Tsunami Advisory
Chapter 24
The third-floor lounge, which doubled as an in-house café, was quiet now that the lunch rush had ended. Amid the subtle aroma of coffee and the languid afternoon air, Hae-il was calmly unwrapping his sandwich, all traces of his precarious demeanor from moments ago completely gone.
Danbi set down the Americano she had bought from the company café in front of him and naturally slipped into the seat opposite him.
“I’m not sure if it’ll be to your taste. It’s my first time buying it, too….”
When Danbi spoke awkwardly, Hae-il took a demonstratively large bite of the sandwich. He chewed slowly as if savoring it, then nodded slightly with a satisfied expression. A faint smile touched the corners of his eyes. The icy chill that had frozen the lobby just moments before had melted away as though it had never existed.
Was he so touchy all this time because of a lack of carbs? She washed down the laugh that almost slipped out with a sip of iced tea.
Perhaps the sight of the two of them together was an oddity. Employees from other departments passing through the lounge glanced over with blatant curiosity. Murmurs drifted by every now and then.
They were the same suspicious glances she had endured to the point of exhaustion back when they still wore school uniforms.
“Um… Team Leader. What if people get the wrong idea?”
At Danbi’s concern, Hae-il unhurriedly chewed and swallowed his bite of sandwich before answering.
“Then let them.”
It was an utterly nonchalant response. Recalling the warning he had once given her, Danbi mumbled, “You were the one who told me to be careful…,” which earned a smirk from him.
“If you’re uncomfortable with rumors spreading, you can leave right now.”
In contrast to his words, his gaze held Danbi captive. Looking into his face, a forgotten memory suddenly surged to the surface. At seventeen, when she was suffering from excruciating loneliness, Hae-il was the only one who had sat down to eat with her. The debt from that day was one she had yet to repay.
Danbi didn’t look away, instead shaking her head.
“You said you didn’t want to eat alone. I know that feeling all too well.”
An awkward silence settled after her calm reply. Fiddling with her cold plastic cup, Danbi brought up words she had kept buried for a very long time.
“And… it might be a little late to say this now, but thank you for back then. Really.”
Hae-il’s hand paused for a fraction of a second. Danbi continued without bothering to look at his expression.
“Though, I guess it’s different from back then. Who’d misunderstand just because the Team Leader and I are together? Coworkers on the same team eat together all the time anyway….”
“They might. We’re still a man and a woman around the same age.”
At that, Danbi pressed her back firmly against the chair and puffed out her chest. Right in the middle of the black T-shirt she tapped with her finger remained a faint stain—the aftermath of the spicy pork kimchi she had eaten for lunch.
“We’re way too different for that to happen.”
Having made her point, Danbi lightly scuffed the floor with the toe of her canvas sneaker. A crisp friction sound echoed. A man in a neatly pressed suit and polished dress shoes, and a woman in a stained T-shirt and sneakers. That mismatch—glaringly obvious to anyone—was the clearest proof of the gulf between them.
Yet suddenly, the faces of the kids from her past who persistently badgered her about what was between her and Hae-il overlapped with the team members who had recently been darting strange looks between her, Suhyeon, and Hae-il. Come to think of it, there always seemed to be people who suspected something regardless.
“Um… or couldn’t you just say you have a girlfriend, Team Leader? To nip any misunderstanding in the bud. If strange rumors start circulating in the office, it’ll be a headache in a whole different way than school.”
Hae-il seemed lost in thought for a moment, then shook his head.
“What a shame. I don’t have a girlfriend, so I can’t do that. I’m not particularly fond of lying.”
No girlfriend?
The square boxes she had spotted on his bedside nightstand a few days ago flashed through Danbi’s mind like lightning. Then who on earth is he using all those condoms with? In an instant, her mind was flooded with steamy scenes straight out of an American drama. Wild, freewheeling parties, one-night stands with strangers whose names he didn’t even know…
The distance she thought had narrowed through reminiscing felt as though it had taken another step back.
Popping the last piece of sandwich into his mouth, he looked at Danbi intently and said,
“Thank you. For keeping me company.”
The sincerity in his eyes came through unfiltered. Whether it was ostracization in school or subtle isolation in the workplace, the feeling of being alone was never pleasant.
She hoped this had repaid, even just a little, the small warmth she had received from him all those years ago.
“Don’t mention it.”
Danbi answered with a slight shake of her head. Whether it meant it was okay, that there was no need to thank her, or something else that encompassed all of it, even she couldn’t tell.
✶ ✶ ✶
Was it because the sandwich Danbi handed him settled his stomach, or was it the relief of long-held misunderstandings melting away? What was certain was that from that day on, the reins of the world known as ‘Han Hae-il’ no longer belonged to him.
Every time he caught himself, his gaze was invariably fixed on her. Whenever he saw Danbi laughing and chatting with the male team members, something hot and sour surged from the pit of his stomach. He would linger around her desk without any real business just to bring up work matters, or habitually ask about schedules on the messenger that he already knew by heart.
When night fell, the symptoms grew even more severe. Her face flickered across the dark ceiling, and his heart ran wild, betraying its owner. She was swallowing his nights, his reason, his everything whole.
Today was no different. Last night, too, he had tossed and turned thinking of her, only managing to fall asleep near dawn. Yet even that was fleeting; his eyes snapped open again all too soon.
Knowing he wouldn’t be able to fall back asleep, he headed to the office far earlier than usual. In the chilly air of the empty office, the exhaustion accumulated through the night weighed down on his entire body all at once.
‘Don’t let personal matters affect your work.’
The words he had snapped at her time and time again returned to him like a boomerang. To think that, unable to handle even the waves of his own emotions, the vessel of his daily life was listing entirely out of control.
In bitter self-reproach, Hae-il roughly rubbed his dry face with his hands. Get a grip. The hollow resolution echoed in his mind. It was at that exact moment.
“Oh? Team Leader, you’re here early.”
At the sudden voice, Hae-il turned his head. It was Danbi.
In the empty office, she stood alone by the window. The soft morning sunlight scattered, breaking along her silhouette. Eyes that seemed to hold all of that light turned toward him. And a flawlessly bright smile blossomed across her face.
In an instant, the world went mute. In the silence where both the faint hum of machinery and the distant rumble of the city vanished, all the colors around him faded, leaving only her presence floating at the center of his vision like a painting.
His heart pounded as if to shatter his ribs, and an inexplicably overwhelming joy surged through his veins, spreading through his entire body. A remarkably calm and lucid voice whispered to his soul.
This is love.
But the fleeting ecstasy vanished as ephemeral as a mirage. What encroached upon his consciousness next was a suffocating despair. The sensation of the ground giving way beneath his feet and the axis of his world collapsing. Why did it have to be you? You don’t have even a speck of feeling left for me, so why now, when everything is over?
His pride shattered into pieces, scattering like a handful of dust. Caught in a flood of emotions he had never experienced in his life, he was powerless to stop the trembling racking his body. His vision blurred hot, and the dam of his emotions finally broke. Incapable of managing even a single feeling of his own, he could only stand there in a daze, staring at her.
“Team Leader…? Are you unwell?”
Finding his behavior strange, Danbi looked up at him intently and asked with a worried expression.
Hae-il barely parted his dry lips. He wasn’t sure if his voice would come out properly.
“……What does it look like?”
What kind of face am I wearing in your eyes right now? Just like the face you showed me that day, is it drenched in a feverish love—so unmistakably sorrowful and pitiful at a single glance? The words he couldn’t dare utter swirled in his throat.
Danbi seemed slightly taken aback by his question, but soon studied Hae-il carefully with serious eyes before offering her diagnosis.
“Um…… your face is a bit red, and you seem to have a slight fever. Could it be a cold…? I heard the flu is going around lately.”
A self-deprecating chuckle escaped him at her innocent diagnosis. Right, maybe it was a cold. A terrible, vicious cold.
“I suppose so……. That day, I got caught in the rain. Must have caught a nasty one.”
At his words, Danbi tilted her head and looked out the window. For days now, the weather had been so blisteringly clear that people even joked about holding a rain ritual.
Watching her puzzled, uncomprehending expression, Hae-il smiled silently. Once, and then again. At the tail end of that smile, he finally admitted it all.
You win.
I lose.
