ITBF 08

CHAPTER 08

At various events, Jae-hyun had seen countless celebrities and influencers who were famous for their beauty, but he had always regarded them as nothing more than rocks.

“Here is the pizza you ordered. I’ll set it down for you.”

Just as he was floundering in his bewildered emotions, the pizza arrived.

Two employees came over and placed three different pizzas on the table before leaving.

There was barely enough room left on the table.

Haesom asked with a surprised expression,

“Oppa… you ordered three whole pizzas? I can’t eat all this. Do you… think I’m a pig?”

“What?”

Jae-hyun couldn’t help but laugh.

“You could probably carry all of it with one hand. What pig?”

“Then….”

“I wanted you to make up for everything you haven’t been able to eat until now. Try some of every kind. Don’t worry about leftovers.”

As soon as he finished speaking, Jae-hyun put a slice of bulgogi pizza onto a plate and set it in front of her.

Then he put a slice of pepperoni pizza on another plate and placed that in front of her as well.

“What if there’s a lot left over…? It must have cost money you worked hard to earn….”

Jae-hyun tilted his head, wondering if he had heard her correctly.

Then he asked casually,

“What did you just say?”

“I said I’d feel bad if I left food because you bought it with money you worked hard to earn….”

Suddenly, a strange feeling arose in his chest—sweet and fizzy, like cola.

Until now, there had been plenty of people who knew he was the chairman of Taekyung Group’s son and tried to get free things from him.

No one had ever taken his circumstances into consideration like this.

They say a man becomes loyal to a woman who recognizes his hard work.

How could a girl who was only twenty-two be like this?

In truth, separate from his decision about quitting the company, Jae-hyun had planned to decide whether to tutor Haesom only after seeing what kind of person she was today.

If she turned out to be incompatible with him or, having received no education at all during her kidnapping, was excessively spoiled or brazen, tutoring her would only drain him.

But even though they had spent only a few hours together, seeing her care about him made him want to help her somehow.

While Jae-hyun was lost in thought, he noticed that Haesom had nearly finished an entire slice of pizza.

“……You must have been really hungry.”

Unlike the gloomy expression she had worn when worrying about leaving food behind, she answered brightly,

“It’s so delicious. It’s completely… intense! I only ate fish, boiled chicken, and eggs every day, and now that I’m eating bread, it feels like the whole world is spinning in front of my eyes!”

Jae-hyun chuckled.

In a way, perhaps it was because she had been free to live her life until now that she could express her emotions so openly.

There was something incredibly innocent about it, and it made him even more curious about her.

She was completely different from all the people who had approached him with ulterior motives.

Bzzz—

Just then, his phone rang.

It was a text from an unknown number.

[Hi, oppa! This is Kwon Min-ah, whom you met in front of Haesom’s house earlier ><]

What is this now?

Jae-hyun frowned and immediately shoved his phone back into his pocket.

“Kid.”

“Yes?”

“But why haven’t your brothers bought you a phone yet?”

“Oh. That’s because….”

Haesom quickly chewed and swallowed the pizza in her mouth before answering.

“You don’t have to answer so quickly.”

Jae-hyun handed her his cola.

After taking a few sips, Haesom continued.

“They said there’s so much disturbing stuff on the internet that maybe I should get one after I’ve adjusted to living in Seoul a little.”

Jae-hyun could understand that to some extent.

These days, you could come across highly stimulating content far too easily with just a few taps on a smartphone.

For Haesom, who had essentially been living in the world of twelve years ago, encountering things like that might have been confusing.

“Hmm. I understand, but how do you contact your brothers when they’re at work? What about when you want to go out alone?”

“They told me not to go out by myself for the time being. If I need to go somewhere, they said to call one of my brothers.”

Jae-hyun nodded.

“And there’s a landline at home, so I can use that to make calls.”

“……A landline?”

Come to think of it, there had been an old black landline phone on the console in the living room when he visited earlier.

He had wondered if anyone still used phones like that these days.

Apparently, Geuk-ju’s family did.

“They said they never replaced the home phone in case I ever called. If it broke, they’d repair it, and then repair it again….”

Silence followed for a moment.

It was a heavy story.

She had gone through something so painful that even speaking about it seemed difficult, yet she calmly explained everything to him without any trouble.

Jae-hyun found that admirable.

“But Haesom.”

“Yes, oppa.”

“Couldn’t you remember the home phone number? Why didn’t you call home? If you had, they might have found you sooner.”

“There wasn’t a single house on the island with a telephone. And as so much time passed… I forgot the number.”

Just how small an island had she been living on?

“Your pizza’s getting cold. Eat up.”

Jae-hyun put a slice of Hawaiian pizza she hadn’t tried yet onto her plate.

Then he took out his phone and texted Secretary Kim.

[Secretary Kim. When you come, get a 2G phone activated as well and bring it.]

After finishing their meal, the two headed to a nearby bookstore.

The moment they entered a place filled with books, an even brighter light sparkled in Haesom’s eyes than it had at the pizza restaurant.

“Do you like reading?”

Haesom nodded vigorously.

“Yes! Reading was my only joy on the island. There were tons of random books in the attic of the house where I lived.”

Every word Haesom told him fascinated Jae-hyun.

“So whenever that woman—no, my mom—went outside, I secretly went up to the attic and read. There must have been more than two hundred books. About thirty of them were old books written in Chinese characters, so I couldn’t read those, though.”

“Then you read all the others?”

“Yes. Every single one. I was sad after I finished them because there were no new books left to read.”

Perhaps she truly had loved reading and had genuinely been upset when there were no new books available, because her eyes became somewhat dull as she recalled the past.

“Then pick out whatever books you want to read. I’ll buy them for you. As a present to celebrate us getting to know each other.”

“Really?!”

“Yeah. But let’s look at the study guides first. That’s why I brought you to the bookstore.”

Jae-hyun had already researched roughly which study guides they would need.

He had looked through materials for each grade and planned to choose ones suited to Haesom’s level.

But he was beginning to think that preparing for the equivalency exams might be easier than he had expected.

Since she had read so many books, she would probably understand the theory quickly if he explained it properly.

The two spent about an hour in the equivalency-exam study-guide section, choosing books together.

“At your level, you probably don’t even need to prepare for the elementary-school exam. You could probably just take it. As for middle school, I think a month or two of intensive studying should be enough.”

Haesom smiled.

“Oppa. You’re just complimenting me to make me feel good, aren’t you? Do you know how long it’s been since I last studied?”

“We’ll have to see. Don’t you want to go to university soon?”

“University… I do want to go.”

“Good. We’ll finish in six months what takes other people years to prepare for.”

Haesom’s pupils shook like an earthquake.

“Trust your family’s genes.”

Her parents were doctors, one brother had ranked first in the National Intelligence Service’s regular recruitment, another was the youngest prosecutor in the country, and another was an idol known as a genius composer.

There was no doubt that intelligence ran in the family.

Jae-hyun left the large pile of study guides at the checkout counter for a moment, giving Haesom time to choose books she wanted to read.

He received numerous work-related messages during this time, but instead of focusing on his phone, he stayed close beside Haesom.

“Wow…!”

Then he heard Haesom gasp.

“This is amazing…. This is the final volume….”

Jae-hyun read the words written on the sign above the section where she had stopped.

Comic books?

“Oppa! This is Arongsatae. It’s a comic about Arong, who gains superpowers, and his life story. There were twenty volumes at home. I loved reading this series so, so much… Wow, so the final volume was the very next one.”

At Haesom’s disappointed muttering, Jae-hyun checked the volume number of the comic titled Arongsatae.

It was marked as Volume 21, the final volume.

“……Then, you….”