Chapter 25
Jaekyung returned to the school after dropping Yugam off at KE Group headquarters, still angry.
They were only going on a Jeju field trip, yet she had to prepare thirty official documents.
After staying up all night and stubbornly finishing them, she submitted the paperwork to the faculty office.
As she stepped out of the main building, she spotted Kim Juyoung standing in the parking lot and hurried over.
“Teacher Kim! Are you feeling all right?”
“Teacher Seo. Yes. I'm okay.”
Juyoung gave her a faint smile.
“We finished the Samujae memorial rites too.”
“You've been through a lot.”
Jaekyung gently patted her shoulder.
Teacher Kim's father had apparently been ill for a long time.
All Jaekyung had managed to do was briefly visit the funeral hall and pay her respects.
“Thank you.”
Juyoung's eyes softened.
“Thanks to you, I was able to send Dad off properly.”
Then she looked Jaekyung up and down.
“But why have you gotten so thin?”
She frowned.
“Is the chairman bullying you?”
“No.”
Jaekyung quickly shook her head.
“The chairman works really hard, so I've been busy too.”
Then Juyoung lowered her voice.
“Have you heard the rumor?”
Jaekyung blinked.
“What rumor?”
“They're saying the chairman might resign.”
Jaekyung's expression changed.
It was the first time she'd heard anything like that.
“Where did you hear that?”
“In the group chat.”
Juyoung looked around.
“The teachers who are close to the vice principal all seem to know.”
“The vice principal?”
Jaekyung had left the teachers' group chat after resigning from her contract teaching position.
She hadn't known conversations like that were happening.
Whether the rumor had any basis or not, anything involving Yugam made her thoughts complicated.
“Woobin!”
Teacher Kim suddenly brightened and waved toward a car.
Chief Kwon had just gotten out.
Jaekyung looked between them.
“You two know each other?”
“We're friends.”
Juyoung smiled.
“We lost contact for a while, then ran into each other again at school.”
They called themselves friends.
But the way Chief Kwon's eyes sparkled when he looked at Kim Juyoung was different from usual.
Minho parked his car outside the Uitae Foundation school gate.
Jaekyung hadn't been answering his calls lately.
It was making him increasingly anxious.
He remembered what he had told his medical-school friend.
“What are classmates for? I'm part of the Uitae Foundation's medical team. I should know the chairman's health condition.”
No matter how much Minho pressured him, his friend refused to hand over Do Yugam's medical records.
In the end, Minho bribed a head nurse and obtained one of Yugam's old prescription records.
It was from five years ago.
But even medication history could reveal a rough idea of a patient's symptoms.
Minho frowned as he scanned the list.
“Why was he taking this many medications?”
There were endless prescriptions for sleep disorders, anxiety, panic disorder, and similar conditions.
Then again, ordinary office workers suffered from those things these days.
For someone living under the pressure of a chaebol family, maybe this amount of medication was nothing unusual.
It would have been better if he knew what Yugam was currently taking.
That would have made things more definite.
Still, even this information was useful.
Depending on how he pieced it together, Minho thought it could become a good trap for pulling Jaekyung out of the chairman's grasp.
“She won't even answer her boyfriend's calls.”
He checked the time irritably.
“When is she coming out?”
He had even used one of his vacation days.
Yet after waiting for hours, Jaekyung still hadn't appeared.
She used to wait endlessly whenever he called her.
This is all because of Do Yugam.
Then Minho noticed a car stopping near the school gate.
“Huh?”
He narrowed his eyes.
“That isn't the chairman's car.”
Through the open window, he saw Jaekyung.
She was in the driver's seat.
And there was an unfamiliar man sitting beside her.
“What the hell?”
Minho's expression hardened.
“Another man?”
He called her again.
No answer.
“She must have her phone on silent because she's working.”
Minho reassured himself.
Jaekyung had only broken up with him because Do Yugam threatened her.
There was no way she genuinely intended to leave him.
Before the chairman appeared, there had been nothing wrong between Minho and Jaekyung.
He had even proposed.
They had only ever held hands, but they had already been planning marriage.
He couldn't just let someone take away the woman who was supposed to become his wife.
Jaekyung's background and qualifications might be lacking.
But that only meant Minho was the one man capable of accepting her despite those shortcomings.
He clenched his jaw.
“Doctor Kang, I think the new chairman is planning a major purge.”
He remembered what the vice principal had told him.
“I'd appreciate it if Doctor Kang could help me.”
Minho had drunk with the vice principal several times before.
If he could remove that inexperienced young chairman, he was willing to help the vice principal with anything.
“He said everyone at the school is complaining about the chairman too.”
Minho smiled.
This was simply the natural path toward removing an untested parachute appointment.
“What can that bastard even do besides being born into a good family?”
Humming in a good mood, Minho started following the car Jaekyung was driving.
“Secretary Seo, I'll owe you one.”
Chief Kwon settled into the passenger seat.
“They said they'll send me a rental car tomorrow.”
He sighed.
“Apparently the replacement part will take months to arrive.”
Chief Kwon had been busy with outside work but had deliberately stopped by the school to drive Kim Juyoung home.
When his perfectly functional car suddenly stopped, he had insisted for thirty minutes that it would start again soon.
But when it refused to move at all, even he became flustered.
Watching Chief Kwon break into a sweat in front of Teacher Kim despite his normally neat appearance had made Jaekyung feel sorry for him.
“Don't say you owe me anything.”
Jaekyung smiled.
“How many cookies have I gotten from you?”
She started the car.
“And we're going in the same direction anyway.”
“Oh, those cookies?”
