Chapter 03
“Ugh, not again. This elevator always acts up.”
Mijeong grumbled as even the elevator’s floor indicator went out.
“Let’s try calling the maintenance office,” Eunjae said calmly, pressing the emergency call button.
But all she heard was the dial tone—no one answered.
“Wait a sec. If you hit it a few times, it opens,” Mijeong said, pounding the open button with her fists.
“Uh, is it okay to hit it like that?”
“Yeah. It opens if you hit it right.”
Mijeong jabbed the button repeatedly like she was used to it. Miraculously, after a couple more hits, the doors actually opened.
“What’s the matter?”
A voice finally came through the speaker.
“Oh, it’s fine! We solved it,” Mijeong called out coolly and dragged Eunjae out.
“Busy as I am, this kind of thing has to happen too,” she complained.
“Shouldn’t we report the malfunction?”
“I tried. Reported it several times, but they never fixed it properly.”
That’s why she avoided this elevator whenever possible, Mijeong shared as a tip.
“See how skilled I am? I’m good at fixing machines.”
“Now I see why it breaks so often,” Eunjae muttered.
“You have to hit a machine to get the real effect,” Mijeong joked.
Eunjae let out a wry smile as they turned the corner.
“Hey. There—your brother’s there.”
“…!”
Woogyeong stood in front of the evidence storage room.
A head taller than most, his handsome face easily noticeable even from a distance.
Dressed in a black suit with a vest that looked like armor, he radiated an inescapable presence.
“Go in first. I need to use the restroom.”
Eunjae instinctively turned away, not wanting to run into him outside the office.
“Huh? You’d have to go with me to at least say hi. Too bad.”
Leaving the disappointed colleague behind, Eunjae headed in the opposite direction of her destination.
Luckily, Woogyeong wasn’t visible when she came out of the restroom. Eunjae breathed a sigh of relief and entered the evidence storage room.
She hadn’t realized how uncomfortable it could be to run into an ex at work. Even though she had done nothing wrong, she felt like she was walking on thin ice all day.
“How do people even manage to stay friends with their exes?”
Just seeing him made her heart feel like it was being sliced with a knife.
Pushing aside unnecessary thoughts, she quickly found the evidence she needed. It was already almost time to return to her desk.
“I don’t want to go back.”
It was hard to believe that Prosecutor Baek Woogyeong had only been assigned here for less than a week.
“When will my transfer request even be processed?”
She wondered if she might have gotten a reply. It had only been half a day since she submitted it, and she was anxious.
As she walked down the corridor, she instinctively reached for her phone—and then remembered she’d left it on her desk. She had stepped out briefly and hadn’t brought it with her.
“My mind’s everywhere,” she muttered.
Either way, she had to return to the desk in Woogyeong’s line of sight.
Sighing, she pressed the elevator button.
Stepping toward the open doors, she suddenly froze.
“…!”
The familiar citrus scent hit her nose in the confined space. Polished black shoes and black suit pants came into view.
Woogyeong, who had disappeared earlier, was there.
“….”
His sharp eyes glanced up from the documents he leaned against the wall.
Eunjae, unable to bring herself to step inside, locked eyes with him.
What’s with that look?
A crooked smirk tugged at one corner of his mouth—mockery, clear as day.
‘Why do I have to be the one avoiding him?’
A strange stubbornness flared within her. As soon as she stepped into the elevator, the doors slammed shut.
One second. Another second.
Time seemed to stretch unbearably, and Eunjae stared at the changing numbers on the panel.
The humming of the elevator filled the awkward silence, which was oddly comforting. She prayed for the elevator to reach her floor quickly.
Clunk. Clatter.
An ominous sound rang out, different from the usual mechanical hum.
No way…
She remembered what happened with Park Mijeong earlier. And she had ended up in that same elevator.
“…!”
Her bad feeling was confirmed as loud bangs echoed—the elevator had stopped.
Eunjae and Woogyeong’s eyes met mid-air.
Woogyeong brushed his hair back in annoyance and pressed the emergency call button.
As expected, maintenance couldn’t be reached again.
“I-I’ll try.”
Eunjae nudged Woogyeong slightly and pounded the open button with her soft fists.
“What are you doing?”
“If you do this, it starts moving again.”
Bang, bang, bang. Woogyeong’s frown deepened as she kept hitting the button.
“Trying to fix an elevator by hitting it?”
“It works after a few hits,” Eunjae replied.
“What a pain,” he muttered.
Ignoring him, she continued banging the button. But the elevator remained unresponsive.
“That’s strange… it worked earlier.”
“Stop being reckless. Move aside.”
Eunjae stepped back slightly, watching him press the emergency button with his reddened hands.
The dial tone suddenly cut off, and the lights went out.
“…!”
Complete darkness engulfed them.
“Phone… I need to turn on the flashlight.”
She remembered she’d left her phone on her desk.
“I… left my phone. What should I do?”
No answer came.
“Prosecutor, do you have your phone?”
Eunjae guessed the direction he was in and spun around.
Then a memory flashed in her mind—his claustrophobia.
Woogyeong couldn’t handle dark, confined spaces.
It stemmed from a trauma when he was kidnapped by a man after money as a child.
‘Woogyeong! Hey, snap out of it! Baek Woogyeong!’
‘Doctor! Quickly, call Professor Kang!’
When he was in elementary school and Eunjae was a little girl, a serious incident happened at the Doyoung mansion.
The elevator in the main building broke down, trapping Woogyeong inside.
Since it happened at night, no one noticed until morning. When they finally pulled him out, he was unconscious and nearly stopped breathing.
‘If we’d been even a bit later… he would have died. It’s a miracle.’
Eunjae had snuck into the main building out of concern and overheard the briefing from his doctor.
‘Claustrophobia must be overcome personally, but since Woogyeong was still young, preventing such incidents is the best course.’
The incident nearly killed the heir and shook the entire household.
Enraged, Chairman Baek immediately removed all elevators.
All staff, including Eunjae’s mother, had to undergo strict safety and emergency training. CCTV was installed throughout the house, much to her mother’s complaints about the lack of privacy.
And now… she was trapped in the same kind of situation.
A small, enclosed, pitch-black elevator.
“Prosecutor?”
No response. Eunjae frantically groped around.
“Prosecutor! Oppa. Oppa? Woogyeong Oppa!”
Finally, she felt his solid, stiff body.
She began frantically checking his body.
“Oppa, are you okay?”
What should she do? Panic took over her mind. She remembered his tightly buttoned suit earlier.
“F-First, let’s get your clothes off.”
She recalled her first aid training: patients with breathing difficulties should have their clothes removed to secure their airway.
Trembling, she unbuttoned his jacket and took it off.
“Sorry, I need to remove this.”
Pulling his muscular arms from the jacket made a tearing sound as some buttons resisted.
Still, she persevered, removing both the jacket and vest.
Ah, the tie.
Her small hands found the tie and pulled it off. She then unbuttoned his shirt quickly, driven by the urgency to secure his breathing.
“Jung Eunjae.”
A deep, husky voice rumbled from the now-exposed neckline. Thankfully, he hadn’t lost consciousness.
“Stop.”
“Almost done! Just one more button, Oppa.”
She pressed down on his firm chest to check how far the buttons were undone. Enough to expose his chest, it seemed sufficient.
“Hey.”
“What about your phone? Do you have it?”
She searched the jacket pocket, but found nothing.
“Let’s at least turn on the flashlight. Light helps a bit.”
Her hand finally hit a blunt, solid object in the pants pocket.
“This… is a phone, right?”
The hard object fit perfectly in her palm, like a smartphone.
But something felt… odd yet familiar.
A phone should be flatter than this.
The object in her hand was thick and column-like.
“No… this isn’t a phone.”
His slow, deep voice seemed to mock her.
