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

26

In-joo looked around the office, panic settling in her bones. When she saw that no one was there, she relaxed just enough to allowed her to frown and to feel a light veil of tears obscuring her sight. What was that note? Was it meant for her? Was it for someone else? She snatched it from the table and put it in her bag. Then she picked up all the documents that were scattered around the floor and put them back on her desk. They were all messed up, there was no logical order to them, but it wasn't important right then. She needed to get out of that room as fast as she could. She grabbed everything she had left in the wardrobe, stashed everything inside the big, old bag, and rushed downstairs.

When Do-il saw her coming back inside the Gala room, he could immediately tell that something was off with her. The way she walked screamed of panic, her face was pale, her eyes were bright with unshed tears, and most importantly, she had her bag with her, like she was ready to go away. He stood up and met her halfway through the walk to the bar.
"In-joo-ssi? Are you okay?" He searched her face for any other sign that could tell him more about her stressed behavior, but he didn't notice anything else. In-joo nodded her head, then she said, "I need to drink a little bit of water, then I think I'm gonna head home." She tried getting past him, but he blocked her.
"What's going on?" Do-il put his hands on her shoulders and kept her firmly in place. The bookkeeper bit her lip, tears rushing up again in her eyes, and her breathing became unstable.
"I don't know, I – I don't know." The man pulled her closer to his chest and led her to the bar, so she could sit down on a stool.
"Calm down, In-joo-ssi." He told her with his soothing, nothing-bad-is-gonna-happen voice. "You went upstairs, then what happened?"
"I changed my shoes, and... and then I turned, and... paper, there was paper everywhere."
"Paper documents on the floor? Someone knocked them on the floor?" He was trying to figure out what she could've seen, but there weren't a lot of elements to understand why she seemed so upset.
"Ye-yes, and then on my desk..." she interrupted herself mid-sentence and dove her hands inside the bag that was still hanging from her shoulder. "There was this." She took out what looked like a paper note and let it slide from her fingers to his. Do-il turned it around to be able to read it properly.
Welcome back, it said. It was handwritten, but he didn't recognize the calligraphy behind it.
"Doesn't look sketchy at all," he said ironically. "Let's get you a glass of water, and then we should tell your sisters you're leaving. What do you think?"
"Yes, yes, please." In-joo asked for a glass of water, gulped it down in one go, and then they started looking for In-kyung and In-hye. They met Do-il's mom first, and he told her he would leave for an hour or so and that he'd be back. After that, they met everyone they were looking for around the table where they had dined, with them were Jade, Neil, and their babies.
"Hey guys," she walked up to them with a tight-lipped smile on her face that was both trying to be reassuring, but it almost looked terrifying.
"Oh, unni. I was wondering where you were. I haven't seen you in a while."

"Ah, yeah, well... I went up to my office to grab my stuff. I'm going home. It's kinda late already, and I'm tired..."
"You're not gonna stay for the final reveal?" In-hye interjected. She was referring to the moment they'd open the boxes to see the final amount of donations.
"I'm sure you're going to fill me in tomorrow. I'll see you later, or tomorrow morning. Alright?" In-joo insisted.
The sisters nodded their heads and said their goodbyes. They didn't miss the fact that Do-il wasn't that far away waiting for her and that they were about to leave together.
In-joo made her way back to him and got out of the hotel.
"Where's your car?" he asked her.
"Why?"
"Two reasons, I wanna make sure everything is safe, and if it is, I'm driving you home." Easy explanation, it left no room for doubts.
"It's in the underground parking lot. Sector 4."

When they got there, Do-il made her wait at the door that led to the parking lot while he checked the car. He had seen one too many rigged cars that had been fatal to the people driving them, In-joo had witnessed one of them as well, and he wasn't about to let that happen now. He got onto his knees, checked below the car for any red spy or weird-looking little box, checked the doors for any kind of explosive, then opened the car hood and checked the engine and everything around it. When he was sure nothing was amiss or had been added or manipulated, Do-il let In-joo in and made her hand over the keys. She climbed into the passenger's seat and buckled up.
"Are you still staying at your halmeoni's house?" the man said once he had sat down as well and started the engine.
"No, I've got my own apartment."
"Good," he stated, if this was some kind of sick joke, it'd be nothing to be worried about, but if it was somehow connected to old events... a new apartment would have been harder to track down. He hoped so, at least. Five years were a lot of time to follow a person, understand their movements, analyze their daily routine, and anticipate it. What made him hopeful, though, was the fact that whoever this was, had waited this moment to make their move, and plus, the note said 'Welcome back'.
Do-il hadn't said anything, but he was feeling it in his bones: that message hadn't been written for In-joo. It had been left there for him. In-joo was supposed to find it, yes, but the meaning was clear, and it was directed at his coming back home. But who could it be? Everyone was dead. Except for... No, it couldn't be. He refused to believe that Hyo-rin could have anything to do with all that.
He asked In-joo the address, and they started moving.