Chapter 6
Of course, there wasn’t a complete lack of a sly side to him, but mostly they were jokes tinged with affection. Not intentionally trying to insult her like this.
Pressing her lips tightly together, Hong-joo bit down gently on her molars. Observing her intently, Ji-hyuk slowly backed away. Before she knew it, any trace of expression had vanished from his face.
“What’s with that look in your eyes?”
His voice also became noticeably more monotonous. His coldly lowered eyes were dry, devoid of a single emotion. Just meeting his gaze made her skin prickle as if stung by thorns. However, the more he did that, the more her fighting spirit bubbled and seethed in Hong-joo’s eyes.
“What kind of look do I have?” “A look that says you didn’t know I would act like this.”
Her inner thoughts were completely exposed, but she didn’t want to shrink back. She didn’t want to lose, either. Raising her chin high, Hong-joo answered.
“You know well. You aren’t originally this kind of person.” “Not originally this kind of person, you say.”
It seemed he didn’t like her answer.
“Do you still have illusions about me left?”
Irritation once again settled on Ji-hyuk’s face.
“Don’t you know by now? That I’m not that good of a guy.”
Still, this was better. Better than an expressionless face, and better than a lack of emotion. Being pierced by mean words was far better than being ignored and passed by.
“Why do you speak like that?”
Since there had to be some emotion for her to even have a chance to squeeze in. Only when an opening is made can she wedge herself into it.
“The Ji-hyuk I know is originally a good guy.”
Hong-joo, who quickly stepped away from leaning against the glass door, widened the distance between her and him and said,
“Take your time washing up and come out.”
As if nothing had happened, as if she hadn’t heard a word. Curling the corners of her mouth beautifully and smiling smoothly, Hong-joo plopped down onto the living room sofa.
“Because I’ll be waiting obediently right here.”
Resting her left hand on the sofa’s backrest and leaning her body askew, she tilted her head with a very leisurely and confident face.
Only when Ji-hyuk disappeared into the bedroom could she finally breathe properly.
Huu.
Hong-joo took a deep breath. She acted leisurely and pretended to be bold, but she actually wasn’t. Because she kept breathing out of sync since earlier, her ribs were on the verge of feeling stiff. Or maybe it was her heart that was stiff.
“Why are you just looking at me like that? You should take yours off, too.”
Just recalling the words Ji-hyuk said made her entire cheeks burn. She couldn’t take her eyes off Ji-hyuk’s body visible beyond the shirt as the buttons came undone. Seeing him casually take off his clothes and approach made her swallow her saliva involuntarily. Funnily enough, somewhere deep in her lower abdomen tightened sharply, too.
The heat and body odor transmitted from him when he approached closely. The suggestively shaped chest and chiseled abs that came right up to her nose. Hong-joo’s gaze, without her realizing it, trailed even further down. Towards the belt and the front crotch of his trousers, something that looked thick around that area.
“Should I undress you?”
As the tips of their toes touched, their knees brushed, and his lower body drew closer to the point of almost touching, she snapped back to her senses. Whether he really intended to undress her or not, she had no choice but to swat away the hand reaching towards her. Once again, heat flared up fiercely on her face.
“It’s dangerous.”
It was dangerous. It wasn’t the time to discuss whether he was a good guy or a bad guy. Ji-hyuk’s gaze sweeping down her as if trying to seduce her was dangerous. The insidious desire boiling within his dark eyes was dangerous.
Then, as if all of it was an act, as if it was a joke, he wiped it away in an instant. With a face that changed as if a switch had been flipped off, Hong-joo even had to feel a sense of vanity. That’s why it was dangerous. That Baek Hong-joo’s body and mind fluctuated over Seol Ji-hyuk’s act, a joke heavily laced with malice.
Even if the existence of Baek Hong-joo didn’t hold any particular meaning to Seol Ji-hyuk, the existence of Seol Ji-hyuk to Baek Hong-joo was not like that. He was her utterly devoted first love, and a sorrowful unrequited love. Perhaps because the catalyst for their parting was extraordinary, she hadn’t been able to forget him for a long time.
Only after sending off 10 years, enough time for the world to change more than a dozen times, could she barely regard it as a memory, but running into him like this, that wasn’t the case either. It felt as though the feelings from those days were reviving completely intact. No, something with a different texture from back then triggered alongside it. It was really, really dangerous. Imagine if she hadn’t swatted Ji-hyuk’s hand away earlier and stayed still.
“…”
Would he really have undressed her? Would they have gone into the bathroom together? And then sex…
“I, I must be crazy.”
Hong-joo lightly slapped her cheeks with both palms.
‘What sex out of nowhere, skipping all the intermediate steps.’
She was thoroughly possessed by a demon of lust. Unilaterally stealing glances at his body, and imagining things. There was no pervert like this pervert.
‘Get a grip. Don’t forget your duty.’
Slapping her cheeks even harder, Hong-joo laid her body right down on the sofa.
‘Even if I didn’t swat his hand away, such a thing wouldn’t happen.’
Ji-hyuk, who was joking, would have stopped while undressing her. And he would have scolded Hong-joo with a strict face.
‘Baek Hong-joo, what did I tell you? Didn’t I say not to be in an enclosed space alone with a man? If he tries to undress you, you should slap his face. Or kick his vitals. Do you understand or not? Aren’t you going to answer?’
Pulling out a memory from a certain day long ago, Hong-joo lay flat on her back on the sofa and stared blankly up at the ceiling.
“Ji-hyuk.”
Ji-hyuk.
“But what should I do when that’s you, Ji-hyuk? You didn’t teach me that.”
An enclosed space, alone with a man. And that man is you. Slap his face? Kick his vitals? How could I do that. It’s Seol Ji-hyuk. My prince, Baek Hong-joo’s Seol Ji-hyuk…
Hong-joo slowly lowered her eyelids that kept growing heavy.
Entering the bathroom, Ji-hyuk raised his right hand and roughly ruffled his own hair.
“Crazy bastard.”
Letting Baek Hong-joo into his room? What was he going to do by letting her in? What did he intend to do.
He rubbed a hand hard down his face and, leaning on the sink, looked at himself in the mirror. His dark brown, almost ink-black eyes sizzled, radiating an insidious light. He looked exactly like a highly venomous pit viper with prey right in front of it.
Even with these eyes, “Ji-hyuk, Ji-hyuk.” Baek Hong-joo sure had a strong stomach. Recalling Hong-joo looking up at him with her cheeks dyed pink, he let out a chuckle of disbelief.
It had been a whopping 10 years. Calculated in days, it was 3,650 days, and calculated in hours, 87,600 hours had passed. Such a long time had flowed by. For Ji-hyuk, it was a time where not just the landscape changed, but the very heavens and earth had turned upside down. He had spent time killing his heart, replacing his soul, and scraping his bones. So why was Baek Hong-joo exactly the same?
Why did she look at him with admiration just like when they first met? Why did she send him unconditional trust? What if I actually harmed her? He even felt a sense of despondency at her appearance, which was no different from the past.
Of course, there were things that had changed. She had grown slightly taller, and her overall vibe had changed. Her face, which had lost its baby fat and become noticeably smaller, made her already gorgeous features even more enchanting. Was that all? The curves of her body had changed a bit more drastically. Narrow shoulders and round shoulder blades, a cinched waist that seemed barely a handful, slender, straight legs, and breasts that were noticeably full. It was a body that any man would have his gaze stolen by at least once.
Feeling as though he were choking for no reason, Ji-hyuk swept a hand around his neck as if tearing off clothes he wasn’t even wearing. Funnily enough, his throat was parched. At that moment, the mobile phone he had tucked into his back trouser pocket vibrated.
He pulled out the phone and checked the caller ID.
[Jeong Seong-tae]
He was a friend he could call practically his only middle and high school classmate. Now, he was acting as the legal counsel for SW Private.
Ji-hyuk answered the phone.
“Speak.”
This morning. While eating breakfast together at the Macau hotel, there was one thing he had ordered Seong-tae to do. It was to find out about Hong-joo.
