Chapter Fifteen

‘Thanks so much for meeting me,’ I said to the woman sitting across the table with me.

‘It’s my pleasure,’ She smiled politely as she moved her long auburn hair off from her shoulder to her back.

‘Chaeyeon-shi, can I ask about your time working as a dietician?’ I asked her. I had worked with her only once or twice and that was very early on during my career. By the time I was hired, she was already transitioning out of dietician and was going back to school to become a teacher.

‘Are you sure I’m the one you want to talk to? I haven’t worked as one in a few years,’ She laughed softly, clasping her hands before putting them onto the table. She seems much happier now than the last time I saw her at her goodbye party at work. Maybe there was something dodgy going on even then.

‘So you haven’t gone back to work as one?’ I asked her.

‘Haven’t thought about going back even once. Working as a teacher allows me to help children without the heartbreak. I couldn’t take seeing some of the children and how under malnourished they were,’ she explained to me. ‘What’s going on, Kyung Mi-shi?’ She asked nervously.

‘There’s been some cases which I’ve gone and reviewed again to find they have been completed not to standard. Some of those were signed by supposedly you within the last year,’ I explained to her as I handed over to her the files which she supposedly completed.

Her eyes quickly scanned through the document as a frown formed in the middle of her forehead.

‘This is definitely not my work, I haven’t stepped foot back into that office since the day I quit. And even if it was, that is not my quality of work,’ she said, looking somewhat offended that I would even suggest that it was hers.

‘Would you have any ideas who would fake being you or why they would?’ I asked her for suggestions. I’ve seen many former co-workers leave but her name was the only one that popped up in those cases.

‘I’m not sure who would want to do that, but it must be because my license is still active,’ she paused. ‘In order to teach the subject health to the older students, I thought it would be good to have that license reviewed every year to make sure my knowledge is still up to date.’

‘As your license is still active, it wouldn’t ring any alarm bells. The reports would be put through as normal and whoever was writing them would get away with it,’ I said, having a light bulb moment.

‘Is Sungwoon still the manager there?’ She asked.

‘He is. Do you think he is the one writing these?’ I asked her with perked up interest. Sungwoon doesn’t seem like one to break the rules to me though.

‘Oh definitely not,’ She said with her palm out in a motion to calm me down, ‘he is too much of a gentle soul. He wouldn’t know how to break a law even if someone gave him specific instructions,’ she laughed.

‘It probably wasn’t him, but what about someone more senior than him? What about one of the other branches? When I was worked there were 3 in the country but I’ve heard that many have opened up since then.’

‘That’s true, there’s around 8 all around the nation but I don’t know a single thing about the others.’

‘Well that’s where you need to be looking at next. I’ve got to run, but please keep me updated. Whoever is doing it is using my name.’

Someone within one of the branches must have a tight connection with someone else who is a social worker. Besides who, why are the doing it? False reports and taking children away from homes – how does that help anyone? At this point, I don’t actually believe it has anything to do with the re-election anymore.

If the current minister wanted to be kept in power, I could see why he would want to inflate the numbers of children taken from supposedly dangerous homes. But completing false records on the dietician sides provides no momentum or help to being re-elected.

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‘Why did you want to meet here?’ Minhyun asked as I approached him. He was sitting at one of those benches in the middle of a shopping centre looking genuinely confused.

‘Because there is a sale and I figured you could buy a few things too.’ Instead of a lunch or dinner meeting, I decided I would kill two birds with one stone by meeting and doing my shopping at the same time.

‘Please don’t tell me you dragged me down here so you could clothes shop and make me hold your bags,’ he groaned as we walked to a specific store.

‘You can do that with your precious Soomin,’ I said. ‘No, we were going to Baby’s Co. There’s a 30% storewide sale,’ I pointed out the large sign in the shop’s window front.

When you are living paycheck to paycheck, you’ll learn to love sales. Even if you aren’t living like that, sales are the most wonderful things.

‘How’s the morning sickness?’ he asked as he pushed a cart besides me through the aisles and displays.

‘Better. Doesn’t bother me much anymore,’ I shrugged and placed a pack of 6 baby bottles into the cart. ‘Which one do you think looks better?’ I asked him as I pointed out two different types of baby bags.

‘They both look exactly the same,’ he said with a straight and serious face. Clearly there were differences between the two of them. I guess a baby bag isn’t essential anyways though. Plus, a bag is just needed to carry things around; I can use any old bag I have in the wardrobe.

‘Sorry about your lunch last time again. I feel bad that I made you miss out on your lunch date, was she angry much?’ I asked him, as we continued to walk through the aisle as I placed different things into the cart.

‘Yeah, funny story about that. She was actually annoyed at me, apparently I missed some kind of important date but she wouldn’t tell me why,’ he laughed awkwardly and took one hand off the cart to scratch the back of his neck.

‘Did you ever figure it out?’

‘Nope and she refuses to tell me.’ If you can’t even remember your anniversary date, or even be able to guess it after knowing that that