JIAH POV
"I went to our school to get his reports."
I straighten slightly in my chair, my fingers tightening around the phone as Bora's voice comes through the speaker with a strange tension I have never heard from her before. "Did you get them?"
There is a brief pause on the other end of the line, long enough for the air around my desk to start feeling heavy. I glance toward the closed office door across from me without meaning to.
"There's no such reports saying Yu Enhyeok studied there."
For a moment my brain refuses to process what she just said.
"What are you saying?" I ask, sitting up completely now as the chair wheels shift slightly under my weight.
"I said he is not in the report," Bora repeats, her voice slower this time as if she expects the sentence to land harder the second time. "His name doesn't exist in the student database, Jiah."
My fingers press against my temple.
"How is that even possible?" I mutter quietly, the words slipping out before I can stop them.
We studied together for three years, shared classrooms, teachers, exams, and lunch breaks like normal students do, so how the hell does someone disappear from official records like that.
Bora lets out a short laugh that carries absolutely no humor.
"Isn't it funny?" she says. "The one who studied with us is just a ghost now."
The sentence leaves a strange pressure in my chest that I don't like.
"We should meet at our café this evening," I say after a moment, forcing my voice back into something stable because this conversation feels like it needs to happen face to face. "I want to hear everything."
"Yeah," Bora answers quickly. "Let's do that."
The call ends.
I lower the phone slowly and stare at the desk in front of me while the office floor around me continues moving like nothing strange just happened.
Employees walk past the corridor outside the glass wall, printers hum quietly somewhere down the hallway, and the faint clacking of keyboards fills the air.
Something heavy sits right in the center of my chest.
The intercom on my desk suddenly lights up.
"Secretary Seo," his voice says through the device, calm and controlled like always. "Come in."
I close my eyes for a second and force a slow breath into my lungs before pushing my chair back and standing up. By the time I reach his office door, my expression is already back in place.
Professional.
Neutral.
I open the door and step inside.
Yu Enhyeok sits behind the large desk with several documents spread across the surface, his sleeves rolled slightly past his wrists while he reviews a stack of reports with quiet concentration.
The sunlight from the window behind him catches the sharp lines of his face, making the whole scene look unfairly composed.
It hurts to look at him like this.
Fucking pretty and cruel.
"Give me the operational report from the China branch," he says without lifting his eyes from the document in his hand. "I want the revised financial projections and the market expansion summary attached with it."
I move toward the desk and place the file in front of him.
"This is the latest version approved by the regional management team," I explain, opening the folder so he can see the numbers clearly. "They're proposing a new distribution network through Shenzhen and Guangzhou."
His eyes move across the pages quickly.
He became CEO only five days ago, yet he handles regional restructuring like he has been sitting in that chair for years
He flips another page.
"After I finish reviewing this report, you can leave," he says calmly.
I hesitate.
"I want to say something."
"Talk," he replies without even looking up, his attention still locked on the financial statements.
I cross my arms loosely.
"When I was in high school, I loved someone," I say, the words coming out lighter than they should. "We were good together for a while, but somehow things ended and we broke up."
His pen moves across the page as he signs a document.
"And now," I continue with a small laugh that feels strange even to my own ears, "he's not even in the school records anymore."
He keeps reading.
"He became a ghost."
The room stays quiet except for the sound of paper shifting under his hands.
Finally he speaks.
"Is that necessary information about the work you're doing right now?"
"No," I reply with a shrug he doesn't bother to look at. "I'm just saying it in case you get bored of staring at those reports all day."
"I wasn't bored," he says flatly. "Until you started this shit."
I roll my eyes before bowing briefly out of habit and turning toward the door.
My hand is already reaching for the handle when his voice stops me.
"If you really loved him," he says quietly from behind the desk, "he wouldn't be a ghost."
My body freezes.
The sentence lands somewhere deep enough that for a second I'm scared my eyes might betray me if I turn around, so I don't even try.
I open the door without looking back and walk out into the hallway before the air inside that office crushes my lungs completely.
By the time I reach my desk and sit down, breathing already feels wrong.
Something thick is stuck in my throat and every inhale comes out shallow and uneven.
He became a ghost because I didn't love him?
What a fucking joke.
By the time I leave the office building, the sky above Seoul is already dark and the glass towers around the street are glowing with cold white lights.
The work floor had emptied hours ago, but I stayed longer than usual finishing reports just so I didn't have to sit alone with the thoughts running through my head.
The cold air hits my face the second I step outside.
I pull my coat tighter around my shoulders and start walking quickly down the street toward the café we always use as our meeting spot.
The place is only three blocks away, but tonight the distance feels longer than usual.
The sign of the café comes into view through the window lights.
Bora and Haerin are already sitting at the corner table when I push the door open and step inside. The smell of coffee and baked bread fills the room while quiet music plays somewhere near the counter.
I walk straight to their table and drop into the empty chair.
"What happened, Bora?"
She exhales heavily before leaning back in her seat, her fingers still wrapped around a cup that has clearly gone cold by now.
"I went to our school to get his reports," she says slowly, glancing between me and Haerin like she still can't believe the words coming out of her own mouth.
"I got every record from our year, every exam sheet, every registration file, every transfer document."
Her jaw tightens.
"But his name isn't in any of them."
The irritation in my chest spikes immediately.
"That's such bullshit," I say, leaning forward with both elbows on the table while my fingers lace together tightly. "We studied with him for three years. He sat in the same classrooms as us."
Bora nods.
"We all know that," she mutters, rubbing her forehead. "The problem is we don't have a single piece of proof showing he was actually there."
Haerin shifts in her seat.
"What about our photos from school trips or festivals?" she asks, glancing between us like she's trying to piece something together. "We took a ton of pictures back then."
Bora shakes her head immediately.
"That doesn't mean anything now," she says. "In this era people can create a teenage version of themselves with two clicks and some editing software."
Haerin frowns.
"He wasn't in the yearbook either," she adds quietly.
The words make something tighten inside my chest.
I look down at my hands resting on the table.
He wasn't even at graduation because he already—.
Silence spreads across the table.
Bora watches me carefully for a moment before leaning forward again.
"So what should we do, Jiah?"
I lift my head slowly and meet her eyes.
"There's nothing we can do," I say flatly. "So let's forget him like he never existed."
Haerin studies my face carefully.
"Can you actually do that?"
A short laugh leaves my mouth before I can stop it.
"Of course I can."
The words barely settle in the air before a voice cuts through the café from behind us.
"How dare you say that."
All three of us turn at the same time.
standing there with Anger in his face
Is
Minseok .