Chapter 10 …
The morning felt refreshingly clear, completely different from yesterday. Having cleared up the misunderstanding with the man next door put her mind at ease, and her cold symptoms had eased significantly as well, leaving her feeling light and unburdened.
“Watch the house for me.”
Seyeon spoke to Cheshire, who was sprawled out in the yard, then left the house to go retrieve the car she’d left at the hospital.
Just as she opened the front gate, she ran into the man from the house next door coming out as well. For once, he was heading to work a little later than usual.
“Good morning.”
A brief, awkward pause passed between them, but Seyeon greeted him casually.
“Going to pick up your car?”
“Yes.”
“You’re going to the hospital anyway. Ride with me.”
“I’m fine—”
“Alright, then.”
Without even waiting for her to finish, the man abruptly turned around and walked away.
Watching his back as he grew farther away, Seyeon pondered quietly.
Late autumn was cold, and it was easy to catch a cold or the flu. Without the Seoul Clinic, the nearest clinic in the nearby town was at least an hour away by car—and even then, it was far inferior to the Seoul Clinic in terms of facilities and equipment.
Having reached her conclusion, Seyeon hurried after him and matched her pace to his.
“I was going to say I’m fine, but I’d be grateful if you gave me a ride. But you don’t really let people finish their sentences, do you?”
“You said the car was a rental.”
“Yes. I signed a two-month contract with a rental company in town.”
“Two months?”
He looked at her with clear curiosity. Two months, rather than one, sounded like a much more definite deadline—as if she had firmly decided she wouldn’t be here next year.
But to Seyeon, it sounded more like he was asking if she planned to stay that long.
“I’m not staying longer than that. I’ll definitely go back to Seoul after two months. If things work out, I might even leave before then.”
“What do you do at the resort?”
“I’m a short-term employee on the guestroom team. They hired several people as winter-season contract workers.”
Housekeepers—the lowest-ranking staff at the resort—handled not only room cleaning but also bedding changes and minibar restocking. In other words, they were part of a department that inspected every guestroom thoroughly.
“If it’s only a two-month contract, you could’ve easily found work in Seoul.”
He wasn’t wrong. If she was only planning to work for two months, she could have found another part-time job in Seoul.
Coming all the way out here just to work for two months was hard for anyone to understand. It wasn’t like the pay was exceptionally high, either.
“Actually, I wanted to come see this area. My grandmother’s hometown is somewhere around here. She doesn’t remember the exact place because she was so young, but she said it was near the sea and had beautiful sunsets. So I figured this must be it.”
Of course, her main objective was to find a key factor that would help her succeed in the bid—but she left that part out.
“You must be close to your grandmother, if you’d even look for her hometown.”
“She said that time was when she was happiest. Even though she was poor and hungry, she said those were her happiest days. I got curious… and I also wanted to see exactly what she saw. The sea and the sun are the same now as they were back then, right?”
“You came all the way down here for such a romantic reason?”
It might have sounded romantic, but it wasn’t very convincing. She could tell from his expression. Still, it wasn’t a lie.
“That’s not the whole reason, of course, but that’s most of it.”
“People have been wondering why Ms. Myeong Seyeon came here. You could’ve just told them.”
“Wouldn’t it sound strange if I said I came because it reminded me of where my grandmother lived as a child?”
The two chatted as they walked to the empty lot where Yujin had parked his car.
Seyeon found it unfamiliar that he no longer spoke to her sarcastically, but she welcomed the change and felt quietly satisfied. It felt like the first step toward becoming friendly neighbors.
“Then can I ask you something too?”
“Go ahead.”
There was only one thing Seyeon wanted to know—the connection between the man next door and Kim Daehyun. She wanted to confirm it.
“I saw your medical license at the hospital, and your background stood out to me.”
Carefully, she opened the conversation, hoping he either didn’t know Kim Daehyun at all or wasn’t close to him.
“You graduated from a university in Seoul and completed your residency at a top-tier general hospital. So why did you open a clinic in Cheonghaeri?”
“Yes. I figured a lot of people have probably already asked you that.”
“There’s a lot of empty land in Cheonghaeri, and no big hospitals. Seoul already has plenty.”
Seyeon had heard that opening a clinic in Seoul wasn’t easy. There was practically no neighborhood without a hospital.
Doctors didn’t have a retirement age, so once someone established themselves, they rarely shut down. Vacancies were hard to come by—and the startup costs would be much higher than here.
Even so, the current Seoul Clinic looked like it had cost far more than opening a clinic in Seoul would have.
“That’s true. Seoul has so many hospitals you trip over them. Then you must know a lot of doctors who were residents at Hanseong Hospital too, right? Some of them must be close friends.”
Si Yujin—the overlapping point with Kim Daehyun. Seyeon carefully edged closer to the information she wanted.
“Why are you curious about that?”
“It’s Hanseong Hospital. Isn’t it natural to be curious?”
“I wouldn’t be.”
With that, Yujin shut down the topic entirely. Maybe it was just her imagination, but his tone felt cold again, just like before.
Wanting to maintain a friendly relationship with the man next door, Seyeon hurriedly searched for another topic. Then she suddenly remembered the day she’d gone to his house with Cheshire.
“Then how about the tattoo on your arm? Nil desperandum. When did you get that?”
She pointed at his right upper arm with her index finger. She hadn’t noticed it at the hospital because he wore a lab coat, but she’d happened to see it when she went over because of Cheshire.
Yujin, who had been walking straight ahead, suddenly stopped. He turned halfway toward her and looked down at her sharply.
“I only asked because I’d never seen someone with a tattoo on their arm who wasn’t a celebrity. If it’s something you don’t want to talk about, I won’t ask anymore.”
Maybe it’d be easier just to get along badly.
“When I was in the military.”
Just as Seyeon was about to change her mind under his silent stare, Yujin dropped the words and started walking again. Even though he seemed to be walking slowly, his strides were long, and Seyeon had to move quickly to keep up.
“You can do that in the Korean military?”
“I never said it was the Korean military.”
“Did it hurt a lot?”
“Lettering tattoos just sting a little.”
She deliberately didn’t ask about the story behind it. Someone wouldn’t carve the words ‘Never despair’ into their skin in a happy state of mind.
The people of Cheonghaeri viewed Seyeon as suspicious—but the truly suspicious person was the man next door.
Still, everyone carried at least one story in their heart that they didn’t want to share with others.
For example, the reason her uncle became a company president at a young age while her father, even past fifty, remained stuck as a research and development director with the title of executive director.
Seyeon had been curious whether he knew Kim Daehyun—and if so, how close they were—but she decided to drop it now.
In the end, she would be leaving this place in two months anyway. What did it matter if things were this way or that? She figured she’d just get along moderately as neighbors, maybe give him resort discount coupons out of goodwill.
A few days later, her cold had completely vanished. Feeling better, she deliberately went farther out of her way to buy a small cat tower.
She was struggling to assemble it alone over the weekend when the man next door came over to complain about the noise. Instead, he shoved her aside and quickly put the cat tower together himself.
Once they placed the cat tower in the yard, Cheshire stopped rolling around on the cement floor. He must have liked his new playground—he hardly came down at all except to eat.
And then, finally, Monday morning arrived.
Leaving the house earlier than usual, Seyeon noticed a white paper bag hanging from the front gate handle.
Tilting her head, she opened it and found a small memo along with several high-dose liquid vitamin ampoules. They were German-made nutritional supplements that helped with immune balance and fatigue recovery.
You spend too much time rolling around at the hospital.
After a brief moment of thought, Seyeon carried the paper bag and headed toward the stairs.
It was her first day stepping into her role as an employee of Sunrise Resort.
