BTUB 01

Chapter: 01

The air around them had grown hot.

“I… I really can’t do this anymore.”

Warm breath scattered past Eunjae’s lips. Taegun frowned and gently pressed his finger against Eunjae’s lower lip as he whispered.

“Just this?”

“Haa…”

Firmly, his finger pushed her lips apart and invaded her mouth. He pressed down on her soft tongue, continuing to urge her to open her mouth wider.

“Just this? How many times do you have to do it before you’re satisfied…?”

Unable to either close or open her mouth properly, Eunjae looked up at him with resentful eyes. Since she was wearing nothing but a pure white bathrobe, her trembling figure looked just like a rabbit that had become prey.

“If you provoke me, you should take responsibility properly, Han Eunjae.”

Taegun met her eyes and whispered in a low, hoarse voice. He seemed so completely absorbed in the act that the heat in his fiercely gleaming eyes looked as though it might pour out at any moment.

“E-Even so… this is a little too much!”

“What is?”

Was he really asking because he didn’t know?

Eunjae turned her head away from him, only to freeze when she noticed the muscles right in front of her. Through Joo Taegun’s deliberately opened bathrobe, his broad, well-defined chest muscles were clearly exposed.

‘He has such a ridiculously good body for no reason….’

Even though she didn’t want to look, she simply couldn’t take her eyes off him. The man’s muscles were that perfect. His large frame, sharply defined shoulders, and the lines of muscle filling him without a single gap from his chest to his abdomen…

“Open your mouth.”

While she had been distracted by his captivating physique for a moment, Taegun grabbed Eunjae’s chin. As both her cheeks were pressed by his firm grip, her lips naturally puckered into a plump shape.

“L-Let go!”

“You can finish quickly, but the longer you put it off, the more you’ll suffer.”

“I don’t want to! This is too much!”

Eunjae suddenly shoved Taegun’s arm away with all her strength. Of course, because of the huge difference in their physical strength, she could barely free herself from the hand holding her cheeks.

“If you’re going as far as making me take herbal medicine… this is too much!”

Pointing at the herbal medicine that had been brought right up to her face, Eunjae shouted desperately. Regardless, Joo Taegun, who had just been about to pour the herbal medicine into her mouth, raised his upper body with a sigh.

“Why are you doing this?”

Joo Taegun’s right hand held the herbal medicine that had been there from earlier. The cup, freshly warmed in the microwave, gave off the bitter smell of hot medicinal herbs.

“Who takes herbal medicine just so they can do t-that?”

As she heatedly complained between heavy breaths, Eunjae’s face turned bright red. The sight of the two confronting each other in their bathrobes was solemn, as though they were about to engage in a lengthy debate.

“We’re people, not animals, are we?”

“If someone heard you, they’d think we had actually done it like animals, Eunjae. Do you want me to attack you like a real animal?”

Joo Taegun’s voice dropped even lower. She already knew from several previous experiences that he wasn’t joking when he said things like that.

If Joo Taegun really put his mind to it… he could probably go for two days without eating or sleeping!

“T-That’s not what I mean….”

But she was different from Joo Taegun. As the representative of all weak ordinary citizens, Han Eunjae’s stamina could never keep up with his.

“Have you already forgotten why you received this herbal medicine?”

Seeing her answer with a dejected expression, Joo Taegun drove the point home once more. Eunjae wasn’t intimidated and continued moving her lips as she protested.

“How can a person change all of their lifestyle habits overnight? Just as the vice president has his own way of doing things… I have my own way too!”

“I want to respect your lifestyle too.”

Taegun swept his bangs back with his left hand and let out a deep sigh. He couldn’t believe that, despite how much he cared about her health, she still didn’t understand. Especially since he had a very good reason for worrying.

“If you hadn’t fallen asleep right on top of me while kissing me.”

The problem was that, at the most important moments—very, extremely, unbelievably important moments—her stamina always got in the way.

“I-I only did that once….”

“What about when you begged me to hold you, then suddenly said you thought you were having stomach cramps and pushed me away?”

And that wasn’t all.

When she said she wanted to go on a date, he had gone to considerable trouble to find a place and taken her to an upscale restaurant, only for her to eat oysters that didn’t agree with her and get sick. When she said she wanted to have fun, he had taken her to an amusement park, only for her to get overheated and complain that everything was spinning before her eyes….

Faced with his continuous rebuttals, Eunjae firmly closed her mouth.

Everything Joo Taegun said was completely true.

“You can think I’m being annoyingly meddlesome if you want.”

Moreover, Joo Taegun would sometimes say this with his breathtakingly handsome face filled with genuine sincerity.

“As long as you live healthily, I don’t care.”

Ah, this was kind of touching.

Eunjae was momentarily captivated by his face and lost her words.

Just as she thought it was unfair of him to use his beauty against her—

“But you can’t go on like this. If you keep living this way….”

“If I do?”

“You’ll die young.”

Joo Taegun declared it firmly. His certainty was almost like a curse.

“Do you want to spend your life doing nothing but working at the company, only to be found dead with your face down on your desk?”

“…No.”

“Then open your mouth.”

There was no way left to persuade him.

Eunjae opened her mouth with a miserable expression.

“That’s right. Good girl.”

Only then did Joo Taegun approach her with the herbal medicine and a satisfied smile. She opened and closed her mouth like a bird being fed.

And she remembered the winter of last year, when she had begun getting involved with this unreasonable man.

The very day I quit this shitty workplace!

Han Eunjae thought this as she stormed out of a bar in a secluded alley near the company. If she didn’t quit this damn job, she would be the one to die young from pent-up anger.

“Assistant Manager Han, wait! I said wait!”

“…….”

“Han Eunjae! Hey!”

But faced with the rage of her superior, who had chased after her with a terrifying expression, the brief rebellious spirit of an ordinary citizen quickly faded.

Eunjae dropped the earphones she had hurriedly been taking out and turned around with a miserable expression.

“W-Why are you doing this? I even told you beforehand that I was going to leave work early….”

“Are you really asking because you don’t know?”

The sharp shout instantly cut through her already feeble voice. Seeing her reaction as she fell silent, Team Leader Kang seized the opportunity and poured out his irritation like a machine gun.

“I deliberately sat right next to you, but Assistant Manager Han moved to the opposite side! Do you have some kind of victim complex toward me? Is that it?”

“That’s… because Team Leader Seo told me to sit next to Assistant Manager Kim, so I moved.”

“Oh, so Team Leader Seo’s orders are more important than mine?”

Team Leader Kang—in other words, Kang Seok-ho—huffed and exploded with anger.

He had a deep inferiority complex toward Team Leader Seo Yu-mi, who had returned from maternity leave and was now receiving plenty of affection from the department head thanks to her high performance. Eunjae’s mistake had been failing to consider that.

But what could she do?

In truth, she had moved as soon as Team Leader Seo told her to, but it wasn’t simply because she prioritized Seo’s orders.

It was already common knowledge that if she sat next to Kang Seok-ho, he would subtly pretend to be drunk throughout the company dinner and press his thigh against hers.

“That’s not it, Team Leader.”

“Why are you using Assistant Manager Kim as an excuse? You two aren’t even particularly close. You were quiet the entire dinner.”

Apparently, where someone sat during a company dinner was this important of an issue. Eunjae felt the alcohol she had been suppressing slowly rising, transforming into anger. Of course, it was anger that had been accumulating for a very long time.

Team Leader Kang had been persistently hitting on Eunjae since last autumn. The reason was that she was the only unmarried female employee in Marketing Team 1.

When even Moon Ji-hye, the last unmarried woman, announced that she had gotten a boyfriend, Han Eunjae had become his new target.

“Who’s been taking care of Assistant Manager Han all this time, even though you’ve always been an outsider in our team? Huh?”

“…….”

“Where are you going to find a superior who worries about you as much as I do? Instead of buying me a meal to thank me, now you’re openly avoiding me?”

While Team Leader Kang shouted angrily, Eunjae blankly stared into the window of the shop beside her.

Her reflection was clearly visible in the darkened window, standing there with her shoulders drooping.

Raindrops had been falling lightly over her head for a while. Even the gloomy weather had to make an appearance in this situation. It was the worst.

Her face, framed by a messy, awkward-length bob and oversized glasses, looked exhausted in both body and mind. Her small frame looked even tinier because of the unnecessarily oversized, worn-out coat she was wearing.

‘I want to run away.’

Eunjae laughed bitterly as she wondered whether she should swear at him while drunk. Compared to Team Leader Kang Seok-ho, who practiced judo as a hobby, her build was tiny, like a hamster standing before a cat.

If she picked a fight with him looking like this, it was obvious what would happen. These days, there were countless people in society who would retaliate just because their confession had been rejected, and there was no guarantee that Team Leader Kang wasn’t one of them.

“Team Leader.”

“Yeah! Say it!”

In the end, Eunjae decided to use the shield she had been carefully considering for the past few days. It was a method she had obtained from an AI chat system that she had secretly been using as a psychological counselor. According to her very own AI-ChatChat, there was no more perfect defense than this.

“I, um… I have someone.”

“What?”

But the moment she actually gave her answer, a whole bundle of worries came rushing in.

The moment she used this method, rumors about Eunjae would never stop circulating at the company starting tomorrow.

Team Leader Kang would constantly visit the smoking area and gossip about her, becoming the source of all kinds of ridiculous rumors.

But what else could she do?

“I-I have a….”

“A what?”

According to information from Assistant Manager Moon Ji-hye, Team Leader Kang kept bringing up Christmas.

If she left things as they were, he might even be dreaming up plans to suddenly confess to her on Christmas.

She absolutely had to prevent that!

“I have a boyfriend!”