After getting rid of the detective, Seo turned and gave Namu a piece of her mind for having such a big mouth, spreading rumours that her cousin was crazy and ruining his chances of ever getting married. Namu knew he was in the wrong, so he shuffled back home.
Seo went back inside and found Dohyun passed out on the floor again. She started getting worried. If I keep him here any longer, I'm going to get caught sooner or later.
She came up with an idea to shove Dohyun into a big cardboard box and move him to another spot. Dohyun woke up, saw what she was doing, and started trying to negotiate.
"Hey, let me go. I promise, if you take me back to the office, I'll tell everyone I came here on my own to rest and that I wasn't kidnapped. You won't have to go to prison."
That sounded reasonable to Seo. So she pulled out her phone and said, "Fine. Let me call your company and confirm that right now."
As soon as the call went through, Dohyun immediately flipped the script and screamed into the phone. "Help me! I'm kidnapped! Her name is Seo. Her address is —"
Dohyun screamed until his voice was gone. But the person on the other end only replied in some gibberish he couldn't understand.
Then Seo burst out laughing. "Stop acting. I just called a Chinese restaurant. They don't understand a word of Korean, so they aren't going to save you."
Dohyun was speechless. It was the first time in his life a superstar like him had got trolled so hard by such a nobody girl.
Realising he couldn't use any more dirty tricks, Dohyun had to do what Seo said and write a handwritten letter to the company saying he was on vacation, to put everyone at ease. At first he tried to be sneaky and use a secret code, the first letter of each line spelling out help me. But Seo was too smart for that. She caught it instantly and forced him to rewrite a normal one without any hidden messages.
Finally, Seo snuck over to the company car park and tucked the letter onto the CEO's car. Even though she was almost caught by the best friend, Miran, she managed to get away just in time.
When everyone at the office read Dohyun's letter, they breathed a sigh of relief, thinking he was just acting like a diva again and had gone off on his own to blow off some steam. When the old CEO read it, he immediately remembered Dohyun's earlier threat. Keep forcing me to go to meetings and watch me run away. So he totally bought it, thinking Dohyun was just being moody and had gone off to have some fun. To kill all the rumours that were making the company's stock tank, he decided to release the handwritten letter to the media.
And just like that, the whole world believed superstar Dohyun was simply out on a road trip to find some inspiration.
Seo was thrilled, because she had got away with kidnapping, while Dohyun was absolutely fuming. He muttered, "I haven't even written a love letter to anyone in my whole life, and now I've had to write a leave-of-absence letter to my boss." And the crazy part was that his boss actually believed it.
The next day, Seo had to drag herself to her old company to finish that wretched handover duty. Before leaving, she had to ask her neighbour Namu to watch over Dohyun again.
Dohyun started using his brain more at this point. He pretended to be suffering. "Hey, man, let me out on the roof for some fresh air. If I stay in this room any longer, I'm going to suffocate."
In truth, Dohyun was surveying the terrain. He was looking for the fastest escape route and where the nearest police station was. While he was at it, he subtly asked, "So, what's the deal between you and Seo? Do you like her?"
Namu just laughed. "Seo is a good girl. Everyone in this neighbourhood likes her."
Dohyun heard that and gave a mysterious smile, as if he were planning something.
Meanwhile, at the office, Seo was enduring all sorts of humiliation as a leftover employee. She was harshly discriminated against. She had to wait for the full-time employees to finish eating before she could eat. She wasn't allowed to stand in the fancy area to drink coffee. Seeing her colleagues looking down on her so openly, Seo felt terribly sorry for herself. She really was the black sheep of the company.
When she got home that night, Dohyun started questioning her. "Hey, are you and that Namu guy a couple?"
Seo was startled. "What are you talking about?"
Dohyun then pulled a trick. "Namu himself said he likes you, you know."
Seeing him bring this up, Seo sadly shared the painful truth. The story went that when she first moved here, she heard some neighbourhood ladies gossiping that Namu was a rich heir who didn't want to follow in his family's footsteps, so he had moved out here to live independently. Since Seo was broke back then, she got the idea to gold-dig. She worked hard making pancakes to bring over and flirt with him, hoping to land a wealthy husband and change her life.
Who knew? As soon as she introduced herself, Namu threw cold water on her. "You've lived here for three months and you're only now coming to say hello? Too late."
So that introduction was a total failure, and after that she didn't bother with Namu any more, right up until Dohyun showed up and the crazy-cousin lie was born.
After hearing all this, Dohyun started acting all high and mighty. "Why do you have this mindset of depending on other people's money? Money isn't everything. Love is what matters."
These words really hit a nerve with Seo. She screamed, "What do you know? You're a superstar. You just have to smile to put billions into your pocket. How could you understand the struggle of people who have to scrape by every day like me? I've worked like a dog for years and still have nothing to show for it."
Dohyun got a real earful and couldn't even catch his breath, so he shot back out of pride. "You think I just got rich for nothing? My success cost me blood, sweat and tears. It didn't just fall from the sky."
Hearing Dohyun talk about success costing blood, sweat and tears hit home for Seo, and she let out all her bottled-up frustration. She screamed through tears.
"I also worked like a dog for three years at that company. I wasn't just playing around. But in the end, did they ever give me an official position? They blamed everything on me and fired me. And now they're even making me work for free to pay back last month's salary. I've never got anything I wanted in my life."
Seo admitted she was so tired of being poor that she just wanted to find a wealthy guy to marry and settle down with, and get it over with.
Her honest words about her struggles and about being stuck made Dohyun go silent. That night, as he lay down to sleep, he started feeling sympathetic, and understood a little about the unlucky situation of the girl who had kidnapped him.