Deal Breaker - Chapter 41
Operation: Protect the Han River-View Apartment
Twenty-six years old. Highest level of education: high school graduate. And yet, already a successful career woman.
Impressive, Noh Hyeji.
Even if she owed much of that success to her being born a Guide.
Hyeji stood by the window, smiling as she lifted a steaming cup, gazing out at the Han River shrouded in morning mist. The taste of coffee from ‘my home’, with a view spanning Seongsu Bridge and, in the distance, Dongho Bridge, was unbeatable. Even if the bathroom and dressing room technically belonged to the bank.
She had bought this place in November last year, so it had been four months since she’d moved in. The apartment was a modest size, perfect for just her and her grandmother. They’d sacrificed floor space to get a newly built place.
If her mother were still alive, they might have chosen an older but larger apartment for the three of them.
Every morning, after finishing her routine and standing here drinking coffee, she thought of her mother. Just twelve years ago, the one heading out in a suit, carrying a tumbler of instant coffee her grandmother made, had been Hyeji’s mother.
“Princess.”
Now, the only person left who still called her ‘princess’ was her grandmother. Her grandmother stepped out of the dressing room holding two lipsticks. She was also getting ready for work.
Even after Hyeji landed a job paying several tens of millions of won each month, her grandmother hadn’t quit working. She’d always said that when a person who has worked their entire life suddenly stops, they age overnight.
Thanks to her grandmother’s contributions, Hyeji had been able to save everything she earned and, right at the tail end of being twenty-five, achieved her goal of buying her own home—a Han River-view apartment at that.
On move-in day, she and her grandmother had popped open an expensive bottle of champagne. That’s how it had started, but over time the drinks shifted from champagne to beer, then from beer to soju. The bitterness of years spent drifting from one rental to another was something even alcohol couldn’t wash away easily.
But after finally getting her own home, both Hyeji and her grandmother had found peace of mind. Her grandmother left behind the grueling restaurant work and care-giving jobs she had always done and instead began studying coffee, something she had always wanted to learn.
“If I’d learned earlier, I could’ve made something nicer for Yeong-ah to take to work, too.”
It was only recently that Hyeji realized her mother was the reason behind this new pursuit.
These days, her grandmother worked as a barista at a “silver café” run by the senior welfare center nearby. The coffee Hyeji now held had been hand-dripped personally by her grandmother.
“Royal Grandmother, for what reason has Princess Hyeji summoned me?”
“Which color do you think suits me better?”
Her grandmother showed her a red lipstick and a purple one as she asked.
“What scarf are you wearing?”
“Come here for a second.”
From early in the morning, Madame Kim Geumok’s fashion show had begun in the dressing room.
A lifelong stranger to romance, having spent her life supporting her daughter and granddaughter, Grandmother was now flirting with someone. A regular at the café.
“Turns out he’s from the same hometown as me.”
What had started as casual mentions of a certain gentleman customer had led, just recently, to weekend drives. Today, she said, she’d go see a movie with him after finishing her café shift. Hyeji poured all her energy into coaching her grandmother’s date look.
“What bag should I carry? Oh!”
She’d been about to pull out a large box buried deep in the closet when her grandmother stopped her.
“Aigoo, leave that one. It’s too precious.”
“I bought it for you to carry on days like this. If you hoard a luxury bag, it just turns into an overpriced brick. You need to take it out and use it.”
It was a handbag Hyeji had bought at duty-free on her first Dubai business trip. Seeing it again after so long made her smile as the day’s mishaps came back to her.
When she’d gifted it, expecting her grandmother to be pleased, the older woman’s face had instead turned dark. Puzzled, Hyeji soon discovered the misunderstanding.
“Hyeji-ya, tell me honestly, okay?”
“What?”
“You’re not working at a bar as a hostess, are you?”
“What? I told you, I’m a secretary!”
She had proudly handed her grandmother ten business cards, freshly printed with her company name and job title. But given how much she earned as a secretary, her grandmother’s suspicion was understandable.
“Who works at a bar during the day?”
“Then maybe you’re…”
Her grandmother’s doubts about her twenty-year-old granddaughter, who’d suddenly taken a leave from university and started bringing home large sums of money, were endless. Every morning, tall, sharply dressed men and women in black suits would arrive in a gleaming black sedan to pick her up and then drop her off again in the evening…
“Are you some mob boss’s wife or something?”
What era even had mob boss wives anymore? Hyeji had doubled over laughing at her grandmother’s wild imagination.
“No, it’s not like that…”
Eventually, she confessed that she was a Guide. Her grandmother only vaguely knew that such a profession existed and assumed, since the government required adults to undergo testing, that it was some sort of civil servant position.
“The CEO says I could get kidnapped, so he always sends a car and guards with me wherever I go.”
“Aigoo. Then this is dangerous work! This girl!”
“So don’t go around telling people I’m a Guide or that I make good money. If word gets out that I make a lot, people will start spreading weird rumors. And if it gets out that I’m a Guide, I really might get kidnapped.”
For Madame Kim Geumok, her only granddaughter’s safety came before pride. Even her grandmother’s closest friends, people who knew exactly how many spoons were in their house, still didn’t know Hyeji was a Guide.
