If vacations were meant to refresh the soul, then returning to work felt like being shoved back into traffic without warning.
The elevator dinged.
Yoo Minjae stepped out onto the analyst division's main floor and felt it immediately.
Not silence. Not noise.
Attention.
It wasn't dramatic. No one froze. No one stared openly. People kept typing, kept walking, kept talking—but the rhythm was off. A half-second delay here. A glance that lingered a beat too long there.
He adjusted the strap of his bag and moved forward.
"Morning, Sunbae!"
The intern near reception bowed so deeply she nearly knocked her ID badge into the desk.
"Morning," Minjae replied automatically.
She bowed again.
He kept walking.
From design to operations, from procurement to HR, eyes followed him—not with hostility, not with awe. Curiosity. Anticipation. As if everyone was waiting for a punchline he hadn't delivered yet.
*So it's like this already,* he thought.
Ten minutes later, it got worse.
Seori arrived first, greeting a few people with her usual calm nods. Yura followed shortly after, laughing at something on her phone. Yuri came last, coffee in hand, already arguing with someone from legal about printer access.
The hum intensified.
Minjae didn't turn around, but he felt it—the collective recalibration of attention as the four of them existed in the same space again.
"Minjae-ssi."
He stopped near the lounge.
Hyungtak, an assistant team lead from two floors up, leaned against the counter like he'd been waiting.
"Got a sec?"
Minjae sighed inwardly and turned. "If this is about quarterly projections, talk to my manager."
Hyungtak laughed. "Relax. This is more… cultural."
"That's worse."
Hyungtak grinned wider. "Word is, you went off-grid for a week and came back with a courtship entourage."
Minjae stared at him.
"…I took paid leave."
"And synchronized it with three department gems?" Hyungtak continued smoothly. "That's either next-level planning or fate."
"It's neither."
"Come on. People are impressed."
"I don't need them to be."
Hyungtak clapped him lightly on the shoulder. "Hey, no judgment. Your secret's safe with me."
Minjae met his eyes. "It's not a secret."
Hyungtak raised an eyebrow. "Even better."
Minjae walked away before he could say something regrettable.
---
By noon, subtlety had died a very public death.
Minjae was passing Meeting Room Five with a report folder tucked under his arm when he stopped short.
Someone had commandeered the whiteboard.
At the top, written in bold marker:
**MINJAE'S PARTNER PROBABILITY CHART**
Below it was a pie chart.
A *color-coded* pie chart.
He stared.
"Is that… percentages?" he muttered.
Next to Seori's name, written neatly in pink ink:
*First Daughter-in-Law Energy.*
Yura's section had a doodled heart and the note:
*Sleeps on his shoulder. Home advantage.*
Yuri's was surrounded by arrows and annotations:
*Calls him out. Secretly soft? Opposites attract.*
Someone had added star ratings.
Someone else had added citations.
Minjae lifted the report folder and covered his face as he walked faster.
From behind him, he heard someone whisper, "I'm telling you, Seori's got longevity."
"No way," another replied. "Yura has emotional terrain control."
"What about Yuri?"
"That's endgame chaos."
Minjae pretended he was deaf.
---
It escalated again an hour later.
An anonymous post went up on the company's internal board.
No faces. No names.
Just a short clip.
Four pairs of shoes lined neatly by the doorway of a vacation house. One clearly male. Three unmistakably female. A seagull cried in the background. Wind brushed past the microphone.
Caption:
**"Taken by a friend. Guess who?"**
The comments detonated.
> *No way that's not them.*
> *The left pair is definitely Minjae's. He polishes his Oxfords.*
> *Who needs dramas when we have THIS office?*
> *Please marry all three. For science.*
Minjae closed the tab.
He did not slam his laptop shut.
He did not react outwardly.
But his jaw tightened.
---
Later, Yuri stopped by his desk and set her coffee down deliberately close to his keyboard.
"Next time," she said casually, "we take separate flights back."
He didn't look up. "They'd invent a tragic breakup arc."
Yura leaned against the divider from the other side. "Okay, then we arrive in separate taxis. Pretend we haven't spoken in months."
"And we bring props," Seori added as she passed by. "Tissues. Old love letters. A haunted playlist."
Minjae finally looked up. "You're enjoying this."
Yuri sipped her coffee. "Only because it's funny."
"And," Yura added, smiling, "because none of it's wrong."
Minjae blinked. "What?"
"Nothing," all three said in sync, already walking away.
He stared after them.
"…That was coordinated," he muttered.
---
Across the building, on the upper executive floor, Renner stood by the window.
He didn't need the rumors.
He had data.
Vacation logs that overlapped too cleanly. Lab surveillance gaps that aligned with unlisted access windows. Procurement orders filed under project codes that didn't officially exist.
And the personnel?
Always the same constellation.
Always orbiting one name.
Yoo Minjae.
Renner exhaled slowly.
It wasn't suspicion anymore. It was structure.
Still, he didn't act impulsively.
He opened his tablet and finalized a schedule.
Employee interviews. One by one. Under the umbrella of *operational restructuring*.
Clean. Documented. Unassailable.
His assistant knocked. "Sir, the next interview is in ten minutes."
Renner nodded. "Send in the reports."
"And Minjae?"
Renner paused.
"…Move him to the end of the list."
The assistant hesitated. "Any reason?"
Renner smiled faintly. "I don't like ambushing people."
Especially not ones this careful.