Chapter 5

“N-no, Senior. It’s really okay. I-I didn’t help you for this…….”

Seoyun truly looked flustered. The way she hurriedly waved her hands looked fairly convincing.

That expression, that she had “helped” him, annoyed him even more. Ijun frowned. The very fact that they were having this kind of back-and-forth was irritating.

“Take it. I don’t enjoy feeling indebted to someone I barely know.”

Seoyun, who had paused, bit her lip, then started walking without a word, clutching her handbag. It seemed she really meant to refuse his repayment to the end.

As she opened the door, Seoyun turned to look at Ijun.

“Senior, thank you for coming to pay respects when my father passed away. It comforted me because of that. So please think of what happened overnight as my way of repaying that.”

The door clicked shut softly.

Ijun knit his brows in displeasure. Causing trouble? Thankful? Comfort? Repaying?

It felt as though he had just heard every word he should not have had to hear in this situation. If she had at least awkwardly accepted the money, he would not have felt this unsettled.

Especially at the very last moment, the moisture lingering in Seoyun’s eyes was particularly irritating.

Dropping back onto the sofa, Ijun threw down the bundle of bills in his hand as if casting them away.

A sense of self-disgust came over him at these unfamiliar emotions he had been experiencing one after another ever since he informed Harin of their broken engagement.

It took quite a while before the anger boiling inside him finally subsided. At last, Ijun let out a long breath and picked up his phone.

“Chief Hyeon. Bring me a change of clothes and come to TJ Hotel. The room number is…. One moment.”

Ijun checked the key card on the bedside table and told him the room number.

Only then did he feel thirsty. He opened the minibar in the room and took out a bottle of water. The moment he twisted off the cap, he emptied the whole bottle in one go.

“Song Seoyun, what on earth was that?”

Ijun’s daily life was solid and secure. And the road he was meant to walk stretched wide and smooth toward its destination.

And yet, through the brief crack in that routine caused by Seo Harin, someone had appeared like a foreign substance.

Looking back, it ought to have been nothing more than a trivial incident. And yet somehow, an unidentifiable premonition kept prodding at Ijun’s mind.

“Song Seoyun…….”

Sitting on the sofa with a hand pressed to his forehead, Ijun murmured the name once more. It suddenly struck him that the name lingering on the tip of his tongue suited the woman’s pale face rather well.

Not long after, Chief Hyeon arrived at the room carrying a change of clothes.

“Did you…. sleep in this room?”

Chief Hyeon’s face clearly read, ‘Why on earth?’

“There was a reason for it. Let’s stop by headquarters before work. Check Vice Chairman’s morning schedule and set an appointment for me.”

“Yes, understood.”

Ijun put on the drawers Chief Hyeon had brought, then slipped his arms into his shirt as he gave the order.

Since it was a small room with no separate bedroom and sitting area, Chief Hyeon stepped over by the door with his phone and began making the call. The other party was likely the secretary in the Vice Chairman’s office.

Fastening his cuff links, Ijun tried hard to shake off the thoughts swirling restlessly through his head.

Before going to work, he had to see his father and tell him about the broken engagement with Harin. There would probably be troublesome words for a while, but Ijun’s daily life would soon return to flowing just as it always had.

***

At least it was a relief that her transportation card still had some balance left on it. She took a bus, then the subway, then another bus. By the time Seoyun left TJ Hotel and returned to the rooftop room in the outskirts, quite some time had passed.

She had only meant to lie down for a moment and then get up, but somehow she had fallen asleep there. Ijun’s warm body heat, his scent, had felt too nice for her to make herself leave. So she had lingered, thinking just a little longer, just a little longer, and in the end must have fallen asleep.

No, to begin with, how had she even come up with the idea of lying down beside him? She must truly have been out of her mind.

After the night, when darkness covered everything, had passed, seeing the world brightly lit again made her feel as though her senses had returned.

If anyone knew, they would surely call her a shameless pervert who had lost her mind.

And then she remembered the moment Ijun had held out money to her.

Swaying inside the bus, Seoyun could not bear the humiliation and ended up squeezing both eyes tightly shut.

He had probably not meant to insult her. Even though he looked cold on the outside, Seoyun knew he was actually a considerate person.

“Um, are you feeling unwell somewhere?”

Perhaps she was on her way to work, because the woman seated next to her, dressed in a suit, whispered softly.

“Pardon? Ah, no. It’s nothing…….”

“It’s okay. I have really bad menstrual cramps too. This is a painkiller you can take without water. Have one.”

The woman kept whispering in that same small voice, then took out a pill from her bag and pressed it into Seoyun’s hand.

“Ah…. Thank you.”

That kindness from a stranger only made Seoyun feel all the more shabby.

Please, let Ijun forget this.

But his warmth had felt so good. Even the sight of him sleeping had been breathtakingly handsome….

She had thought she had come to her senses, but apparently not.

A smile slowly rose to the lips of Seoyun, who until just moments ago had been twisting in humiliation.

***

After climbing the stairs that ran along the outer wall of the multi-family house for what felt like forever, the rooftop finally appeared. At one corner of the rooftop stood a flimsy single-room structure built with panels, hot in summer and cold in winter.

She and Jiho had hurriedly found this place after Jeonghun, who had collapsed from a cerebral infarction, died after a long struggle with illness, but now they were in a position where they had to feel thankful simply to have a place to lie down.

Even so, for a one-room place it was fairly spacious, so with a curtain drawn through the middle, it was enough for her and Jiho to live there together.

As soon as Seoyun stepped onto the rooftop, Jiho, who had been sitting at a low platform table eating ramyeon, sprang to his feet.

“Sis! What happened? Why are you only coming now? Where were you all night? Did that bastard Go Changseok not let you go? What the hell did he do?”

Dragging his slippers, Jiho rushed over in an instant, grabbed Seoyun by the shoulders, and looked her over from head to toe.

“What did Go Changseok say? What did that bastard want?”

“How can you keep calling an adult ‘that bastard’?”

“No, when was it that he betrayed Dad and left? So why is he calling you out now?”

Jiho, now a second-year student in the Department of Computer Engineering at Korea University, still had traces of boyishness left in him. Seoyun smiled faintly as she looked at Jiho, six years younger than she was, with affection.

“I parted ways with Department Head Go pretty quickly. He just…. said he was worried about how we were getting by.”

“F*ck, worried my *ss. Then why did you stay out all night?”

“Hey, I can stay out overnight too. Yesterday I met Jiyu, and after chatting over a beer, it just ended up that way. I slept at Jiyu’s place. I’m sorry I couldn’t contact you.”

“Ha…. Do you know how worried I was?”

Jiho had lost his mother at an age when he most needed a mother’s touch, and had grown up relying on Seoyun. Because of that, even now, he absolutely adored her.

They had lost their family, but just as Jiho gave Seoyun the strength to keep living, it was the same for her too.

Her life had hit rock bottom, but because Jiho was there, it was still bearable.

“But why haven’t you gone to school yet? And what’s with ramyeon first thing in the morning?”

“I didn’t have first period today, so I waited for you, Sis.”

“Even if you don’t have class, you should still go study. Don’t think about anything else and just focus on studying. Okay?”

Patting Jiho on the back, Seoyun headed toward the rooftop room. She needed to wash up quickly and go out for her part-time shift. Her whole body felt heavy and her mind was still unsettled, but seeing Jiho made her feel a little more energized.

“Did you eat breakfast, Sis? If you’re going to work, you should at least eat something first. I’ll make egg rice for you. Hurry up and eat.”

Leaving behind the ramyeon he had been eating, Jiho dashed into the room. Watching Jiho’s back, already much taller than hers before she even realized it, Seoyun smiled faintly.

That’s right. She had to think about Jiho. She had already given up on everything, but Jiho could still do anything. For Jiho’s sake…….

She should have been glad that there was something she could still do for him, and yet for some reason the tip of her nose stung. Seoyun bit her lip hard to keep from crying.

***

“F*ck, that worthless little bastard dares to…….”

Between the sharp clatter of the keyboard, savage curses muttered under his breath could be heard.

“Ugh, hey, Song Jiho, stop cursing already. My ears are rotting.”

“With filthy eyes, where the hell does he think he’s looking. I should rip his d*mn eyes out….”

Despite the complaints of his friend Jaehyeon, Jiho’s expression remained grim. His fingers, tensed with force, hammered at the keyboard as though he might smash it, and Jaehyeon watched with an uneasy face.

It was a brand-new programming keyboard Jiho had bought for over 500,000 won, using his Lunar New Year money from last holiday along with the allowance he had saved up.

“Just leave him alone. Hasn’t that bastard always lost his mind whenever it comes to his sister?”

Jaeyun, sprawled out on the faded fabric sofa, said indifferently.

The garage at Jaeyun’s house, an old run-down building, was the hideout of the three friends, all classmates in the Department of Computer Engineering at Korea University.

Originally, it had been a garage left unused for so long that dust had piled up, and the rusty shutter would not even go up.

Not long after entering university, the three had grown close, cleaned out the garage, and furnished it decently with an old sofa and desks they had managed to get. Even so, the desktop computers each of them used were top-tier in specification.

In this place the three called the “Bunker,” Jiho would often lose all sense of time and immerse himself in hacking. Sometimes he built information security systems no one could break through, and other times he identified vulnerabilities in various websites and broke into their systems himself.

His older sister Seoyun thought Jiho spent all day attending classes and then returning after studying at the university library, but in truth he spent more time here.

He felt sorry because he knew how hard Seoyun worked to support him, but it could not be helped. Jiho had already mastered the basic knowledge taught in his major courses back in middle and high school. What could he do if it was all too boring?

“Do you think Sister Seoyun knows that bastard is that much of a lunatic?”

“Hey, how would she know? Haven’t you seen how he acts all innocent and nice in front of his sister?”

“I swear, I nearly collapsed from the pain in the back of my neck. But what can you do. Genius is just another word for psycho.”

“Shut up.”

After snapping roughly at Jaehyeon and Jaeyun, who were snickering behind him, Jiho sank into thought.

Go Changseok, that traitorous bastard, there was no need to ask why he had called Seoyun out. For a long time already, the look in that bastard’s eyes whenever he watched Seoyun had been downright filthy.

When Jiho found the hotel room receipt in his sister’s small bag after she came back that morning, he had felt like he was going to lose his mind on the spot. Because he knew Seoyun would do anything for his sake.

At this rate, rejecting the countless offers he had received from all over the world and choosing to enter university for his sister’s sake had been the mistake instead.

Everything was because of money. It was always money that was the problem.

Jiho stopped moving his fingers and glared at the monitor.