Chapter 8.3

“By the way, how about exchanging contact information?”  

His tone was so icy that Cho-ah momentarily thought she had misheard him. 

Was he really asking for my number with a face like that, as if he were challenging me to a duel?  

“Why would you need my contact information, Executive Director?”  

Cho-ah looked at him suspiciously. Ignoring her overreaction, Seung-jo calmly stated his reason.  

“A strange man came to her house, but she didn’t report it, so it must be someone she knows. I don’t want to dig into it myself, but I can’t just let it go either.”  

“…That happened? When? What the hell! So she wasn’t joking earlier? Who the hell dares to mess with my Unnie…?!”

When Jung Cho-ah shouted, Seung-jo frowned and covered Su-eon’s ears with his hands. Su-eon flinched at the loud noise, her shoulders momentarily tensing before gradually relaxing again.  

Seung-jo cast a silent, reproachful gaze at Cho-ah, who was wide-eyed, and then quietly proposed,  

“Whoever finds out first shares the information. How about that?”  

“Fine.”  

It was the first time the two, who had disliked each other from the very beginning, agreed on something.  

“Though I’ll probably find out first, I’ll let you know if I have time, Executive Director.”  

“Well, I think I’d recognize the description better than you.”  

Amid their clashing intentions from the start, Cho-ah deliberately provoked Seung-jo, pushing all his buttons.  

“You must be nervous, meeting someone like my Unnie for the first time. That’s just how she is. Back when she was in the GRO (VIP Services Department), there were so many guys confessing to her and proposing that if you lined them up, they’d cross Mapo Bridge.”  

And the trash among them? There were plenty. Compared to the chaebol chairman who blatantly offered to make her his mistress, a crypto pyramid scheme scammer was almost endearing. 

Jung Cho-ah had personally filtered out and rejected every single one of those men.  

Although she couldn’t compare those guys to Ki Seung-jo, she still didn’t like his extraordinary background. 

Why did she consistently like guys like this? Honestly, unbelievable.  

“You don’t need to tell me things like that.” 

Seung-jo said coldly. The arrogance in his gaze seemed to crack ever so slightly.  

“I already know it all too well, so don’t worry.”  

Cho-ah turned her head away with a huff, thinking that he might be an even tougher opponent than she had anticipated.  

***

“Ji Su-eon, wake up.”  

Upon arriving home, Seung-jo laid Su-eon down on the bed. She remained motionless, fast asleep. Despite her reputation as a heavy drinker, he wondered how much she had to drink to end up like this. He debated whether to call a doctor, but Su-eon stirred before he could decide.  

“…It’s hot. I’m thirsty.”  

With a pale face and a pained expression, Su-eon groaned softly. Seung-jo removed her clothes and, as she burrowed into the sheets, he lifted her into his arms.  

“Let’s drink some water.”  

Holding water in his mouth, he gently let it flow into her slightly parted lips. Even in her unconscious state, Su-eon wrapped her arms around his neck and clung to him. As he held her, Seung-jo pressed his lips to her forehead.  

“Do you even know who you’re clinging to?”  

“Senior…”  

“Yeah.”  

“…I’m thirsty… I want to wash up.”  

Her warm breath against his neck made Seung-jo’s breathing slow and scatter.  

“I’ll help you wash, but you need to take your medicine and sleep.”  

After giving her another sip of water, Seung-jo whispered as he gently rubbed the nape of her neck, feeling her body go limp in his arms. Her hair carried the indulgent scent of a summer night, mingled with the smell of alcohol from the club.  

Her hair was disheveled, and her makeup had smudged, leaving her face shiny. In this state, with all her usual defenses down, Su-eon burrowed into his chest and nuzzled her cheek against him. It seemed to be her drunken habit.  

Thinking that it was a habit he particularly disliked, Seung-jo let out a languid sigh. Muttering to himself that he shouldn’t act frustrated with a drunken girlfriend, he stood up.  

After filling the tub with warm water, he gently placed Su-eon into the bathtub before heading to the guest room where her belongings were stored.  

When he opened the door and stepped inside, the room was filled with Su-eon’s scent, which he had grown familiar with over the past few days. 

Once again, suppressing a hollow laugh at his own body acting like it was in heat, Seung-jo stepped inside. On one side of the wall, a suitcase lay horizontally, still unpacked. He opened the unlocked suitcase to find some clothes for Su-eon to change into.  

While rummaging, he found a sleek black luxury box that took up an entire section of the suitcase. Thinking it might contain underwear, he opened the lid—and froze for a moment.  

“What… is this?”  

Inside, neatly organized, were albums. Alongside them were other peculiar items, all carefully wrapped and arranged. Among the assortment, only one thing stood out to him as recognizable: a photo card of an idol group Su-eon had been holding recently. It was tucked neatly into a binder.  

Recalling Su-eon’s irritated expression when she’d scolded him about leaving fingerprints on it, Seung-jo couldn’t help but chuckle.  

“She insisted it wasn’t hers…”  

The thought of Su-eon hurriedly gathering all of these things and packing them up when she left home that night made him shake his head in disbelief. She must have only taken what was most important to her.  

How important could these have been for her to haphazardly pack her clothes but carefully secure a box filled with idol albums? Meanwhile, her underwear was rolling around carelessly inside the suitcase.  

With her sharp, no-nonsense demeanor, she always acted as if she had no interest in men. Yet here she was, secretly hoarding these. All the faces in the photos were young and pretty, without exception.  

“What a complete facade.”  

Dumbfounded, Seung-jo let out a hollow laugh before sitting down and covering his face with his hand, unable to suppress his amusement.  

“This is driving me crazy.”  

He couldn’t stop laughing.  

***

The next morning, Su-eon opened her eyes and blinked slowly, lying under the blanket with a dazed expression. Her entire body felt numb. She must have drunk far too much, she thought, as her hand fumbled around for her phone.  

She wanted to check the time and make sure Jung Cho-ah had gotten home safely. But the moment her eyes landed on the screen, her priorities shifted instinctively.  

Seeing that Black had made it through the night without incident, she clicked on the video she’d been watching the day before.  

Thanks to the quick work of the fans, the two-minute clip had already been expanded into an hour-long compilation and was heating up the message boards. Su-eon quickly lost herself in the video, completely absorbed.  

It was so perfect it brought tears to her eyes. As she lay comfortably in bed, indulging in this luxury, a pang of guilt hit her—

Was it even okay to enjoy this kind of bliss?  

Her reverie was abruptly interrupted when the phone was snatched from her hand.  

“Huh? So this is the kind of thing you watch?”  

While Su-eon froze like ice, Seung-jo, fresh out of the shower and drying his hair with a towel, stared intently at the phone he had taken from her.  

On the screen, the young men from the photos she had so carefully packed in her suitcase were wearing tight leather suits, complete with leather gloves, and gyrating their hips in a provocative and reckless manner.  

Seung-jo remembered that the one in the center of the group was the same one whose photos had been the most abundant in her box.  

“So that’s what a three-piece leisure suit is…”  

As upbeat dance music filled the room, Seung-jo’s snicker cut through the atmosphere like a discordant note. His lips curled into a smirk, but his eyebrows shot up sharply as if he’d just discovered something particularly amusing.  

“You even left a comment?”  

“……”  

“‘Put it on the 9 o’clock news.’”  

Su-eon, who had frozen like a fossil, couldn’t endure it any longer and pulled the blanket over her head. At this moment, a new peak of embarrassment was being added to her 28 years of life.  

“You should’ve told me earlier. We could’ve enjoyed it together.”  

Seung-jo, sitting on the edge of the bed, leaned over the blanket-covered figure of Su-eon.  

“Su-eon.”  

“……”  

“Ji Su-eon.”  

He teased her in a sweet voice.  

“Where did my Princess go?”  

“……Stop joking around and give me my phone.”  

Su-eon extended only her hand out of the blanket. Instead of returning the phone, Seung-jo grabbed her hand and pulled her gently.  

“I don’t think so. I can’t take my eyes off it either. Not after seeing the comment left by my girlfriend.”  

“……”  

“‘Every time his hips move, I feel like my soul is leaving my body.’ Was that sincere?”  

Su-eon’s face burned as if it were on fire.  

“That wasn’t my comment!”  

“It says your username here, though? ‘Does his pelvis have a soul?’ What does that even mean?”  

“Stop reading it! I’m serious, stop!”  

“I’m reading it, but I don’t understand it.”  

Narrowing his eyes at the dazzling fan lingo, Seung-jo muttered. The words were clearly written in Hangul consonants and vowels, but no matter how he read them, they didn’t make sense.