She hears her phone go off and almost doesn't read the text when she sees his name attached to it. Where are you?
Why? she eventually responds, knowing he'll harass her if she doesn't.
Come here.
She glances at her laptop screen, thinking about how much she can get done if she just ignores him, especially since he's not in the office to distract her. And she does ignore him, for a few minutes, until something gnaws at her enough to make her respond. She's not sure if it's guilt, or something else entirely, but she picks up her phone and types out a reply. Fine. Where are you?
He responds with a location, and Hurry.
A few seconds later, her phone goes off again. You look reasonably presentable, right?
She doesn't answer because that's irrelevant and none of his business.
She's halfway there when he texts her again. Why are you taking so long?
She continues to ignore him. You'd better be here within the next three minutes.
She rolls her eyes, wondering how she managed, after months of job-seeking, to find a boss who is so outrageously demanding.
Two minutes later, she meets him outside the doors of a big conference room. "What is it this time?" she asks, not even bothering to hide her irritation.
"Nothing much. Just play along, okay?"
"All right. Whatever."
He laces his fingers through hers. She stares at her hand, then back up at him. "What are you doing?"
"I told you, just play along."
She smiles, but it's the kind of smile where she's biting her lip and contemplating which would be the best method to get him hospitalized again. "Let's go," he says, opening the door and dragging her into the room.
It's filled with a bunch of gossiping rich people, and she immediately feels very out of place. "Sit here for a minute," he says quietly into her ear, and she takes a seat next to the door. Everyone is staring at her, and she smooths her skirt, glaring at him as he stands at the front of the room. He proceeds to explain that the blackmailer has been caught, again lying that it was a stranger he had never met before. He clarifies a few other things, and he speaks so clearly and eloquently that she wonders for a second if he's been possessed by some mature and benevolent spirit. "And one last thing," he continues. "This young lady sitting by the door is my girlfriend." He looks straight at her, staring so directly that she almost forgets to breathe, then walks over to her and takes her hand again, leading her to the front of the room to stand at his side. "Today, we wanted to announce our engagement." She stands there in a daze, so surprised and horrified that he would dare to do this to her—and without any warning—that she just stares blankly, smiling demurely at all the grouchy rich shareholders. He bows. "Thank you all for coming." Still holding her hand, he leads her out of the room.
She manages to keep her cool until the last of the shareholders, and all his brothers, and his father, have walked past, smiling and bowing at them as if this were perfectly normal and acceptable. As if she had known before five minutes ago that she was engaged.
The minute she's sure they're all out of earshot, she turns to him in a rage. "What on earth do you think you're doing?"
"You know the situation," he says, his eyes wide at her sudden attack. "You know I have to refute the rumors."
"Then hire someone to be your fake fiancee! Why are you making me do it? I'm not even your secretary. I am your bodyguard! This is way above my pay grade."
"But—I—"
"Also, how long do you plan to keep this up? Until we're married? Until we have four children? Deceiving your family was bad enough, but all the shareholders?"
"Obviously I don't expect you to actually marry me!" He shoots back, flustered. "Once the successor is officially announced, no one will care anymore."
"And how much longer will that take?" She is screaming now, on her toes so that she can scream more closely into his face. "Are they going to start taking me to press conferences and putting pictures in the newspaper and doing interviews and all that? This isn't my job!"
"I won't let it go that far," he says, stepping back to get away from her yelling.
"How far will you let it go? I don't know if you remember, but I never agreed to any of this!" She pokes him in the shoulder, and she's so angry that she forgets to control her strength and he gets shoved to the floor, yelping like an injured puppy. She walks over, standing next to him with her arms folded across her chest. "What's your plan to get me out of this situation? If you don't find a way to fix this right now, I'm seriously going to quit."
He stands up, still wincing, rubbing his shoulder with the opposite hand. He looks at her for several seconds, and she tries to ignore her slightly erratic heartbeat. "Should we just date?"
She blinks several times in rapid succession. "What?"
He looks alarmingly serious. "Let's date. For real."
Her eyes get wide, and then she steps back, nodding. "I knew it. As expected, you're actually insane."
"Why shouldn't we?" he asks, not moving at all, still staring at her with that look like he's trying to stare directly into her soul.
"Because we—because I—well, you—" The words are tripping over her tongue, and even though she knows in her head there must be lots of good reasons why they shouldn't date, at the moment she cannot think of a single one.
"It's a good idea, right?" he says simply, clearly pleased with himself, taking her inability to think clearly as a compliment to his intelligence.
"Are you really being serious right now?" she finally chokes out.
He nods, and then he says it again. "Let's date."
She almost nods too, in agreement, before she realizes what she's about to do and abruptly stops herself. "No way. You're crazy." She walks away, even more dazed and confused by this sudden proposition than by any of the rest of it.
"Bong Soon-ah! You'll think about it, right?" he calls after her.
She doesn't say anything, but she is wondering how she'll be able to think about anything else.