CHAPTER 26

Breaking the silence, Rose asked Taejun a question.

[Santon, how many rooms are there in our house?]

Taejun hesitated for a moment before answering.

[…Our house. Our house has eight rooms.]

[Wow! So that’s why there are so many doors! Santon, can’t we make a playroom too? Angela brags every day about having a playroom in her house!]

[Hmm. What are you going to do in the playroom?]

[Santon, don’t you know that? It’s for playing and having playdates! Santon, let’s have a playdate there too. So, we need a slide! Oh, and a treehouse with a ladder.]

Taejun chuckled at Rose.

[Okay. The room next to yours is empty, so we can build it there. Minhee, I’ll tell Luca about the playroom, let me know if you need anything].

At the child’s words, Minhee was left dumbfounded by the idea of creating a playroom.

Under normal circumstances, she would have been worried that the child would be spoiled. But this child had lost so much at once. She couldn’t help but notice the desperate efforts to attach affection to this still unfamiliar place by calling it ‘our house’ and gradually expanding her boundaries.

‘Besides, there’s an uncle with the ability to handle this without any problems. What’s the issue? He’s the one who donated a million dollars to the school, asking them to take good care of Rose.’

Minhee’s father, who had left behind a stable career as a teacher to settle in a foreign country and support his family, had the superhuman integrity and determination of a first-generation immigrant. While he lived the life of a laborer, his daughter Minhee quietly climbed to the edge of the middle class.

Holding onto that precarious edge of the coat, Minhee was always accustomed to cherishing and being a bit thrifty. So every time she witnessed something like this, it was like watching a movie.

It was Manhattan, where the world’s elite, traditional old money, and emerging new money filled the skyscrapers. Among them, the life of Manhattan’s upper class, which she saw and heard about while working at Aster School, attended by children from the highest class, was similar to The Gilded Age in ‘The Great Gatsby’ as one ascended the pyramid.

Parents with the kind of lineage– overflowing wealth, honor, and power that the last name implies, had no qualms about showering their children with what they had.

Rosewood High School, the private school in Hilton Head Island where she had felt a relative sense of deprivation, felt like a middle-class public school compared to Aster School in Manhattan. Aster School was like an expensive diamond bubble that only let in bright and beautiful light, creating a dazzling rainbow spectrum.

It was the teacher’s and adults’ responsibility to show the world outside that glittering bubble and nurture empathy. Minhee had mentally noted that once Rose found a bit more stability, they should volunteer together at the free meal center once a month.

Taejun, pausing with fork and knife in hand, had a serious expression as he tapped the smooth surface of his cellphone with his finger.

‘Luca is going to be busy.’

Every day was a series of new discoveries about Taejun. Minhee picked up the clear glass he had handed her earlier and drank the half-full glass of water, stealing a glance at him beyond the rim.

‘I wonder if there’s an infinite, generous heart lurking beneath that aloof, cold exterior.’

As the cold water flowed down her throat, her spine tingled.

* * *

When she knocked on the door made of tightly packed wood, a solid knocking sound echoed.

“Come in.”

Taejun’s voice, with concise weight, pulled Minhee in like a magnetic field. Feeling the hairs on her forearms and the nape of her neck stand up, Minhee opened the door and stepped into his study.

Taejun’s study, seen for the first time, resembled a video art piece she had once seen at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). A monitor lined one wall, split into multiple screens, each flashing numbers and red and blue triangles.

A huge bookshelf occupied the opposite wall, stacked floor to ceiling with what must have been thousands of books. With his back to the bookshelves and facing the monitors, the desk was large enough to seat twelve people, with six computer monitors fixed above and below it, forming a folding screen.

This is where Taejun spends most of his time, and the smell of machines and books mingled with the faint phytoncides of the cypress wood bookshelves and his body scent.

Minhee inwardly admired Taejun’s side profile as he stared at the screen with a slightly furrowed brow. The line from his forehead that continued to his thick eyebrows, the sharp bridge of his nose that dipped under the eyebrows, and the contrast with the soft curves of his lips.

‘Wow… His side profile is perfect too.’

Unable to take her eyes off his face, Minhee walked towards him, swaying, but was obstructed by something.

Next to the desk, a single recliner armchair made of luxurious leather sat facing the wall monitor like a movie theater chair. It was clear that this room had been created solely for Taejun’s convenience and needs.

Only now did he lift his gaze from the monitor, fixing his eyes on Minhee.

The corners of his lips twitched and quivered slightly as he stared at her with an unreadable gaze, then slowly leaned back in his chair, his lips twitching slightly.

Under his scrutinizing gaze, which swept her from head to toe, Minhee clasped her hands together politely, like a student who had been sent to the principal’s office for doing something wrong. Fidgeting, she sneaked behind the desk to avoid his gaze, and when she stood, she couldn’t see his face because of the height of the two-story stack of monitors.

‘Ugh… I need to break the habit of hiding like an ostrich burying its head in the sand. Why am I not making progress?’

Watching Minhee hide behind the monitors, Taejun remembered the first day he met her. At that time, he had thought of her actions, stacking books as if building a wall between him and her, as a small animal trying to protect itself in front of a predator.

As the round crown of her head disappeared from the monitor, Minhee’s face popped out from the side of the monitor, along with her swaying hair. Her cheeks were tinged with an embarrassed smile.

He wanted to swallow her parted lips and ruthlessly intertwine their tongues, watching her translucent skin with almost no visible veins turn bright red. He wanted to see her eyes become hazy.

Stretching his paper-thin patience, Taejun tapped his index finger on his desk and called Minhee with a beckoning motion.

“Come over here.”

It felt like it took Minhee an eternity to get around the desk and stand next to Taejun like a well-behaved student. As she came close, the sweet scent of ripe fruit mingled in the familiar space that he always felt when she was near. Breathing in, when Taejun stood up from his chair, Minhee stepped back, hunching her shoulders.

‘You look like a very cautious kitten, no matter what you do.’

He stepped aside, half-leaning on the desk and crossing his arms.

“Sit here.”

Minhee alternately glanced between Taejun and the chair, then reached out and lightly stroked the leather of the backrest. Memories of Luca boasting about an ergonomic chair tailored to Taejun’s height and physique flashed through her mind.

‘Wow, you look like you could be a space explorer in this chair.’

Minhee’s ears reddened and giggling like a child as she settled into the chair, her gaze scanning the six monitors and giant mechanical keyboard.

“Do you, by any chance, do hacking as a hobby?”

“Hacking?”

“Yeah, like in the movies where hackers set up things like this.”

Minhee gestured at the six monitors in front of her. Taejun clicked the mouse a few times to bring up a screen on the monitor directly in front of her, and the corners of his mouth twitched up in a smirk. Subtle dimples appeared.

“A few times when I was bored as a kid. Not anymore.”

Surprised by the unexpected answer, Minhee, taken aback, couldn’t help but burst into laughter at Taejun’s playful smile. As their eyes met with smiles, the smiles disappeared from both of their faces.

Minhee’s eyelashes trembled as if shivering, and she quickly turned her head to focus her gaze on the monitor. The screen was paused on the school website’s login page.

“Uh… haven’t you received the guardian’s ID and password email yet?”

Taejun nodded.

“I’ll talk to the IT team tomorrow morning and have them send the login information to your email, Taejun, but for now, I’ll show you how to sign up for after-school activities with my ID and give you Angela’s parent’s contact information.”

Sitting halfway on the chair, with her hands on the keyboard. When Minhee raised her hands, Taejun placed one arm on the backrest and the other on the desk, leaning down towards the monitor.

His thick, rippling muscles and tanned skin stood out against his crisp white shirt that was folded haphazardly, revealing a view that was not limited to his elbow. Distracted, Minhee’s fingertips trembled, and she pressed the wrong password twice.

‘There’s an adult man scent coming from Taejun…’

Glancing at the large veins on the hand gripping the desk, she felt a light shiver at the memory of how it had held her in its grip and pinned her down at the gym a few days ago. Her lower stomach tingled for no reason, so she pressed her thighs together.

“Fill out the club activity application form here, and then make a payment with your card. Then… see the Contacts tab? If you click on it and search for names, the contact details will appear. Here, are Angela’s parents’ names and contact information.”

Minhee displayed Angela’s parents’ contact details on the screen. Leaning over, Taejun came even closer.

“Do you know them?”

“Ah, you mean Angela’s mom, right? That’s actress Natalia Shiffrin.”