It was not a loud voice, and there was no profanity mixed in.

It was a single, quiet sentence, and yet the pressure it carried was overwhelming.

“The police are on their way. You’d better talk before they get here.”

At the cold final warning, Kim Youngmuk, his face now smeared with blood from a nosebleed that had started at some point, lifted his head and began to speak in a scramble.

* * *

After handing Kim Youngmuk over to the police, Jisang found himself thinking about cigarettes, which he had quit some time ago, and rubbed his fingertips together.

After dealing with a creature like that, a dull throbbing had started behind one eye.

Moments like this always reminded Jisang that he was built for the military. At least there, he had not been required to engage in pointless communication with people he despised.

Unable to hold out in the end, Jisang stepped out of the police station and held his hand out to Minsu.

“Give me a cigarette.”

Minsu pulled one out and promptly lit it for him.

The cigarette, tasted for the first time in so long, was unbearably sweet. He drew in a deep drag, and his cheeks hollowed so sharply his cheekbones stood out.

“If you were going to enjoy a cigarette that much, why on earth did you quit in the first place?”

Jisang thought of the last letter from the girl who had been the reason he quit.

[I sometimes think of you smoking. Honestly, it was really s*xy. Enough to make me curious what it tasted like. But. Cigarettes aren’t good for you. The reasons are. First……]

The letter had gone on listing nothing but the bad things about cigarettes.

At the time, he had thought she must have run out of things to write, sending him something like this after writing every day.

[I hope you don’t have to worry about things like that. You need to live a long time.]

She could not bring herself to say quit directly, so she had gone around it. It had been rather endearing. He had had a cigarette between his lips when he read that letter too.

[And this is my last letter. Take care, Sir.]

That one sentence had hit him in the chest without warning.

Jisang had been reading her letters as they arrived each day, treating them as a small diversion.

But seeing the word ‘last,’ he had realized for the first time that he had been looking forward to those letters, and felt that something would feel hollow going forward.

The cigarette he had been holding at that moment became his last.

Quitting had not gone smoothly. His subordinates had begged him to please just start smoking again, he had been so irritable.

Still, whenever his mouth felt restless, he had taken out that letter and read it to steady himself.

Thinking of that letter again now, Jisang pulled the half-burned cigarette from his lips and stubbed it out.

Then he gave Minsu the answer.

“I didn’t want to be someone who smells like cigarettes.”

Minsu looked at the cigarette that still had plenty left in it, as though mourning the waste, and grumbled about why he had asked for one in the first place.

“Just buy me another pack. You little punk.”

Jisang gave the back of his head a playful smack, then patted both his forearms to shake off the smell that had soaked into his clothes and walked away. Minsu hurriedly tossed the cigarette and followed.

“Hey. Minsu.”

“Yes.”

“Do I really look that old for my age?”

“Yes. I’d say so, a bit.”

Having answered honestly without thinking, Minsu scrambled to take it back under the scorching weight of Jisang’s stare.

“No. You don’t look old for your age right now!”

“Right now?”

That made it worse.

“You first saw me eight years ago, right?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“I was twenty-four then.”

“Yes. I would have been twenty-two.”

“If I don’t look old for my age now, what did I look like back then?”

Minsu recalled the day he had first laid eyes on him and swallowed a nervous lump in his throat.

Kim Minsu, chief secretary to Chacha Entertainment CEO Cha Jisang, was a fellow UDT/SEAL serviceman and comrade. Unlike Jisang, the youngest son of a wealthy family who had chosen the path of a non-commissioned officer as though fleeing from something, Minsu had been a poor student working his way through school. He had enlisted in the UDT with the resolve that if he had to serve anyway, he might as well earn the extra pay.

They had both majored in business administration, which gave them common ground, and they had gotten along unusually well even within the military. When Jisang heard that Minsu had been discharged and was stuck studying for the civil service exam because he could not find work, he pulled strings to get him placed in the Chayoung Group secretarial office.

At the time, Minsu had vowed to consider Sergeant Cha the greatest benefactor of his life. Now, he regretted taking that parachute placement every single day.

If he had known he would be trained into a capable secretary only to be devoured like this, he would never, ever have taken that parachute……!

“Why aren’t you answering. I asked what I looked like back then.”

“You were handsome then, and you’re handsome now.”

“Setting the handsome part aside. What did I look like.”

“……”

When Minsu hesitated, Jisang nudged his thick bicep with an elbow and pushed him along.

“Be honest.”

“……You won’t hit me.”

“Right. I won’t.”

“And you won’t challenge me to a sparring match either.”

“Right. I won’t.”

Jisang nodded with the most casual air in the world, and Minsu, like a lamb, was naive enough to believe him.

“Then I’ll be completely honest.”

With no idea whatsoever of the trial that was about to descend upon him.

“When I first saw you, I thought you were at least a captain. I was surprised to find out you were just an enlisted soldier like me.”

“Ha ha.”

Minsu snapped his mouth shut. That was not a real laugh. Which meant he was dead.

Instinctively sensing this, Minsu hurried to throw out something appeasing.

“What does it matter if you look older than your age! Either way, CEO, right now anyone would say you look thirty-two. Exactly thirty-two. They say people who look old when they’re young end up looking young as they age. By the time you’re forty, people will be telling you that you look like you’re in your early thirties.”

“You little punk. You call that a compliment?”

“I said it before, didn’t I? Handsome then, handsome now. What does it matter whether you look young or old? Some actor even said it, didn’t he. ‘Good looks are everything. Always thrilling.'”

“Tsk.”

This time Jisang smacked the back of his head in earnest, with full sincerity.

Minsu, quick-witted but not particularly good at reading the room, changed the subject.

“You’re usually sharp as a blade, CEO. Military discipline through and through, right?”

“What are you trying to say.”

“With Yoo Hari, you’re just…… how do I put it, a bit…… like a pushover.”

Jisang accepted it without fuss.

“Yeah. I am.”

“……Pardon?”

“I am a pushover. I even volunteered to be her bodyguard. What’s the problem?”

Well. If he says so himself, only a madman would argue.

“No. No problem.”

Jisang walked ahead with his long strides and dropped into the passenger seat, letting out a languid breath and sinking back into it.

He had not exerted himself physically to the point of exhaustion, but the psychological weight of the day had left his body feeling like lead.

Bzzt.

His phone gave a light vibration. Jisang checked the message immediately.

“Will you be very late?”

He turned the screen off without replying, but a faint smile came out of nowhere.

Chief Secretary Kim Minsu always told other employees, whenever he gave them instructions, that they had to call the CEO, never send a message, because he would not check them.

And yet here he was, feeling the faint vibration as though he had been waiting for it, checking the message as naturally as breathing.

He found it remarkable himself. If Minsu had seen it, he would have been floored and gone on about how long he had lived to witness such a thing.

Minsu climbed into the driver’s seat a moment later, and Jisang quickly composed his expression.

“Take me home.”

“What? We need to go to the office! Work piled up like a mountain while you were in Thailand.”

“Handle whatever you can on your end.”

“I already did that and passed the rest on!”

“……”

“Ah, hyung!!”

Jisang waved a hand dismissively, telling him to keep it down, and closed his eyes, shutting out Minsu’s protests entirely.

* * *

In a small act of quiet defiance, Minsu dropped Jisang off at the front gate of the townhouse and drove away.