CHAPTER 39
The office buzzed with life as the new employees were introduced, Noeul among them.
He was one of the three new red teamers hired by Chung-Hee’s company.
Since his hands had not fully healed, the plan was for him to start part-time and gradually take on more hours and responsibilities as his recovery progressed.
It was already March, and Seoul was breathtaking beyond the enormous office windows, the skyline glowing beneath a pale blue sky. The air outside was crisp and cold, but inside, sunlight stretched across the polished floors and glass walls.
Noeul hadn’t felt this excited in a long time.
From the moment Chung-Hee suggested he return to work, his stomach had churned with a mixture of excitement and anxiety.
He had spent too many weeks trapped inside apartments, hospitals, and his own thoughts.
Too many days depending on other people to cook for him, open things for him, even help him dress when his hands had been at their worst.
Today, for the first time in months, he felt almost normal. Useful.
The thought alone made him smile.
He stood beside the other two new employees while their team leader introduced them to the department.
Noeul listened carefully, bowing whenever someone greeted him, trying desperately to remember the names being thrown at him.
There were far too many. After the sixth introduction, he had already forgotten the second.
A young man sitting near the end of the room raised his coffee cup toward him. “Don’t worry. Nobody remembers everyone on the first day.”
Noeul laughed quietly. “Was it that obvious?”
“Very.”
A few people nearby laughed, and some of the tension left his shoulders.
It felt strange. Normal conversation. Normal people. Someone complaining about a meeting, someone else asking where they were ordering lunch from, two employees arguing over whose turn it was to make coffee.
For once, nobody was asking whether he was all right. Nobody was watching him sleep. Nobody was telling him what he deserved.
Here, he was simply Jung Noeul, the new red teamer. He liked that more than he expected.
His desk had already been prepared for him, positioned near the other members of the security team: two monitors, a company laptop, credentials, documentation, and enough internal material to keep him occupied for the next several days.
Noeul sat down and immediately adjusted the chair. Then again. And once more.
The man beside him glanced over. “Nervous?”
“No. The chair is wrong.”
There was a short silence before the man laughed. Noeul smiled and finally left the chair alone.
His first assignments were deliberately light. His team leader explained that they wanted him to become familiar with the company’s systems, internal security policies, reporting procedures, and testing environment before assigning him anything demanding.
Noeul nodded obediently. Inside, he was slightly disappointed.
He wanted something difficult. Something that would force his brain to work hard enough that there would be no room left for anything else.
Still, when the first testing environment appeared on his screen, excitement moved through him. His fingers settled naturally over the keyboard.
Then came the first reminder that his body had not caught up with his mind.
A sharp ache traveled through his left hand.
Noeul stopped and flexed his fingers carefully beneath the desk, waiting for the discomfort to fade. Almost four months had passed since the second surgery, but prolonged typing was still difficult. His wrists tired quickly, and certain movements sent small flashes of pain through his hands.
He stared at them for a moment. They had caused him so much trouble lately. Other people had washed them, bandaged them, fed him because he couldn’t properly hold chopsticks. He had spent weeks treating them like fragile objects that belonged to somebody else.
Enough.
He placed them back on the keyboard, slowly this time.
There was no need to prove anything.
By late morning, he had already found something in the testing environment that caught his attention. At first, he assumed he had misunderstood the documentation. He checked it again, then returned to the system.
No.
There it was.
He leaned closer to the screen. “Interesting…”
The colleague beside him glanced over. “Found something?”
“Maybe.”
Noeul tested it again before answering. Then once more.
A smile slowly appeared on his face.
Definitely.
He called his team leader over and explained what he had found, careful not to sound overly confident on his first day. The older man studied the screen.
“You found this already?”
Noeul immediately wondered whether he had done something wrong. “Yes. Is there a problem?”
“No.” The man looked at him, mildly impressed. “You’ve been here for three hours.”
“Oh.”
Noeul wasn’t sure how to respond.
His team leader laughed. “That’s a compliment, Noeul.”
A small warmth spread through his chest. “Thank you.”
It shouldn’t have meant so much. It was one small finding in a controlled environment, hardly anything worth celebrating. Yet when his team leader walked away, Noeul found himself staring at the screen with a smile he couldn’t suppress.
He had missed this. Being good at something.
For the next hour, he became completely absorbed in his work. The office faded around him as his attention narrowed to the screen. He barely noticed the conversations, ringing phones, footsteps, or the occasional burst of laughter somewhere behind him.
His hands began aching again before lunch, forcing him to stop. This time, he listened. He leaned back and stretched his fingers carefully, annoyed but unwilling to risk damaging them again.
“First day and you’re already trying to destroy yourself?”
The comment came from somewhere behind him.
Noeul smiled without turning around. “I’ve been told I have a talent for that.”
The words left his mouth before he thought about them.
The colleague beside him laughed. Noeul’s smile faded slightly. Maybe normal would take some practice.
After lunch, the office settled into a quieter rhythm. Noeul returned to his desk, almost indifferent to the voices around him. He focused on his screen, eager to continue his first project, when a familiar voice interrupted him.
“Noeul?”
His fingers stopped over the keyboard. He knew that voice. For a moment, he couldn’t bring himself to turn around. Then he looked up, and his heart nearly leapt into his throat.
Standing before him, slightly older but unmistakably recognizable, was Minho. His former best friend. The man who had once been like a brother to him, before Haneul’s death drove them apart.
For a few seconds, neither spoke.
Minho smiled, though there was hesitation in his eyes. “Hey. It’s been a long time.”
Noeul felt a surge of conflicting emotions, anger, pain, and a trace of nostalgia he immediately wished he could erase. His expression turned cold almost instinctively.
“Minho. I didn’t know you worked here.”
Something in Minho’s expression changed at the formality in his tone. Only slightly, but Noeul noticed.
“Yes,” Minho replied with forced lightness. “I’ve been here for a while. So you’re one of the company’s new hires.”
Noeul nodded briefly. “Exactly.”
Minho shifted awkwardly, the weight of their shared past hanging between them.
There had been a time when silence between them had been comfortable. They could sit together for hours playing games, studying, eating whatever snacks they had managed to buy, without needing to fill every second with conversation.
Now even a few seconds felt unbearable.
“I didn’t know you were coming back to Seoul,” Minho said.
Noeul’s gaze returned to his monitor. “There was no reason for you to know.” Another small wound. He saw it land. Part of him regretted it. Another part didn’t.
Minho lowered his voice. “I know things ended badly between us. I’ve had a lot of time to think about everything that happened.”
Noeul’s fingers tightened slightly. Not here. Not today.
“I want you to know that I’m sorry,” Minho continued. “I never meant to hurt you.”
Noeul’s expression remained unreadable. “What happened between us was a long time ago. Let’s keep things professional.”
Minho sighed. Hurt showed on his face, but he remained beside the desk.
“I understand that you’re still angry. I would be too. But I hope we can at least talk about it someday. Properly. You were my best friend. I hate how things ended.”
Noeul looked away. For one terrible second, he could see them as they had once been. Four boys who had once believed friendship could survive anything.
Then the image disappeared. Minho had disappeared when Noeul needed him most. The nostalgia hardened into something bitter.
“The apology comes a little late, don’t you think?”
Minho opened his mouth, but Noeul didn’t allow him to answer.
“Look, Minho,” he said flatly. “I’m here to work, not to revisit the past. Let’s keep things professional and leave it at that.”
Minho stared at him for several seconds before nodding. “All right. I understand.”
He stepped back but stopped before leaving.
“I won’t bother you. But if you ever change your mind, I’m here. There are things I should have said years ago.”
Noeul finally looked at him.
Minho’s expression was different now. Older, perhaps. Less certain of himself. For a moment, Noeul wanted to ask what those things were. Instead, he shrugged indifferently and turned his attention back to his computer screen.
“We’ll see.”
Minho nodded and walked away. Noeul stared at the same line on his screen for almost a minute without understanding a single word. Damn it. He leaned back in his chair and released a slow breath.
For the rest of his shift, Noeul struggled to concentrate. He should have felt angry. Instead, beneath the anger, there was something else. Relief. Minho regretted what had happened. It didn’t erase anything. It certainly wasn’t enough for forgiveness. But it mattered.
By the end of his five-hour shift, his hands were aching and his head felt heavy, but he also felt a strange sense of satisfaction. His first day back at work was over. He had survived it. More than that, he had enjoyed parts of it.
Noeul pulled on his coat and glanced once more through the enormous windows. Seoul was beginning to glow beneath the fading spring light, thousands of windows illuminating one by one. For the first time in months, tomorrow didn’t feel entirely like something to endure.
Noeul wasn’t ready to forgive Minho. Maybe he never would be. Still, as he stepped into the elevator, he couldn’t deny the small spark of hope beneath all that resentment.