Chapter 10
The phone call that had come in the middle of the night had lasted nearly thirty minutes.
When he said he was coming to see her, she had laughed and dismissed it as a joke. She had told him she was going to sleep and unilaterally ended the call, but Jaegyeom had actually come all the way here.
“Lim Jisoo, I must be insane. I should just die. Why do I even live?”
She slammed her head against the table littered with beer cans.
She did it mercilessly, without holding back.
Clang, clang.
The beer cans rattled loudly.
“Ugh… So noisy. What are you doing?”
At Eunmi’s sleepy scolding, Jisoo answered in a dazed voice.
“Exactly. What am I doing? I want to die.”
The fact that she remembered everything clearly made her want to go even crazier.
If her head was going to hurt this badly and her stomach was going to feel like it was humming, she should at least have lost her memory.
In dramas and movies, female protagonists always claimed they didn’t remember anything after getting drunk.
Why was her memory perfectly intact?
She slammed her head against the table again with a loud thump.
Eventually, even Eunmi jumped to her feet.
“Why! Why are you doing that?”
What Eunmi saw was bizarre.
Jisoo had a bright-red forehead, a phone in her hand, and a miserable expression on her face.
Don’t tell me…
“Lim Jisoo. Don’t tell me you called Kim Youngbaek?”
“Ah! No? Absolutely not!”
“Ha… Thank God.”
Hearing Eunmi say that suddenly sent a chill through Jisoo as well.
Right.
Calling Yoon Jaegyeom was a hundred times better than calling Kim Youngbaek.
It was truly a miracle.
Jisoo threw her arms around Eunmi’s neck.
“Choi Eunmi, thank you. Seriously. Your ability to turn things around and achieve victory through sheer positive thinking is unbelievable.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“Let’s eat hangover soup. You deserve it today.”
The hangover soup Jaegyeom had bought came in a surprisingly wide variety.
Dried pollock, bean sprouts, beef bone soup, seonji soup, and more.
Eunmi, unaware of where the soup had come from, had just started drinking the broth when Jisoo suddenly confessed everything, nearly making her choke.
“The day Youngbaek and I went down to greet my mother, our car broke down in town. He said he was hot and annoyed, then took a taxi straight back to Seoul by himself. A mechanic helped me then, and I slept with him because I thought he was our classmate.”
“Ghk! Cough! Cough!”
Eunmi choked on the soup and coughed for quite a while.
“There are so many shocking things here that I don’t even know what to ask first. Kim Youngbaek took a taxi and did what? You did what? With whom? Lim Jisoo, are you really Lim Jisoo?”
“……That man bought this hangover soup and left it here.”
“What? That man knows where you live in Seoul? Did you meet him while I was sleeping yesterday? What the hell are you talking about? Wait!”
In the end, the entire conversation between the two women that morning was dominated by Yoon Jaegyeom.
Jisoo confessed everything, including the fact that he lived in the neighborhood above Gyechon Reservoir and that he had pretended to be her boyfriend when he met her mother.
Eunmi said she would find out more about Yoon Jaegyeom through the seniors, juniors, and classmates she knew who still lived in Gyechon.
“Whew. You dated a guy like Kim Youngbaek for six years—a man I wouldn’t date even if someone paid me—and you only ever held hands. So I thought, ‘Fine, maybe she’s just afraid of sex.’ But now that I think about it, our Jisoo wasn’t afraid of sex. She just fucking hated doing it with Kim Youngbaek, didn’t she?”
“No, I mean… Why does the conversation keep turning into that?”
“Otherwise, how else do you explain this mysterious one-night stand?”
Jisoo couldn’t answer.
She found it ridiculous herself that she had been convinced that Jaegyeom couldn’t be a bad person simply because he was a classmate and a local resident.
Why had she trusted him?
The sense of security he had given her from their very first meeting, or the attraction she had felt toward him…
She was filled with emotions that couldn’t be explained through rational thought.
As they cleared away the bowls of hangover soup and the beer cans, Eunmi asked solemnly,
“Hey. We’re not minors, and it’s your private life, so I don’t really have anything else to say… But I’m worried about you, so I’m going to ask you exactly two things. Answer carefully. Birth control—was it definitely taken care of?”
“……Yes.”
“And was he handsome?”
Jisoo’s face turned bright red, and she answered by nodding.
Eunmi nodded with a satisfied expression.
The hangover hadn’t completely disappeared, but thanks to the good meal, the two had recovered enough to feel somewhat refreshed.
They went outside the studio apartment building to throw away the beer cans.
As they walked toward the recycling area beside the building, they chatted about whether they should go to a bathhouse together for the first time in a while or spend the day at a comic-book café.
Then they saw a figure waiting for them.
Both women screamed at the same time.
“Ah!”
“Jisoo. It’s me, Oppa. Why are you screaming? Why haven’t you been answering my calls? You didn’t block me, did you? Huh?”
Kim Youngbaek was standing there waiting for Jisoo with a huge bouquet of flowers.
He was even dressed neatly in a suit.
The morning atmosphere at the Pyeongchang-dong mansion where the chairman’s family of Daeyoon Group lived was more uncomfortable than ever.
Chairman Yoon and his wife, their only son Seongsik, and Jaegyeom were all having breakfast together.
The conversation during the meal was led by the chairman and his wife.
Whenever business matters, political topics, or social issues came up, Seongsik did everything he could to agree enthusiastically with his parents.
The only person quietly eating his meal was Jaegyeom.
“Let’s all have dessert in the living room. There’s something in particular I want to discuss with Jaegyeom.”
Chairman Yoon’s wife, Lady Jin Songhwa, was the lady of the Daeyoon Group household and actively participated in media-related and external activities on behalf of the group.
She also served as chairwoman of a cultural foundation that operated galleries and performance venues.
Of everyone at the table, Seongsik was the only one who tensed at whatever was about to come from his mother’s mouth.
“Once the establishment of Daeyoon Motors is finalized according to your father’s wishes, we’ve decided to have Jaegyeom appointed immediately. He’ll be coming to Seoul to live from now on, so I trust that Seongsik will take good care of Jaegyeom as his brother.”
Seongsik’s face flushed red and pale by turns, but he couldn’t utter a single word of protest.
He clearly hated the thought of having to share what he already possessed—and what he would possess in the future—with Jaegyeom.
But after being reprimanded by his father the previous night, he was forcing himself to endure it.
“And Jaegyeom. Leave all your belongings behind and come. Once you move up here, you’ll need to start preparing for marriage right away anyway.”
“What?”
This time, Jaegyeom’s face hardened.
“Although you’re the same age as Seongsik, your birthday is earlier… You should hurry up, get married, and settle down, shouldn’t you?”
After his stepmother finished speaking elegantly, his father added,
“Finding a spouse who can contribute to the company in one way or another is also part of management.”
At the suggestion that they would force him to marry someone who suited their preferences, Jaegyeom could no longer endure it.
“If you want me to come to Seoul and learn the business, I’ll do that. But don’t interfere with my marriage. I’ll take care of that myself.”
“Mother, Father. Look at that bastard. Look at the way he gets up first while all the elders are still sitting here. Good grief… He has no manners and barely any knowledge. I suppose that’s what happens when you’re born without any proper roots. I’m seriously worried about the future of Daeyoon Motors.”
Seongsik seized the opportunity and began spewing out insults.
Jaegyeom didn’t back down.
Looking down at Seongsik with eyes full of contempt, he answered coldly.
“Why do I have no roots? My mother may be dead, but Father is alive and well right here. Half of those supposedly ‘poor roots’ of mine are shared with you, so don’t insult them too much. Father might be hurt.”
“What, you bastard?”
“And you know my birthday comes earlier than yours, right? We were born in the same year, so I won’t insist that you call me ‘hyung,’ but at least think about it a little. Think about who came between my late mother and my father.”
Regardless of how the chairman and his wife’s expressions changed, Jaegyeom said everything he had to say.
Unable to endure it any longer, he tugged his tie loose.
“I’ll be going now.”
After bowing politely, Jaegyeom left the Pyeongchang-dong mansion.
He wanted to see Lim Jisoo.
“Jisoo. I was wrong. I’m sorry.”
Youngbaek held out the bouquet of flowers he had prepared as his final move.
Everyone in his family liked Jisoo.
His parents were desperate to boast to others about having a daughter-in-law who had graduated from Hankuk University.
His grandfather had even said that he would only let Youngbaek inherit his fortune if he married Jisoo.
That was why he had come to see her despite everything.
He just needed to give her the bouquet, appease her, take her to his mother, and prove that they had reconciled.
But the bouquet couldn’t reach Jisoo because Eunmi stepped between them.
“Uncle. Please stop doing shady things.”
“E-Eunmi. Did you forget me because it’s been so long since we last met? Uncle? I’m Youngbaek Oppa.”
