hari. All your schedules are cancelled for the time being.”

“All of them……?”

“It’s on the CEO’s orders. Something else has come up too.”

Hyunseo asked on Hari’s behalf as she stood there looking flustered.

“Something else? Like what?”

“Moving.”

Why was moving suddenly being mentioned? The two women looked at each other in confusion. Then Jungwook said something even more out of nowhere.

“Let’s start packing right now.”

Hari knew he was dragging it out on purpose to tease her, so she didn’t react, but the problem was that Hyunseo was constitutionally incapable of tolerating suspense. Jungwook knew his wife’s temperament perfectly well and was poking at it anyway, which made him as foolish as ever.

“Hey. Choi Jungwook. Can you just say what you mean?”

“Sorry.”

Jungwook was hopelessly devoted to his wife and couldn’t hold out against her, so instead of teasing further he opened his mouth and explained.

“The company found us a place.”