I Was Reborn at My Engagement Party, So I Proposed to Someone Else novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Pen
Seo Ji-an dies in the rain at 29, wakes at 26 at her engagement gala with her fiancé's pen in her hand, refuses to sign, gives back the ring in front of four hundred guests and proposes to Kwon Tae-gyeom; in the elevator her mother calls: her uncle's men are emptying the house.
Her husband had told her she would never reach Seocho, where the prosecutors' office was.
Forty minutes later a truck came across the median on the Gangbyeon Expressway.
Seo Ji-an remembered the rain on the windshield and then the rain on her face.
The car was on its roof. Her seatbelt was cutting her in half.
Somebody was pulling the door off with his bare hands.
"Seo Ji-an."
A man's voice. Low and furious.
"Look at me. Stay awake. You owe me."
It was Kwon Tae-gyeom.
The Myeongsan bastard. A man she had spoken to twice in her life, both times at parties, both times about nothing.
Three days earlier somebody had texted her from an unknown number.
"I know you didn't light it. Bring me who did."
She had the ledger on the seat beside her. She had her uncle's handwriting in it.
She didn't make it.
Ji-an died at twenty-nine with Kwon Tae-gyeom's hand on her face, and the last thing she thought was, why him?
Then she opened her eyes.
There was a pen in her hand.
Black lacquer, a gold nib, her initials on the cap.
She knew that pen. She had signed her whole life away with it.
"Ms. Seo?"
Her secretary, So-hee, was crouched in front of her with a hairpin in her mouth.
"You fell asleep sitting up," So-hee said around it. "They're ready for you. Your uncle's already on stage."
Ji-an looked down.
Burgundy silk. A diamond on her left hand as big as a molar.
This was the bridal waiting room of the Sky Hall, sixty floors over Yeouido.
Her engagement party.
She was twenty-six years old, and in three months she was going to marry Yoon Jae-hyuk.
"So-hee," Ji-an said. "What's the date?"
"March fourteenth." So-hee frowned. "Are you okay? You look like you saw a ghost."
"I saw a truck."
So-hee took the pin out of her mouth. "What?"
"Nothing. Walk me in."
The ballroom had glass walls on three sides, and the river was black beneath it.
Four hundred people turned to look at her.
Her uncle stood at the microphone with his jade ring flashing.
"And as a wedding gift from the family," Uncle Myung-ho boomed, "my niece takes the chair of Hanseong E&C!"
Applause. Ji-an's mother clapped at the front table with her hands shaking.
Her grandfather didn't clap at all.
Jae-hyuk came across the stage to her, smiling, in a pale grey suit.
He kissed her cheek for the cameras.
"Your first signatures," he said into the microphone. "As a CEO, and as my future wife."
A staff member held up a silver tray.
On it lay the engagement agreement and a second document, three pages, already marked with little yellow arrows where her name went.
In her first life Ji-an hadn't even looked at it.
This time she picked it up.
"General power of attorney," she read aloud.
The room went a little quieter.
"Granting Yoon Jae-hyuk full authority over my shares in Hanseong Holdings," she read, "and all decisions of Hanseong E&C."
Jae-hyuk laughed, warm and easy.
"Don't read it, baby. You'll give yourself a headache." He tapped the yellow arrow. "Just sign. You always do."
People laughed with him.
They had always laughed with him.
Ji-an looked at the pen in her hand.
With this pen she had signed the demolition order for a hill in Ahyeon-dong.
With this pen she had signed her divorce, and the papers that took her mother's foundation, and a statement saying she had acted alone.
She put the cap back on.
She set the pen down on the silver tray, very gently.
Then she took off the ring and set it down beside the pen.
"I'm not signing anything," she said. "And I'm not marrying you."
Somebody's champagne glass hit the floor.
Jae-hyuk's smile stayed exactly where it was. Only his eyes changed.
"Ji-an," he said softly. "You're tired."
"I've never been less tired in my life."
Her uncle's hand closed on her elbow. His ring dug into her arm.
"You will apologize to the Yoon family," he said through his teeth, "and then you will sign."
"Let go of me, Uncle."
She said it into the microphone.
Four hundred people heard it.
He let go.
Ji-an stepped down off the stage.
The crowd opened in front of her.
At the far window, alone, stood a tall man in a black suit and a black shirt with no tie.
Nobody stood near him. Nobody ever did.
He had a glass he hadn't touched, and a pale scar along his jaw, and he watched her walk toward him.
She stopped in front of him.
She held out her hand.
"CEO Kwon," she said. "Will you marry me?"
The silence behind her was so complete she could hear the river.
Kwon Tae-gyeom looked at her hand.
Then at her face.
"When?" he said.
"Monday. The district office opens at nine."
"Why wait until Monday?"
Somebody gasped. Her uncle swore.
Tae-gyeom put his untouched glass down on the windowsill and took her hand.
His palm was warm and dry.
"Yes," he said, loud enough for the room. "I'll bring my seal."
They walked out through four hundred people, and he didn't let go once.
In the elevator Ji-an started shaking.
He didn't ask her why.
He just took his jacket off and put it over her shoulders.
Her phone rang. It was her mother.
She was crying.
"The housekeeper just called me," her mother said. "Your uncle's men are at our house, Ji-an. They're carrying your father's study out to a truck."
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