The Sun to my Moon

Chapter 27: Pregnant?

Go Hae-ri felt awful.

She blinked and told herself sternly to pay attention to the monthly budget meeting she was attending, but she felt dizzy and nauseous and it was difficult to focus. She hadn't been feeling well for the past several days and she knew her performance had been suffering as a result. After their recent success discovering Ahn Minseok's true identity, she'd been able to devote her full attention to her research on the steel corporations and project development companies. As a result, she'd finally started making some progress on narrowing down the list of employees, but over the last few days she'd found herself more often than not scanning the lists of names only to realize she hadn't absorbed the words on the page she'd just read and having to start over again.

It was no good. Ahn Ki-dong from accounting was droning on about quarterly projections and Hae-ri gave up trying to pay attention. She let her mind wander.

She hoped Cha Dal-geon was doing okay. She was worried about how he was reacting to Yoon Han-ki's death. He seemed fine, but it was so hard to tell with him sometimes. He'd definitely been rattled when it happened—hell, so had she—but in typical Dal-geon fashion he betrayed barely a flicker in his composure. He'd seemed fine on their phone calls the last few nights, though, so maybe he really was all right. Yesterday, for example, he'd seemed far more interested in prying into the details of her life back in Gwangju than discussing the fact that he'd had Yoon Han-ki's blood splattered all over him less than seventy two hours before.

She frowned and rubbed her temple absently against the headache that was trying valiantly to split her skull in two. She was really becoming too attached to those phone calls. Last night she'd had to beg off early because she hadn't been feeling well, but even with a pounding headache she'd been reluctant for the phone call to end. It was just—Dal-geon so rarely shared anything personal about himself. For some reason, the phone calls had become a conduit for facts and anecdotes she'd never imagined hearing from him. She felt like she'd learned more about him over the course of their nightly check-ins in the past few weeks than she had over the past year. She greedily drank in the information he offered, and surprised herself by opening up more to him, as well. He always managed to surprise her with stories of things he'd done, or places he'd been. Sometimes he even just surprised her with an opinion on something she would have assumed he didn't care about. She'd always been curious about his past, but unlike Dal-geon himself, she wasn't the type to push; she'd always respected his privacy. Lately, though, he had been sharing more of himself with her, entirely of his own volition.

She was jostled out of her reflections by the meeting breaking up at last. Thank God. Maybe she would take a leaf out of Dal-geon's book and lie down on the couch in her office for awhile. Just until her stomach settled down a bit. Someone brushed past her and she swayed slightly. On second thought, maybe she should consider stopping by the ladies room before she vomited all over someone's shoes. With this in mind, she turned left instead of right when she got out of the conference room, concentrating hard on the goal of not throwing up in the hallway.

"Ya Hae-rissi!" a cheerful voice called her.

Hae-ri tried to pretend she hadn't heard, intent on making a beeline for the nearest restroom, but a staying hand on her shoulder stopped her and she was forced to face her pursuer.

Park Kwang-deok from Organized Crime was beaming at her. Hae-ri smiled weakly back at him. "Oh Sunbaenim," she said politely, though what she was really thinking was: crap.

Kwang-deok was nice enough, but she'd recently made a practice of avoiding him whenever she could. She'd had a run in with him at the last NIS holiday party that had alerted her to the fact that he had a more than friendly interest in her. She'd narrowly escaped being cornered under the mistletoe by him, but she'd had to take desperate measures to effect her escape, and she hadn't quite forgiven him for being the cause of the situation she'd found herself in as a result. She'd fled the offending sprig as soon as she'd spotted it bobbing its way towards her, held aloft by Kwang-deok as he searched for her. Desperate for escape, she'd made the mistake of making a rash promise to Dal-geon in exchange for him helping her hide out on the dance floor, where Kwang-deok was unlikely to follow. Later, it had occurred to her that Dal-geon probably would have danced with her anyway, if she'd just asked like a normal person instead of begging him for help and letting him see her desperation. By that point, however, she'd already allowed herself to be blackmailed into promising to sing backup for Se-hun the next time he managed to trick the team into going to Bullet Chicken's on karaoke night. Really, Dal-geon's sense of humor was completely beyond her at times. She'd wanted to sink into the floor when she'd had to get up on that stage with him sitting there in the front row looking so amused she thought his face might actually split in two from how wide he was smiling. Since then, she'd made it a practice to engage in evasive maneuvers whenever she spied Kwang-deok heading her way with intent. Unfortunately, this time she hadn't seen him coming.