Chapter 7: His Three Rules
486 Words
There were three rules Kim Seon Ho lived by in his personal life:
Never explain.
Never ask for explanations.
Never complicate feelings.
He followed them like muscle memory.
At work, he was a man of routines, systems, and locked drawers — every thought filed away, every emotion buried under precision.
He didn’t leave space for softness.
Because soft things?
They crumble.
But something about her just didn’t match the category — Eun Ha Neul.
He hadn’t asked her name. But he remembered it. The way it had been written neatly on her notebook, all lowercase in blue ink.
He had expected someone loud. Like almost every woman he met — who would try to over-explain things in the quest to prove herself. She didn’t.
She just… arrived.
Then quietly filled up space without asking for any of it.
That morning, when she laughed, he hadn’t known what to do.
It was sharp at first. Then it cosied in the room, almost ticking his funny bone. Offguard.
He looked at her, but didn’t let himself stare.
Her hand had flown to her mouth, almost embarrassed.
Why?
Why be embarrassed by something that sounded like warmth?
Then came the call.
He shouldn’t have lingered. He should’ve stepped farther away.
But when she answered in English — soft, steady, respectful — he realized it wasn’t the language that changed her voice.
It was emotion. Anger.
The kind that didn't shout. The kind that cracked inside and leaked out without permission.
He remembered the look in her eyes when he returned.
Not red, not wet. But tight.
Like a wall that had already patched its cracks while no one was watching.
She had said,
“It was family.”
He hadn’t planned to ask what he did.
But he asked anyway.
It wasn’t part of the lesson.
It wasn’t necessary.
It had slipped past whatever rules he’d spent years keeping intact.
Just one question.
And somehow, it felt louder than most things he’d ever said.
But she didn't try to explain to get out of the embarrassing situation. She answered. Blunt and direct.
And the way she held her phone pocket afterward like it still vibrated under her hand — it told him more enough.
She may be an exception.
That evening, in his private study, he picked up a file from the corner of his desk. The one his secretary had sent the day before she started — A basic background check. Standard hiring procedure.
He’d ignored it until now.
Her name.
Her country.
Previous tutoring roles.
Single parent background.
Former address in Busan for one year — before vanishing again into Seoul.
No red flags.
No anchors either.
Just a series of soft disappearances.
He closed the file.
And for the first time in a long time, he found himself wondering not what she came here to do —
but what she was trying to leave behind.
- Writer
