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They're always asking her.
"What do you want to do?"
"What's your dream job?"
"Where do you see yourself in ten years, Joo Yeri?"
Yeri has learned that most questions are not questions. They're traps dressed politely.
So she smiles.
"Music."
"Oh?"
"Harp."
Delivered with a shrug, like she chose it because she liked the shape.
"Why harp?"
"I'm trying to make my mom's unfulfilled dream come true. In my generation, we owe respect for what our parents sacrificed for us."
Harp is prestigious-looking and the competition pool is small.
She didn't care about her mother unfulfilled dreams. In fact, she hoped that woman was living in her own special hell, wherever she was now. But the role of a grateful daughter has better PR. That's the kind of thing rich parents like to hear.
If she could answer truthfully, with no consequences, no raised eyebrows, no well-meaning lectures, she'd lean back in her chair and say:
Darling, I do not dream of labour.
She dreams of air conditioning and someone else paying the bills. She dreams of not calculating every decision by how much money it might bring in. She dreams of not knowing the street price of her own body.
But that's not appropriate for a guidance counselor's office.
So: music. Harp. Mother's dreams.
Easy answer. Zero follow-ups.
Yeri's entire life is built on easy answers.
Yeri didn't carve her place at Chaehwa Girl's High School through grades.
She wasn't stupid — she just wasn't suicidal about rankings.
Studying sixteen hours a day for the privilege of being second to Yoo Jaeyi — heiress of the school's biggest sponsor — sounded like unpaid labor. And she never worked for free.
So she chose the route she knew best.
She learned names.
Who cried in bathroom stalls. Who was cheating on their boyfriend. Which teachers flirted with parents and which parents flirted back. Which families would implode if the right rumor reached the right group chat.
Information was lighter than textbooks and far more useful.
People liked talking to her. She was pretty. She laughed easily. She remembered things. And she never wasted good data.
Sometimes she sold it. Sometimes she traded it. Sometimes she just kept it, like emergency cash, folded neatly in her pocket.
In exchange, she got access.
Actually, owning luxury brands got her through the door. These chaebol kids were shallow little creatures — they only interacted with people who looked like them. But after that, information kept the door open.
Seats at lunch. Notes before exams. Invitations. Favors. Protection, sometimes.
Positioning.
And that was how she ended up orbiting the top students without ever being one of them. Close enough to hear everything. Far enough not to be crushed.
Jaeyi noticed that she was useful. Their relationship: transactional.
But then there was Choi Kyung.
Righteous. Judgemental. Acting like she was better than everyone else. But always near Jaeyi - tense, trying too hard. Like someone sprinting on a treadmill.
"You shouldn't get involved in everything," Kyung scolded once, after Yeri casually mentioned a cheating scandal before it broke.
"I'm not involved," Yeri replied. "I'm informed."
"That's worse."
Yeri smiled. "You're just jealous I know things before you."
Kyung scoffed. "I don't care."
She always cared.
Then, when Yeri lit a cigarette behind the building to steady her hands — the day her mother left — Kyung snatched it out of her mouth.
"Do you want to die early?"
"You're so dramatic," Yeri said.
"You're so reckless," Kyung snapped, but leaned against the wall beside her.
That's their dynamic.
Kyung scolds. Yeri shrugs. Kyung stays.
The staying part is what matters.
The first time Kyung watched someone try to recruit her — full-time, no euphemisms — she embodied a badly-tempered guardian angel.
"I'll report you and your business for soliciting minors," Kyung had said, voice shaking but unwavering.
The man had laughed.
Kyung hadn't.
"Call me," he said, motioning to Yeri.
Ah. Just another slimy man, one of many, approaching a pair of pretty legs and calling it opportunity. Yeri could only be amused at how consistent they all were.
"Are you seriously smiling right now?" Kyung was still seething. "You know what kind of business card this is, right?"
Kyungy...
"Of course I do. It's not my first time getting one."
"Doesn't it disgust you? Or are you just brainless?"
"Kyung-ah. You only get these if you're pretty. Have you ever gotten one?"
Oh Kyungy, you're so lucky you're rich. You don't need to be pretty.
"Gosh, you're so delusional, Joo Yeri."
"I'm just being honest. It says it right here." She pointed at the card without even looking — she didn't need to. "Ten percent," she continued, watching the horror bloom across Kyung's face. "Being in the top ten percent of looks and body in the Republic of Korea? That's no easy feat."
Her tone was humorous but her words were not.
Her plans for tonight? Get back to her empty apartment. Check her body. Swallow vitamins. Exercise according to the scale. On a good day, she might even consider a meal.
No easy feat indeed.
And then one of her many playthings pulled over. They really came in handy at times like this. Just a text away.
"Yeri-ah," the man called from his convertible, waiting.
"I'll be off," Yeri said, hopping off the bench. She was too pretty to ride the bus at this hour.
Kyung watched her go in disbelief. She flipped her off. Both hands.
Yeri just laughed.
Before Kyung, wanting safety felt like a full-time job.
Before Kyung, imagining herself as someone's accessory felt pathetic.
An arm piece.
Pretty. Decorative. Smiling in photographs. The kind of girl men display. The kind that was purchased.
Yeri would have rather swallowed glass.
She had spent too long making sure she was the one choosing the transactions — choosing the mask, the angle, the exit. Living came with a price. At least this way, she could set it.
Being chosen without compensation? Unacceptable.
But then Kyung started rewriting her own future.
Medicine first. Of course. Respectable. Predictable. Parental approval included. Direct competition with Jaeyi.
"You'd hate it," Yeri had told her the first time.
"I would not."
"You'd fight the hospital director within a week."
Kyung had glared.
Later it became engineering, patent attorney. Law hovered at the edges, unacknowledged.
Yeri had suggested law so many times it bordered on harassment.
"You like arguing."
"I don't argue."
"Sure. You just correct people aggressively."
Kyung never admitted she was listening. She was too busy trying to prove she wasn't second best at everything. She refused to settle.
And for some reason, Yeri found that infuriatingly impressive.
Kyung looked grown. Cool, even.
Yeri imagined her in a courtroom. Sharp. Unyielding. Correcting people mid-sentence. Terrifying, honestly.
And then her brain betrayed her.
She saw herself beside Kyung. Not in the audience. Beside.
At events. At dinners. At ceremonies. Standing just slightly to Kyung's right.
Untouchable.
Because if she belonged to Kyung — publicly, undeniably — no one would hand her a business card again. No one would look at her like inventory.
She would be under Kyung's jurisdiction. Protected property.
And maybe — this was the embarrassing part — she liked that Kyung's future had a little bit of her fingerprints on it.
The thought should have disgusted her.
Instead, it made her feel warm.
Which was deeply inconvenient.
Kyung had always orbited Jaeyi in the most miserable way — too close not to compare, too far to win.
Second place was Kyung's permanent residence.
It wasn't that she lacked talent. She just lacked the right surname.
Jaeyi was legacy. Polished inevitability. Engineered perfection.
Kyung was effort.
Yeri watched Kyung unravel in subtle ways only someone very close would notice. The tighter jaw. The sharper comments. The way her pen pressed too hard into paper whenever scores were mentioned. The way she pretended not to look at Jaeyi first.
Then the class president election happened.
Kyung was the only candidate. It should have been an easy win — effortless credit.
But of course Yoo Jaeyi had to stir things up.
Kyung lost.
To Seulgi, of all people.
Seulgi, who barely seemed to want it.
Kyung shot out of her seat when the results were announced, already marching toward Jo Ara and the allegedly miscounted votes. Yeri grabbed at her sleeve, too late.
It was humiliating.
Later, Yeri found her behind the gym, pacing like a caged animal.
"It doesn't make sense," Kyung muttered. "What does she even gain from this?"
"You don't have to care this much," Yeri said.
"Yes, I do."
No hesitation. Just conviction.
Kyung always cared too much.
About grades.
About injustice.
About being overlooked.
About proving she wasn't second best.
And when it came to Yeri, she cared exactly the same way.
Because when Yeri was the one being ranked — measured, evaluated — Kyung never accepted the result.
Not for grades. For things that mattered.
"That guy is beneath you. Stop wasting your time with him."
"You're not tired. You're sabotaging yourself. Quit smoking."
"How are you going to call yourself a harpist if I've never seen you fight for a stage?"
The same tone. The same stubborn certainty. The same refusal to accept second place.
She argued.
She intervened.
She stayed.
That was when it clicked.
Kyung didn't just hate coming second. She also hated watching Yeri placed there. And once Yeri understood that, her world shifted.
Standing beside Kyung wouldn't mean being displayed. It would mean never being second to anything again.
Pushing Kyung inside the blind date booth seemed like a great idea at the time. She deserved the prettiest Hoegyeong boy flirting with her as a reward for handing Yeri the perfect opportunity to steal Seulgi's phone.
Besides, Yeri still needed time to charge and inspect said phone before handing it to Mr. Yoo, and Kyung running around asking questions was a distraction.
She was surprised to almost run over Kyung again on her way out of the booth.
"Gosh, you scared me."
"Hey. Did you see that guy's face just now?" Kyung asks, a little out of breath from dashing from the girls' side to the boys'.
Yeri pauses. She hadn't expected that.
"What's this?" She looks Kyung up and down. "You're into him?"
"What the heck?" Kyung mutters, still scanning the field, still looking.
Yeri's smile sharpens. "You're making me jealous."
It's a joke. It's supposed to be a joke. But something twists low in her stomach when Kyung keeps searching the crowd.
Three minutes behind plastic with a faceless voice shouldn't matter this much. And yet the idea of Kyung wanting to see him — needing to see him — lands wrong.
Possessive, petty and not at all platonic.
Yeri straightens.
"Well?" she says, now dry. "Was he worth the cardio?"
Kyung finally looks at her instead.
"I was just curious."
"Of course you were."
Yeri smiles.
This time it takes effort.
They briefly agree to part ways without fanfare or an actual plan. Seulgi leaves with Jaeyi, Byeongjin driving them to the morgue to recognize Jena. That left Kyung and Yeri still at the nightclub's back, shocked with the news.
Kyung lingers.
Yeri pretends not to notice.
"You can stay at my place," Kyung says at last, voice smaller than usual. "If you want."
Yeri scoffs before she can stop herself.
"I don't want your pity."
"It's not pity." Kyung shakes her head quickly. "I just... didn't know."
Silence settles between them.
"It's just..." she tries again. "You always look like you have everything handled. Calm. Like nothing really gets to you."
Kyung fidgets with the strap of her bag, eyes fixed somewhere near Yeri's shoulder instead of her face.
"I thought you were fine." Kyung continues, almost in a whisper.
Yeri lets out a quiet breath.
"Appearances can be deceiving," she says, voice flatter than intended. She's tired — of explaining, of performing, of pretending she lands on her feet because she wants to.
Kyung nods slowly.
"I don't think you deserve it," she adds.
The words hang there, heavier than they should be.
No judgment. No lecture. Just certainty.
Yeri doesn't know what to do with that.
The silence stretches too long, thick and uncomfortable.
So she does what she always does.
She tilts her head, mouth curving.
"So," she says lightly, "you think I'm pretty?"
Kyung freezes.
Color rises immediately to her face.
"That's not— I didn't mean—"
Yeri laughs, softer this time, rescuing her from finishing the sentence.
The tension loosens.
But something lingers.
Because Kyung didn't take it back.
"So," Yeri says slowly, fingers tapping the desk. "You masturbated at school?"
"Yeri-ah—"
"So what? I do it too." She waves it off like it's nothing.
Yeri is faintly amused that Kyung thinks this is the worst scandal a girl could commit inside Chaehwa's sacred walls.
If she only knew.
"But it can look suspicious," Yeri continues, tilting her head. "Since it was the night before midterms. Right?"
Kyung eyes cast down in embarrassment, she just nods.
Yeri then turns to the computer, select the files and delete them. Unceremoniously.
Kyung looks relieved.
Yeri turns back to her, casually sitting on the desk.
"Besides," she says, studying her. "I'm more shocked that you knew of Jena and Mr. Woo's relationship and kept it a secret all this time."
Kyung exhales like she's been holding her breath for hours and looks at Yeri like that was the highest praise she ever received.
"It was none of my business," she mutters. "Not until Mr. Woo died and Jena disappeared."
The way she looks at Yeri after — careful, searching — says something. Trust.
"And now Jena is dead." Yeri completes her thought.
Of course. Kyung hates injustice. Hates secrets that rot from the inside. She could still pretend she didn't know anything about it. But she chose not to ignore it.
And for a fleeting, dangerous second, Yeri wonders what else Kyung would keep — or burn — if it meant protecting her.
But she can't afford to think about that right now.
"I appreciate your method but," Yeri smirks, already hopping of the desk. "If you need to relax before the exams, there's better ways to do it."
Kyung's face turns red instantly.
"You should ask me next time." she finishes with a wink.
The study room at J Medical Center is quiet in the way expensive places are — climate controlled, deliberately soundproofed, the hum of someone else's money doing the work of silence.
Jaeyi runs tutoring sessions like she runs everything else. Like a favor you didn't ask for and now owe.
Yeri doesn't mind. The trade is fair and she's learned to take good tutoring where she can find it, even packaged inside someone's elaborate chess game. She copies notes with the same focused calm she brings to most things — detached, efficient, present enough to absorb what she needs.
Across the table, Kyung is not calm.
She hasn't been, all session. Yeri noticed it early and filed it away: the way Kyung's pen slows on certain problems. The way she reads the same line twice without meaning to. Her posture is correct but her jaw is working, doing quiet overtime.
CSAT, probably. Or engineering. Or medicine. Or the specific misery of not yet knowing which fear to listen to.
Yeri doesn't say anything.
She's still doing the math on what's allowed between them since the nightclub. Since Jena. Since the things neither of them finished saying. The calculation keeps coming out inconclusive, which is its own kind of answer, and not a useful one.
Then Seulgi appears at the door.
The disruption is immediate and theatrical in the way Seulgi never intends — she's too honest for theater, which makes everything she does land harder. She needs Jaeyi. If Yeri was in a gossip mood, this would be such a generous buffet. But she already got enough homework.
After a minute, Jaeyi is already composing herself into whatever version of herself she chooses to show Seulgi, and out the door she is.
The room recalibrates.
Yeri keeps her eyes on her notes for a moment longer than necessary.
Then she looks up.
Kyung is sitting very still, staring at nothing in particular just past the edge of her textbook. The pen is down. Her shoulders have dropped slightly — not relaxed, just suspended, like she forgot to hold the tension and hasn't noticed yet.
She looks like herself, Yeri thinks. Not the version she performs at school. Not the one who argues with teachers and keeps perfect posture and tracks every slight for later use. Just Kyung, in a borrowed study room, temporarily unplugged.
It lasts maybe four seconds.
Then Kyung blinks and comes back, and catches Yeri looking.
"What?"
"Nothing," Yeri says.
Kyung's eyes narrow slightly. "You're staring."
"I'm resting my eyes." She gestures vaguely at her notes. "This is a lot of material."
"It's the same material we've covered."
"Kyung-ah," Yeri says, with great patience, "not all of us have your memory."
Kyung looks at her for a beat. The awkward residue of the past few weeks sits between them, present but not insurmountable. Neither of them addresses it. This is, Yeri has found, the most workable arrangement.
"Stressed?" Yeri asks, because she's apparently not done making things harder for herself.
Kyung's expression shifts slightly. "What?"
"You've been stress-reading the same page for twenty minutes."
"I have not."
Yeri tilts her head. "Page 84."
Kyung looks down. Looks up. Says nothing.
"CSAT's still months away," Yeri offers, with the easy magnanimity of someone who has made peace with her own mediocrity.
"That's easy for you to say."
"It really is."
Kyung's jaw tightens. She flips a page with more force than necessary.
Yeri watches Kyung instead.
The tension is back in her shoulders. The pen is moving again but the rhythm is wrong — too fast, slightly uneven. She's not absorbing anything. She's just performing studying at herself.
"You know," Yeri says, in a tone of great thoughtfulness, "there are healthier ways to deal with exam stress."
Kyung doesn't look up. "I'm studying."
"Sure." A beat. "Or you could try what works."
Something in Kyung's posture changes. Imperceptibly, if you weren't paying attention.
Yeri is always paying attention.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Kyung says, to her textbook.
"I'm just saying." Yeri examines her nails. "My method is very effective. Clinically proven, even."
"Joo Yeri—"
"Stress relief is important during exam season—"
"I will move seats."
"There's only two of us in here."
Kyung finally looks at her. Her ears are pink. She points with her pen. "You are genuinely the worst person I know."
Yeri smiles, slow and satisfied.
And Kyung, despite herself, exhales — a short breath through her nose that isn't quite a laugh but is adjacent to one. Some of the tension goes with it. Her shoulders drop. She looks, briefly, like the four-second version of herself Yeri clocked earlier.
There it is.
Yeri looks back at her notes before Kyung can catch her looking again.
The thing about running distribution is that it requires a very short memory.
You learn not to think about where the pills end up. You learn the brick, the money, the drop — the clean geometry of it. You don't follow the product past your own hands. That's how you stay functional. That's how everyone in this system stays functional.
Yeri has been functional for months. But this drop felt fishy. The smug way Beongjin talked about the buyer. It wasn't just anyone.
So she waited at the corner behind the east building and sees Choi Kyung crouching by the third trash container, fingers already under the brick.
She stops. "That little bitch."
She crosses the distance and grabs the back of Kyung's collar, pulling her up and snatching the pack of pills of her hand.
"What the hell—" Kyung's voice snaps up fast, already defensive. She straightens and her face does something complicated — surprise, then recognition, then the entitled anger of someone who already paid.
"Give it back." She reaches for the pack.
Yeri easily move it out of Kyung's reach.
"What is it? Do you need more money? Fine. I'll give you more."
Yeri looks at the pack in her hand. She knows this one.
"Do you really want to do this?" she says, and she means it as a genuine question, which is unusual for her.
Yeri looks at her. Really looks. The jaw. The dark circles she's been covering with concealer for weeks. The way she's standing like she's already braced for a fight she's been having with herself for much longer than this conversation.
The silence between them sharpens. Kyung's eyes are doing that thing — cataloguing, recalculating. Yeri recognizes the look because she invented it.
"Just go," Yeri finishes, already walking away. Forget this happened, she wants to say.
"Look at you." Kyung's voice comes out strange. Tight. Like she's angrier than she meant to be. "Acting all high and mighty. But you accept hostess club business cards."
The words land.
Yeri goes very still.
"What the fuck are you saying?" She hadn't meant to say it. It comes out anyway, because she's tired and because Kyung cornered her and because some things are apparently still tender enough to bleed through. "I left that place long ago."
Shit.
Yeri watches her read the slip. Something moves in Kyung's face and then she keeps going anyway. Yeri rolls her eyes, already bracing for the lenghty scolding she's getting.
Here we go.
"I knew the moment I saw you grinning over that 10% business card." Kyung says. "I'm not surprised. That's all you saw growing up."
Yeri's vision goes narrow and specific the way it does when she's choosing violence.
"Fuck you, bitch. It was you, wasn't it?" She steps forward. "You uploaded that post."
Kyung didn't back off, but poke a finger at her shoulder. Defiant.
"I'm not like you," Kyung says, it's the voice of someone who already knows they've gone too far and has decided to go further anyway. Yeri recognizes that voice. She's used it herself. "I don't go around selling other people's secrets."
"Damn it." It's such a clean hit that Yeri almost respects it.
Almost.
Kyung reaches for the pack. Yeri doesn't let go. For a moment they're both holding it — then it goes sideways, and there are hands in hair and elbows and the specific graceless violence of two people who have never actually wanted to hurt each other, which makes it worse, not better.
The pack hits the ground.
Yeri steps on it. Multiple times, deliberate. Then kicks it away into the dirt where it belongs.
Kyung stares at it.
Yeri breathes. Gets herself level. Looks down at Kyung, who looks back at her with something that isn't quite hate but is adjacent to everything hate uses as raw material.
"Stop trying to beat Jaeyi." Her voice comes out cracked and barely holding it in, and it still takes considerable effort. "If you want to continue private tutoring, keep your mouth shut."
"What are you talking about?" Seulgi comes around to throw away a trash bag, stops when she sees them, and reads the room in one second.
Neither Yeri nor Kyung explains anything.
Neither of them stays.
The bench is cold.
Yeri sits with her wrist in her lap and doesn't look at it.
The walk here was quiet. Kyung didn't try to fill it, which Yeri appreciated more than she'll ever say out loud. Kyung just walked beside her. Same pace.
That was enough. That was, if she's being precise about it, a lot.
CSAT is over.
That should feel like something.
It doesn't feel like anything yet. Just the bench, the afternoon light, and Kyung sitting beside her with the specific energy of someone who just cited law verbatim at a dangerous adult and is pretending that was a normal thing to do.
She breathes.
Yeri had watched her do it. Had stood very still and watched Kyung's voice come out steady and precise and genuinely frightening, and had felt something move in her chest that she is choosing, actively, not to name.
"Is it true that you worked at a club?"
She'd been expecting the question. Doesn't mean she has an answer prepared.
"Damn it." She looks at the middle distance. "They wanted me to sell my virginity for ten million won."
She can feel Kyung next to her, very still.
"What?"
Yeri tilts her head slightly. The way Kyung says it — not disgust, not pity, just the pure unprocessed shock of someone recalibrating — is almost funny.
"What's that look about?" she asks. "What part of it shocked you?"
A beat.
"You haven't had sex before?"
Yeri looks at her.
So of everything — the club, the ten million, the woman who showed up at the back door of a national exam to collect her like a debt — that's the part Kyung is stuck on. Choi Kyung, who has apparently been walking around with some private image of Yeri as a woman of vast and sophisticated experience.
Deeply, deeply gay of her.
Yeri files it away in the part of herself she visits when she needs something to smile about.
"No." She lets it sit. "What about you? Why aim for medical school?"
"Shit, why are we going there?"
"You're more of a law student." Yeri knows she sounds like a broken record but the evidence is irrefutable. What Kyung just did should not go unnoticed, specially because Yeri would never be able to forget.
"You were dead cool earlier," she blurts before she can stop herself. It was so hot and I want you to do it all the time, she barely kept in her throat.
The smirk, when it comes, is small and private and entirely too pleased with itself. Yeri is equally pleased that she made that smirk happen.
That dork.
Yeri looks away before it can do anything further to her.
"Is your wrist okay?" Kyung asks. Quieter now. The smirk gone, something else in its place. "You have a practical exam."
Yeri looks down at her wrist. Flexes it once, slowly.
"I'm not good enough to go to college." True things usually cost more than that. Today they're coming out easy, which is either growth or exhaustion and she's not sure she wants to know which. "But I should at least play a few notes." She smile at Kyung. "Don't you think?"
Kyung looks at her and they share a small laugh, releasing the tension of the day and just enjoying whatever happens.
Then she looks back at the lake in front of them, and the cold bench, and the future that still hasn't loaded.
It's fine.
She thinks it might actually be fine.
They're sitting outside the café where Yeri now works part-time. The agency recruiter's card is still in her apron pocket, slightly bent.
Kyung is ranting about a professor.
"He docked points for formatting. Formatting."
"Tragic," Yeri says solemnly.
"You're not taking this seriously."
"I'm always serious."
Kyung narrows her eyes. "That's a lie."
Yeri studies her for a moment instead. The tension in her shoulders. The way she chews the inside of her cheek when she's trying not to spiral. Law school suits her in the worst possible way.
"You should take it, by the way," Kyung says suddenly.
"What?"
"The offer." She nods toward Yeri's apron.
"Why?"
"Because you're talented."
Yeri huffs a laugh. "I picked harp because there was less competition." She never claimed musical prowess.
"That doesn't mean you're not good."
Yeri searches her face for sarcasm. There isn't any.
"You'd be pampered and pretty all the time," Kyung adds, almost offhand. "Isn't that your dream job?"
A beat.
Yeri tilts her head.
"My dream job," she says lightly, "is actually being your arm piece."
Kyung blinks.
"My what?"
"Your arm piece. Stand next to you at important events. Look pretty. Glare at your enemies."
"You already glare at my enemies."
"Exactly. I'm qualified."
"That's not a job."
"It is if you're rich enough."
Kyung rolls her eyes. "I'm not going to be that kind of lawyer."
"Bold of you to assume I won't upgrade you."
Kyung snorts despite herself. "You're impossible."
Silence stretches a second too long. Kyung looks at her more carefully.
"Why would you want that?"
Yeri shrugs, aiming for flippant and missing.
"Seems easy."
Kyung doesn't laugh.
"You really have no ambition," she says, scolding. "Don't you want something for yourself?"
She never sugarcoats. Never lets Yeri get away with hiding.
But Yeri doesn't retreat this time.
"Maybe I do," she says, softer than she meant to. "Maybe I want you."
Kyung goes still.
"What?"
"As my employer," Yeri amends smoothly. "Obviously."
Kyung exhales, flustered. "Don't you have a shift?"
"You'll need a secretary eventually," Yeri says, standing. "Think long-term."
Kyung shakes her head, already burying herself back in her book.
"Eat something," she mutters, flipping a page. "You skipped lunch."
Kyung pretends to read.
Yeri lingers.
She can see it already — Kyung being brilliant. Courtrooms and conferences and headlines.
And herself beside her.
Protected.
Chosen.
She sees herself slipping her arm through Kyung's. She sees Kyung pretending not to like it. She sees Kyung staying.
Darling, she doesn't dream of labour.
She dreams of this.