High on You (Choi Do Il x Oh In Joo - Little Women 작은 아씨들)

4

From: Du-joon
Are you still up for lunch?

In-joo stared at her phone and took a deep, steady breath.

From: In-joo
Yes, of course I still am. Meet you downstairs?

From: Du-joon
I'm coming up first.

The girl shook her head in disbelief. This guy was crazy. They had to go all the way down anyway, so why bother? She put the phone down on her desk and kept analyzing the data she had been working on all morning. Her head ached in the worst way; her eyes felt swollen, and there was a constant thump at the front, as if there was a hammer hitting her forehead on repeat. Just a few more minutes, In-joo, just a few more minutes.

She was turning off her computer when she heard him coming through the door at the back of the open-floor office.
"Du-joon-ssi! Over here." She told him. Du-joon made his way toward the bookkeeper and greeted her with his signature shy smile, so in contrast with his rather bulky frame.
"Oh In-joo-ssi, you ready?" In-joo nodded her head and made to reach for the bag beside her desk, but Du-joon was already handing it to her.
"Oh, thank you." She took it from his hands, and together they proceeded in the direction of the stairs. Three flights down, on the suite floor of the hotel, they got into an elevator.
"So, where are we going?" In-joo asked. The man hadn't told her anything yet, and curiosity was eating her up.
"Do you like samgyeopsal?" Who didn't like pork belly, honestly?
"I love it," she excitedly answered.
"Then you don't need to worry about where we're headed. Just know that they have the best samgyeopsal."
In-joo smiled at him, and he mirrored her expression. The elevator emitted a loud bing, the doors slid open, and the two co-workers started searching the streets for an available taxi.

***

It had been a while since In-joo last went to a Korean BBQ restaurant, so she let Du-joon do the honors. They both decided to avoid soju, so while he grilled the meat, she served water and some apple juice.
"When was the last time you went to a BBQ, In-joo-ssi?" the girl gaped at him, wondering if perhaps he could read minds.
"I was just thinking about that, actually," she admitted, "I think the last time I went was with my little sister Oh In-hye. A year and a half ago-ish. She had just come back from the USA after spending three months there with my other sister, Oh In-kyung."
"Ah yes, the reporter. I didn't know you had another younger sister, though."
"Indeed, the reporter. And yes, the youngest is 23 years old now," In-joo said.
"She doesn't live with you?" The inflection of his voice made it sound like a question, but considering how Du-joon had worded the sentence, he made it sound like he merely wanted to clarify that aspect.
"She doesn't. She has been traveling the world since the age of 18, since... well, you can do the math."
Du-joon simply nodded his head and started serving the cooked food. It was no secret that In-joo had been among all the people involved in the Jeongran case, guilty or not. Both she, her sister In-kyung, Choi Do-il and Hwa-young had been all over the news after Won Sang-a's and Park Jae-sang's deaths.
"Don't feel ashamed around me for what happened. I know you didn't do anything." If only that had been true, though. In-joo knew she technically didn't do anything wrong, but she definitely still felt like she could have thought more about some aspects of it all: taking the money in the first place. She had reprimanded herself countless times over the years because she knew the smart thing to do back then would have been to report that money to the police, even if policemen could have hypothetically been under Park Jae-sang's thumb. Reporting them would have meant for her and In-hye to be out of the dangerous games that she had been played in by Choi Do-il, Park Jae-sang, and his murderous wife. She couldn't say the same for In-kyung: she had already started her own battle way before In-joo had found the money Hwa-young had left her in the locker. But in the end, she was convinced that she had done what was right for her family back then. That money, stolen, safely put away, donated, then stolen again, then taken back again – for real and legally, this time around – had been her sisters' way out of this vicious story. Not hers, though. Never hers.
When In-hye had sent her the money, she had immediately felt relief in her bones, but not a second had passed that she had felt guilty as hell. Hwa-young had exposed herself to save her and had ended up in jail when she could have continued living her life as a free woman, a guilty but free woman. Choi Do-il had to leave everything behind to hopefully clear his name and be able to come back one day. In-hye had been 18 years old and had to escape with her best friend to stay safe out of reach from Park Hyo-rin's parents' claws and mental abuse. In-joo didn't choose a way out, she hadn't fled from the newspapers, and she hadn't fled from her work duties either. Two weeks after Do-il's departure, she went to her old office headquarters to finally clean her station on the 13th floor: in fact, before everything happened, she had been about to leave her position as bookkeeper. After taking all her stuff, she went to Hwa-young's precious orchid corner one last time and decided to bid the majestic plants farewell. She had no idea who would have taken care of the Princess and the rest of the collection from that moment on, but she sure as hell wouldn't have had anything else to do with orchids ever again, given the fact that she had had plenty for a lifetime in the span of just a few months. She then turned out to be jobless at the worst possible time, socially, ethically, and morally speaking. She had been in jail, after all. No one wanted her to touch or even look at their money. Then, a little over two years ago, she had received a call from the recruiter at Gilded Hotel, whose owners had happened to know her grandma, and they had offered her a job.