She looked at my plain clothes and decided I was a custodian, then adjusted to intern, and told me the executive elevator was not for people like me. Nobody in that hallway asked my name. A woman quietly advised me to take the service lift, and when I asked how anyone reached the floors above fifty eight, she said they climbed four flights, every day, because someone had decided they were not worthy of sharing a car with executives. That bothered me far more than the insult. I stepped in anyway. Upstairs the whispers followed. Secretary Rian is his right hand. He spoils her. Then the light caught a white limited edition watch on her wrist, one of twelve made, the one I had chosen for my mother-in-law’s birthday and asked my husband to order.
When Haneul came out of that conference room he called her Sohee ya, in front of forty people, and asked who had dared upset her. She pointed at me and said an intern. He saw my face. And then he said nothing at all for eleven full seconds, which was the answer.
I did not shout. I went upstairs, chaired the ten o’clock board session as the incoming chief executive, and had the elevator policy struck from the building rules before lunch. The following morning, the whole staff used the same lift. Rian Sohee resigned within the week rather than sit through the audit of her expense authorisations, which had been irregular for three years. Haneul asked me to see it as a mistake. I told him the mistake was thinking I was small.
The divorce took nine months. I kept the role and none of his assets. The woman from the hallway, Boram, runs the operations division now, and she was the only person in that corridor who tried to help a stranger she thought was nobody.
The watch came back in an envelope with no note. I gave it to his mother, who cried, and who still telephones me on Sundays.
They spent an entire morning deciding what I was worth from four feet away, and not one of them thought to ask. I have stopped needing to be recognised by people who never looked. I know exactly who walked into that building, and she is the same woman who walked out.
