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Chapter 10
Monday afternoon.
Sehee returned to the office after taking a half-day in the morning, her expression unusually blank.
The weekend’s events had completely drained her, leaving her with no energy to smile as she normally would.
Just after midnight on Saturday, Sehee had taken a taxi straight to Yongin, wasting Yu-won’s effort of seeing her off.
Waiting until morning would have been the wiser choice, but in that moment, rational thinking was impossible.
“Sehee…!”
It had been a couple of months since she could visit her family due to her heavy workload.
Her young aunt looked noticeably exhausted.
Sehee tried to calm herself as she held her aunt tightly, who was bursting into sorrowful tears.
“Aunt, it’s okay. Tell me slowly—what do you mean by being scammed? And Uncle, is he okay?”
“Uh… Sehee, you’re here?”
At that moment, the bedroom door opened, and her uncle appeared. Seeing him smile awkwardly, Sehee staggered in shock.
“Coming here alone at this late hour… what were you thinking? It’s dangerous.”
“Uncle…”
Her uncle’s bruised and swollen eyes, scratched cheeks, and limping leg revealed the raw marks of violence. For a moment, her vision went white.
A surge of anger rose, but Sehee forced herself to stay composed and coaxed her aunt and uncle into explaining the situation.
“I’m sorry, Sehee. We… have no excuse.”
Her aunt’s confession went far beyond anything Sehee could have imagined.
“The investment proposal was just too convincing…”
Even hearing it, it was hard to believe.
People who had never invested in stocks had fallen for a real estate scam.
About ten months ago, rumors about land investments began circulating among local small business owners. When interest started to build, professional scammers appeared and targeted the shop owners.
They leaked small bits of development news and took a few seriously interested people to inspect the land.
“This site is an opportunity reserved only for a select few investors with a keen eye. See it for yourselves and make your judgment.”
Her aunt and uncle, imagining a resort to be built on the vast land, were completely entranced and finalized the contract on the spot.
Afterward, they even took out a loan using their rice cake shop as collateral.
“Honey, as we get older, our health isn’t what it used to be. How long can we keep working? I’ve been worried I might end up burdening Sehee… But finally, looks like our lucky day has come. When the money comes, let’s buy Sehee an apartment first.”
“Just an apartment? We’ll get her a car too. And if she wants to study abroad, let’s send her. We haven’t done much for her all her life, so we should finally act as parents. Let’s even take a trip. Remember you said it was your dream to go abroad?”
The couple naively dreamed of a rosy future, but of course, it was all a scam.
The land, supposedly 2 million won per pyeong, was actually worthless public green land, far from the inspected site and barren.
By the time they realized the scam, it was too late.
The scammers had vanished, and the loans they had forced themselves to take tightened around their throats. The rice cake shop they had cared for their whole lives was at risk of being entirely taken over by the bank.
Even legal action offered no hope, as courts said winning would be difficult.
Yet they avoided total disaster—for a while.
Had they not touched private loans to cover the heavy interest, things might have stabilized.
But from that point, their decline accelerated.
The couple, unwilling to burden their only niece, kept their suffering to themselves.
As they struggled to handle the crisis, the private loan of 70 million won ballooned to 400 million. The monthly compound interest was 35%.
Friday night marked the first time violence hit them, as loan sharks retaliated against missed interest payments.
That was the night they first broke under pressure.
“Haah.”
Sehee exhaled heavily, burying her face in her hands, on the verge of tears.
Why had this happened?
They had lived a lifetime of kindness and diligence… so why?
The more she thought about it, the more her heart ached with despair.
Since her parents died in a traffic accident when she was six, her aunt and uncle had become her second parents.
They had no children of their own and raised young Sehee as if she were their own, pouring their affection endlessly.
“Aunt, I’ll do the dishes. Please let me, okay?”
“It’s okay, Sehee. When you’re an adult, you’ll have to do chores even if you don’t want to. So until you’re independent, don’t even think about touching the dishes, alright?”
Sehee had worked diligently to repay their kindness, believing that a happy future awaited. But now…
“…What should we do?”
She could not sit idly by as their lives crumbled.
But no matter how she thought, she could not find a solution.
Where would she get such an enormous sum?
Even the money she had saved since starting work amounted to only a few thousand at most, which, with the skyrocketing interest, would be like pouring water into a bottomless pit.
Knowing this, Sehee transferred all the money she had saved to a loan shark first thing Monday morning.
Then she called the loan shark using the contact she had forced from her aunt.
“This is Han Sehee, niece of Kim In-sook. I just transferred 30 million won under that name.”
The loan shark, named Kang Gi-tae, let out a grating laugh in a hoarse voice.
-Haha, so Kang Sang-won had such a clever niece? I was worried for that family with no one to tend their grave—what a relief.
Throughout the call, Sehee felt sickened.
The fortunate part was that her request to freeze interest for now and only pay monthly interest on the principal was accepted—for the moment.
It was probably just a tactic to reclaim the principal.
-Just because I feel sorry for you, but if you’re late even a day, you know what happens, right?
Kang Gi-tae sneered and delivered his cruel warning.
-Then you, Han Sehee, will have to sell your body to make money.
Recalling the disgusting threat sent chills down her spine.
Still, she felt relieved that her aunt and uncle were safe for now.
The sharks would no longer harass them, leaving Sehee as their new source of repayment.
If her aunt and uncle were endangered again, she would not be able to bear it.
“Hello, Manager.”
“Hello.”
Entering the office, Sehee greeted her colleagues and made her way to her desk. Then, she stopped without realizing it.
“……”
The familiar office suddenly felt strange.
Had her life been thrust into chaos so abruptly that everyday normality now seemed unreal?
Overwhelmed by this strange dissonance, she stood dazed.
From across the hall, a commotion arose as a group appeared, led, as always, by the impeccably perfect man.
Yu-won had faced a chaotic weekend, a rare disturbance to his usually orderly mind.
The cause, as it had often been recently, was Sehee.
More precisely, it was the peculiar impression she left on Friday night.
He had decided to take her home simply because she had returned with her eyes exhausted from sending a single email—ridiculous, funny, and worrying all at once.
Until then, Yu-won had not even realized it was his first time having a woman in his car.
Not until Sehee let her guard down did he recognize the impact.
