Chapter 7
Though it was a marriage of convenience, they had done everything other people did.
The announcement of their sudden and unnatural marriage had attracted too many eyes, after all.
Naturally, their honeymoon was another important occasion they couldn’t simply skip.
The destination was a resort owned by Hajin, located on a famous vacation island.
Sua had known she was marrying into wealth, but seeing the resort, which looked more like a palace, made the disparity feel even more overwhelming.
Moreover, she had always been forced by her parents to live frugally, so everything here felt uncomfortable, almost as though she were wearing someone else’s clothes.
This was a position she was supposed to get used to now.
“Lieutenant Chae, your room is this way.”
As Sua looked around with complicated feelings, Hajin held out a key card to her.
“My room is across the hall.”
“What?”
Sua stared at him blankly, caught completely off guard.
After all, how many newlyweds actually stayed in separate rooms on their honeymoon?
She had naturally assumed they would be no different.
“We’re not staying in the same room?”
The resort had temporarily closed to the public for their private honeymoon, so there was little chance word of their separate rooms would spread.
Still, it felt strangely wrong.
“Would you be okay with it? Staying in the same room with me.”
Hajin stared at Sua with apparent fascination.
Even at a moment like this, she was being completely honest with him.
“Well, I wouldn’t mind. But spending the night with someone as beautiful as Lieutenant Chae on a day like today would be rather dangerous.”
Sua’s face slowly turned red.
“I’m rough, reckless, and have no self-control….”
Whoosh.
Before Hajin could even finish speaking, Sua snatched the key card from his hand and fled into her room.
Watching her disappear in an instant, Hajin gave a quiet chuckle.
“You certainly are quick.”
He pushed Sua’s suitcase in front of her room and then tried to imagine what she must look like on the other side of the door.
It was a rather mischievous curiosity, but he found himself wondering just how red her face could possibly become.
The unfamiliar feelings he had toward another person were unfamiliar even to Hajin himself.
“But I….”
Hajin murmured softly.
“I won’t do anything Chae Sua dislikes.”
Not under any circumstances.
I am already harmful enough to you as it is.
After unpacking everything, Sua quietly stepped out of her room.
No matter what, they had come here on a trip. It seemed like such a waste to spend the entire time indoors.
Besides, lying lazily on a bed doing nothing simply wasn’t in her nature.
Hajin’s room door was firmly closed.
Sua had approached it intending to ask if he wanted to go for a walk together, but soon changed her mind.
It wasn’t as though they were close enough to enjoy a cozy walk together, and she wondered if Hajin might find it bothersome.
It wasn’t as if he had accepted this marriage because he was madly in love with her, either.
For him, this marriage was ultimately just a marriage of convenience.
When Sua stepped outside the building, an eerie silence seemed to envelop the entire world.
It was hard to believe that this place was normally crowded with people.
The neatly maintained paths, the bright lights—everything seemed to have been turned on solely for her.
It even felt as though she had been transported to another planet, and just as the strangeness of it all began to make her uneasy, her phone vibrated.
Expecting it to be her parents, Sua checked the caller ID and let out a small sigh.
[You actually went through with that marriage?]
“Of course I did. What, did you think I’d back out?”
It was Hyeongwon, one of Sua’s closest friends.
Their fathers were both generals of the same rank, and Sua and Hyeongwon had attended the Korea Military Academy together, making them closer than most ordinary friends.
When Sua had announced that she was going through with this ridiculous marriage, he had been one of the people who protested most vehemently, along with Lieutenant Colonel Shin Cheol-woo.
[I deliberately volunteered for this training because I didn’t want to attend your wedding.]
“I know.”
[How could someone like Chae Sua marry into a chaebol family? And of all places, into ‘LOW,’ with all its corruption?]
“Maybe I liked the money.”
[Don’t say something so ridiculous! And why did you leave the military?]
Sua stopped walking.
The stars seemed strangely close, much closer than they did in Seoul, and their light made her eyes sting.
[You were our class valedictorian. You handled training tougher than most of the guys….]
“My father said the first person he went to was your father, Hyeongwon.”
[….]
A faint sound came from behind her.
When Sua turned around, she saw a long shadow.
A chill ran down her spine at the eerie sight.
“He asked him to lend us just enough money to get through the immediate crisis, but apparently your father coldly turned him away. My father was deeply shocked at the time. I guess it was because he considered your father a particularly close friend.”
Sua immediately assumed a stance from which she could subdue her opponent if necessary.
“It’s your father’s right to refuse to lend us money. But it’s rather funny hearing you, of all people, criticize my marriage.”
[That’s….]
The shadow stepped into the bright light.
Only after recognizing the familiar face did Sua finally let out a relieved breath.
“Don’t call me unless you have something important to say. I’m a married woman now.”
[Sua.]
“Let’s hang up. I’m with my husband right now.”
It was Hajin.
He had changed into comfortable clothes.
Even his more casual appearance suited him surprisingly well.
“I seem to have interrupted.”
After Sua ended the call, Hajin asked quietly.
She shook her head.
“No. I was just about to hang up anyway.”
“Who was it?”
Then Hajin asked in a slightly hurried breath,
“Your boyfriend before you got married?”
“He’s a friend. We’ve known each other since we were children.”
She hadn’t done anything immoral, yet she felt strangely uncomfortable, as though she’d been caught cheating on her husband.
“By any chance… how much did you hear?”
Sua asked cautiously, watching Hajin’s expression.
They hadn’t been using speakerphone, but the surroundings were so quiet that he might have heard enough of the conversation.
“That it was ‘LOW,’ with all its corruption?”
“….”
“I heard from there onward.”
At Hajin’s calm response, Sua squeezed her eyes shut in embarrassment.
Of all the parts he could have heard….
“I’m sorry. If that offended you….”
“No. It’s true.”
By then, the two of them were walking side by side down the nighttime path.
“I don’t say that proudly, but even at this very moment, corruption is probably taking place within ‘LOW.’”
Hajin wasn’t being sarcastic, nor was he condemning himself.
His tone was simply dry, as though he were stating a fact that had nothing to do with him.
Come to think of it, Hajin had openly disparaged the very organization he belonged to from the moment they first met.
Sua didn’t know what he truly felt about it now, but seeing him like this made her feel sorry for him.
“The fact that you’re aware of the corruption and are still the heir means there’s plenty of room for things to improve. The truly hopeless situation would be one where no one even realizes that corruption is wrong.”
The words slipped out before she could stop herself.
Realizing she’d overstepped, Sua cleared her throat awkwardly and changed the subject.
“By the way, I thought you’d already gone to bed.”
She deliberately avoided Hajin’s gaze as he quietly stared at her.
“I was about to, but I thought Lieutenant Chae was out taking a walk, so I came out.”
“….Why?”
Did he want to take a walk with her?
“Because I was a little scared to walk alone.”
“What?”
The rather unexpected answer made Sua burst out laughing.
It was a completely natural laugh, free of any awareness of the situation.
Hajin turned his head and quietly looked down at her.
“If I walk with Lieutenant Chae, I feel like you’d defeat any ghosts or thugs we happened to run into.”
This was yet another new expression from her, completely different from the stiff face she had worn at the event and the expression that had looked ready to cry at their wedding.
“You were an ace in the Army, so you’re good at fighting, right?”
“So you know how to joke after all.”
That smile of hers sparkled and shone like the stars in the night sky.
For a moment, Hajin couldn’t take his eyes off her.
“So you can smile like that, too, Lieutenant Chae.”
At Hajin’s blunt remark, Sua hurriedly composed herself.
She hadn’t expected herself to laugh so quickly and so defenselessly in front of this man.
It was an unexpected event even for Sua.
“Do you handle CBR training well, Lieutenant Chae?”
“What do married couples usually talk about on their honeymoons?”
One thing was certain: they definitely didn’t usually talk about CBR training.
It was a special kind of conversation only two people with military experience could have, but it wasn’t particularly romantic.
“Usually, they’d talk about the future. Things like whether they plan to have children.”
Since when had the phrase plans for children become such an embarrassing thing to hear?
Caught off guard, Sua choked and began coughing.
It might have been better to talk about CBR training after all.
As expected, her face turned bright red, looking as though it might burst at any moment.
“I’m barely holding myself back.”
Afterward, Hajin muttered something she couldn’t quite make out.
“Please don’t keep making me want to tease you, Lieutenant Chae.”
Sua wondered what exactly he was desperately holding back.
But she pretended she hadn’t heard him.
For some reason, she had a feeling that was the right thing to do.
The first thing Sua saw when she opened her eyes wasn’t sparkling stars, but the painfully bright glow of fluorescent lights.
The warm, dreamy atmosphere of that night felt like something from a distant planet.
Perhaps that honeymoon—which had been so boring and decidedly unromantic—had left a surprisingly deep impression on Sua.
After all, it had even appeared in her dreams while she was in this much pain.
“Are you awake?”
When she saw the face of Hajin’s identical twin, Woojin, her vision blurred.
Paradoxically, Woojin’s presence was proof that she could never meet Hajin again, and that all the time she had spent with Hajin had become an irretrievable part of the past.
