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Episode 13

Once the helper waiting room quieted down a little, Min Wongil approached.

When she dipped her head slightly in greeting, Min Wongil looked around and lowered his voice as he spoke.

“Why are you doing this? CEO Jung said you wanted to come here, so she sent you. Keep this up and you’ll end up assigned to a really strange guest.”

“A strange guest?”

Min Wongil swept his eyes over the guest list in her hand and spoke again, looking worried.

“There are ten guests left, and one of them is a bomb. Up until last year it wasn’t our company’s job so I don’t know the details, but I heard it caused an uproar.”

A bomb of a guest.

As if she knew who he meant, Eunjo let out a faint laugh.

Min Wongil’s voice grew a little more urgent.

“You’re laughing? The rumor’s already everywhere, so the other helpers are going to avoid that person. Then you’ll get stuck.”

Min Wongil’s expression was grave, as if to say what are you going to do if you take on someone even normal helpers avoid?

“CEO Jung told me to make sure I keep an eye on you, but if you do this, then I….”

In an instant, Min Wongil’s serious face crumpled with a crunch.

“Damn, they’re here.”

Following his gaze as it wavered in trouble, Eunjo turned her head. Two elderly people had just entered the exhibition hall.

“Why did the two of them come together?”

Grumbling, Min Wongil pressed in close beside her and pointed with his index finger.

“Nabi, you take the gentleman on the left. He’s the chairman of the Yewon Society, and the vice chairman of the Dain Group. He’s quite dignified, so if you just quietly run errands properly, you’ll be fine. Smile brightly, okay?”

It looked like he intended to stand Na Eunjo—ignorant and without a shred of manners—beside the Yewon Society chairman and turn her into a pretty decorative flower.

“Yang Iso.”

Min Wongil called Yang Iso, who had been leaning against the wall listening to music since earlier.

Yang Iso, who took off her headset and hung it around her neck, came over.

“You’re at least calm and smart, so… you can handle that grandma, right?”

Yang Iso’s gaze landed on the small elderly woman standing beside the Yewon Society chairman.

Yang Iso stared at her without changing expression, then opened her mouth.

“Is that the person everyone avoids—the ‘bomb’?”

Min Wongil, still wearing a troubled expression, nodded.

“Yeah. She’s not easy. You know Troyple in Seoul Forest, right? She recently moved there, and….”

Min Wongil, who had been rattling on, pressed his lips shut.

“No. What am I even saying, holding you and talking.”

With that, he held out a file to Yang Iso. Even at a glance, it was a page densely filled with precautions about the elderly woman.

Yang Iso’s eyebrow, blank until now, twisted slightly.

“Hard things are always my share, huh?”

Then she accepted the file and nodded listlessly.

“Fine. I’ll do it.”

For someone taking the bomb, she looked fairly unbothered.

Then Yang Iso threw her a look.

“Nabi, you’re buying me food later.”

Food, my ass.

Eunjo let out a short snort. Then, as if snatching it away, she took the file from Yang Iso’s hands.

“You buy. Food.”

Spitting out that sharp reply, Eunjo leisurely left the waiting room.

Behind her, Min Wongil’s raw groan—unable to quite shout—rang out plainly.

* * *

Kim Sohye.

Former chairwoman of the Rouen Cultural Foundation.

She was also the head of the world-class Rouen Group.

After losing her only daughter in a horrific accident and becoming ill at heart, Kim Sohye devoted the rest of her life to the paintings her daughter had loved.

Because of her ramrod-straight back, she looked like she was in her seventies, but in truth she was well past eighty, and she was a major spender in the art world.

But because of her prickly temperament, she was also the worst kind of guest for ⟨Festival of Light⟩ helpers.

The reason she had attended the same event for four years was out of loyalty to the Yewon Society chairman.

More than anything, it was also to see the face of the person who planned this exhibition and to chat about paintings.

Last year too, and the year before that, she had barked at helpers, so no noisy children would latch onto her.

With the intention of quietly appreciating the paintings, she headed alone toward the special exhibition room.

⟨Flowers and Butterflies⟩

Kim Sohye stopped in front of the two paintings she met at the entrance to the special exhibition room, held her breath, and thought of the person who painted them.

“Wretched thing….”

Just then, she sensed quiet footsteps approaching beside her.

She noticed the presence, but pretending not to, she didn’t turn her head.

Instead of showing her irritation directly, she let out a low groan and only lifted her eyes coldly.

Then a calm voice reached her.

“The ⟨Flowers and Butterflies⟩ series is a set of paintings by an artist strongly influenced by Impressionism, focusing on the flow of light.”

At the voice that pierced straight into the core, Kim Sohye turned her head.

“Especially, they made a special effort to capture how the light reflected on water changes from moment to moment.”

The woman, smoothly dressed in a black suit, was looking at the painting with a peculiar gaze.

“The way the lines flow ambiguously is also meant to depict light flowing with undulations, so it may feel a bit more dreamlike.”

Her eyes, slack as if bewitched by the painting, were as dreamlike as the painting she was looking at. Then, before she knew it, she turned to look at Kim Sohye and smiled brightly.

“Personally, I like this work very much.”

In that moment, she was slightly startled.

Because her face was as pretty as a painting.

And because her gaze and manner of speaking… resembled someone she knew.

Kim Sohye, forcing herself to hide her surprise, turned her eyes back to the painting.

“…You know this is a painting the artist made in college, don’t you?”

“Of course.”

It was a rather quick answer. Then she continued at once.

“The languid light expressed in bright pastel colors speaks for how happy the artist’s heart was at the time. The lines may look vague, but in truth they’re packed with strength. And I think the way they used the drawing knife was better at this time, too—personally.”

She was even more surprised.

A mere art student. An aspiring painter. At best, a young painter who had just started toddling—yet she analyzed ⟨Flowers and Butterflies⟩ quite well.

“My name is Na Eunjo, Chairwoman.”

The helper, wearing a bright smile on her clear face, greeted her politely.

Na Eunjo.

Was it because of the name? Somehow, her heart went to her.

But a still-stiff voice flowed from her mouth.

“I don’t need a helper.”

Of course, it was a softened voice compared to before.

Then Eunjo spoke with a far more earnest face.

“I’ll only accompany you as far as viewing how the Inside Hall digitized ⟨Flowers and Butterflies⟩.”

“I’m even less interested in digitization.”

But Kim Sohye couldn’t help but take interest in what followed.

“Just like CX Soft Chairman Lee Wongyu’s daughter, they implemented ⟨Flowers and Butterflies⟩ perfectly in digital form.”

A helper recommending it with a confident gaze, as if it were her own painting.

“I promise you, you’ll like it.”

She couldn’t help but feel favor.

* * *

From the start, the target was Kim Sohye.

Someone she knew inside and out.

Someone whose heart she could move easily.

Someone who could be involved with high society, the Baerong Society, and even the Yewon Society.

Above all, someone who lived in Troyple.

Kim Sohye fulfilled all those conditions.

Having succeeded in drawing favorable feelings from her, Eunjo quietly followed behind her.

As they slowly toured the special exhibition hall displaying the ⟨Flowers and Butterflies⟩ series, Kim Sohye asked a few more questions.

Of course, Eunjo answered every question without hesitation. No one would know her paintings better than she did.

Standing before the last work, Kim Sohye appreciated the painting with somewhat wistful eyes.

“She was a painter I cherished.”

Her voice held moisture.

“There was a big age difference, but we had quite a lot that clicked. I really liked her—Painter Lee Eunjo.”

Her voice also carried a wistful longing. She couldn’t tell her that she had felt the same.

“That seems right. They say you can see the person in the painting—this painting suits you well, Chairwoman.”

“Does it?”

“Yes.”

The corners of Kim Sohye’s eyes, looking back at Eunjo, were slightly wet as well.

“Thank you, to say that.”

With an embarrassed smile, Kim Sohye swept Eunjo with a firmer gaze.

“You are….”

It was Kim Sohye’s distinctive, observing gaze.

“Did you major in art? Or aesthetics? You seem like you might be in criticism.”

Eunjo smiled softly.

“My circumstances were difficult, so I couldn’t go to college.”

Na Eunjo, from an orphanage, hadn’t gone to college. She hadn’t even wanted to.

“My.”

As if it pained her greatly, Kim Sohye’s gaze darkened.

“Then, paintings…?”

“I like them.”

“Drawing? Or looking?”

“Both.”

At that moment, another voice suddenly cut into the conversation.

“How unexpected—Ms. Na Eunjo likes paintings.”

A resonant baritone.

A voice like a languid cello melody.

Her fingers curled without thinking.