"Jeon. Ha. EUN!! It's time to wakey the wake UP!" Mom's voice sliced through the bedroom as the wooden door slammed into the wall with a loud thud. She then walked toward and stood by Ha-eun's bed with her hands on her hips while looming over the bed. Ha-eun groaned, burying her face in her pillow. "I'm twenty-six! Not six-!"
Mom, then yanked her pillow away, and a soaking wet cloth smacked her face. "Aigoo! Omma! Stop!" Ha-eun's limbs flailed like a fish dumped onto the riverbank.
The cloth plopped onto Ha-eun's chest as she blinked, before mustering one last defence. "Five more minu.." Gravity betrayed her, and she was yeeted straight out of her bed.
Ha-eun plopped onto the floor with a thump, her blanket cocoon unravelling like a defective spring roll. "Owie! You could have broken my neck and killed me, y'know!?" she yelped while rubbing her tailbone.
"Yah! If not for your attitude!" Mom then squinted at Ha-eun's phone when multiple notifications ran off on the nightstand. "... A VIP check-in..?" She squints. "The chairman of..." She squints even more. "Seo... Seohan Industries? Sounds fancy."
Ha-eun's blood ran cold. "Tha.. that's today?!" she lunged for her phone. "Why didn't you... eight missed calls?! I thought I set an alarm for this days ago!" The screen glared back, 8:47 AM. The VIP check-in was set to be at 9:00 AM.
"I silenced it! You need uninterrupted sleep!" Mom said as if it was perfectly reasonable to do so.
Ha-eun muddled to her feet, her sleep-addled brain finally catching up. "Do you know how important this is?! That old b*stard would only have me serve him. He would most definitely kill my colleagues if I were even a second late!"
"Calling him an old b*stard sooo casually... heol! Is he your boyfriend or something?" Mom's eyes widened. "Yahooo! I'm so proud of youuu!" Mom applauded, her eyes sparkling with enthusiasm. "My daughter is with the son of a chaebol! You can finally pay off our debt!"
"WHA!?" Ha-eun spat out, choking on her own breath. "Omma! That old coot is older than a fossil, and he is already married!"
Mom smirked. "Well.. maybe if you play your cards right, he could get a divorce and.."
"STOP WITH YOUR NONSENSE!"
Ha-eun whirled in frantic circles, trying to figure out where her uniform and stockings were, how to fix her hair, and invent teleportation. She got to her closet and hectically put on her uniform.
Meanwhile, Mom was still going, "My baby grew up so fast. From playing with dolls to playing with billionaires~ Bean is going to have more premiumtunas!!"
Ha-eun hastily dumped her belongings into her handbag and made a run for the front door. Mom trailed behind with a devious smug while Ha-eun struggled to put on her heels.
"Good luck with your future husband~"
"STOP SAYING THAT! THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THAT CAT AS WELL!" Ha-Eun yelled, and when she glanced down, she was in a pair of mismatched heels, one blue and one red. She scoffs in frustration, kicking off her heels before wearing matching navy blue heels instead.
"Annyeonghi gaseyo~" Mom cooed as Ha-Eun scrambled to slam the door shut. When she got to the elevator, it was once again stuck on the fourth floor.
"Why does this keep happening to me?! "
She groaned as she bottle down the stairs. Five floors down, and she is already wheezing. "Who.. who the hell.. invented.. cardio?!" she complained as she gasped for air in the poorly ventilated stairway, gripping onto the rusty handrails as if it were her life support.
She burst out of the stairwell as if she were being pursued by a hoard of zombies, then kicked the elevator door out of pure spite, and the left heel snapped with a sharp crack with the sole dangling traitorously off the frame.
She blinked at the dangling heel. Her soul, tone, and eyes were filled with weary betrayal as she addressed it directly. "Wow.. okay.. cool. Just spectacular timing. Thank you for this."
She hobbled out of the building on her good heel before logic finally settled in, running was now not an option. In a flash of deliberate logic, she jumped in front of a motorcycle and climbed behind the rider while jabbing the broken heel into the rider's back. "Drive me to Jeonyeog Paradise Hotel! Now!" she hissed in a panic, "Or else, I swear I will blow you into pieces!"
The rider flinched and whipped his head around. "What the!?"… "NOW!!". For a terrifying second, Ha-eun thought he might buck her off and shout for help. But he gunned the engine and took off.
"FASTER!! TURN LEFT! TURN LEFT!!" she screamed while the broken heel still pressed against his back. They screeched to a halt in front of the soaring glass panels of the hotel. She checked the time on her watch: 8:59 AM.
The motorcycle had not even stopped before she was already beginning to slip off, stumbling onto the pavement and running off. "Thanks! Please don't sue me!"
She bolted into the hotel, passed the reception and onto a flight of stairs. Finally, bursting through the doors of the private dining room at exactly 9:00 AM. She stopped, breathing hard. Her hair falling in messy strands around her head, her blazer crooked, her stockings broken at her toe, while holding onto a heel with one foot bare.
"Ah! You're here!" The chairman rose with genuine warmth and a smile. "There she is! Punctual to the second!"
In the room, two other men are present, one in a tailored suit sitting beside the chairman, who looks oddly familiar, and the other is my colleague, frozen mid-pour, overflowing tea onto the table. But to the silvered hair coot, only she mattered right now.
"Chairman Lee…" she bowed deeply while wobbling on one heel. "I apologise for my messy appearance."
"Nonsense!" he exclaimed as he moved around the table, surprisingly energetic for someone his age, and before she could even protest, her hands were already in his. "Look at you! Working way too hard to make our hotel more hospitable. You barely even have time to dress yourself!"
Her face blazed with embarrassment. "Actually, Chairman... I-"
"Father," the man in the tailored suit interrupted with a blend of amusement and nostalgia. "Why is there a need to delay checking in to wait for someone who resembles her? Why are we even checking into our own hotel?"
"Who is 'her'?"
"Evelyn."
Ha-eun's blood turned cold.
Evelyn.
A name that she had not heard ever since she left Singapore 4 years ago. Never since the Lee family paid off her family's debts and gave her a job to pay them off.
"Jay." she breathed and slowly looked up at him. Properly.
"Ah.." He stood as he understood what his father had orchestrated. Everything else in the room is suddenly irrelevant as something cracked in his composure.
"Hello, Evelyn."