Chapter 6
Delusional Cove
In the sitting room of the VIP hospital room, Chief Secretary Choi Kang-hoon looked down through the window.
A small, beautifully landscaped park stretched out in front of the hospital.
The early summer sunlight made the lush greenery of the park look even more vivid.
Ji-an approached with two cups of coffee and quietly stood beside him, handing one over.
“Chief Secretary, here.”
“Thank you.”
Chief Secretary Choi accepted the coffee with a brief nod. He took a sip, his expression troubled, before continuing.
“Tomorrow, I’ll put an alternative agenda concerning Director’s absence before the board of directors at headquarters, and we’ll temporarily put the new overseas acquisition on hold. I’ll also give the first-quarter earnings presentation in his place.”
Ji-an nodded.
“Yes, Chief Secretary. I’ll organize the inquiries from the investment firms and report them to you.”
“All right.”
“When do you think Director will be discharged?”
“The doctor says he could technically leave as early as today, but…”
Chief Secretary Choi’s voice trailed off as he thought of Sa-heon in his current state. He took another sip of coffee, his face filled with concern.
Ji-an sighed and nodded.
“I think it would be better for him to leave as soon as possible. There must be an information network inside the hospital too, and they’ll quickly notice that Director’s memories aren’t intact.”
“I agree. Let’s have him return home for the time being.”
If the fact that Sa-heon had lost his memories leaked to the outside world, the balance of power within the family would be thrown into turmoil.
Especially since the people who had tried to eliminate him by causing his car accident wouldn’t let such an opportunity slip through their fingers.
On top of that, he kept treating Ji-an like his girlfriend and saying all sorts of absurd things.
Another sigh escaped between Ji-an’s lips. Chief Secretary Choi stared out the window with a troubled expression before changing the subject.
“It’s gotten quite hot.”
“It really has.”
The two fell silent for a moment.
The weather had grown warmer.
Which meant that Eurosatory, Europe’s largest defense exhibition for land-based weapons systems, was just around the corner.
“Still, it’s fortunate that Director is recovering so quickly.”
“Yes. It was a miracle that he wasn’t more seriously injured.”
But Sa-heon’s memories were still frozen at the age of twenty-one.
The heavy secret shared only by Ji-an and Chief Secretary Choi weighed heavily on both of their hearts.
“Let’s discuss it with Director and proceed with his discharge right away. I’ll stop by the office and come back.”
“Understood, Chief Secretary.”
Ji-an bowed her head in greeting. By then, the coffee had already gone cold. Chief Secretary Choi drained it in one gulp and swallowed another sigh.
Twenty-one-year-old Sa-heon, stripped of his memories, was a man who was increasingly impossible to predict.
“I just can’t accept that we weren’t lovers.”
Lying diagonally across the bed, Sa-heon stared intently at Ji-an and muttered as though speaking to himself rather than asking a question or starting a conversation.
“Why would I do that? With a woman that beautiful right in front of me.”
Ji-an, who was adjusting the humidifier beside his bed, heard him perfectly. She pretended she hadn’t and simply pressed the button to adjust the humidity.
Was I impotent or something? That doesn’t seem right.
Sa-heon’s muttering was quieter this time, but in the silence of the hospital room, it somehow sounded even clearer.
Ji-an’s hand paused for a moment before she calmly pressed the humidifier button again.
A faint whirring sound came from the machine.
“Honey. Can I have your number?”
This time, Ji-an looked up from the flowers she was arranging in a vase. Her expression remained calm, but a wary question flickered in her eyes.
“Why do you need my number? You don’t even have a phone yet.”
“You said you’re my secretary. Of course I need it, don’t I?”
Oh, right.
Ji-an bit her lip lightly.
He’s been saying strange things about how pretty I am, so of course I’m going to start overthinking everything.
She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment before opening them again, silently scolding herself. Then she took a business card from her bag and handed it to him.
“Here.”
Their fingertips brushed lightly as she handed him the card. A strange sensation, almost as though an electric current had passed between them, made Ji-an hurriedly pull her hand away.
“Thanks.”
Sa-heon ran his finger over his name before slipping the business card into the front pocket of his hospital gown. Then he flashed a villainous grin.
“I’ll put it to good use when I need it.”
A vaguely unpleasant feeling made Ji-an force the corners of her lips upward. Sa-heon threw off the blanket and slowly got to his feet.
Her head naturally tilted upward to follow his tall frame.
He had only taken one step closer, but with his long stride, the distance between them disappeared in an instant.
“Why are you being so wary of me?”
Sa-heon laughed in disbelief when Ji-an flinched and instinctively took a step backward.
“I’m not being wary.”
“You clearly are.”
Even though he’d lost his memories, his instincts were still sharp.
When Ji-an couldn’t come up with a response, Sa-heon opened the refrigerator and took out an orange.
“Want some?”
“I’m fine. Would you like me to peel it for you?”
When Ji-an reached out her hand, he tossed the orange lightly into the air and caught it with a grin.
“If you’re going to peel it, feed it to me too.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Figures. You never fall for it.”
I told you she’s attractive.
Muttering to himself, he skillfully tossed the orange into the air once more before walking toward the dining area in one corner of the room.
Pretending not to hear him, Ji-an took a small kitchen knife and a plate from the cabinet, set them on the table, and took the orange from his hand.
“I’ll just do it for you.”
“All right, then.”
He had nearly died and lost his memories on top of that, yet somehow he was so carefree.
It feels like I’m the only one agonizing over this.
Ji-an peeled the orange, letting out a worried breath.
“Director, do you realize how serious the situation is right now? Someone deliberately sabotaged your car.”
“That’s a problem.”
Sa-heon rested his chin on his hand and stared at her as though she were talking about someone else’s troubles.
A little frustrated, Ji-an set down the orange and raised her voice slightly.
“The last person Director spoke to on the phone was the Vice President. The phone was damaged, so we can’t listen to the call right now… but judging from the conversation recorded on the black box, there’s a high probability that the Vice President was behind it.”
“Wow. When I was in elementary school, he tied me to a tree and beat me. Now that I’m in my thirties, he’s trying to kill me.”
He scoffed as though none of it surprised him.
“He beat you?”
“Yes. I’m pretty pitiful, aren’t I?”
He folded his long arms on the table and rested his upper body against them, tilting his head as he looked up at her with lonely eyes.
“Two complete strangers suddenly came into my life claiming to be my brothers, and they beat up a little kid like that.”
“Then were you always on bad terms with them? Even when you were twenty-one, the age you remember being now?”
“We were never on good terms. Especially two years ago—ah, I mean, when I was a senior in high school, they used to wake me up at three in the morning every day.”
“Why?”
“They were afraid I’d get good grades. They’d open my bedroom door just to wake me up and pour water on me. Though, from my current perspective, that was more than ten years ago.”
Ji-an picked up the orange she’d set down and continued peeling it, muttering in disbelief.
“How could they do that…? It must have been hard.”
“Not particularly.”
Sa-heon shrugged.
Ji-an was quietly surprised by how casually he brushed aside things that were anything but ordinary.
“Then they did that throughout your entire senior year?”
“Hmm… No. They stopped after I installed an electric shock device on my doorknob.”
A segment of orange slipped from Ji-an’s hand and fell to the floor.
“Y-you mean an electric shock?”
“They got electrocuted. Must have hurt quite a bit.”
Sa-heon calmly straightened his upper body and continued.
“Still, thanks to that, I woke up early. On days when I couldn’t fall back asleep, I just studied. So I prepared well for the college entrance exam. I got in as the top student in my department.”
“Ah, haha…”
Ji-an gave an awkward laugh.
“I see.”
“I barely even got to experience college life, and now I’m suddenly over thirty. It’s pretty unfair. Especially when the person I think is my girlfriend keeps denying that we’ve ever dated.”
Sa-heon lightly brushed the back of Ji-an’s hand with his fingers, raising and lowering one eyebrow in dissatisfaction.
“I can understand why you’d be confused.”
Ji-an discreetly pulled her hand away, then gave an awkward smile as she picked up the piece of orange that had fallen onto the floor and placed it on a tissue.
“You don’t understand why I’m not more surprised than I am, do you?”
Sa-heon continued with a relaxed smile.
“I’ve been kidnapped several times since I was a child. When I was a teenager, I almost got stabbed while I was out with my father. And when I came home, I had brothers who were constantly desperate to kill each other.”
“Ah… I didn’t know.”
Because Sa-heon had such a deep-rooted distrust of people, there were only two members of the secretary’s office who served as his closest aides.
Now Ji-an finally understood why he’d always been so exceptionally strict about security.
And why he remained so calm even after something this serious had happened.
Things that would likely leave ordinary people traumatized after experiencing them even once, he described as casually as though he were talking about yesterday’s weather.
Perhaps what seemed shockingly abnormal to her was perfectly normal in the world he belonged to.
The position of ultimate head of Hyun-gang, a position for which brothers were willing to threaten each other’s lives to claim it, must have been almost like a destiny in their world—a way of proving that they were the final survivor in a world where only the strong survived.
Ji-an couldn’t answer. She simply finished cutting the orange into pieces.
She didn’t even dare offer him some careless words of consolation.
“You look like you’re sorry for asking something you shouldn’t have. I’m fine.”
“Ah.”
Sa-heon opened his mouth and nodded toward the piece of orange in Ji-an’s hand.
Caught off guard, Ji-an placed one piece of orange into his mouth.
Sa-heon accepted it, then curved his lips into a handsome smile.
“See? Something bad happened, but in the end, something sweet came out of it too.”
A fresh citrus scent spread through the air.
For a long moment, Ji-an couldn’t take her eyes off his face.
