— Dongmin’s POV —
What felt strange started that day in the elevator.
The moment I opened my eyes, something poured into my head.
In a car, brakes, shattering glass, and a person I was holding in my arms.
It was clearly a scene I’d never experienced before, and yet it was vivid.
To the point that I couldn’t breathe.
After that, similar scenes kept interrupting too.
There was no order to them, no consistency.
Some days it was us walking hand in hand, other days it was the sound of cars colliding.
Whenever I looked at Yeoju, one of them would suddenly surface.
At first I thought it was just because I hadn’t fully woken up from a dream.
But when Yeoju held out the coffee and I pulled my hand back, that feeling I had then wasn’t a dream.
There had definitely been a time before when I’d pulled my hand back the same way. Even then, it had hurt just like now.
The jealousy that surged up when I saw Wunhak sitting with her in the archive room wasn’t a feeling I was experiencing for the first time either.
It felt like something older, something deeper.
I couldn’t explain it all.
I didn’t even know why these scenes kept intruding, or whether they were real events or just some strange premonition.
So I couldn’t properly tell Yeoju.
Saying I didn’t know and that I’d tell her once I sorted it out wasn’t a lie. It was true.
The one thing I knew for sure was this.
In those scenes, Yeoju was always standing in the dangerous place before anyone else.
And it always ended badly.
Even now, seeing Yeoju try to shoulder something alone, those scenes overlapped again before my eyes.
Even if I couldn’t explain every reason, this time I couldn’t pretend not to know and look away.
I got into the company server and reopened Sunil Capital’s cash flow records.
Before, similar holes would appear at the end of each quarter and then get quietly patched before settlement.
But this time, the hole was left there, still unpatched.
It meant Seongho hadn’t been able to hold it back any further at the manager level.
Then the question was why he couldn’t hold it back.
If it wasn’t money Seongho could decide on his own, then someone above him had either stopped it or was delaying it.
In the end, I casually asked a senior I knew.
What else was above Manager Seongho’s approval line.
Even knowing it was dangerous, I couldn’t stop.
— Yeoju’s POV —
Since morning, I’d been buried in Sunil Capital’s materials.
I was organizing the past three years of transaction history by date.
A similar pattern had repeated several times.
At the end of each quarter, a similar amount would disappear into a similar account, then get quietly patched back in before settlement.
There had never been a case where it couldn’t be patched like this and was left alone.
On my way to get water by the pantry, I ran into Dongmin, who was on the phone.
He’d lowered his voice, but I could hear everything.
"...So if I want to see what’s above Manager Seongho’s approval line, which server log am I supposed to look at."
My heart sank.
Dongmin was digging into the exact same thing Wunhak had uncovered, all on his own.
Dongmin only noticed someone nearby a moment later and turned around. The moment our eyes met, he hurriedly ended the call.
"...How long have you been standing there."
"...Just now."
It was a lie. I’d heard almost everything.
"You don’t need to worry about what you heard. It was just for work......."
"For work, why are you looking at server logs for an executive-level approval line."
The words came out sharper than intended.
Dongmin’s face stiffened.
But what came back wasn’t an apology—it was a question.
"...How do you know something like that. The fact that there’s an executive-level approval line—most people wouldn’t know that."
I was at a loss for words.
I’d found that out through Wunhak.
I was no different when it came to the parts that were hard to explain.
"...That’s not the important part right now. Saying it was for work is a lie."
"Don’t dodge it. Answer me. How did you know."
This time it was a question I couldn’t back away from.
We were both asking each other the same thing. How did you know.
"...I’ve got a lead too. But that’s not something I should bring up before why you went off on your own, Dongmin. You went this far without saying a word to me and looked into it alone, didn’t you."
Dongmin couldn’t answer and looked away.
That reaction was already the answer.
He looked like he wanted to press further, but Dongmin backed off first.
"...All right. I’ll ask you again later about how you know that."
It wasn’t dropped; it was postponed.
I still hadn’t decided when that question would come back, or what I’d say then.
*
In the afternoon, I sat across from Wunhak in the archive room and told him exactly what I’d just heard.
Wunhak’s face turned serious.
"...Hyung, why would he."
"Exactly. He’d been moving on his own without me even realizing it."
"I’ve barely been able to scrape the edges of that line myself. If hyung tries to look into it directly, he could get caught even faster. It’s a position that stands out more than mine."
My uneasiness deepened even more.
"...What about you. Did anything else come up?"
"A little. In the executive-level approval records, only one English initial showed up. It’s signed with 'S', but that alone still doesn’t tell us anything."
Wunhak lowered his voice even more.
"But more than that, I saw that person again in front of my place yesterday. They hadn’t been seen for a few days, so maybe they’d just been lying low."
My legs felt weak. Two weeks. That number felt much closer now.
"Be careful. Don’t go home alone."
"You too. If you keep letting hyung move around alone, the one who’ll be in danger first is hyung."
It wasn’t wrong. The deeper Dongmin went on his own, the faster what we were trying to protect could fall apart instead.
*
Toward the end of the workday, I stopped Dongmin again in the hallway.
"...Why did you try to find out on your own."
Dongmin stayed silent for a long time before finally speaking.
"...I had a feeling you were doing something alone. That you kept meeting with Wunhak separately, and that lately your expression had always been tense."
"So what."
"...I just couldn’t leave it alone. No matter what it was, I felt like I had to know too."
His voice was trembling.
"You said you felt scared, so you were keeping your distance. But weren’t you afraid doing something like this alone?"
"I am scared. But I thought that was better than you being the only one in danger."
My chest ached at that. The person who said he’d keep his distance was, even while keeping his distance, still looking in the same direction in the end.
"...Then don’t do it alone anymore. If I’m in on it too, I can tell which side is more dangerous."
Dongmin looked at me for a long time, then gave a small nod.
"...Then let me ask one thing too. The reason you’re going this far—it's because of me, right."
I couldn’t deny it.
"...Yes. It’s because of you, Dongmin."
Dongmin didn’t press any further.
Instead, for the first time, he met my eyes without looking away.
The one who had been keeping distance and the one who had been closing in were now standing and looking in the same direction.
When I got home, I looked at the calendar.
Two weeks.
It was no longer a number we were counting separately.
