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Chapter 10
“……?”
It was already the second time he’d asked her the same question.
Back when she first woke up in the hospital and started rambling nonsense, he had asked:
“Do you really not remember anything? Not even a little?”
Was that a question asked in the hope she’d remember? Or in the hope she wouldn’t?
It was hard to tell.
“Why? Do I look like I’m faking it too?”
“Faking it?”
“Seo Taejo said that. That maybe I was faking my memory loss.”
At that, Yoo Donghyuk’s brow twisted sharply.
“What the hell is that bastard talking about…?”
He bit down on his cigarette filter until it crumpled, cursing under his breath as if about to go on.
Rrrrrrrr—
His phone rang.
With a scowl, Donghyuk pulled out his phone and checked the caller. Then he jerked his chin toward the stone steps leading up to the mansion—telling her to head on inside.
Without hesitation, she turned to leave. Behind her, Donghyuk’s voice carried:
“Yes, sir. Chairman.”
Chairman?
“I just got back. Yes, I had dinner at home. Thank you for your concern.”
……Chairman Seo Do-woo?
“Is that so?”
He had spoken so darkly to his brother, yet to the chairman, his voice melted like honey.
“Of course, I’d be glad to. Actually, Taejo called off his engagement with Haein… yes, she was deeply hurt.”
She wondered what they were talking about but decided not to linger.
“June, you say? If that’s what Madam Lee wishes, we have no reason to refuse.”
June? So it really was about marriage, in the end.
Walking quickly up the steps, Juhong stepped into the entrance hall. Donghyuk’s voice still echoed behind her.
“That works for us. Then let’s set a date that works for the family….”
Quickly shutting the door, Juhong leaned against it with a sigh.
“This won’t do.”
Things were getting tangled.
“I told Seo Taejo loud and clear I would never marry him.”
Should she go see Taejo’s mother before things got more complicated and settle this once and for all?
Yes. That was best.
Resolving herself, Juhong hurried upstairs to her room.
It had taken eight days for the last two victims’ bodies to be recovered from the collapsed <Ino Training Center>.
Eight days later, the police, with the families’ consent, held a joint funeral for the victims. Taejo was there as well.
Dressed solemnly in a black suit and tie, Taejo carried a single white chrysanthemum. He placed it before Juhong’s portrait.
After a brief moment of silence, his gaze lingered on the photo.
Her face was bright and delicate, like a flower bud just beginning to bloom. His chest ached at the sight.
How did we end up meeting again like this?
If only I had cared for my own happiness, and nothing else.
At the very least, I wouldn’t have left you here like this.
I wouldn’t have let you suffer such a terrible fate.
Regret—so unbearably late—washed over him in waves.
Closing his eyes tightly, Taejo remained before her portrait a little longer. Camera shutters clicked from all around.
Some reporters recognized him, but most people didn’t even know who he was; they just snapped away, hoping for a decent shot to put in the news.
Because of this, the Seo Group’s PR office would now be busier than ever. Taejo hated this kind of spectacle.
Scowling slightly, he stepped down from the platform. A middle-aged man in a black suit approached—Yeom Jin-ho, Director of the National Intelligence Service’s First Bureau. He was both Taejo’s former superior and a man who had known both him and Juhong.
With his hands deep in his pockets, Director Yeom glanced around cautiously before speaking.
“So, you came after all.”
Without sparing him even a look, Taejo replied coolly as he walked toward the bereaved families’ section.
“Was I not allowed?”
“No, that’s not it,” Yeom said, scratching his head awkwardly.
“I just thought you wouldn’t.”
Taejo stopped in his tracks. His gaze toward Yeom was icy.
“I came for Rok’s sake.”
His voice was just as cold.
“I suppose so,” Yeom murmured, nodding knowingly.
“You and Rok were best friends since high school. And yet, once you were both at the Agency, you acted like strangers.”
“Rok was White. I was Black.”
Even his own parents didn’t know that Taejo had once been an NIS agent.
Recruited during his military service, he had worked as an agent for seven years—living and dying solely at the state’s command.
His very face was classified. Back at university after his discharge, he’d hidden it even on campus, meticulously.
A friend and a fellow agent pretending to be close? Impossible.
Director Yeom knew that better than anyone—that explained the regretful look on his face.
“And it was the same with Hong. If only you two hadn’t been torn apart back then, maybe you wouldn’t be standing here drowning in regrets now….”
“Enough.”
Taejo cut him off.
Regrets?
It wasn’t regret.
Regret means you couldn’t quite forget, that some of the feelings had been left behind. But that implies there was something you had forgotten.
Not him. Not even a fraction of a gram. He hadn’t been able to let go of his feelings for Juhong, not in the slightest. That was why he’d shut the switch off completely.
He had forced himself to hold it down, enduring on the razor’s edge of breaking.
Unable to even reveal his real face or real name, all he could do was carry guilt toward the woman he had loved.
So, just as he had until now, he would live on acknowledging she wasn’t by his side, keeping the switch shut off.
In time, maybe life would dull again.
Even as he steeled his heart, Yeom kept pressing, oblivious.
“Still, wasn’t it the purest love? Secretly paying her tuition, reserving library seats day and night, passing her old exams, carrying an umbrella to her in the rain….”
Of course, it had been doomed from the start.
The state had monitored her, marked her as a subject of observation, and in the end, interfered.
“Love? What love. Did we ever actually date?”
Taejo’s eyes turned glacial.
Yeom only smiled.
“I know. It was just a ‘something.’ A tender, unfinished thing.”
Then, patting Taejo lightly on the back, he added:
“But for you, it was love.”
Taejo clenched his jaw.
Because that was the reason for their breakup.
Because he had loved her.
Because the state had discovered that love.
In the end, he’d had to let her go.
Yeom knew the entire story, yet today of all days, he was cruelly twisting the knife.
“They say Hong never knew the real you to the very end. That was true professionalism.”
A pair of thick black glasses and a mouthguard-like dental prosthesis—that was all it took.
But Taejo, changing his expressions, posture, voice, and even his gait, had completely become someone else. He had hidden his true self from Juhong all along.
“And now, showing your true face here… at least Hong finally knows what you look li—”
“Wait.”
In the middle of Yeom’s words, Taejo turned his head toward the entrance of the hall, frowning.
“What is she doing here…?”
Dressed in a black suit, Yoo Haein had just walked inside.
