Chapter 2.5

His blunt question made Moonkyeong’s gaze waver.  

Her eyes darted around aimlessly in the empty air.  

She couldn’t figure out his intent. 

Was he mocking me for being bad at kissing, or was he genuinely curious?  

She didn’t want to answer, so she threw a question back at him instead.  

“You don’t smoke, do you?”  

“Why?”  

“Because you don’t smell like it. You just look like you would.”  

“Look like I would?”  

His lips seemed to urge her to say whatever she wanted, as if daring her.  

Moonkyeong continued.  

“You look like the type to pick all the bad habits, but you don’t smell like smoke, so it’s surprising.”  

How do I look, exactly?  

Seojun lightly tapped her forehead with his fingers and chuckled coldly.  

“I don’t smoke.”  

“Why not?”  

“Because I want to live a long life.”  

“Oh.”  

That, too, was unexpected.  

He didn’t seem like someone who clung to life, yet his desire to live long didn’t suit him at all.  

Realizing that Seojun’s answers were unexpectedly sincere, Moonkyeong wanted to ask him more.  

Partly because she didn’t know what he might do next if she didn’t keep talking.  

Kim Seojun was a dangerously unpredictable man for Seo Moonkyeong.  

She lowered her gaze.  

“Do you still go to that café these days?”  

“Not regularly.”  

Not regularly, but occasionally, then. Next question.  

“Are you good at playing the piano?”  

“Is that even a question?”  

Of course. Asking a man who majored in piano such a thing was absurd.  

Then something else. 

Something she genuinely wanted to know about this man. She decided to ask that.  

Moonkyeong swallowed hard.  

“What’s your relationship with Lee Heejin?”  

“Is there anything to define? What you see is all there is.”  

“But you accepted her invitation.”  

“Because I thought you might come.”  

“…….”  

Moonkyeong was a bit slow to understand what Seojun meant.  

She was so flustered that she struggled to come up with her next question.  

Before her mind could calculate, her mouth blurted out the first thing that came to mind.  

“Then why do you keep using informal speech with me?”  

Her voice, raised without her realizing it, made Seojun let out a small laugh.  

Until now, the smiles she had seen from him were mostly sarcastic or cold, but this one was entirely different.  

It was a boyish smile, as if her question had genuinely caught him off guard.  

“Then why don’t you drop the formalities too?”  

Is that even an answer?  

When Moonkyeong shot him a sideways glance, Seojun quickly dropped his smile.  

The boyish grin disappeared, replaced by the face of an adult who seemed to have lived half a century in enlightenment.  

Thick eyebrows, a smooth nose bridge, and eyes that seemed to pierce through people—his gaze undoubtedly belonged to a strong man.  

Even at this moment, the desire to possess that gaze stirred deep within her, like a hidden yearning crawling out from the depths.  

This time, it was his turn to ask a question.  

The heat she had barely managed to suppress began to rekindle from below.  

Tilting his head slightly, Seojun leaned closer.  

Like a hunting dog searching for its prey, he took in Moonkyeong’s scent.  

“Do you want to play with me?”  

Even his voice was sensual enough to melt someone’s heart.  

“…….”  

Will he kiss me again?  

Caught in the impulsiveness of his gaze, Moonkyeong tightly shut her eyes.  

She was scared that this time, she wouldn’t be able to refuse.  

Contrary to her expectations, instead of kissing her, he licked her ear.  

Goosebumps rose all over her body.  

When Moonkyeong opened her eyes, Seojun whispered.  

“Come to the second floor just before sunrise. The second room on the right—that’s my room.”  

Before the heat rising to her neck could subside, he passed her, opened the door, and left.  

Moonkyeong’s legs gave out, and she collapsed to the floor.  

Only then did she realize how tense she had been, to the point where her hair stood on end.  

She even felt a chill run down her spine.  

*** 

Starting at 9 p.m., as the sunset began, people gathered.  

The once quiet beach in front of the house was soon filled with a crowd.  

In the front yard of the mansion, a professional chef came to grill barbecue.  

Even as loud music played and people enjoyed their meals, the party members were busy dancing.  

The only ones sitting upright and leisurely enjoying their meal were Kim Seojun and Seo Moonkyeong. Just the two of them.  

Seated at opposite ends of the table, they couldn’t exchange a single word, but unlike the day before, the food tasted good.  

Moonkyeong’s gaze shifted from Seojun to Lee Heejin.  

She was already half-drunk. Dressed in a bikini twice as revealing as the one she wore yesterday, she seemed to have pushed her chest up as high as it could go.  

Come to think of it, everyone was dressed in swimsuits, ready to jump into the sea at any moment—except for Moonkyeong.  

She wore short shorts and a flowing long-sleeved T-shirt.  

A breeze blew in from the garden. The fluttering sleeves made her look like a butterfly dancing with every slight movement of her hands.  

“Aren’t you hot?”  

Lee Heejin asked Moonkyeong, looking somewhat frustrated, but Moonkyeong shook her head, pretending to be fine.  

She couldn’t help it. Earlier, in that confined room, he hadn’t only targeted her lips.  

He had left red marks on places that weren’t visible.  

The bruised-looking marks were from every spot his tongue had touched, and Moonkyeong had no choice but to hide them.  

“Where did you go earlier?”  

Lee Heejin’s sharp yet casual question didn’t faze Moonkyeong. She answered calmly.  

“I was in my room the whole time.”  

“Really?”  

“Yes.”  

Moonkyeong’s composed reaction made Lee Heejin nod before she headed straight to Kim Seojun.  

The distance was too far to hear what they were saying, but the scene was easy to imagine.  

She had likely asked him to dance several times, only to be repeatedly rejected, which seemed to have upset her.  

Eventually, she boldly kissed the Russian model who had been paired with Moonkyeong earlier. Although it didn’t seem out of place in a foreign setting, it made Moonkyeong frown instinctively.  

Lee Heejin’s intentions were too obvious. Her actions were clearly meant to provoke Kim Seojun, but would it work?  

Shaking her head, Moonkyeong paused her meal and turned her gaze toward Seojun.  

Even though she knew better, she wanted to see if he might look jealous or angry.  

Unfortunately, his gaze was fixed directly on Lee Heejin and the Russian model.  

It left her feeling strangely annoyed.  

After asking her to “play” with him, his attention was still on Lee Heejin, and that fact alone bothered her.  

Losing her appetite, she set her fork down and wiped her mouth. At that moment, he seemed to grow bored of watching them and turned his face in the opposite direction.  

Moonkyeong felt a sense of relief.  

She realized she had become unusually sensitive, to the point that she was paying attention to his every move.  

The two who had been kissing suddenly disappeared into the mansion, leaving only four people behind.  

Lee Heejin’s friend suggested going to a club, and they naturally joined in.  

At the club entrance, Lee Heejin’s friend exchanged a few words with the staff.  

There seemed to be a separate VIP entrance, as the four of them were led straight inside.  

The music was deafening, and the neon lights were dazzling. The playlist by the famous DJ was flawless.  

Moonkyeong watched Seojun’s back as he silently disappeared to the second floor but decided to leave him be.  

She simply didn’t want to disrupt his time, and more importantly, she still hadn’t made up her mind.  

The choice of whether to “play” with him tonight was entirely hers now.  

Even so, the excitement and strange floating sensation that had been building since earlier left her feeling parched.  

When Moonkyeong was standing in front of the bar table and talking to the club staff to drink beer in a good mood,

“Call me when Heejin gets here.”  

Lee Heejin’s friend grabbed Moonkyeong’s arm and firmly requested this.  

“What?”  

“Call me when Heejin arrives!”  

The friend then abandoned her partner and ran up to the second floor where Seojun was.  

It seemed Moonkyeong wasn’t the only one taken aback.  

The hockey player who had been paired with the friend muttered a short curse under his breath as he stood next to Moonkyeong.  

Ah. All three women wanted Kim Seojun.  

Well, the pheromones he emitted were extraordinary.  

The way he could make someone lose their mind with just a glance from his smoldering eyes—surely, she wasn’t the only one who felt that way.  

Moonkyeong gulped down the drink handed to her by the staff.  

She couldn’t forget the way Kim Seojun had looked at her with those seductive eyes, the way his hands had roamed freely over her body, and those fatal lips of his.  

Somewhere on the second floor, out of sight, where no one could see, she imagined he might be seducing someone else again, and it infuriated her.  

This was undoubtedly jealousy and desire.  

The desperate and obsessive thought of wanting to claw at the faces of the two women who desired him consumed her mind endlessly.  

Moonkyeong drank more and more.  

The more intoxicated she became, the simpler her thoughts grew.  

By the end of the night, she had decided—she had to have him.