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“I need to leave. I can’t breathe in here.” I feel so small right now. If I could, I would pull my shirt over my head and hide. I don’t know how my life came to this—how the people I loved and trusted have all betrayed me in big and small ways.
“Okay.” Yujun’s chair scrapes against the tile as he stands. He fishes his wallet out and lays some bills on the table. “Take care of this, will you?”
“Yes,” Ahn Sangki answers. “Go. I will see her home, too.”
“Wait.” Bomi grabs the bottom of my shirt. “Promise that you won’t say anything to anyone. If you tell someone, your roommates, anyone, it could get to the internet and it would ruin IF Group.”
“No, it won’t,” Yujun cuts in tersely.
“Yes, it will,” Bomi insists. “Sajangnim has been a recognizable champion of adoption rights and single motherhood. She has made a practice, a loud one, of hiring women who don’t have education or experience, who a major corporation would turn away. That she abandoned her own child, married a rich man, became famously wealthy herself, and did not seek out her own child? She would be ruined. The company would be ruined. The board will take the company away from her. They’ve hated her ever since—”
“Enough.” Yujun slaps his hand on the table. Heads turn and hands fly up to cover whispered observations.
Ahn Sangki tries to melt into his seat.
“Enough,” Yujun repeats, this time in a more moderate tone. He tries to smile at me, but it’s a grim stretch of his lips. “The only people who are responsible for the success of the IF Group are the people who work there, and at this table it is Choi Yujun and Kim Bomi. No one else.”
Bomi glares at Yujun before turning to the other man. “What do you say, Ahn Sangki-nim?”
I’m interested as well. My eyes cut toward Sangki, who finds his empty plate very interesting.
“Ah, I, well,” he stammers, and then clamps his mouth shut when Yujun sends him a piercing look. He quickly fills everyone’s glass including his own and drinks his glass down.
His nonanswer is answer enough.
I sink back into the chair. “If you don’t start talking, then perhaps I will go to the press and tell them my story. As you say, someone will be very interested.”
Across from me Yujun stiffens, but he remains silent. There’s a tension in the air that’s different from before, flavored by the worry from both Yujun and Bomi.
The girl licks her lips. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything.” I place my hand over her soju glass. “And no more of this until you are done.”
She begins to talk. “I started working for IF Group when I was nineteen. I did not have a college education but I got hired after I interviewed at a job fair. Even then I had good English and I was hired because of it. I worked my way up and took distance learning courses to obtain a college degree. Sajang—”
“It means CEO and she’s not to use those titles at IF Group. We’re a family,” Yujun interjects.
“That’s right.” Bomi nods fiercely. “A family. Choi Wansu-nim took care of me. She has paid for my education. She is helping me support my family, as she does all of her employees. She does not take a salary. She is good.” Bomi says this as if by repeating it enough, she will compel me to eventually repeat it, but my heart’s a rock at the moment and no amount of sad stories or heroic deeds is going to penetrate.
The other girl sighs. “Because of my English skills, I have been promoted and have worked closely with Choi Wansu-nim on several projects. Last year, she asked me to do a very great favor for her. She asked me to leave my family for a short time and go abroad. There was someone she knew who lived overseas that she had not heard from in a long time, and would I be so kind as to check in on that person. I was—and am—so grateful that she asked this of me.”
Choi Wansu had collected all of these children in place of me. I should be impressed, but it only makes me sick.
I hold up a hand. “Please. I don’t need any more editorial comments about how great and wonderful Choi Wansu is. I want to know about these reports. How long have they been going on? How long has Wansu been paying for ‘everything,’ as you say.”
“I do not know how long. I know that they existed and stopped.”
“And they were provided by Ellen Wilson?” I want to be wrong.
Bomi nods. “Yes. I saw the last report. It was on Choi Wansu-nim’s desk when she gave me the tickets to America. I did not see the entire thing. It was a printout of an email. The subject line said ‘Monthly Report.’”
