Chapter 3
“I’ll shower quickly and come out. The dressing room is back there.”
“Okay.”
“Open the second door from the left. There’s a tie console in there. Pick out a tie for me.”
“……Me?”
“I thought I’d try wearing whatever my fiancée picks out for me.”
The man grinned and casually pulled off his T-shirt.
“W-Why are you taking your clothes off without even saying anything?!”
“I told you I was going to shower.”
Just before the bathroom door closed, the man gave her a confirming answer.
“My name really is Yoon Jaegyeom.”
As he chuckled and disappeared into the bathroom, Jisoo unconsciously took a deep breath.
She could still see the body she’d just seen lingering in her mind’s eye.
Muscles arranged in a very nice—
Nice? What am I thinking?
You’re crazy, Lim Jisoo. Forget it. You didn’t see anything.
So his name was Yoon Jaegyeom.
Yoon Jaegyeom…
No matter how many times she repeated it in her head, she couldn’t remember him at all.
With that height, that physique, that face, and such an uncommon name, there was no way she could have forgotten him.
Besides, as the man had said earlier, Gyechon High School was small.
It was a rural school that was barely maintaining its existence.
Jisoo had only cared about studying and had a very limited social circle, so she barely knew any of her male classmates. Even so, the name Yoon Jaegyeom was still completely unfamiliar.
“I should ask Eunmi.”
Her former classmate Eunmi had been the head of the broadcasting club at Gyechon High School.
She had actually been the club leader, but because of her outgoing personality and wide network, she was practically the school’s representative social media account, knowing the news of every grade and every teacher.
If it was Eunmi, she would probably know exactly who this man was.
“Second from the left. This must be it.”
There was no particular reason Jisoo had to indulge Yoon Jaegyeom’s request to coordinate his tie.
But he was willing to pretend to be her fake boyfriend for her sake, despite their only connection being that they were high school classmates.
So she willingly walked into the dressing room and stood in front of the tie console.
As she looked over the neatly arranged ties, Jisoo organized her thoughts.
I’m sorry, but tonight, for just a few hours, I’ll introduce twenty-eight-year-old Yoon Jaegyeom as thirty-five-year-old Kim Youngbaek.
She would make sure her mother saw his face, have him eat a simple meal, make an excuse that something urgent had come up, and leave as quickly as possible.
The moment she left her mother’s house, she would say goodbye to Yoon Jaegyeom, too.
And as soon as she returned to Seoul, she was determined to completely end things with the “human junk car,” as Jaegyeom had metaphorically called him—Kim Youngbaek.
Her eyes scanned the beautifully colored ties, but her mind was filled with nothing but regret.
“Maybe I really did decide to get married too hastily. I shouldn’t have come all the way down here like this.”
She had been trying to force herself to marry someone she didn’t love enough to marry, her heart weakened by her mother suddenly collapsing.
Maybe this had been inevitable.
She decided it was fortunate that things had fallen apart before the wedding.
She was still looking over the ties when—
“Have you picked one? Which one should I wear?”
“Eek! You scared me!”
The man had come up directly behind Jisoo with nothing covering him below the waist except a towel.
With both arms braced against the tie console, he had effectively trapped her.
Their bodies were almost touching, and Jisoo froze, unable to even breathe properly.
He leaned his head toward Jisoo’s right ear.
He was standing as though he were hugging her from behind, or resting his chin on her shoulder.
And yet the two of them still weren’t actually touching.
“You’re taking this long to choose? There aren’t even that many.”
There aren’t that many?
It felt like she’d walked into an entire tie shop.
Jisoo felt her face gradually turning red, so she squeezed her eyes shut.
Then she pointed randomly at the glass cover.
“T-This one.”
“You’re going to greet your mother in this? That’s what you wear to a funeral.”
Of all the ties, her index finger had landed on the blackest one.
Jisoo hurriedly moved her fingertip.
“Ah! No. Then this one.”
“Okay. Does your mother like red?”
As the man moved his body even closer and asked, a drop of water fell from his hair and landed on the rim of Jisoo’s ear.
The dizzying, strangely sensual sensation made Jisoo’s body flinch.
She realized far too late that she couldn’t stay pressed this close to him in a room with only the two of them.
Jisoo took a deep breath, trying not to stammer.
“Um, could you move aside? You have the tie now.”
“You should move. This is the dressing room.”
“No, you’re the one with your arms—”
“Ah.”
Jaegyeom withdrew one arm from the tie console and stared intently at Jisoo.
His eyes were hot and searching.
Jisoo’s gaze was no different.
As though he were playing with the taut tension between them, Jaegyeom continued in a mischievous tone.
“If you want to keep looking, you can stay.”
The moment he finished speaking, he loosened the knot of the towel hanging around his waist.
Jisoo couldn’t even scream.
She immediately fled into the living room.
The man’s laughter continued without end from the dressing room.
“Wow. Whatever his name is, Yoon Jaegyeom is seriously weird.”
He definitely wasn’t normal.
A normal person wouldn’t have volunteered for something like this in the first place.
Before she even had time to recover from her embarrassment and tension, her phone began ringing loudly.
Come to think of it, the estimated arrival time she’d given her mother was almost here.
—Daughter, where are you? Is there a lot of traffic? It seemed like you should be arriving soon, so I called.
“Mom. Why are you talking like that?”
—Nooo… Well, I thought if you were driving, maybe you’d be talking on speakerphone or something. Then your boyfriend might hear me. I have an image to maintain, you know. Hoho.
I’m so relieved.
Her mother was still so girlish and cute.
She was glad she wouldn’t have to hurt her.
“Mom. I think I’ll be there in thirty minutes. See you soon.”
—Okay. All right. Drive carefully. Be safe! I’ll see you soon. I love you, my daughter.
“Mom… Stop. Did you take your medicine?”
—Don’t worry. I’m taking it religiously. Hoho. See you soon.
The call had just ended with her mother’s embarrassed laughter when—
“Wow.”
Jaegyeom appeared right in front of her.
Jisoo unconsciously let out an exclamation of admiration.
She couldn’t even close her slightly open mouth as she stared at him.
He had looked handsome even in his mechanic’s uniform, but seeing him dressed in a proper suit made an exclamation instinctively escape her lips.
Even the way he came out holding the tie was beautiful.
Would it be too cliché to say he looks like a model?
“For the husband of Gyechon High School’s pride, Lim Jisoo, I have to look at least this good. Why are you surprised?”
Come to think of it, what had Kim Youngbaek been wearing today?
She couldn’t remember exactly, but it definitely hadn’t been a suit.
She had never demanded this level of courtesy from him, but the fact that he hadn’t even thought about making that effort in the first place suddenly made her angry and hurt.
“Thank you.”
A sincere word of gratitude slipped out once again.
Because they were still awkward with each other, she had reverted to speaking formally.
“If you’re grateful, tie this for me. It’s been so long since I last did it that I’ve forgotten how.”
He held out the tie to Jisoo.
It sounded suspiciously like an obvious ploy, but she found herself wanting to indulge him.
The man bent down toward Jisoo after handing her the tie and even gently closed his eyes.
But when he waited and still felt no hands touching him, he slowly opened one eye.
“Ha… What are you doing, Lim Jisoo?”
Jisoo had the tie around her own neck.
“I’ve never tied someone else’s tie before. But I was good at tying my school uniform tie.”
Her school uniform tie hadn’t been the zipper type, so she had always been rushed every morning while getting ready for school, she muttered quietly to herself.
Then, with the burgundy tie Jaegyeom had handed her still around her own neck, Jisoo quickly formed the knot, loosened it around her neck, and pulled the tie off.
“Here.”
She proudly held the tie out to him.
Jaegyeom looked utterly dumbfounded.
“You do know that when a man asks a woman to tie his tie, that’s usually not what he means by ‘tie,’ right?”
“……”
“I’m asking whether you understood what I was hoping for.”
“Yes. I think I did… But wouldn’t that be a little too conceited of me? I decided that a man who saw everything that happened to me today wouldn’t try to make a move on me.”
“Make a move. That’s right. I think I want to make a move on you.”
“Don’t. Do it to someone other than a woman like me.”
At Jisoo’s firm words as she pushed him away, Jaegyeom gave her a perfect smile.
At the same time, he shook his head slightly, as though he had no intention of agreeing to what she’d said.
