She was dismissed because of her plain clothes, first mistaken for a custodian and then belittled as an intern. When Secretary Baek Yerin blocked her from using the executive elevator, she noticed another employee quietly warning her to use the service elevator. Baek mocked the woman, and that moment stayed with the narrator. Then she noticed Baek wearing a rare white watch she had personally chosen for her mother-in-law, a gift her husband Doyun had supposedly ordered.

Upstairs, Baek proudly claimed she had been close to President Han for years. When Doyun appeared, he called her affectionately in front of thirty employees and asked who had upset her. Baek pointed at the narrator and called her an intern. Doyun looked at his wife but said nothing, and that silence confirmed everything she needed to know.

Instead of confronting them, the narrator went to the tenth floor and opened the board meeting as the company’s incoming chief executive. By noon, she had the humiliating elevator policy removed from the building’s code of conduct, making it clear that status and appearance would no longer determine who deserved respect.

An internal audit then uncovered something much worse. Baek had been approving expensive client entertainment for three years without having legitimate authority to do so. One of the questionable expenses was connected to the very watch she had been wearing. The investigation quickly ended her position.

Doyun chose to resign from the board rather than face the full review. The narrator’s marriage ended in divorce seven months later, closing a fifteen-year relationship that had apparently been built on his silence and betrayal.

Meanwhile, Song Boram—the employee who had quietly tried to spare the narrator further humiliation—was promoted to run operations. The narrator remembered that she had shown kindness to someone she believed was powerless.

The watch was returned to Doyun’s mother, who continued wearing it and calling the narrator every Sunday. She never apologized for her son because she understood that his choices were not hers to excuse.

The people in that hallway had spent only minutes deciding the narrator was insignificant because of how she looked. By the end, she realized their judgment had never determined her worth. She had simply stopped waiting for people who underestimated her to recognize it.