THREE

“Fired? Already?!” Jinri shouted. “You really couldn’t keep your mouth shut, could you…”

Seorin sighed, burying her face into her palms. “Can’t you take my side like a normal best friend and just insult that with me?”

“Okay, fine… That head intern at Kangdo Marketing is the dumbest, psychotic jerk ever!” Jinri exclaimed jokingly. “He’s just the worst. We should just shave him bald.”

“Har har, so funny.” Seorin rolled her eyes at her friend’s sarcasm. “… I’m serious though. He thinks he can do whatever he wants, whenever he wants, just because he’s the son of the CEO…”

Jinri’s eyes widened as the words sunk into her mind. “What? Why didn’t you mention that earlier?!” She shouted. “You were working with Do Seungsoo this entire time?!”

Seorin frowned. Who the hell is Seungsoo?

Her best friend returned the confused look, not knowing that the CEO of Kangdo Marketing had two sons, not one. But when her mother began yelling at her from the kitchen, she didn’t have the chance to ask any questions. “I’ll – I’ll talk to you later! Have to get back to work…” She grumbled. She had to learn her way around the kitchen if she was going to take over her parents’ chain of high-class restaurants around the world.

Seorin was left at the table alone. She sighed, picking at her poached salmon. She wondered if she should wrap it up and take it home – her mother liked salmon. And maybe if she brought it home, her mother wouldn’t be as angry with her for getting fired after one week…

Unfortunately, the salmon didn’t help at all.

“One week? Really, Seorin-ah?” Her mother lectured. “All you had to do was up your pride...”

“It’s harder than you think, Umma,” Seorin complained. “You don’t know how much of a prick this guy is!”

“And now that you have your pride, what are you going to do for the rest of this summer? Laze around, hm?”

She bit her lip nervously. “Do you think maybe Appa could…”

Her mother sighed and interrupted, “You know you can’t ask your father for help…”

“Why not?! He’s a commercial director! Why can’t I just work at the marketing company he works for?” She didn’t know why she was asking for the tenth time when she already knew the answer.

She even mouthed it along with her mother: “He works for a foreign company. They’re overseas and –”

“Their policies are different, I know,” she finished. It was always that same very reply. Whenever she wasn't allowed to do something, it was always because her father worked for an American company.

She stood up from the table. “Eat the salmon. I’m going to my room,” she muttered. She didn’t know any companies that would accept her this late into the summer, but she would have to at least try and look. She knew that as a last resort, she could always try calling her father anyway and ask him to pull some strings with some connections he had with a