Chapter 7
By the time Ji-seo got home, it was already past midnight. Her parents—who’d closed up the shop and returned earlier—were deep asleep.
For the first two years of her career, whenever Ji-seo entered a Gate, they couldn’t eat or sleep properly. But after watching her return home safely, time and time again, for several years now, they no longer stayed up waiting if it was only a D-rank Gate.
Her father’s faint snoring—something that had started with age—reached all the way into the living room. Not feeling especially exhausted, Ji-seo sat down on the couch and looked around the darkened space.
Even without turning on the lights, her Esper vision easily picked out the yellowed wallpaper, faded molding, a broken baseboard peeling away, dents in the vinyl flooring. It had already been fifteen years since they’d moved into this house after her father retired from the bank.
We really should renovate… or move, she thought—only for that train of thought to naturally lead to the recent catastrophe she’d caused.
“Ugh…”
She let out a small groan and habitually turned on her phone. Several messages had come in, which she only now checked.
The first was from her mother, telling her there was braised short ribs in the fridge and to eat that for breakfast if she came home late.
The other was from someone who wasn’t added as a contact.
[You worked hard.]
[Are you feeling okay?]
“…Who is this?”
Ji-seo scratched her temple. The timestamp read 3:20 a.m.—which meant the sender knew she’d entered a Gate. They’d probably sent it after seeing the Gate-closure news or the disaster alert being lifted.
If the number’s not saved, it’s probably not someone important.
She plugged her phone into the charger and headed into her room.
After clocking out at 3 a.m. and suppressing a Gate, she was exhausted. Fortunately, depending on the Gate’s rank, Espers were typically granted anywhere from one day to a full week of remote work.
Calling it “remote work” was generous—after burning through both body and mind to fight and win, it was really just time off so they could rest properly before the next Gate opened.
Ji-seo intended to take full advantage of it. There was no telling when she’d next go without sleep or food, rolling around in pools of blood. You rested when you could.
But she slept too well.
“Holy hell. I was gonna eat galbi-jjim with Mom and Dad…”
When she woke up, it was 4 p.m. Her parents would’ve left for the shop hours ago.
Like Shin-chan looking for his mom, she wandered around the small apartment muttering “Where are you?”—but no matter how she looked, she was alone.
“How do you sleep for twelve hours straight?”
She scratched at her bird’s-nest hair, then decided she should at least feed the stomach that had been empty for nearly twenty hours.
After eating, she could help out at the shop—or head to headquarters to train. With that plan in mind, she cheerfully reheated the braised short ribs and started the rice cooker.
She even set out the scallion kimchi her sister Yeon-seo loved so much. Once everything was laid out, it looked almost excessively lavish.
“A feast like this needs a rice buddy.”
Recently, she’d gotten hooked on a certain office worker YouTuber whose main content was cooking neat, efficient meals after work and enjoying a light drink alongside them.
The ingredients weren’t fancy, but the food always looked so delicious and well-presented. Even Ji-seo—who normally viewed meals as nothing more than fuel—sometimes found her appetite stirred while watching.
“My phone, my phone…”
She looked around before remembering she’d left it charging by the couch the night before. She hurried over—and the moment she turned on the screen, she couldn’t help but gasp.
13 missed calls
Startled, Ji-seo immediately checked the call log.
All thirteen were from the same number.
And it wasn’t saved.
Did something happen? Maybe a parking issue? Worried, she grabbed her car keys from the shoe cabinet by the door while dialing the unfamiliar number.
Whoever it was must’ve been waiting anxiously—the call was picked up before the ringtone could even finish once.
Living in a villa with limited parking, Ji-seo quickly adopted a polite tone.
“Hello, I’m calling back because I had missed calls. Who is this?”
—“Who is this?”
The caller was a man.
His voice was low and pleasant, but the curt tone felt oddly familiar. She’d heard someone speak like that recently—sharp, blunt. Where was it again…?
Ah.
“Vice President Baek Do-hyuk?”
—“Hah. Ms. Lim Ji-seo, you didn’t save my number? And why aren’t you answering your phone?”
Baek Do-hyuk sounded deeply displeased by the fact that his number wasn’t saved in his debtor’s contacts.
Should I have saved it? Was that necessary?
Then again—she had caused him damages in the tens of millions. And since she hadn’t answered, he might’ve thought she was dodging him.
Still, his voice wasn’t raised, nor was it fast. Yet it carried a strange weight that pressed down on the listener.
Either way, Ji-seo quickly apologized for her unintentional act of debt evasion.
“Ah, I’m sorry. I was exhausted after coming back from a Gate last night and ended up sleeping until now.”
There was a brief silence—then an odd sound of breathing. Her smartphone, a tiny culmination of modern technology, transmitted even the softest sigh without missing a beat.
Is he really that annoyed?
Ji-seo waited quietly for his response.
A D-rank Gate only took an hour or two at most. She’d been about to mock herself for sleeping the whole day after something so minor—
—“If you just woke up… have you eaten?”
Suddenly, Baek Do-hyuk’s voice softened.
Had he relaxed after realizing she wasn’t avoiding him, just overslept? And asking if she’d eaten—he’d clearly calmed down.
“Ah—no. I was just about to.”
Of course. Korean instinct, she thought. Even if the culprit was pathetic, food still came first. Ji-seo nodded to herself. Even chaebols were no exception.
—“Then let’s eat together.”
A few days later.
Ji-seo met Yeon-seo at a café in the lobby of a university hospital. It had been exactly two weeks since they’d last sprawled out together on the living room floor, scratching their bellies.
Seeing how much thinner her sister looked, Ji-seo felt a pang of pity and began explaining the stacked side-dish containers one by one.
“This is soy-braised beef. These are donggeurangttaeng and assorted jeon—you can eat them right away. There’s a lot, so share with the other doctors. And this one is—”
“Share? I barely have enough to eat myself.”
“There’s a lot.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
Unlike Ji-seo, Yeon-seo had a hearty appetite—and when it came to their mom’s cooking, she had zero restraint. Seeing how gaunt she’d gotten, Ji-seo slid the cake she’d ordered with her coffee toward her.
“How’ve you been? Still getting dispatched a lot?”
“Yeah. More or less.”
Knowing her sister wasn’t the type to complain in detail, Yeon-seo narrowed her eyes with a low hum. She always examined Ji-seo like that.
Whether it was Yeon-seo barely finding time to come home, or Ji-seo pulling all-nighters inside Gates, their situations weren’t that different. Yet Yeon-seo always worried as if Ji-seo were a child left alone near water.
Ji-seo couldn’t fault her for it. Given Ji-seo’s profession, worry was unavoidable.
So she stirred her iced coffee with a straw and changed the subject. She didn’t really open up about these things to coworkers or friends. After all, Im Yeon-seo—the smartest and most perceptive person she knew—was right here.
“Unni. This is about someone I know. A coworker.”
“Mm.”
Yeon-seo replied absentmindedly, eyeing the metal container of assorted jeon despite the café’s No Outside Food sign. There was definitely pollack jeon inside. She was holding back from taking just one piece.
“So, this person got into a minor accident. The other party is rich. A guy around her age. The car she hit was really expensive. But instead of talking about repairs, he keeps calling her out to eat. Always dinner. Always coffee afterward. Yesterday, he even suggested watching a movie.”
Carefully, Ji-seo summarized what had been happening with Baek Do-hyuk lately.
The day after clearing a Gate—she’d declined his invitation to eat together. Then he complained that since his car was in for repairs, there was a restaurant he really wanted to go to but couldn’t.
As if a man like Baek Do-hyuk only had one car. Wouldn’t he have a driver?
That thought hadn’t crossed Ji-seo’s mind at the time, and she’d ended up picking him up in her fifteen-year-old sedan.
That was how it started.
No car. No loaner. Because it was Im Ji-seo. Because it had to be Im Ji-seo.
With excuses like that, Baek Do-hyuk had neatly ensnared her—and lately, he’d been outright calling her out as his meal partner.
Including the dinner on the day the Gate opened, it was already the fifth time.
If this were a blind date, they’d blown past the third meeting. And it wasn’t like he was some middle manager who couldn’t eat alone. At his level, he probably rarely ate solo—and he had to be insanely busy.
“So why is he doing this?”
It was Ji-seo’s biggest concern these days.
“He’s making a move.”
Yeon-seo said it flatly.
