9

Jin Hun stared at the documents on his desk. Since he had to answer to his mother, he really didn’t have the option of skipping work whenever it suited him. But it would probably have been better if he did because for the past week, he hadn’t been able to comprehend a word of anything he’d read.

He really didn’t know what to do. What options did he have? No matter what he did, he’d have to hurt someone. The question was, “Whose pain would be easier to live with?”

His mother barged into his office. “Is this what you call professionalism?”

He looked up from his desk at who, at that moment, was the last person in the world he wanted to see. “What?” He saw Eunsoo walk in then shut the door the behind her. He tried to communicate with her with his eyes but she looked away.

“Are you a professional? Are you a man? I thought you’d finally grown up but it looks like I was wrong!” his mother shouted.

He sighed. Damn, it was going to be one of those days. “Ms. President, what are you talking about?” He really could do without all this stress.

His mother threw some files on his desk. “Have you seen these?”

He picked up the folders and looked at them. They were the documents Eunsoo had spoken to him about in the previous week. He looked up at her and nodded.

“And?” his mother asked furiously.

“And I am still looking at them.”

His mother sat on his couch. “Really? Didn’t Eunsoo show them to you last week? She said that you said you were going to get back with her the next day but since it was taking you so long to ‘look at them’ she came to me.”

Jin Hun shot Eunsoo a look. What was she playing at? Once again, Eunsoo looked away. “Okay,” he said, flipping one of them open. “You want me to look at them now?”

“Why? There’s no need – she was right. Mr. Shim has been embezzling funds from this hotel and if Eunsoo hadn’t caught this so quickly, we would probably have ended up bankrupt. I can’t believe you were so careless!”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes!” His mother pointed at his desk. “If you had bothered to look at those files you’d see it all in there. Do you even take your job seriously?”

He sighed. “Is it my job to look over the books? Isn’t that what the accountant should do?” And considering his mother had personally recruited and supported Mr. Shim, shouldn’t she be taking some of the blame?

“But you are supposed to oversee everything that’s going on. And if you had been paying more attention to our accountant, he wouldn’t have been able to get away with it for this long.”

“Since you are the president, shouldn’t you be overseeing me?”

His mother got really furious. “Look here. It’s bad enough that you didn’t catch Mr. Shim, but after Eunsoo brought this up with you, you should have researched it.”

“I’ve been busy,” he grumbled. Her screams were already giving him a headache.

“Busy doing what? If Eunsoo wasn’t--”

Argh. He couldn’t take it anymore. “Mom, do you want to offer Eunsoo my job? Is that what all this is about? If so, let me know quickly so I can pack my things and leave.”

“How… How dare--”

“And since we are talking about me leaving, just so you know – I am going to marry Kim Sam Soon very soon – with or without your approval.”

It was the first time Jin Hun had seen his mother stunned into silence. He looked at his watch – it was 11:30. He got up and picked his jacket off the coat rack. “I’ll be taking a long lunch. See you later,” he said, leaving the two women in his office.


***
“Hey, it’s me. Can you come out now?” Jin Hun was sitting in his car which was parked outside Sam Soon’s shop.

“I’m busy – as you know, it gets really busy here at lunch time.”

“But haven’t you already baked what’s needed?”

He heard her sigh. “Yes. But I might need to help out. How about later this evening?”

“You don’t have English class?”

“Oh, shit. I forgot. Alright, I’ll come out for a little while. When will you be here?”

“I’m already here. Just come out.”

A few moments later, Sam Soon emerged with her phone still in her hand. Even though weight loss was supposed to make people look better, to his surprise, Jin Hun preferred her the way she used to be. Maybe it was because she just looked different… like a less happy version of her former self.

She gave him a half smile. “Long time, no see.”

He couldn’t return her smile. It hurt him to hear her utter such an emotionless line to him.

“I guess it’s only been a week so it’s really not that long,” she continued, obviously uncomfortable.

He tried his best to perk up. “I’ve got news for you.”

“Yeah?”

“I told my mother we were getting married.”

She rolled her eyes. “I thought you’d told her that many times before. What’s so different now?”

“I told her that I was getting married very soon, with or without her approval. So maybe after your class we can go to your mother and set a wedding date.”

She darted her eyes around and he could see tears welling up in her eyes.

“Is that so?” she asked. “You still want to marry me?”

He quickly moved closer to her and took her hands. “Of course. I want us to be a family.”

She looked directly into his eyes. “And what about all that stuff about being disappointed? When you didn’t call me…” She was visibly shaking.

He put his arms around her. “Forget about all that. I love you.”

By the time they separated, she was no longer hiding her tears.

“So what did you tell her?” She wiped her cheek with her apron.

“I just told her that we are going to get married whether she likes it or not.”

“And if she never approves?”

He caressed her upper arm. “Then too bad for her. We’ll get married anyway. Sam Soon, let’s get married really soon.”

She smiled widely but it slowly faded from her face. Then she nodded as if she'd just realized something. “So that’s all it took?” She shook his hand off her.

Jin Hun studied her face. What was she thinking? “What do you mean?”

“All you had to do was tell her you’re marrying me anyway? Which means that you could have done this last year? That you could have done it two years ago? You mean that we could have been holding our first child right now? And we’ve wasted all this time because…?” She looked at him expectantly.

“Sam Soon…”

She averted her eyes. “Gosh.” She stubbed the ground with her shoe.

Jin Hun’s heart started beating fast. This was not the reaction he’d expected. “What difference does it make? We are getting married now.”

“Funny. You know what I am thinking? It makes a hell of a lot of difference.”

“Calm down, Sam Soon.”

“I’m calm, Jin Hun. Very calm. But you know something? I don’t think I can marry you.”

“What?”

She sucked her teeth. “No. Actually, I am sure I cannot marry you.”

“What?!?”

“I did all I could for us. I haven’t had a good meal in about three months just because I wanted your mother to like me. I am taking bloody English lessons so that she can think I am worthy of the Hyun family!!” She looked at him in disgust. “‘It looks like it’s going to rain.’ ‘Can you tell me how to get to Trafalgar Square?’ ‘The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plane’,” she said in English. “Do you think that was fun for me?”

“Sam--”

“And all you had to do was put your foot down? So basically, in the future, the only way I can get you to do what is right is to threaten to leave? I have to basically go out of my mind for months before you do anything? And you call yourself a man?”

“Sam Soon, stop it!”

She kept nodding. “I see how it is. Yes… yes, I love you, but it’s no big deal. No, it’s really not. You’re only human after all – I can get over you,” she said more to herself than to him. Then she looked him dead in the eye. “But there’s one thing I am sure of and it’s that there’s no way I am going to marry a man like you!



A few months later…

“So should I give you your present now or later?” Lee Tae Young asked Sam Soon.

She looked up at her boyfriend. “It’s not naughty, right?” she asked coyly.

He frowned. “Of course not,” he replied, missing the joke. “Why would I get you something like that for your birthday?”

She shrugged. “Whatever. Then you can just give it to me now and I can open it with all the rest.”

“Hmm… well, the present comes with a question so it might be better for you to open it in private.”

Sam Soon’s heart jumped to her throat. “Wh--”

“Sam Soon,” her sister’s voice interrupted, “you’ve got a visitor.”

Sam Soon started to leave when Tae Young held her back.

“It’s a party so just let her in,” Tae Young shouted.

“Ehm, Sam Soon, could you please come?” her sister insisted.

Sam Soon smiled at him, hoping that the smile really did come off as apologetic. He’d spoken about marriage a few times so she knew what her present was but she hadn’t expected for it to come so soon so she hadn’t prepared a response to it. She caressed his cheek. “Why don’t you go and join everyone else? I’ll be right back.”