Carrying Hyeon-myeong’s message, Jeong-yeon trudged back into the hospital room.
The moment Jeong-yeon stepped inside, Yu-yeon fired off the question. Unlike moments before, her face was fraught with clear distress.
Suspicious at Yu-yeon’s question, Jeong-yeon furrowed her brow. Even if she didn’t know everything about her sister, Yu-yeon was never one to say something like this out of nowhere.
Yu-yeon looked at Jeong-yeon in silence before turning her head away with a sigh.
Was it all right to tell her, now that her little sister was an adult?
Since the sister she remembered before waking had still been in high school, Yu-yeon hesitated, having not yet fully adjusted to the change.
After a moment’s deliberation, Yu-yeon opened her mouth with solemn resolve.
Jeong-yeon turned her head away as well, blinking her reddened eyes.
‘No wonder the way he treated me was so completely different from how he treated her. To think there was that kind of history between them.’
If Executive Director Choi Hyeon-myeong had truly said such things to her sister, he was in the wrong, but Jeong-yeon still could not turn a blind eye to the kindness he had shown. To Jeong-yeon, Choi Hyeon-myeong had been a gentleman and a benefactor for the past two years.
Carefully, Jeong-yeon began to recount everything that had happened while Yu-yeon was in a coma.
Two years and four months. She spoke of those heavy, agonizing days.
She spoke of the man who had been her sole ray of light during that pitch-black time, when she had lost their father and her sister would not wake.
Watching her sister carefully choose her words to defend Choi Hyeon-myeong, Yu-yeon knit her brows in displeasure.
“…”
Before her accident two years and four months ago, quite a few men had approached her claiming to have fallen in love at first sight, so Yu-yeon found herself speechless at Jeong-yeon’s answer.
Still, she couldn’t make sense of it. After two years and four months in a coma, she was reduced to skin and bones. She had probably looked pitiful for a very long time.
There was no way his feelings from falling in love at first sight could have remained unchanged for someone like her.
If those feelings were truly intact, that wasn’t pure devotion—it was perversion. He might be far more deranged than she thought.
Her sister, however, didn’t seem to have thought that far.
When her sister compared Choi Hyeon-myeong’s persistence to Do Yong-tae, Yu-yeon clamped her lips even tighter.
“…”
Jeong-yeon held out her phone, fixing Yu-yeon with a fierce glare.
Thinking her sister acted more like Choi Hyeon-myeong’s sibling than her own, Yu-yeon gave her the hardest glare she could muster. Jeong-yeon didn’t back down in the least.
Jeong-yeon was not merely holding her ground; she was seething with spite.
Her voice climbed an octave with every syllable, ringing through the hospital room.
‘Ah, she hasn’t changed one bit in two years.’
A headache throbbed behind Yu-yeon’s temples as she remembered her sister screaming over the phone two years ago because she had borrowed one of her shirts without asking.
That stubborn girl refused to concede even an inch, even to her bedridden sister.
— Look only with your eyes.
In the exhibition hall, cautionary notices were posted every so often near the floor beneath the artworks hung along the vast wall.
Around one hundred works by Korea’s most acclaimed painters had been gathered in a single place.
Choi Hyeon-myeong, who had come to pay his respects at the invitation of an acquaintance hosting the exhibition, had been lingering before a single painting for a long time.
A size-200 canvas—standing before a sprawling frame 2.6 meters wide and 1.9 meters tall, the man of imposing build did not look diminished in the least. If anything, the sight of him before the canvas was a painting in itself.
Watching quietly from a few paces back, his secretary, Kim Gi-baek, felt an urge to warn the people surreptitiously drifting closer to steal glances at the man’s picture-perfect features rather than the art on display.
Look only with your eyes.
Because the reality is dangerous.
To Gi-baek, that striking face was the most terrifying one in the world.
Choi Hyeon-myeong had a moniker known only to those in his inner circle: Killer Whale.
They said the ancient Romans called the killer whale a demon from the underworld. Even now, that description rang true.
A creature that couldn't look more majestic in photographs, yet was supposedly a complete psychopath in the flesh.
Splendid, even lovely to look at, but foul-tempered, vicious, and capable of the utmost cruelty the moment things went awry.
An intelligent killer that never lets go once it sinks its teeth into its prey, not until that prey is dead. A killer whale.
Choi Hyeon-myeong was precisely that kind of man.
He would carry himself with the quiet dignity of a refined scholar, gazing out as though everything in the world were entirely meaningless, only to bring ruthless focus and drive to anything that truly needed doing. And whenever something caught his interest, his obsession ran terrifyingly deep.
Catch him on the wrong foot when his nerves were frayed, and it was over. Under Choi Hyeon-myeong’s chilling smile, Gi-baek had seen half-heartedly diligent people cut down without mercy countless times.
So please, everyone, just admire him with your eyes.
Standing still as a statue for two hours in front of a monochromatic canvas simply titled Cyan was proof enough that the man was uniquely unhinged.
Was he introverted, or did he just find speaking bothersome? Was he a meticulous planner, or utterly spontaneous? Did he harbor ambition for power, or none at all? Was he in a good mood right now, or a foul one? Even after serving him for six years, Gi-baek still couldn’t make a definitive judgment about this ultimate enigma of a man.
A man whose true intentions could never be read.
That was Kim Gi-baek’s boss, Choi Hyeon-myeong.
The madman who had stood motionless for two hours finally turned around. The people clustered behind him, whispering as they watched, flinched and quickly averted their eyes. Without giving them so much as a glance, he strode past.
Was it just his imagination? Though barely noticeable, his boss’s footsteps felt ever so slightly lighter.
It seemed as though something about him had changed after he stepped out on his own a few hours ago.
To Gi-baek, that was even more terrifying. The man simply never let anyone let their guard down.
While Gi-baek stood dazed with his phone in hand, Hyeon-myeong walked ahead.
The air outside the building felt refreshing.
—This is Hong Yu-yeon. Forgive me for being so rude earlier; my mind was in complete disarray. My sister told me everything that has happened in the meantime. I would like to offer my apologies and thanks in person. Please feel free to visit whenever it is convenient for you. I ask for your understanding, as I am unable to move about just yet.
Before he knew it, the world had slipped past the chill of winter and entered the season when trees burst into bud. Only now did he notice.
—Tomorrow at four. I will visit then.
Hyeon-myeong’s lips curved into a slow smile as he replied to the text message that had arrived two hours earlier from Hong Jeong-yeon’s number. He did not notice his secretary’s face freezing over at the sight of that beaming expression.