Skip to content She was interviewing a beetle in French. She had placed a small flower in front of it, apparently as payment. He was late to his conference call for the first time in 3 years. When Kang Jun came looking for him, they both stood at the window and watched. Should I? Kangjun started. Push the call 15 minutes. Mong said your 12:00 is director Choi. He doesn’t. 15 minutes. Kangjun.
At the end of the day, Vivien collected Zara and found a small lunchbox that hadn’t been there when she left. Mrs. Zo’s handwriting on the label, but the contents were things Vivien had mentioned liking only once. When in passing to no one in particular, except maybe Kong Jun. Zara looked at it. Mr. Shoe Man sent lunch. We don’t know that. I know that.
I asked him this morning when he was at the window. You spoke to him through the window. I waved. He waved back. Then he did. She mimed writing. And then the lunch came. She produced from her pocket a post-it note folded twice in a very clean handwriting. The beetle went east. I watched. Hm. Viven stared at the note, then at the house. The fourth floor window was empty. He’s funny. Zara said, taking back her note. Your ears go red.
Zara added on the bus. When you don’t want to talk about something, Vivien touched her ear. She stopped touching her ear. They do not. They are red right now, Zara said, and climbed the bus steps ahead of her with enormous satisfaction. It was on a Thursday, three weeks later, that Su Yian Choi came to the house.
Viven heard the voice before she saw her, clear and deliberate, carrying the particular tone of a woman who had never needed to adjust her volume for anyone else’s comfort. Coming up from the entrance hall while Vivien was on the second floor landing with her cart, she heard Kangjun, “Miss Choy, Mr. Han is expecting you in the main drawing room. Then the laugh and something inside Viven went very very still. She knew that laugh.
She had heard it in a shared apartment in Lion 5 years ago. Across a workspace she and that woman had built together from nothing. 22 and 23. Full of an idea they had grown from a napkin sketch into something real, something funded. Is something that was about to become the business that would change both their lives. She looked over the railing and saw her.
Choi Su Yan, 28 years old, immaculate cream coat, precise heels, hair as sharp as her ambition. She had not changed. She had improved the way things improved when polished with someone else’s effort. She did not look up. Viven stepped back from the railing and made a firm decision that her hands were not going to shake.
She had known Hansung Group was connected to the Choi family when she took this job. She had seen the name in the agency briefing documents and looked away and needed the money. It had not occurred to her that Su Yon would come here to this house through this door. But of course she would because five years ago Su Yan had taken everything, the business they built with the funding they had secured and she had paid Vivian’s boyfriend to end it to manufacture a breakup dramatic enough that Vivien would leave the country to clear the table of the only other person with a claim to what they’d created. And
