Yesterday at lunchtime, I said I liked him while eating a triangle kimbap, and he made sure to confirm it once more in the elevator on the way home from work.
And yet this morning, Dongmin was back to his usual distance again.
I couldn’t take it anymore.
At lunchtime, I stopped Dongmin in the hallway.
"...Can we talk for a moment?"
I dragged him into an empty conference room.
Dongmin stood by the door, avoiding my eyes.
"...Why do you keep avoiding me?"
"...I’m not avoiding you."
"I already told you I’m not involved with Unhak, and I told you how I feel too. But you keep acting like this anyway. Why?"
Dongmin couldn’t say anything, only biting his lip. The longer that silence went on, the less angry I felt and the more hurt I became.
"...Do you hate me?"
"No."
The answer came out too fast.
That speed was honest, in its own way.
"Then why?"
Dongmin stared at the floor for a long time before finally opening his mouth.
"...I know this will sound weird."
"Please, tell me."
"...I don’t really know how to explain it either, but when I look at you, something sometimes flashes past. Like a scene, but I can’t tell exactly what it is. But weirdly, inside it, there’s both a feeling of liking and a feeling of pain. It definitely feels like I liked it, but at the same time it feels like that was the most painful thing. I got scared of that, so I kept putting distance between us."
My heart dropped with a thud.
A thought flashed through my mind: No way.
Could he be going through something too?
"...What exactly is that scene like?"
"...I’m not sure about that either. It’s just a feeling. But lately, whenever I see you, it keeps happening, and I don’t know why I’m like this either."
Dongmin looked flustered himself.
It seemed like he’d realized he’d said more than he meant to.
"...No, it’s nothing. The way I said it was weird. Don’t mind it."
"...Still, please tell me. It’s okay if it sounds weird."
"...For now, I don’t know what’s right either. I’ll tell you once I’ve sorted it out."
I wanted to press him further, but Dongmin opened the door first and left.
Alone in the conference room, I went over what he’d just said again and again.
I’d suspected Dongmin was carrying something since the day my third life began.
But it was the first time I’d heard him say something like, "a scene flashes by," so directly.
For the first time, I wondered if Dongmin might somehow be sensing that I was living my third life too.
*
In the afternoon, I sat across from Unhak in the archive room. Today, I couldn’t put it off anymore.
"...Have you finished thinking it through?"
Unhak took a moment to steady his breathing.
"...Yeah. I decided to help Yeoju. If I drag this out any longer, I feel like I’ll get dragged over to Manager Sungho’s side instead."
With that one line, I could tell his hesitation from yesterday was over.
"...Then did you find out what you said yesterday?"
Unhak took out his notebook and opened it.
"Yeah. I followed the approval line, but it doesn’t end with Manager Sungho. It goes one level higher, to the executive level at BND. I still haven’t seen the name, but the title and the line are definite."
It was deeper than I’d expected. This was the first time I’d confirmed with my own eyes that it didn’t end with Sungho alone.
"...About when do you think the name will turn up?"
"I’ll have to dig more to know that. But we don’t have much time. Until settlement day, we’ve got exactly 2 weeks left."
2 weeks.
That was shorter than I’d thought.
Even in my second life, around this point I’d eventually reached that day having done nothing.
"I’ll look for patterns in the fund flow on the Sunil Capital side. Whether money has been siphoned off in a similar way before, and whether it all ends with Manager Sungho."
"I’ll keep digging through the approval line. I’ll trace it all the way to whose desk it reaches. It’s risky, but if we don’t do it now, it’ll be too late."
"Be careful. Don’t do anything that draws attention."
"You too. Is that person still following you?"
"...I don’t know. I haven’t seen them these past few days, which makes me even more uneasy."
Unhak folded his notebook and added one more thing.
"If we can’t find it within 2 weeks, then what happens after that?"
I had no answer.
In both of my lives before, what came after was death.
I could only believe this time would be different; I had no certainty.
"...We have to find it. No matter what."
I repeated the number 2 weeks over and over in my head.
In my second life, I’d never counted the days like this.
The fact that I was counting them this time was proof that something had changed.
*
At night, I came home and sat down in front of my desk.
I spread out the Sunil Capital materials again.
My hand kept stopping as it scanned the numbers.
Dongmin’s words kept coming back to me.
That part about a scene flashing by.
That part about both a feeling of liking and a feeling of pain being there together.
When I heard that, the first thing I felt wasn’t fear, but relief.
Relief that maybe I wasn’t alone.
But right after that, another worry followed.
For now, Dongmin didn’t know what it was either, but there might come a time when that feeling became clear.
If Dongmin found something out then and started moving on his own, he could end up in danger again, just like last time.
I couldn’t let that happen.
No matter what Dongmin learned, I had to reach the end first.
Only then, in this life, would I be able to save him.
I closed the window and looked over the materials again.
2 weeks. I had less time than I’d thought to find the answer.
