Tsunami Advisory
Chapter 21
Misunderstanding. Trying to gauge the meaning behind that single word, Danbi looked past Hae-il toward Suhyeon. Suhyeon, looking equally flustered with an expression that seemed to ask, ‘Misunderstanding?’, met her gaze.
In the brief second their eyes collided in midair and scattered, Hae-il’s brow twitched faintly. The faint smile lingering at the corners of his mouth vanished without a trace, replaced by an unreadable, icy expression.
“Ah…”
Soon, as if realizing the trajectory of the word Hae-il had dropped, Suhyeon let out a short gasp. His face instantly flushed crimson, and he waved his hands frantically in the air.
“It’s nothing like that. I just helped Danbi-ssi out a bit yesterday, and…”
Despite his desperate explanation, Hae-il’s gaze remained locked onto Danbi alone. He didn’t budge an inch, as if Suhyeon’s words weren’t even worth listening to. When Danbi nodded slightly to back Suhyeon up, Hae-il’s eyes sank into an even deeper, chillier abyss.
“Ah, I see.”
It was impossible to tell whether that reply was an acknowledgment of Suhyeon’s explanation or a declaration that he had already reached his own conclusion.
“Three Americanos as ordered are ready!”
The cafe employee’s cheerful voice rang out, shattering the icy silence. Hae-il picked up two cups first. He handed one to Danbi and kept the other for himself. The single cup untouched by his hands was left behind, a lonely share meant for Suhyeon. One moment he had manners, the next he didn’t. After a brief hesitation, Danbi picked up the remaining cup and handed it to Suhyeon.
“Here you go, Suhyeon-ssi.”
“Ah, thank you.”
It was an entirely natural gesture of looking after a coworker, yet Hae-il’s stinging gaze followed immediately. Beneath his scrutiny, Danbi felt as though every single flutter of her eyelashes was being thoroughly dissected.
Danbi forced a calm voice to say her thanks.
“Thank you for the coffee, Team Leader.”
“Thank you for the coffee as well.”
Hae-il swept a nonchalant glance over the two standing side by side, then offered Suhyeon only a brief nod. Then, without hesitation, he turned and strode out of the cafe. His measured stride was minutely faster than usual, and his rigid, upright back practically radiated coldness.
Only after Hae-il’s retreating figure completely disappeared from view did Danbi exhale the breath she had been holding. The space she shared with him always carried a precarious tension, but today it was particularly suffocating.
What on earth was wrong with him? No, she had an idea why. Remembering the bizarre statement he had thrown out of nowhere yesterday—‘The Lee Danbi I know likes me’—the answer was simple.
He was someone accustomed to a world where everyone was fond of him and showed him interest. That was the default setting in the world he lived in.
In that case, was this attitude like an idol reacting to a devoted fan turning their back and announcing they were leaving the fandom? Was he sulking just because she hadn’t given him the attention he expected?
Danbi shook her head inwardly. There was no way Han Hae-il was that childish. Probably.
“Whew… The Team Leader’s mood seems pretty heavy today. Is he always like that?”
Suhyeon asked cautiously. He, too, seemed to have felt the chill Hae-il was exuding.
“He’s usually a bit like that, but today especially, it’s just…”
Unable to finish her sentence, Danbi trailed off, and Suhyeon lightly patted her shoulder.
“You must have a tough time.”
Danbi smiled weakly. She didn’t want to rashly badmouth her Team Leader in front of an employee from another team.
Hae-il’s final look, the meaning behind the ‘misunderstanding’ he had aimed at her, and the conclusion he had reached after putting it all together—Danbi couldn’t begin to imagine any of it.
✶ ✶ ✶
As the project got into full swing, the atmosphere in the Development Team 1 office was like a taut bowstring. Stable operation of existing services and building massive infrastructure for the new project. Caught between these two grueling tasks, the team members hit their limits every day. And at the apex of that brutal atmosphere was Team Leader Han Hae-il, several times sharper and edgier than usual.
Danbi was well aware that he was an uncompromising perfectionist when it came to work. But the nature of the irritability Hae-il radiated now was on an entirely different level from mere perfectionism. As if deliberately intended, the sharpest edge of that blade was focused solely on Danbi.
It was the same this afternoon. Less than an hour after she submitted the load test report for the newly implemented API, Hae-il summoned her. During the few steps toward his desk, cold sweat invariably ran down her spine. On Hae-il’s monitor, dozens of graphs and log data sprawled like a raging fire, and his finger was pointing precisely at a specific section among them.
“Danbi-ssi.”
“Yes, Team Leader.”
“The authentication module deployed at dawn yesterday. Did you identify the cause of this sudden drop in TPS?”
His finger pointed to a graph for a specific time frame. It was evident that the transactions per second had plummeted noticeably in that section.
“That was… judged to be a momentary network latency, so…”
“Judged? On what basis? Did you even look at the logs properly?”
Before she could even finish her sentence, Hae-il’s finger pointed to another log window.
“Here. The pattern of database connection pool exhaustion. This isn’t an external factor; it’s clearly an issue with resource management in that module. What’s the reason for designing the synchronization block like this without anticipating even this much traffic?”
Because I’m guilty of copying the wrong code, what else…
“…I’m sorry. I should have examined it more thoroughly…”
“More thoroughly?”
He echoed in a scornful tone.
“Do you think a complacent attitude like ‘more thoroughly’ is acceptable on this project?”
The chill in his voice felt tangible against her skin. Danbi bit her lower lip. Normally, he would have wrapped up the reprimand around this point by demanding a solution and preventive measures. But today was different.
Without a word, Hae-il stared intently at Danbi for a moment, as if scanning the system’s most vulnerable point. That silence was harder to endure than any technical rebuke. Under his persistent gaze, she felt as if all her flaws and insecurities were being stripped bare.
His eyes, shadowed deeper as if he had lost sleep, his sharp jawline, and the faint bloodshot veins in his eyes revealed just how extremely on edge he was. Was it fatigue? Was that why he was sharper than usual?
At the end of the suffocating silence, he spoke again. His voice had dropped lower and calmer than before, which only made it sound more threatening.
“From the minor mistakes caught in recent code reviews to fatal design errors like this. Danbi-ssi, don’t you think your focus on work has dropped significantly?”
“…”
“The stability of a back end hinges on a single tiny variable. A developer must possess an extreme sense of responsibility at every moment. Could it be…”
He paused, looking Danbi over once more.
“If your attention is scattered lately because of personal matters, you should keep in mind that doing so endangers the entire team.”
‘Personal matters.’
A giant question mark popped into Danbi’s head at that phrase. Though phrased like standard workplace guidance, there was no mistaking the barbed intention behind it. The coldness Hae-il had directed at her this morning at the cafe when she was with Suhyeon came to mind.
“Unstable factors like this cannot be tolerated in a project expecting large-scale traffic. This is a matter where not just a single server, but the entire service could be paralyzed. Managing one’s condition is part of one’s skill, after all.”
“Yes, I’m sorr—”
Before she could finish her sentence, his final question flew like a dagger and struck home.
“Are you perhaps so busy dating that you can’t even separate work from your personal life?”
‘Dating.’ The somewhat unfamiliar word rattled awkwardly in her ears.
“Da…”
Danbi tried to question it, but Hae-il spoke faster.
“No need to make excuses. Affecting your primary job because of personal affairs, compromising system stability, and putting a burden on the whole team is an attitude that can never be tolerated as a professional. Especially at a crucial time like this.”
His gaze did not leave Danbi for a single moment. It was as if he were declaring, ‘All of these problems are happening right now because of you.’ While his tone on the surface was that of a superior calling out an employee’s negligence, it somehow resembled the petulance of a child.
“Go and roll back that module immediately, and report the root-cause analysis along with a proposed fix before clocking out today. And make sure personal matters don’t affect your work from now on. In short, get your act together.”
A sense of unfairness surged within her on several points, but there was only one answer Danbi could give.
“Yes…”
