Silence flowed.
‘That thing yesterday’.
The clumsy first kiss they’d bumped into each other with. That thing he’d dismissed with a single stroke, calling it a child’s game of house.
Dowon still looked at Yeohwi while gripping his jaw tightly. Soon, his cool thumb heavily swept over Yeohwi’s lower lip as if mocking him. Yeohwi unconsciously held his breath.
He barely pressed down and calmed his mercilessly trembling heart, then rose above the goal he was trying to seize by any means. His two eyes confronting Dowon, those fiercely flashing pupils, resembled a young beast trying to claim its territory upon reaching adulthood.
He wouldn’t run away.
Rather, he rested his face against Dowon’s hand gripping his jaw and spat out an unexpected proposal.
“…Let’s sleep together tonight.”
“What?”
Dowon’s touch faltered. His brow wrinkled fiercely like someone who’d witnessed an incomprehensible creature.
“I’d like it if we slept in the same bed together tonight.”
Yeohwi raised his eyes and lifted his gaze. The sight of him looking up greedily while his jaw was being held looked even more provocative.
“Nothing more than that.”
“……”
“You look tired.”
Dowon was momentarily at a loss for words.
“You right now…”
“Or.”
Yeohwi, who’d cut off his words, glared at Dowon with a reddened face and whispered as if growling.
“R-really, that thing yesterday… We can continue that too.”
Only then did Dowon adjust his gaze looking at Yeohwi, very slightly.
The wariness of facing something unfamiliar. Acknowledging an unexpected situation. This greenhorn wasn’t an easy child he could simply judge and dispose of as he’d thought.
Dowon let go of Yeohwi’s jaw and stepped back with a hollow laugh.
“If I refuse. You’ll end up coming all the way to the company at this rate.”
“…What?”
“Will you take a photo of my office door and send it tomorrow?”
Dowon, as if he didn’t even have the energy to exchange any more words with Yeohwi, roughly swept back and disheveled his own hair.
“I’m washing up.”
Leaving only those words, Dowon passed by Yeohwi and headed to the bathroom in the inner part of the corridor.
***
That night, after washing up in the bathroom, Dowon shook his wet hair with a towel and headed to the study. Yeohwi tried to follow him in, but the door wouldn’t open no matter how much Seong Yeohwi pushed. Dowon had locked it from outside.
In the end, that day too, the next day too, the day after that too, Yeohwi monopolized the huge bedroom and couldn’t see even Dowon’s shadow.
A lull of several days continued like that.
Dowon seemed to have decided to treat Yeohwi like a completely invisible person. Even when Yeohwi sat at the breakfast table and shouted, “Good morning! Did you sleep well?”, he only held his coffee cup and read the newspaper.
Naturally, the texts Yeohwi sent still remained silently unanswered, with the ‘1’ not disappearing.
‘…Was I really blocked after all?’
Yeohwi thought while burying his body in the huge sofa in the first-floor reception room and tossing popcorn into his mouth.
‘Or maybe he just doesn’t reply… Well, maybe I was a bit too much. To someone busy with work.’
He glanced and gave an awkward smile toward Mrs. Park, who was looking at him pitifully from the kitchen.
“Young master, I’m sorry I couldn’t be of much help.”
When Mrs. Park apologized while gauging his mood, Yeohwi waved his hand.
“No. Why apologize? Dowon-ssi… The director had no interest in me from the start. I just did something pointless on my own, that’s all.”
It was when he grabbed another handful of popcorn and put it in his mouth.
Rough and intimidating footsteps came from the direction of the entrance.
Mrs. Park’s face turned pale the moment she confirmed who had entered. She hurriedly ran to the entrance, wiping her hands on her apron.
“P-President! What brings you here? Without even any notice…”
“Where’s Dowon?”
A sharp and low voice cut off Mrs. Park’s words.
It was Do Jingyu, the current president of KD Group and Dowon’s eldest uncle.
Wrinkled eyes. A distorted jaw. A cold and greedy impression. He wore an impeccably pressed top-quality suit, but his appearance looked exactly like a snake wearing a necktie.
He ignored Mrs. Park, who was responding in confusion, like invisible dust and strode into the reception room.
After that, he looked down at Yeohwi, who was sprawled on the reception room sofa holding a container of popcorn.
“…This thing.”
Do Jingyu stopped right there and scrutinized Yeohwi from head to toe, as if appraising a damaged item up for auction.
“Is this it. The Seong family orphan.”
It was contempt itself.
He passed the sofa and approached the table where Yeohwi was eating popcorn.
“I knew that bastard had good tolerance, but I didn’t think he’d actually take in such a maggot.”
Do Jingyu treated Seong Yeohwi as if looking at filth on an expensive carpet. Yeohwi stopped his chewing action. Then he narrowed his eyes and scanned his opponent.
‘Seong family orphan? He knows me.’
“…Who are you, ahjussi?”
At those words, Do Jingyu’s eyebrows rose minutely.
But instead of getting angry, he rather laughed as if his judgment had been proven correct.
“Ahjussi? Ha, being an orphan from a fallen family, you truly don’t know your superiors from your inferiors.”
He patted Yeohwi’s cheek as if confirming the quality of livestock.
When Yeohwi tried to swat away that hand, Do Jingyu’s eyes flashed coldly for a moment.
“That’s right, Seong family child. I heard you inherited all of Chairman Seong’s estate. If you married that bastard Dowon, you should do your duty as family. Isn’t that right?”
Do Jingyu picked up the bowl of popcorn placed on the table. Then he slowly poured the contents onto the floor. The popcorn scattered pitifully onto the expensive rug.
“Everything you’re eating and sleeping in right now, this air you’re breathing—do you know who allowed all of this? How dare you crawl into the Do family and spread the stench of trash everywhere. So shamelessly.”
He set down the popcorn bowl on the table with a sound. After setting it down, he brought up his main point without even a hint of trying to hide it.
“Have you organized the asset list and handed it over to that bastard Dowon?”
“……”
“No, you should have brought it to me first. We need to combine it with the family assets.”
In that moment, the inside of Yeohwi’s head cooled down.
Money. Inheritance.
Of course he knew. That this was his only use. But facing such blatant greed like this, a corner of his heart stung.
On their wedding night, those words Dowon had driven in, saying it was a political marriage, came to mind anew. He’d tried to forget and move on, but it felt like a wound that had healed once was festering and splitting open again.
‘It’s a political marriage. You knew that when you came.’
‘We just need the legal binding, so don’t expect any unnecessary roles or feelings from each other.’
‘Nothing will happen between you and me. Especially not mixing our bodies.’
The futile struggles of sending texts, waiting at the entrance, and attempting clumsy kisses all shattered to pieces. The wish that he’d become his person. The hope of wanting to live like a true married couple seemed to look like nothing but the pranks of an ignorant child in front of those with the Do surname.
‘As expected…’
Yeohwi’s light brown eyes sank heavily.
‘Dowon-ssi knew it would turn out like this. That’s why he even warned me.’
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Yeohwi slowly stood up while dusting off his hands covered in popcorn crumbs.
“Maggot, trash? Maybe it’s because I really am an uneducated orphan, but when I get angry, I throw punches first? Don’t come to someone else’s house out of nowhere and flip things over and shout carelessly, ahjussi.”
“What? This bastard…!”
“Why? Are you confident you’d win if you fought me?”
In that moment, Do Jingyu’s cultivated mask was stripped away. He roughly grabbed Yeohwi by the collar.
“You little bastard… A vermin like you, having the gall in front of who right now…!”
“You gonna let go of this?”
Right then.
Before Yeohwi could swat away the arm, a faster and greater force snatched Do Jingyu’s wrist in midair.
“…!”
It was Dowon.
As if he’d returned in a hurry after postponing an important meeting, his necktie was slightly crooked unlike usual, and his jacket was draped over his arm after being taken off.
Those characteristically lightless jet-black eyes glared at Do Jingyu, his own eldest uncle, as cold as ice.
“Uncle.”
Dowon’s voice rumbled low as if he would murder him right then and there.
“What are you doing right now?”
