EPISODE 4

When Youngjun arrrived at his office, Miso was seated at her desk, grinning down at something. She reflexively jumped to her feet at the sound of the door opening, and Youngjun gave a sidelong glance toward her.

“What are you looking at?”

“Oh, just some old photos.”

Youngjun lumbered over to Miso's desk, looked down at the old photos, and smiled.

In one of them, taken nine years ago, the two were seated at opposite ends of a long table at a general affairs department dinner, gazing in different directions. This was before they’d started working together.

Finding something strange about the Miso in the photograph, Youngjun turned to look at Miso and belatedly realized something.

“Were you this young back then?”

“Um. I'd just graduated high school then, you know.”

The 20-year-old girl with the childlike face, semi-long hair, and rather rustic attire in the photo was now an elegant woman, mature both in looks and conduct.

“When is this one from?”

“Ah, that’s from the first day after I was hired as your secretary. I didn't have a tripod, so I used the dressing table for that photo. The angle was off, so I had to sit in an awkward position. Ho ho ho.”

Miso was making a V with her hand and smiling in the photograph. It looked like it was taken at home, and she must have forgotten to make the background pretty: the tattered wallpaper was plain to see.

Miso's family had been evicted from their home on the day Miso received her national exam results. Her father, who’d operated a fairly large musical instrument shop at Nagwon Arcade, had fallen victim to a fraud.

While her furious father scoured the country like a lunatic to find the thief, Miso had to somehow find a way to pay that month’s living expenses.

Her exam results were in the top 1% bracket, and her school grades were impeccable. She would have had an extensive list of universities she could have attended on full scholarships, but reality is seldom so perfect.

Her father's huge debt, along with the tuition for her sisters’ regional medical schools, dorm expenses, and living expenses, were probably too much to deal with, even with the sisters teaching multiple private classes.

In addition, without her, there would have been no one to care for her father, who’d lost his will to live and wandered about like a tramp. Her mother had died of an illness when Miso was still a child.

And so Miso gave up on her prospects of college. The person who cried the most then was neither Miso herself nor her family, but her homeroom teacher. That may serve as a hint regarding just how desperate the situation was back then.

Miso had given up on college even before writing any applications; she started working a part-time job doing mundane tasks at a lawyer’s office. The lawyer favored her diligent attitude and recommended her in February of the following year as the temporary dispatched secretary of a Yooil Group general affairs department executive who was soon to retire.

Youngjun had just returned from America and was making the rounds through various departments to grow his executive ability. They met for the first time at the dinner in the photo.

“When I first met you, Vice-Chairman, the first impression I had of you was...really hard to explain.”

Youngjun looked perplexed, and Miso covered her mouth to laugh. Wow. This person feels so insolent and natural at the same time. What is with this guy? Her inner monologue had run along those lines, but she didn’t dare say it out loud.

“What do you mean?”

“You wouldn’t understand. Ah! Do you remember that bathroom incident, from the same day?”

“What bathroom incident?”

“I was standing in front of the bathroom, trembling, unable to enter. Remember?”

“Were you?”

“Well, of course you don't remember.”

Miso had left the room as the dinner festivities had reached their peak, and had been fidgeting in front of the bathroom entrance.

For Miso, who’d never consumed an alcoholic beverage in her life, the two jugs of beer the soon-to-retire executive had pushed on her had been too much. Her bladder felt like it was about to burst. And soon.

Despite the urgency, she was still fidgeting in front of the bathroom because of the lone spider building a web to one side of the entrance.

Miso had suffered from severe arachnophobia from a young age. Whenever she encountered a spider, especially one dangling from a thread of spider web, it chilled her to the bone and rendered her immobile. At such moments, even breathing became hard for her.

“I heard shoes clipping the floor and I turned around to see you.”

“Me?”

“Yes. You demanded to know my name the moment I met you, you know.”

Miso had been staring vacantly with a pained expression. Miso's forehead was soon creased with angry wrinkles, however.

“And then you...”

Youngjun's smooth face remained as impassive as ever.

“You just left.”

“Oh?”

Dull indifference in the face of an outrageous situation. It was just like him.

“That was a serious situation, you know! You just turned and left. I can say this to you now, but good heavens! Isn't it human decency to ask why, if a person is standing there trembling?”

“Maybe I wasn't interested.”

Miso sighed.

“So what happened to the spider?”

“I have no clue how he knew, but a restaurant employee came hurriedly and killed it. I was so grateful.”

“Are you still scared of spiders?”

“Yes. That’s one thing I’ve never been able to overcome.”

“Hm.”

Youngjun picked up another photograph, this time taken at a location resembling a university hospital. Miso was smiling brightly in the photograph, arms linked with two other women in white gowns.

“Your sisters?”

“Yes. One is an anesthesiologist fellow at a university hospital, and the other sister works as a salaried doctor at a big hospital. The one with glasses is my oldest sister, Pil-nam. And the short and stout one is my other older sister, Mal-heui.”

“I think I can see when your father decided to stop having kids, and why your name is Miso.”

Miso meant smile. No doubt her father broke into a smile whenever he was asked if his third was also a daughter.

“What?”

Miso stared up at him, round-eyed. Perhaps she did not understand what he meant.

“It’s nothing.”

Miso looked at him for a while, wondering what had gotten into him. He didn’t say inane things often. Miso turned to the pile of photos again and picked up a different photo.

“This was before I got on the plane.”

Miso was smiling again, this time in the departure lounge of Incheon International Airport. Her eyes were puffy and the tip of her nose a bright pink.

“You cried that day, didn't you?”

“A little.”

“Why?”

“Um, I’m not sure. I guess I found it scary to leave my home country, even for a short while... I was also a bit upset with my family...Something like that.”

By the time Miso had neared the end of her three-month contract, another secretary from the team had quietly given her a heads up. They were looking for a secretary for Lee Youngjun, soon to be dispatched overseas. She was told she should try applying for the position. The remuneration was quite good, though it would be very tough to spend two years in a foreign country she did not know the language of.

No matter how smart she'd been up to high school, she was still a high school graduate, nothing more. Furthermore, she’d only been a secretary for three months. There was no way someone like her would be chosen as the secretary of the chairman’s oldest son; when she heard how much the job was worth, however, she decided to give it a shot anyway. The salary was so high, she’d have been grateful to be worked around the clock as long as she could have the job.

She hadn't known that her tentative application would be accepted immediately. In retrospect, maybe the heavens had aided her?

“Have you paid off all the debt?”

“Not yet.”

“You said you haven't looked up your next job. What do you plan to do?”

“Are you worried about me?”

“Don't be silly.”

Miso smiled at Youngjun's sharp retort.

“With my sisters helping, the debt shrank in no time. It’s almost paid off, and I’ve handed it over to them since last month. They’ll take care of the rest.”

This reply didn't seem to satisfy Youngjun.

He seemed to be searching for the right words. He maintained silence for a while before mumbling quietly, “Your face hasn't changed a bit, after nine years.”

Throughout all the photos taken during her two-year job overseas, and from the time Youngjun began to manage the corporation in earnest up to now, Miso's face had really stayed the same. Smiling, always brightly smiling.

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“You’re the same as back then, too.”

Except for a few gray hairs.

“Same as back then? Are you kidding? I don’t know about you, but I’ve grown very much since then.”

Indeed, his looks had grown manlier and more dignified, his status within the company had been elevated, and his wealth had snowballed. He’d grown, in many more ways than one. Though of course, such self-praise tended to sound arrogant and embarrassing. That was the minor detraction. Let's choose to set aside his sky-high self-esteem and narcissistic condition for now.

“I haven’t wasted a single hour, minute, second, or moment during the past nine years. No, strike that, not in my entire life.”

Miso stacked together all the photos scattered on the desk and tapped the stack against it to align them.

“No doubt you’re right.”

“I'm surprised that you had any time to be bored. Have you been doing your work properly?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I'm telling you that you should get your act together instead of quitting, if this is because of ennui.”

Youngjun's jab prompted a small burst of laughter from Miso. She immediately lowered her head and apologized for her faux pas.

“Sorry I laughed. You know better than anyone that I’ve been diligent, without a trace of laziness.”

“Then what in the world is the problem?”

“I've already told you.”

It was plain from the expression on his face that he hadn’t understood, in fact. Miso placed the neat stack of photos in an envelope and pushed it to one side. Youngjun noticed that the open drawer had been cleaned out, and a bunch of old stationery had been thrown into the garbage bin. She had been cleaning out her desk, no doubt about it.

“Here, take this. They’re the people we’ve picked out through our review. The secretary team will be interviewing them in person tomorrow morning. As I told you before, we’ll take care of most of the selection process for you. You just need to be there for the final interviews.”

When Miso cheerfully handed the file over to him, Youngjun glared at her coldly.

“Are you going to keep being this way?”

“I'm sorry. But I’ll make sure to find a secretary much better than I before I leave.”

Her smile defeated any further sharp rejoinders from him. He found he could not keep nitpicking while looking at Miso's smiling face. He studied her with eyes that were still frosty and strode into his office.

“Phew.”

Miso, left alone, heaved a sigh and bent over to empty the garbage bin. It was filled to the brim with discarded items. She then suddenly stopped in confusion and tilted her head.

So what happened to the spider?

“Huh? Did I mention there was a spider to him earlier?”