“Then I will be going, Mr. President.”

“Very well.”

A more cold-hearted, shorter answer than expected came back. She saw Si-Jin throw a few files on the desk they had laid together on just a few minutes ago and sit back on his chair.

She chuckled with perplexity, “…Are you not going home?”

“I still have some work left.”

“When are you leaving then?”

“Probably at 1 a.m, or 2 a.m., at the latest.”

“If you are so busy, why then…”

Why was he wasting time playing around with her was the implied question.

Si-Jin answered nonchalantly, “Because it helps me focus.”

His astonishingly bizarre answer left her dumbfounded.

Chapter 7.A – Friday afternoon, 3:10 p.m.

Focus.

Focus.

The word ‘focus’ would not disappear at all from her mind.

“Ms. Na-Yool, you gave me the wrong Hansung logo file. This one got rejected by the President in the C proposal.”

“… I can’t focus because of focus.”

“What nonsense is that…”

Because it helps me focus.

Because it helps me focus…

That single sentence and its monotonous and incomparably calm tone were dominating Na-Yool’s thoughts. Every time she was about to forget about it, it kept coming back to mind repeatedly, which made her tragically lose concentration on her work.

With no energy left to straighten her slumped shoulder, Na-Yool simply twisted her head to look at the clock.

“I’m doomed. It’s already past 3 p.m….”

“If you keep on not giving me the Hansung logo, I am doomed too.”

“Ahh, it’s driving me crazy. What should I do…”

Despite skipping lunch at 1 p.m. to remain working at her desk as she was too busy, work had piled up with very little progress. She turned on the office instant messaging. She remembered checking it just 5 minutes ago, but it already had 4 unread messages.

She felt a profound fatigue just looking at the preview written in bold. She did not know if it was fortunate or not that his name did not feature there. Or what she expected when opening it. Na-Yool mechanically opened all the new chat windows and started typing down.

I sent it. I will send it to you today during working hours. I have just checked. Thank you for your concern. Na-Yool typed away dispiritedly while scrolling down her friend list with her mouse, until she found Kwon Si-Jin.

It was a bit sneaky, but she had secretly hidden it in case other co-workers noticed they were exchanging private matters…

[My office] 11:12 a.m.

Yesterday’s sole conversation. When he had called her in to scold her.

[Conference room D] 3.24 p.m.

Their sole conversation from 3 days ago. Calling her in, he had then chewed her out in front of the video team.

With great irritation, Na-Yool furiously scrolled the mouse wheel down. Be it before or after, all his messages were just like this. Perfectly uniformed.

The chat window with Si-Jin was one-sided, and the messages shorter than the word ‘short’ itself. She also had long stopped answering back to his messages calling her in out of boredom. Because she had to go anyway.

At the remembrance of her body slightly trembling in fear ‒ despite already enduring it for 2 years ‒ when he had requested her to come to the conference room, she wanted to bang her head on the desk…

… … And reasonably so. It was conference room D, after all.

Na-Yool tried to justify her worries. The reason being that, unlike the other conference rooms surrounded by transparent glass walls like done in foreign offices, conference room D was just a small and ordinary room.

A room completely blocked by four walls. So perfectly blocked that no one could see inside…

A conference room. Just a conference room. Nothing strange about it.

Anyway, it was only Tuesday back then… and just one day after she had received his fake proposition / genuine threat. Fortunately they did not have sex in his car, but she could not even bring herself to mention what had happened…

At the thought of it, she had buried her blushing face in her hands and hurried her steps, along with a brave resolution: How much of a pervert exactly is this man? If he crosses the line during working hours, I will have to firmly cut him off. Yes, if he does, I must.