Tsunami Advisory
Chapter 16
“Hey, long time no see, huh?”
Hae-il only offered Danbi his first greeting after sending all the other team members out under the plausible pretext of a one-on-one meeting. His voice was steeped far less in the warmth of reuniting with an old friend and much more in the leisurely confidence of being the one in charge.
“Pardon? What… do you mean…?”
What returned, however, cleanly betrayed Hae-il’s expectations: a tearful, wide-eyed bewilderment.
Danbi asked back with wide eyes, as if addressing a complete stranger. There was no way she didn’t recognize him. Even if over a decade had passed, there was no chance the three syllables of ‘Han Hae-il’ could have weathered away so easily from her memory. If so, this had to be an awkward performance born of sheer panic and extreme shyness.
Hae-il suppressed the chuckle bubbling up inside him. Well, of course. Her faint first love from the depths of her memories had reappeared before her eyes after more than a decade—and in such a dazzlingly successful state, no less. It was only natural for her heart to pound as if it might burst. But was that any reason to pretend not to know him so blatantly?
Perhaps the flawless fit of his suit today had made her overly nervous. The silly thought even crossed his mind that maybe he should have shown up looking a bit less put-together.
Amused by Danbi’s adorable reaction, Hae-il decided he would happily play along. Barely holding back a burst of laughter, he replied nonchalantly.
“Ah~ I must have mistaken you for someone else. My apologies, Danbi-ssi.”
From that day on, his life alongside Danbi began anew.
Within the confined space of the office, every time their eyes met, Danbi dropped her head as if on cue. The sight brought Hae-il a strange sense of satisfaction. Still can’t even look me in the eye. Well, naturally. When your first love returns having grown into such a handsome adult, your heart is bound to flutter.
Entertained by her reactions, Hae-il constantly struck up conversations with her. Starting from minor work-related inquiries to comments about the weather outside the window, and even asking for snack recommendations. Each time, Danbi could barely squeeze out a stiff, one-word reply with a rigid expression, or she would quietly slip away.
Once, Hae-il spotted Danbi walking down the hallway and was just about to greet her. Catching sight of him as well, Danbi turned pale as if she had seen a ghost and hurriedly ducked behind the wall of the nearest meeting room. Hae-il burst into laughter, thoroughly dumbfounded.
No way, to that extent? She’s even worse than when we were kids.
Of course, the petty amusement from her reactions was great, but he now wanted to have a proper, lingering conversation with her. How she had been during the years of his absence, why of all companies she had chosen this one, and whether she had still been waiting for him from inside that faded memory.
Should they share a drink and have an honest talk? A cozy wine bar with a nice ambiance? Or a high-end restaurant? If he suggested going to his place, would she faint on the spot? Imagining her reaction brought a smirk to his lips.
Speak of the devil. Around quitting time, Danbi came into view, carrying her bag and waiting for the elevator.
Hae-il feigned the most nonchalant, natural expression possible as he approached and spoke to her.
“Danbi-ssi, heading home now?”
At his voice, Danbi flinched and hunched her shoulders. Fearing she might run away again, Hae-il quickly tried to follow up.
“Could you talk with me for a moment…”
Before Hae-il could even finish his sentence, however, Danbi suddenly clutched her stomach and winced, her face contorting in pain.
“Huh? What’s wrong? Are you not feeling well?”
At Hae-il’s question, she barely managed to answer with an anguished expression.
“Ah, suddenly my stomach… sssp… haa… I’m sorry, Team Leader. It’s… it’s really an emergency…”
Trailing off, she vanished into the women’s restroom while clutching her abdomen. Left standing alone, Hae-il stared toward the restroom for a moment before letting out an amused chuckle.
To think it was this bad. It seemed his perfectly groomed appearance had triggered extreme tension, leading to such a disaster. He seriously pondered whether he should tone down his outfits starting tomorrow. At this rate, she’d run to the restroom every time she saw him.
The thirty minutes spent waiting for her outside the restroom were not boring in the slightest. Rather, that time served as proof of just how intensely conscious Danbi was of him.
He didn’t bother hiding the smile rising on his lips. Ah, how could this be so fun? It was to the point where his time in the United States felt trivial. He even thought that returning to Korea had truly been the best decision.
To Danbi, who finally emerged, Hae-il generously bestowed a choice. With the magnanimity of a monarch granting a royal favor.
“Coffee, a meal, or drinks. Which one do you want? You decide.”
“Coffee…”
In times like this, you should obviously pick drinks, dummy.
He had at least expected an atmospheric café near the office, but Danbi stubbornly chose the in-house company café.
Hae-il clicked his tongue inwardly. If she was still this innocent and clueless, what was he supposed to do? A lingering sense of disappointment washed over him.
Disappointed? Me? Over what?
Between his brows, a tiny ripple he couldn’t comprehend himself appeared for a fleeting second before vanishing.
“Um… Team Leader. Did you happen to need something from me?”
‘Team Leader’ without missing a beat. As if she had made up her mind, Danbi treated Hae-il with the utmost deference, exactly like a boss she was meeting for the first time. No, beyond mere deference, it was practically businesslike. As that polite distance dragged on, it began to wear on his patience.
“What about you, Danbi-ssi?”
“Pardon?”
“Don’t you have any business with me?”
He understood well enough that she was nervous. That was plenty. He wanted her to take off that mask now and call his name like she used to. He wanted her to show at least a hint of curiosity about minor things—how he had changed during their time apart, why he had returned to Korea, or whether he was still single.
“Uh… I don’t think so.”
“I think you do, though.”
You’re an adult now, too; you can muster at least this much courage.
“…I really don’t.”
Why was she taking the long, arduous route instead of the easy one? Now that Han Hae-il himself had personally descended into her presence, shouldn’t she be overwhelmed with emotion, crying, ‘Hae-il-ah! Finally!’, and letting everything else progress at lightning speed? The seventeen-year-old boy in her memories had manifested right before her eyes as such a dazzling adult—and as her boss at the same company, at that.
Don’t tell me… she really doesn’t recognize me? Just as that chilling anxiety threatened to sprout like a poisonous weed, Danbi subtly shifted her bag to the side as if preparing to stand up.
“If you don’t have anything specific either, Team Leader… then I should probably get going…”
How long had it even been since they sat down? Hae-il grew anxious without realizing it. He hurriedly scrambled through his thoughts and grabbed onto the first topic that came to mind. The surest pretext to hold her back as her superior: work.
“About Project B.”
Hae-il intentionally rambled on at length about the progress and issues of Project B, which he didn’t even care about at the moment. Looking utterly bewildered and flustered, Danbi repeatedly bowed her head, echoing, “I’m sorry.” Danbi’s consistent demeanor of defining him strictly as ‘Team Leader’ began to wear his patience down to the bone.
The possibility that she genuinely hadn’t recognized him? No, impossible. While it was true he had become many times more handsome than in the past, it wasn’t as if his very identity had been completely rewritten. The three syllables of ‘Han Hae-il’ had to be engraved deep within her heart.
Just as his confidence bordering on arrogance crushed the rising anxiety, she abruptly lobbed a question from an entirely different dimension.
“By any chance… are you lonely?”
It was a question so random it bordered on bizarre. Lonely? Me? Han Hae-il was someone who had never once crossed paths with the emotion of loneliness in his entire life. He was always surrounded by crowds, and with his independent nature, he would rather savor solitude than ever find the time to feel lonely. To ask such a person about loneliness…
Tens of thousands of possibilities flashed through Hae-il’s mind like lightning. Could it be that the ‘loneliness’ she was referring to was… that kind of loneliness between a man and a woman?
In an instant, he felt a heavy thrum deep in his lower abdomen, as if something hot had dropped with a thud.
Whoa… Lee Danbi. Coming right at me with this kind of bold frontal attack?
Struck by a fastball pitched from a completely unexpected angle, Hae-il had to steady his breathing for a moment. His heart hammered rapidly against his will. Right. While he had grown into a proper man, Danbi had also become a ripe, mature woman. Adult conversations were sometimes lightning-fast like this. Hae-il feigned composure as he asked in return:
“Uh… hmm… Which kind of loneliness are you talking about?”
At the exact moment she blinked her pretty eyes at Hae-il instead of answering, an urgent issue notification lit up Danbi’s phone screen, and the subtle tension swirling between them dissipated into nothing.
Yet her loaded question persistently followed him all the way into his bedroom that night, clawing at his nerves. Why on earth did she ask that? If not for that damned notification, what would Danbi have said next? If he had meekly admitted he was ‘lonely,’ in what way had she planned to fill that void?
Her red lips from earlier today flickered before his eyes. The sweet scent of fruit faintly wafting whenever he brushed past her, the feminine curves of her body subtly glimpsed beneath usually loose-fitting T-shirts or knitwear. While he had grown into a man, Danbi had indeed become a woman.
Whether because of the cheap company coffee he drank in the evening or for some other reason, sleep stubbornly eluded him. It was all the fault of Danbi, who had insisted on coffee. Perhaps because he had fallen asleep inwardly blaming her, she appeared in Hae-il’s dream that night. Bare and wanton, she writhed atop him, swaying her hips voluptuously as she panted for breath.
‘Ah… Hae-il-ah… ngh, it’s so big… it feels so good…’
Cheeks flushed crimson, deep eyes glistening with desire. Just like when her feelings had been exposed to him for the first time. No, even more blatantly, her face and movements whispered that she wanted him. Her fluidly rolling hips enveloped him tightly. Reason crumbled helplessly before the waves of pleasure she created. The moment the final wave crashed over him and poured everything out, he was hauled up from the depths of his dream back to reality.
The damp sensation hit him the moment his eyes snapped open. Checking his lower body, he let out a hollow laugh. A wet dream, of all things. Thanks to damn Lee Danbi, it felt as though his body had regressed all the way back to a seventeen-year-old boy.
Even so, the sensation of having possessed her completely in the dream, and the subsequent release that followed, were by no means unpleasant. In the darkness, Hae-il savored the lingering afterglow of that thick, intoxicating sensation for a long time.
Then, deciding that being prepared couldn’t hurt, he ordered condoms from an overseas direct-purchase site.
