Chapter 10
“Homeless? Did you just call him a homeless man?”
At Arang’s words, Jiyi immediately bristled.
“Yes, a homeless man.”
“Are you done talking?”
Arang faltered at Jiyi’s reaction.
“Forget it. Consider it off.”
The veins in Jiyi’s forehead immediately stood out as she sprang to her feet, and Arang grabbed her wrist again.
“Ah, no. No, I didn’t mean it. I misspoke.”
She pleaded with her in a flustered manner.
At this point, it seemed the problem had more or less been resolved.
“And if you call him a homeless man one more time, I’ll kill you myself.”
“I’m sorry, okay?”
“……”
Pretending she had no choice, Jiyi decided to quietly take a step back.
“I said I misspoke.”
“Fine. Two hundred million won after childbirth.”
Even so, Jiyi thought Arang should never become completely at ease. At the same time, she knew she couldn’t push her too hard.
“What?”
“Fifteen million won a month.”
“Hey! Even so, how am I supposed to come up with that much money?”
“After childbirth, thir—”
“Ah, fine! I said fine! Fifteen million won a month and two hundred million after childbirth. I really can’t go any further. Even for me, that’s impossible. Give me a break just this once.”
Arang hurriedly raised a hand and covered Jiyi’s mouth.
“……hundred million.”
“Hm?”
“Fine.”
Jiyi nodded as though reluctantly agreeing. Thus, Jiyi finally accomplished what she had intended, and Arang no longer suspected her.
Heh!
Early the next morning, the taxi carrying Jiyi sped toward the Noble Hotel. Using the phone registered under Arang’s name, she looked at Heo Dong-in’s photograph once again.
He’s pretty handsome for someone I’m about to scam into a marriage.
Indeed, this was an unmistakable scam—something the old Jiyi would never even have dreamed of doing. But eight years in prison and her desire for revenge had half-killed Jiyi’s moral sense. She stared at the photograph on her phone for a while, feeling strangely uncomfortable.
The first thing that caught Jiyi’s attention was the man’s eyebrows, whose shape and color were perfectly balanced. His features as a whole—his eyes, nose, and lips—were not particularly sharp. Heo Dong-in had a simply gentle-looking face, and somehow, that face did not feel entirely unfamiliar to her.
They say I was the one who saved this man more than a decade ago.
But in reality, he was practically a stranger. Not only had an enormous amount of time passed between them, but because of the darkness and the urgency of the situation back then, Jiyi had absolutely no memory of the boy’s face.
If I’d gotten a proper look at his face back then, I probably would have remembered him for the rest of my life.
Without realizing it, Jiyi’s fingertips traced the screen of her phone.
Even if he was just a child, how could I forget a face like this? He grew up without losing any of the beauty he had back then.
He was handsome overall, but his eyebrows were especially striking. They gave balance to his entire face. Those eyebrows would have made Dong-in’s features even more deeply etched into her memory. There was no way she could have forgotten him.
Wait, what am I—
First, she felt a strange ache in her chest. Then she realized that her fingertips had been tracing the features on the phone screen throughout the entire taxi ride.
She flinched and hurriedly tossed the phone into her clutch bag.
Emotions are unnecessary baggage in my life.
I can’t let that baggage ruin the bigger picture.
She steeled herself.
Come to think of it, judging by those intelligent eyes, he doesn’t seem like the kind of man who’d get tricked into a fraudulent marriage. He doesn’t look easy to deceive.
But fortunately, Jiyi and Arang were a package deal.
No matter how intelligent a person was, once the identical-looking Jiyi was firmly established as Arang, it was human nature to force every piece of evidence to fit that answer.
That means this first meeting is more important than anything.
Whether I can fool him or not will be decided by this meeting.
Not long afterward, having steeled herself, Jiyi saw the man from the photograph in person.
She had used Arang’s card to get herself fully dressed from head to toe, and as she entered the hotel lobby, she realized that her concern from the previous day had indeed become reality.
As I thought, there’s no way the hotel coffee shop would actually be open at seven in the morning.
Only guests who had risen early for breakfast were coming and going through the Noble Hotel lobby. There seemed to be faint light leaking from behind a black partition, but the coffee shop itself was quiet and completely deserted.
What should I do? Should I call him or send a message?
While hesitating, Jiyi walked in the opposite direction from the guests heading toward the restaurant and made her way toward the coffee shop. The closer she got, the more uneasy she became.
Should I just leave? Or should I at least knock?
While Jiyi was wavering, the automatic door—which should have been firmly locked—slid open.
“Ms. Im Arang?”
“Yes.”
“Please follow me, ma’am.”
Before long, Jiyi found herself following the hotel employee inside with a bewildered expression.
She was inwardly anxious. She still wasn’t accustomed to being addressed as Im Arang, and although the coffee shop’s automatic door had opened, it was clearly not open for business yet.
At the window of the spacious coffee shop, the man from the photograph was sitting there alone.
Ah!
The photograph apparently hadn’t captured even half of what he looked like in person.
Thump!
At the same time, it felt as though her heart had dropped with a strange sound.
The moment Jiyi’s eyes met Dong-in’s, her footsteps came to an abrupt stop. Their gazes met across the empty space.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
It felt as though time was passing without having anything to do with either of them.
#4
I can’t take my eyes off him.
Jiyi herself didn’t realize it, but at that moment, she had even forgotten to breathe.
“Ma’am?”
If the hotel coffee shop employee hadn’t spoken to her, perhaps she would have remained like that forever.
What is this?
Only then did Jiyi start walking again, wondering.
What on earth is this?
She secretly placed a hand over her chest.
Thump-thump.
She had never felt anything like this in her life.
No.
She remembered.
There was exactly one time when she had felt her heart pounding heavily like this.
From the moment she had accidentally overheard the whispers of a man and woman conspiring to abduct someone, through every minute and every second until she had hidden Im Sang-ah and Heo Dong-in somewhere safe and finally gotten them rescued—her heart had pounded exactly like this.
The sensation was the same, but today was completely different.
Perhaps the reason her heart was pounding so vaguely and inexplicably was because, when it came to fraud, she was still a first-time offender.
Or perhaps it was because this was the first time she had ever truly committed an outright crime.
Jiyi had directly become involved in several dangerous situations while living in the facility. Even then, she had never been the aggressor; almost all of them had been acts of self-defense.
If the facility administrators hadn’t covered things up for their own convenience, citing various reasons such as her performance and other circumstances, she might have accumulated several criminal convictions while inside.
Even knowing the risks, Jiyi had always defended herself aggressively when faced with violence.
