The Woman Who Stole My Flower
Chapter 6
Chapter 6
6.
“And lastly, Manager Jung Yeon-seo from the CSR team.”
Fortunately, not a sound came from above her head.
A suffocating silence stretched on. Thinking enough time had passed, Yeon-seo cautiously raised her head—only to meet his gaze.
…Kang Joo-heon was staring straight at her, his eyes boring into hers.
“Well then, now that introductions are out of the way, shall we move to your office for today?”
The PR director kindly moved to escort him to the private office that had been prepared in advance, but Kang Joo-heon didn’t budge an inch.
“Player Kang Joo-heon?”
Though prompted, he didn’t seem to hear. His gaze remained pinned solely on Yeon-seo. As if no one else existed in the room.
“……”
As he stared without even blinking, Yeon-seo couldn’t even breathe. Her mind went completely blank.
Did he recognize me?
Then what am I supposed to do?
Should I beg for mercy and say I committed a mortal sin?
Should I play dumb and claim he has the wrong person?
By this point, the others had caught on to the strange atmosphere as well. In the deathly silence, eyes darted back and forth between Kang Joo-heon and Yeon-seo as if asking, ‘What on earth is going on?’
Only after a long moment did he finally open his mouth.
“……What the hell are you?”
His heavily lowered voice, sounding as though he were barely holding back, seemed tangled with every imaginable emotion. Anger, resentment, fierce passion, and even a strange sense of relief that he had finally found her.
As the tension turned decidedly ominous, his manager grabbed his arm.
“Jooheon-ah, let’s go inside first.”
“Let go.”
“Alright, let’s just go in and talk, okay?”
Only after the manager practically shoved Kang Joo-heon into the private office did the PR director rush over, pale as a ghost.
“Manager Jung Yeon-seo! What on earth did you do to Player Kang Joo-heon?”
I took his innocence. Unable to possibly utter that, Yeon-seo desperately scrambled for an excuse.
“Um, earlier in the elevator… I think I accidentally… stepped on his foot.”
She had merely blurted out the first thing that came to mind, but it seemed far more convincing than expected—judging by how everyone collectively gasped in horror.
“What? Player Kang Joo-heon-nim’s precious foot?”
“The foot of a player with an ankle injury?”
“That ridiculously expensive foot?”
“You stepped on it?!”
Everyone’s faces drained of color. The PR director personally shoved Yeon-seo by the back.
“Get in there right now and apologize. Beg him! Beg on your knees until your hands wear out!”
In the end, Yeon-seo was pushed into Kang Joo-heon’s office like a calf being dragged to slaughter.
Kang Joo-heon was standing tall in the middle of the room, still boring his gaze straight at her.
“……”
Faced with a physique capable of holding its own in physical clashes against European players, the sheer sense of intimidation was overwhelming. Yeon-seo couldn’t even bring herself to look him in the eye.
“Is she the culprit?”
Without even glancing at the manager, who chimed in with a hostile tone, Kang Joo-heon jerked his chin toward the door.
“Hyung, wait outside.”
“No, Jooheon-ah. I need to hear this too. A woman like this needs a proper scolding…!”
“I said, get out.”
He seemed the type who never tolerated having to say things three times. The moment the manager clamped his mouth shut and obediently left, only the two of them remained in the office.
“Um……”
I am truly sorry for taking your purity. Unable to force those words past her lips, she hesitated, only for Kang Joo-heon to speak first.
“How could you just leave like that?”
His voice was laden with reproach.
“Do you know how much I… for days…!”
Stealing a glance upward, she saw that his usually composed face was swept with turmoil. Interpreting it as rage, Yeon-seo’s heart dropped into her stomach.
“I’m sorry!”
Yeon-seo hurriedly bowed at the waist.
“That day, I was so drunk that I didn’t even recognize who you were.”
Even to herself, the idea that someone could fail to recognize Kang Joo-heon seemed absurd no matter how drunk they were, but that was the only conclusion she could reach. If she had recognized him, how could she have ever been bold enough to get tangled up with Kang Joo-heon?
“When I woke up the next morning, I couldn’t remember anything… so I got scared and just ran away. I am truly sorry.”
At that moment, a subtle tremor crossed his expression.
“You don’t remember?”
He asked back in utter disbelief.
“You don’t remember that night? Not a single thing?”
“Yes. Not at all. But I swear, I never approached you with any bad intentions.”
Yeon-seo tried desperately to make it clear she wasn’t a sasaeng fan.
“I honestly don’t know much about you, Player Kang Joo-heon-nim, and I’ve never even watched any of your matches.”
An even greater shock washed over his sculpted, handsome features. Staring blankly at Yeon-seo, he murmured haltingly after a long silence.
“You’ve never… watched them? My matches?”
It was the unvarnished truth, with not a shred of guilt before the heavens. She had occasionally tuned in to international matches like the Asian Games, the Olympics, or the World Cup, but that was strictly to cheer for the South Korean national team, not to watch Kang Joo-heon. As for his games in the European leagues, she swore on her life she had never seen a single one.
As if finding it impossible to believe, he pressed on.
“Then you’re saying you’re not my fan?”
I knew it, he really thought I was a sasaeng. Yeon-seo waved her hands vigorously in denial.
“No, I’m not! Absolutely not! In the first place, I never had any interest in you, Player-nim!”
The moment the last words left her mouth, she realized how utterly rude they sounded, but being rude was far better than being misunderstood.
Kang Joo-heon stared at Yeon-seo blankly, frozen like a paused screen. He looked stunned, and in a way, utterly drained. To draw a comparison, it was precisely the expression someone would make upon finding a winning first-prize lottery ticket in the pocket of an old seasonal coat—only to realize the claim period had already expired.
“……”
The man, who had lost his words for a good while, suddenly fired off another question.
“Then are you saying you didn’t even know who I was?”
“Pardon?”
“I’m asking if you don’t know me.”
Yeon-seo couldn’t fathom the point of the question. How could any South Korean citizen not know Kang Joo-heon? Even an undercover spy from the North would know him. Noticing her confusion, he corrected his question.
“I mean, have you really never seen me before that?!”
Is he still suspecting me of being a stalker?! Yeon-seo waved her hands with all the sincerity she could muster.
“Never! Really, never! I swear to heaven, that day was the first time in my entire life I’ve ever laid eyes on you!”
Her sincerity seemed to finally get through to him. Watching Kang Joo-heon sink heavily onto the sofa as if all the strength had drained from his body, Yeon-seo thought to herself: Did it shock him that much to think the innocence he’d guarded so dearly was taken by a woman who isn’t even a fan?
“I also deeply regret that things turned out that way unintentionally. But still, it’s not like I forced you into anything, right?”
Though she had zero memory of it, she felt confident on that point. Given the sheer difference in their physical build, was he someone she could ever force into anything?
“We’re both adults, Player-nim, so I hope we can just treat it as a one-night mistake and forget about it.”
“Then, if you’ll excuse me,” Yeon-seo said, bowing once more before quickly turning around. Because she practically fled the office, she failed to see the man left behind biting his lip until it turned white.
*
Looking back on his childhood, his memories were always defined by absence.
There was nothing to eat, nothing to play with, and no one to pay him any mind.
That was also why Jooheon had loved soccer since he was young. Unlike other children, he didn’t have game consoles, trading cards, or robot toys. Kicking around a tattered ball left rolling aimlessly across the schoolyard was the only game Jooheon could play.
Fortunately, he had a talent for soccer. Even without parents to look after him or money to pay the club fees, coaches from soccer programs had scouted and recruited him ever since elementary school.
Even running in hand-me-down uniforms and discarded cleats with broken studs, Jooheon was always better than anyone else on the team. And back then, an outstanding player was essentially a promissory note held by the coach—something that could be cashed in for an enormous sum at any moment.
During his second year of high school, he was selected for the FIFA U-17 World Cup national team, where his standout performance led numerous professional teams and universities to vie for him. The coach of Jooheon’s high school team contacted every single one of them, conducting backroom negotiations. The coach cared nothing for his student’s growth or success; his sole focus was singular: where could he sell him off to pocket the largest commission?
Yet Jooheon, having competed against the world’s elite youth teams at the U-17 World Cup, had formed an ambition in life for the very first time.
He wanted to step into bigger waters.
He wanted to play on the European stage.
