61

The interview room was colder than I expected, not in the dramatic, cinematic way where air-conditioning becomes a metaphor for emotional isolation, but in a subtler, more insidious manner—just enough chill to make me aware of my posture, the line of my spine against the chair, the way my hands rested together on my lap as though they might give something away if left unattended.

The kind of cold that makes you hyper-aware of yourself.

I sat across from four people I had never spoken to before, their expressions uniformly pleasant, professional, neutral to the point of anonymity. Pens lay ready in their hands, tablets angled just enough to remind me that everything I said would be reduced to bullet points and impressions and quietly weighed against someone else’s.

“Miss Kang,” the woman seated at the centre began, her voice measured and kind in a way that did not promise mercy, “thank you for joining us today.”

I nodded, careful not to nod too quickly, folding my hands together again even though they were already folded, my knees pressed together as if that might keep my nervous system from attempting an escape.

I had worn black. Simple, clean, unremarkable. No distractions. No softness. Jungkook liked me in skirts—apparently—and tucked-in shirts, and I would have been lying if I said that memory didn’t float briefly to the surface, unwelcome and vivid, but this room was not for being liked. This room was for being taken seriously.

And yet, of course, my mind betrayed me immediately.

Decision-making logic. Don’t overexplain.

I inhaled, slow and deep, grounding myself in the chair, the table, the room.

Right.

“Let’s begin with the case,” the man to my left said, sliding a printed document across the table toward me. “You’ve had time to review the prompt?”

“Yes,” I replied, my voice sounding steadier than I felt. “I have.”

I picked up the paper even though I didn’t need to. I knew it well by now, the words practically etched behind my eyes. Still, the physical weight of it in my hands anchored me, reminded me that this was real, that I was here, that I was capable of standing in this moment.

Start with containment. Then communication. Then prevention.

His voice wasn’t there, obviously. There was no actual sound, no echo in the room, nothing that could be traced back to him in any tangible way. And yet the structure was. The logic. The path through the chaos.

I began to speak.

I talked about isolating affected systems before public acknowledgement, about preserving data integrity and prioritising internal clarity before external optics, about the human cost of breaches that get lost beneath press releases and damage control strategies.

I didn’t ramble.

I didn’t apologise for pausing to think.

When one of them interrupted me mid-sentence to ask a follow-up, my instinct flared—old, familiar, sharp—with the urge to explain everything at once, to justify myself until there was nothing left to question. I stopped myself instead, let the interruption settle, then continued with a firmer tone, narrowing my answer instead of widening it.

I felt it then.

Not confidence, exactly.

Something steadier.

“Why would you choose this approach,” the woman asked, tapping her pen lightly against the table, “over a more aggressive public response?”

My fingers tightened against the edge of the paper.

This was the point where I usually stumbled, where I tried to say too much, to prove too much, to make myself undeniable through excess rather than precision.

Decision-making logic. Not technical depth.

“Because,” I said slowly, meeting her eyes, “panic amplifies damage. Clear internal alignment reduces it.”

I surprised myself with how cleanly the words landed.

One of them nodded.

Another made a note.

The interview flowed on, moving from hypothetical scenarios to behavioural questions, the tone shifting subtly as they tested not what I knew, but how I carried it.

Conflict resolution.Interdepartmental friction.Leadership under pressure.

At one point, one of them asked, “How do you handle authority figures who intimidate you?”

For a fraction of a second, my chest tightened.

Images flickered—raised voices, slammed tables, the instinctive flinch I hated myself for. I thought of Mr Min. I thought of Jungkook’s hand striking the conference table. I thought of how small I had felt, and how determined he had been that I would never feel that way again.

I didn’t look down.

“I document,” I said evenly. “I communicate clearly. And if necessary, I escalate—not emotionally, but structurally.”

I saw it then, the brief shift in their expressions. Interest. Recognition.

When it was over, they thanked me again, politely, professionally, without giving anything away.

I stood, bowed slightly, and walked out of the room with my shoulders back and my head high, every step deliberate.

It was only once the elevator doors slid shut behind me that my legs began to shake.

I leaned my forehead against the cool metal wall, exhaling a breath I hadn’t realised I’d been holding, a soft, almost hysterical laugh slipping out before I could stop it.

“Okay,” I whispered to no one. “Okay.”

Back at my desk, the world resumed as if nothing monumental had just happened. Emails waited. Notifications blinked. People passed by, absorbed in their own concerns.

I checked my phone.

Nothing.

Of course.

I tried to work. I really did. Opened files. Replied to messages. Reread the same paragraph three times without absorbing a single word. At some point, someone from Jungkook’s team walked past my desk and nodded at me, and I nodded back, the interaction painfully normal, painfully civil.

Like everything was fine.

It wasn’t.

But it also wasn’t collapsing.

By the time evening settled in and the office lights softened, my phone buzzed again.

Jungkook: Hope it went okay.

Five words.

No pressure.No expectation.No attempt to pull me closer than I was ready to come.

Just presence.

I stared at the screen for a long moment, my chest tightening with something dangerously close to gratitude.

I didn’t reply immediately—not because I didn’t want to, but because I didn’t know how to fit everything I felt into something small enough to send.

I stepped out into the evening air, the city alive around me, the noise grounding and overwhelming all at once, and finally typed back.

Me: I didn’t cry. So I think that’s a win.

The typing indicator appeared.

Disappeared.

Appeared again.

Then:

Jungkook: Proud of you.

That was all.

No follow-up.No invitation.No question.

Just pride.

I stopped walking.

People flowed past me, impatient, busy, real, and suddenly my chest felt too full to contain itself.

He wasn’t pushing.He wasn’t pulling.

He was standing exactly where he was, steady and unmovable, leaving the choice entirely in my hands.

And somehow, that realisation frightened me more than the interview ever had.

The worst part wasn’t that Jungkook was avoiding me.

The worst part was that he was doing it gently, like someone handling a wound they didn’t cause but still felt responsible for.

I realised this halfway through the departmental town hall, sitting three rows behind the glass partition that separated my team from Cybersecurity, in a chair that suddenly felt too small for my body and a room that suddenly felt far too aware of my existence. These meetings were usually harmless—long-winded speeches about vision and alignment and growth that nobody remembered five minutes later—but today, the air felt thicker, like it had opinions about me.

I hadn’t known he’d be here.

That was my fault.

I always checked the attendee list. Always. I liked knowing where he existed in a space, even when I told myself I didn’t care, even when we weren’t speaking, even when I pretended that my life didn’t quietly orient itself around his coordinates. But lately my brain had been busy doing backflips over interviews and misplaced ambition and a proposal that still sat in my chest like a live wire.

So when I looked up from my notebook and saw him across the room, seated near the aisle, posture relaxed, attention forward, expression neutral in that infuriatingly composed way of his, it felt like being punched with something soft but devastating.

He didn’t look at me.

Not once.

He listened when people spoke. He nodded at the appropriate moments. He leaned forward when numbers came up on the screen. He whispered something to the man next to him and received a quiet laugh in return, like this was just another Tuesday in a life that hadn’t been temporarily set on fire by a woman who ran away from a ring.

He looked fine.

That shouldn’t have hurt.

I was the one who asked for space. I was the one who froze and fled and pretended confusion was a personality trait instead of a defence mechanism. So why did it feel like he’d taken something essential with him when he stepped back, like I’d agreed to the distance without fully understanding the cost?

I shifted in my seat, crossing and uncrossing my legs, my pen tapping against the page without actually writing anything. The glass partition reflected fragments of people behind me, layered faintly over his image, and I hated that too—that even physics refused to let me see him cleanly or clearly.

At some point, laughter broke out on his side of the room.

It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t dramatic.

It was just… real.

I didn’t hear what caused it, but my chest reacted anyway, tightening like it had been personally offended. My mind, traitorous and bored with my suffering, began to wander.

I started imagining him in other rooms.

Rooms I wasn’t in.

Dinner tables I had never sat at.Meetings where his name came up casually, with respect.Family gatherings where his shoulders softened and his voice dropped an octave.

I imagined being the person he glanced at when something amused him, the one whose reaction he checked before saying more, the one he leaned toward without thinking.

His wife.

The word slid into my head fully formed, uninvited, and refused to leave.

Wife.

Not girlfriend. Not whatever undefined chaos we had been before. Wife was different. Wife meant mornings and shared calendars and quiet arguments about whose turn it was to buy groceries. It meant knowing which mug he reached for first and which shirt he liked even though he pretended not to care. It meant noticing when his temper simmered too long beneath the surface and knowing exactly how to pull him back without making him feel small.

It meant permanence.

My throat tightened.

I had never allowed myself to think that far ahead. Wanting Jungkook had always lived in the present—intense, consuming, sharp—but marriage stripped away the thrill and replaced it with something steadier, something terrifyingly real.

I forced my gaze back to the front of the room, but the damage was done. Every blink brought him back, standing at the edge of my life, holding out a future I hadn’t planned for and was suddenly terrified of losing.

When the meeting ended, chairs scraped back and conversations bloomed around me, but I stayed seated for a moment too long, watching him stand, sling his jacket over his shoulder, exchange polite words with his team.

Someone clapped him on the back.

He smiled.

Still didn’t look at me.

I hated myself for how much that mattered.

I stood abruptly, gathering my things with unnecessary force, and joined the flow of people toward the exit. The hallway felt narrower than usual, the ceiling lower, the lights too bright, like the building itself was conspiring to make me uncomfortable.

I was halfway down the corridor when I felt it.

That pull.

I didn’t turn.

I kept walking, my back straight, my pace brisk, my heart doing something dramatic and unhelpful. But I felt him—not his gaze exactly, but his awareness, hovering just short of contact, respectful and restrained in a way that hurt far more than confrontation ever could.

Being ignored would have been easier.

This was being let go of.

By the time I reached the elevators, my composure was hanging by a thread. I pressed the button too hard and exhaled too sharply and ignored the look someone gave me like I was a malfunctioning appliance.

Inside the elevator, the doors slid shut and I leaned back against the wall, closing my eyes.

“Get it together,” I muttered. “You’re embarrassing yourself.”

My phone buzzed.

I looked before I could stop myself.

An unsaved number.

No—his number.

The left elevator stalls sometimes. Take the one on the right if you’re heading down.

My breath caught.

I stared at the screen, thumb hovering uselessly, heart traitorously hopeful.

He hadn’t spoken to me.Hadn’t approached.Hadn’t crossed the boundary I’d forced him to draw.

And yet.

He was still watching out for me.

I typed back before my brain could interfere.

Noted. Thanks.

Three dots appeared.

Then disappeared.

Then:

Take care.

That was it.

The elevator descended, floor by floor, carrying me away from him while somehow sinking him deeper into me. When I stepped out into the lobby, the thought returned, persistent and dangerous.

What kind of wife would I be to a man like that?

And worse—

What kind of idiot would I be to let him go?

I walked home slowly that evening, the city humming around me, my mind tangled in futures I hadn’t planned for but suddenly couldn’t unsee.

For the first time since I’d run, the confusion thinned into something clearer.

Not fear.

Not doubt.

Readiness.

And that scared me more than anything else ever had.

---

I cleared the interview on a day that had no business changing my life.

Tuesday. Beige. Unremarkable. The kind of day that smelled faintly of printer ink and burnt coffee, where even the air-conditioning felt tired. Mr Min called me in after lunch, folded his hands like a man about to announce a weather update, and said my name carefully, like it was fragile.

“Congratulations, Haerin. You’ve cleared the interview.”

I blinked.

Once.Twice.

Then I smiled like a sane, well-adjusted adult instead of screaming internally like a raccoon trapped in a recycling bin.

He continued speaking—timelines, formalities, department shifts—but my brain had already floated three inches above my body. I thanked him. I bowed. I walked out with dignity. I made it all the way to the washroom before crouching in a stall and whisper-screaming holy shit into my hands.

I did it.

Me.

The woman who applied wrong. Who panicked mid-answer. Who almost cried when asked about leadership. And still—still—they wanted me.

By evening, the department decided this deserved a celebration. Not champagne or clinking glasses, of course. This was corporate joy. This was canteen dinner joy. Plastic trays. Overhead lights. The romance of institutional flooring.

I didn’t mind.

I was glowing.

People congratulated me. Someone joked about how I’d forget them once I moved floors. Someone else asked if I’d still eat with them or “upgrade socially.” I laughed. I said the right things. I felt light.

And then someone said it.

“Oh—Cybersecurity’s joining us too.”

My spine stiffened.

I turned slowly, like a character in a horror movie who already knew what was behind her.

Jungkook walked in with his team.

Tall. Calm. Unfairly attractive in that irritating way men get when they aren’t emotionally spiralling. His sleeves were rolled up. His hair was neat. He looked…fine. More than fine. He looked like someone who had not recently proposed marriage and been fled from like a startled deer.

He didn’t look at me.

Not once.

People greeted him. He nodded politely. Shook hands. Took a seat two tables away. To anyone watching, he was just another senior director attending a team dinner. To me, he was a walking absence.

I waited for something.

A glance.A smile.A you did well.

Nothing.

The food arrived. Conversation bubbled. Someone raised a cup and toasted to my promotion. I stood, embarrassed and proud, said a few words, sat back down. Applause. Smiles.

Jungkook clapped.

Once.

Professionally.

I stared at my tray, appetite evaporating. Every laugh he gave someone else scraped at my nerves. Every second he spent not acknowledging me felt louder than if he’d shouted.

He was giving me space.

I hated it.

I had been ignored for forty-seven minutes.

Not metaphorically. Not dramatically. Literally.

Jungkook Jeon had walked into the canteen, nodded at people like a politician at a rally, sat two tables away from me, and proceeded to act like I was a decorative plant—present, green, and entirely irrelevant.

I was vibrating.

Not glowing. Not excited. Vibrating. Like a phone left on silent during an earthquake.

I was stabbing my food with the kind of aggression that suggested the rice had personally betrayed me when Mirae leaned in beside me and whispered, eyes wide like she was about to confess a crime.

“Haerin… I’m scared.”

I blinked. “Of?”

She glanced across the room. “Director Jeon.”

I followed her gaze.

Jungkook was laughing at something one of his team members said. A soft laugh. A rare one. The kind he used to reserve for me when I said something stupid.

My eye twitched.

“Why?” I asked.

“He took my pen earlier,” Mirae whispered. “By mistake. I think. And now I don’t know how to ask for it back.”

I stared at her.

“Mirae.”

“Yes?”

“You are a grown woman.”

“I know, but he’s very… tall.”

I exhaled sharply through my nose.

Fine.

This was fine.

This was an excellent opportunity to not make a scene.

So naturally, I stood up.

“DIRECTOR JEON.”

The room went quiet like someone had pressed mute.

Jungkook turned, startled. “Yes?”

Mirae physically grabbed my sleeve. “Haerin—”

“You have my teammate’s pen,” I said brightly, walking toward him. “She’s terrified you’ll keep it forever and name it or something.”

A few people chuckled.

Jungkook looked confused. Then amused. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a very normal black pen.

“Oh. This?” He handed it to Mirae. “Sorry. I forgot.”

Mirae took it like it was a sacred artifact. “Th-thank you, sir.”

I crossed my arms.

“And?” I prompted.

“And…?” Jungkook echoed.

“And nothing,” I smiled tightly. “Great. Love the communication.”

Several heads turned.

Mirae looked between us. “Wait. Do you… know each other?”

“No,” I said immediately.

“Yes,” Jungkook said at the same time.

We stared at each other.

Mirae’s brows furrowed. “Which one is it?”

“Oh, we’re colleagues,” I said sweetly. “Extremely distant ones. Practically strangers.”

Jungkook’s jaw tightened. “Haerin.”

I tilted my head. “Director.”

Someone coughed.

“This isn’t the place,” he said quietly.

“Oh?” I laughed. “Because you’ve been very good at choosing places lately.”

Mirae leaned closer to me, whispering frantically, “Why does it feel like I walked into the wrong drama?”

I ignored her.

“You didn’t even look at me,” I said, voice sharp now. “Not once. Did I suddenly become confidential information?”

“Watch your tone,” Jungkook warned.

“Oh now you hear me?” I clapped lightly. “Amazing. Truly revolutionary.”

People were staring openly now.

Mr Min had frozen mid-bite.

Jungkook stepped closer, lowering his voice. “You’re upset. I understand. But don’t do this here.”

“Why not?” I shot back. “Because it’ll make things awkward for you?”

“For you,” he snapped. “You just got promoted.”

“Yes,” I said. “And apparently demoted in your life.”

Mirae made a small, distressed sound. “I just wanted my pen…”

Jungkook closed his eyes briefly, like a man asking the universe for patience.

“I’m giving you space,” he said.

I laughed. Loud. Unhinged.

“Space?” I repeated. “You proposed marriage and then put me on airplane mode.”

That did it.

Someone gasped so hard it echoed.

“What.”

“Proposed?”

“Marriage?”

Mirae’s head whipped toward me. “YOU’RE GETTING MARRIED?”

“I didn’t say yes!” I snapped automatically.

Jungkook’s eyes locked onto mine, dark and intense. “Because you ran.”

“Because you scared me!”

“Because I love you,” he shot back.

Silence detonated.

I felt it—the moment the entire room collectively stopped breathing.

Jungkook straightened, awareness crashing down on him far too late. He looked around at the ring of shocked faces, at Mirae who looked like her soul had left her body, at Mr Min whose jaw was on the floor.

Then back at me.

“And now,” he said calmly, devastatingly, “everyone knows why I can’t pretend you’re just another colleague.”

My heart slammed against my ribs.

“I proposed,” he continued, voice softer but no less lethal, “because I already know what kind of wife you’d be.”

Someone whispered, “Oh my god.”

Jungkook didn’t look away from me.

“And because ignoring you,” he finished quietly, “hurts worse than being rejected.”

The room stayed frozen.

Mirae slowly raised her pen.

“…Can I transfer departments?”