Chapter 20

Lee-jin lifted her gaze and looked at Kwon Ki-joo.

She had to use this opportunity. Instead of tailing him while reading the room and then sneaking into his house while risking her life, she would boldly step into his domain as the life-saver he was insistently claiming she was.

But perhaps he interpreted Lee-jin’s wide-eyed stare differently, because at that moment, the corner of Kwon Ki-joo’s mouth curved in a suggestive way. The searching look in his eyes gleamed with a strange color, and then Kwon Ki-joo whispered sweetly,

“Don’t tell me you’ve already changed your mind? Well, I suppose I am a bit too good to let slip away just like that. Fine, if you don’t want money, then I guess you’ll have to pay with your body. This suite is mine until tomorrow anyway……”

“Please hire me, Boss!”

“……What?”

The moment Kwon Ki-joo’s startled expression froze as it was, Lee-jin spoke in a steady voice.

“Please hire me as your bodyguard, Boss. I have a few certificates, and since I box, I’m confident in real fights too.”

“……”

“And I’m not bragging, but I learned self-defense, so I know how to use a knife too.”

At Lee-jin’s continued words, Kwon Ki-joo moved his lips slightly, but in the end he said nothing and simply closed his mouth again. Then he looked at Lee-jin with an expression that said, what even is this.

Yes, since she had been prepared to work even as some kind of helper anyway, being a bodyguard was not bad. She had done this kind of work before, so she could just think of it as a part-time job.

Though she briefly felt uneasy at the thought that being a gangster’s bodyguard might make her a gangster too, she decided to think about that later.

“Don’t tell me you’re saying you’ll openly trail after me right by my side?”

After a long while, Kwon Ki-joo finally spoke, asking with a laugh of disbelief. He still would not let Lee-jin leave the category of ‘stalker.’ So Lee-jin quickly nodded.

“Yes. If I move around with you, Boss, then I can keep seeing you.”

“Do you know what my bodyguard does?”

“I might not be able to do twenty-four-hour close protection, but as long as it’s not a war with another organization while waving sashimi knives around, I can do the rest too.”

At Lee-jin’s answer, Kwon Ki-joo let out another incredulous sigh. Then he muttered in a voice that was barely audible,

“Are you really that cunning, or are you just an idiot.”

Thinking probably both inwardly, Lee-jin did not avoid Kwon Ki-joo’s gaze.

She thought that maybe this was what Wonjae had intended too. In any case, at least Lee-jin had prevented the disaster of throwing herself into Kwon Ki-joo’s bed.

“You don’t want me to give you money, and you refuse even when I say I can repay you with my body. Yet after all that, what you’re saying is that all you want is to be my dull little bodyguard?”

“If I have a stable job, then I won’t have to drift from one part-time job to another anymore, and I also won’t have to get beaten up at Roxana.”

“Let’s get the facts straight. Since when is being my bodyguard a stable job?”

“Surely you wouldn’t use me as a shield for knives, Boss. After all, I’m your ‘life-saver.’”

When she leisurely put forward the very title she had adamantly denied just moments ago, Kwon Ki-joo let out a short laugh. Thinking she had almost won him over, Lee-jin pressed a little further.

“If it’s inconvenient because I’m a woman, then I’ll cut my hair and even dress as a man. But instead of sticking me in some club somewhere, please keep me by your side, Boss. I’ll follow you around without getting in your way.”

“You really came determined.”

“It’s a better way to see you for longer, Boss, than spending one night here and being thrown out.”

“And you criticize me too?”

“To be honest, Boss, you change women every day, and you don’t see the same woman twice.”

At Lee-jin’s matter-of-fact reply, Kwon Ki-joo let out another incredulous sigh. But seeing the pleasant curve of his lips, it felt as though the matter was already as good as settled.

By this point, it certainly looked like a stalker’s long-term plan.

“You don’t have to pay me much. If you really can’t trust me, you can even just make it a one-year contract.”

At Lee-jin’s repeated words, Kwon Ki-joo leaned back once more and rested against the sofa.

What filled his eyes as he looked across at Lee-jin was unmistakably interest. As though he welcomed this pleasant, unexpected provocation that had caught him off guard.

“It won’t be easy. Do you think you can do it?”

At Kwon Ki-joo’s permission finally falling into place, Lee-jin quickly nodded. If she was lucky, she might even be able to look around his house before long.

“But in return, don’t stop stalking me. Without your eyes following me around, I think I’d feel oddly empty.”

“Of course.”

“Good. Then for the time being, I guess I’ll try being an idiot wrapped up in a female bodyguard’s skirts.”

Looking at the hem of Lee-jin’s skirt, Kwon Ki-joo smiled.

For a moment, his eyes glinted with a strange light, but Lee-jin did not dwell on it for long. As Mimi had said, it was not as if she were a mind reader, and she could not grasp every little thing like that and react to it every time.

* * *

“Oppa, are you insane?”

Even as he watched Lee-jin come in after flinging the door open with a bang and shouting, Wonjae did not look especially surprised. Just as Lee-jin had guessed that he would still be at the office, Wonjae had probably expected that she would come.

“Are you trying to get me killed? Was that your plan?”

“Calm down.”

“Do I look like I’m in any state to calm down right now?”

Lee-jin strode all the way to the desk piled chaotically with equipment and snarled as if she might lunge at him at any moment.

He had carried out the whole thing without giving her so much as a hint beforehand, leaving her anxious the entire time she was with Kwon Ki-joo, and yet Wonjae was infuriatingly calm, just going about whatever he had been doing.

“Do you know how worried I was that you might’ve been caught?”

“It wasn’t the first time. Why would that happen?”

“It’s Kwon Ki-joo. The other side is Kwon Ki-joo. That gangster we were all so worried about before we even started this.”

“Sit down first.”

“Oppa.”

“I said I know, so sit.”

At Wonjae’s calm words, Lee-jin barely managed to suppress her agitation and went over to the shabby sofa, dropping onto it carelessly. In the process, the paper shopping bag with the dress inside fell to the floor.

Letting out a sigh, Lee-jin picked it up and set it back beside her, then asked Wonjae,

“Did the Deputy order you to do it?”

“No. I just handled it on my own.”

“Well, I guess that’s true. That person never cared what you did as long as you produced results.”

When she let out a short, mocking laugh, Wonjae released a long breath and came to sit across from her. Then, after looking at Lee-jin in silence for quite a while, he quietly asked,

“Are you hurt anywhere?”

“I’m so touched by your concern I could cry.”

“Stop being sarcastic.”

“Anyway, I guess you are past your prime now, huh, Lee Wonjae? To only manage that much. If Kwon Ki-joo had gone by car, he wouldn’t even have passed through there. Wasn’t it way too sloppy?”

“……”

“What, don’t tell me…… even the samgyeopsal place too?”

“There’s only one thirty-year-old samgyeopsal place not far from Havana Club.”

At Wonjae’s calm reply, Lee-jin unconsciously leaned her body back, putting more distance between them. She had reported everything to him as usual without leaving anything out, but she had never imagined he would use it this well.

“As you probably noticed too, what happened today wasn’t meant to kill Kwon Ki-joo or hurt him. I told you, didn’t I, that being his savior would be better.”

“Oppa!”

“I thought that no matter what happened, you’d save that bastard Kwon Ki-joo. It would also look more natural if you didn’t know anything, so I adjusted things so you wouldn’t get hurt.”

“You call that something you can just say now? Even so, you still could’ve at least given me some warning in advance.”

“No, you definitely would’ve refused. You would’ve told me not to do something dangerous and said you’d follow him around even more carefully yourself.”

“……”

“You’re the kind of person who can’t stand seeing someone die right in front of you. If you’d known beforehand, you would’ve somehow led Kwon Ki-joo down a different road.”

With Wonjae’s words, a heavy silence settled over the old office. Unable to find anything she could say back, Lee-jin merely bit down on her lip.