My Webtoon Hero Is the CEO Next Door novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Page Fourteen
At the new owner's all-hands, Yeo-reum sees that the cold man from 402 is the CEO, and shuts his tablet on the big screen to stop her unpublished pages; he answers that the thumb on page fourteen is his.
Yeo-reum knew the new owner of Dalbit Toon by the back of his head.
She was standing in the last row of the seventh-floor meeting room, holding a paper cup of cold coffee.
She had not slept since Sunday, and there was black ink drying on her left cheek.
Sixty staff stood in front of her, all facing the stage.
Director Gong Tae-sik, the editor-in-chief, tapped the microphone and smiled his glossy smile.
"Please welcome the founder of Ryu Content, who has made Dalbit his home."
A tall man in a dark grey suit walked up the three steps to the stage.
His black hair was long enough to cover his ears, swept to the right.
He stood with his shoulders square and his left hand loose at his side.
Yeo-reum's coffee tilted in her hand.
She had drawn that back four hundred times.
Every Thursday for two years, a stranger in the shadows of her webtoon had stood exactly like that.
His name was Dowon, and four point eight million readers wanted to see his face.
She had never drawn it, because she had never seen it clearly.
She had only seen the man who lived in apartment 402 from her side of the balcony panel, at night, in shadow.
He was the man who left at six every morning and came home after midnight.
He had never once said hello to her on the stairs.
She did not even know his name.
Now he took the microphone from Director Gong, and he looked at the room.
"I am Ryu Jin-woo," he said.
His voice was flat and a little too loud for the size of the room.
"I bought this company because it publishes good work. I will keep that work safe."
A small, startled laugh went around the staff.
Yeo-reum put her coffee down on the windowsill, because her hand was shaking.
It was him.
It was the man from 402, and he had just bought the company that owned her contract.
"Thank you, CEO Ryu," Director Gong said, taking the microphone back.
He rubbed his hands together, which was what he did before he took something.
"And now I want to show you why this is a good day for Dalbit."
The big screen behind him lit up with the Blue Hour logo.
Heads turned. Someone whispered, "That's the Thursday one."
"Our crown jewel," Director Gong said. "Four point eight million subscribers. And because our new owner has been so generous in his review, I am happy to give you a first look at chapter fifty-nine."
Yeo-reum stopped breathing.
Chapter fifty-nine was not finished.
Nobody had seen it except her and Soo-ah, her assistant.
The first page slid onto the screen, with her rough pencil lines and her margin notes in red.
Haeun stood at a window in the rain.
The second page followed, then the third.
Staff leaned forward and murmured, because the pages were good.
Then page fourteen appeared, eight feet wide.
It was Dowon's hand, caught in close-up on a doorknob, with a pale scar across the thumb.
Beside it, in her own handwriting, she had written: "Left hand. Scar. Ask him for the real one."
She did not remember writing that.
She had been awake for two days.
Director Gong, who had no right to those files, turned to the new owner with a pleased look.
The new owner had gone completely still, and he was staring at the screen.
Yeo-reum put her paper cup on the windowsill and walked down the aisle.
Staff stepped aside when they saw her face, because they did not know who she was.
Director Gong saw her coming, and his smile held for two more steps.
"Writer Reum," he said, "this is a surprise."
"Those pages are unpublished," she said.
He was not on her left, but on her right, so she said it to the stage.
"It is due diligence," he said quietly. "The buyer asked for samples."
"You sent him my drafts."
"Please, not here."
"You put my drafts on a wall," she said, loud enough for the whole room.
She stepped onto the stage, picked up the clicker from the podium, and held the button down until the screen went black.
The sixty staff were silent.
She turned to the man in the grey suit.
He was looking at her mouth, and he had not looked away since she climbed the steps.
He had dark eyes and a very straight mouth, and he was a little taller than she remembered.
She had seen him from a balcony in the dark, but never from three feet away, under a light.
"Ms. Oh," he said.
It was not a guess.
He knew her name.
"Page fourteen," he said, flat and a little too loud, so that the whole room heard. "Left hand. That is my thumb."
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