Chapter 2 The Neighbor

The rest of the morning passed in a blur. Not the soft, forgettable kind—the kind where every sound was amplified, every second stretched. The scrape of a chair behind her. The rustle of papers. The low murmur of his voice as David introduced him to other team members. Each noise made Yerin’s shoulders tighten, her spine stiffen. She didn’t turn around once. Her eyes stayed locked on her screen, but the numbers blurred into meaningless shapes.

He’s here. Elliot Nam is twenty feet away.

The thought looped in her head like a mantra she couldn’t stop.

At 11:17, it got worse. David’s assistant appeared with a Facilities worker pushing a cart. They stopped at the empty desk. The one directly to Yerin’s right, separated only by a low partition. Her stomach dropped. That desk had been vacant for six months. It was her buffer zone, her sanctum of silence. She watched, paralyzed, as they set down a monitor, a keyboard, a phone. They were building a workstation. For him.

Then Elliot rounded the corner, carrying a box of his personal items. He caught her eye and smiled—the same easy smile from the photos, the same one from the rain all those years ago.

“Guess we’re neighbors,” he said, his voice cheerful, oblivious.

She nodded, not trusting her voice, and turned back to her screen. Behind her, she heard him unpack: the clink of a mug, the rustle of a notebook, the soft thud of something being placed in a drawer. The air between them felt thin, charged. She could feel his presence like heat radiating from a stove.

By noon, she needed out. She grabbed her bag and headed for the stairwell, pushing the heavy door open and welcoming the cool, concrete silence. She leaned against the wall, pressed her palms flat against the cold surface, and forced herself to breathe.

Get a grip. He’s just a colleague. A transfer. You are a professional. Act like one.

She repeated the words until her pulse slowed.

When she returned to the office, Elliot was at his desk eating a kimbap roll from a convenience store bag. He looked up as she approached.

“Hey, you vanished,” he said, swallowing. “A few of us went to the Korean place downstairs. You should join us tomorrow.”

“I had errands,” she lied, sitting down and busying herself with her mouse.

“Got it.” He didn’t push. “Since we’re neighbors, do you mind if I ask you a few questions about the filing system later? I’m still finding my way around.”

“Sure. Anytime.” The word came out clipped, but he didn’t seem to notice.

The afternoon dragged. He asked his questions—simple, logistical things—and she answered in short, professional sentences, looking just past his shoulder. But even with her gaze averted, she noticed things she didn’t want to notice: the clean scent of his laundry detergent, the way he tapped his pen against his lip when thinking, the low, pleasant rumble of his laugh when a joke was made across the room. He was a living, breathing person, and he was dismantling her carefully ordered world one polite interaction at a time.

Around four, a lull settled over the office. Yerin was proofreading a report, her concentration finally starting to solidify, when a shadow fell over her desk. She looked up.

Elliot was leaning over the partition, two cans of iced coffee in his hands. She flinched, barely suppressing a jolt of surprise.

“Sorry,” he said, pulling back with an apologetic wince. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

He placed one of the cans on the corner of her desk. Condensation beaded on the cold aluminum. Yerin recognized the brand immediately—the one she always bought from the vending machine.

“Figured you could use a pick-me-up,” he said, his smile a little hesitant now, as if worried he’d overstepped. “It’s the black one, right? No sugar.”

She stared at the can. Her mind went blank. He’d noticed. In one day, amidst his own chaos of starting a new job, he’d noticed what coffee she drank.

This wasn’t the umbrella in high school—a quick, almost thoughtless kindness. That had been a momentary impulse, a stranger helping another stranger. This was different. This was small, specific, observed. He had paid attention to her. To something she did, something that mattered to her routine.

She looked at the can, then at him. Her carefully constructed walls, which had held strong against direct questions and friendly small talk, suddenly developed a hairline crack. Her professional script failed her. Before she could stop herself, a soft, stunned whisper escaped her lips.

“You remembered.”

The moment the words left her mouth, her eyes went wide. She hadn’t meant to say that. She hadn’t meant to let him know it mattered. She hadn’t meant to acknowledge that there was anything to remember at all.

Elliot’s eyebrows rose slightly. His hesitant smile softened into something more genuine, more curious. He looked at her—really looked at her—not as a former classmate or a new colleague, but as a person who had just revealed a sliver of herself.

The office noise faded into a distant hum. For a heartbeat that felt like an eternity, they just looked at each other over the partition, the silence between them suddenly full.

Yerin’s heart hammered against her ribs. Idiot, idiot, idiot.

Elliot’s curious expression held for a second longer before he broke it with a gentle, understanding smile. He tapped the coffee can lightly on her desk.

“Hard to forget the only person in the office who drinks it straight black,” he said. “Enjoy.”

He turned back to his desk, leaving her alone with the cooling can.

The moment passed. But the way he had looked at her—that lingered. The generic friendliness was gone. In its place was something more focused, more personal. He’d seen her slip. He’d filed it away.

Yerin stared at her screen, the numbers a meaningless blur. Her fingers were ice-cold around the coffee can. She wanted to throw it away, to erase the evidence that she had accepted anything from him. But her hand wouldn’t move.

He doesn’t know, she told herself. He can’t know what you meant.

But the echo of his curious expression remained. He had looked at her like she was a puzzle he’d just noticed, one he suddenly wanted to solve.

And that, more than anything, terrified her.