He hadn’t been protesting by skipping meals with a childish and pathetic heart. Nor had he been hurt and holed up crying his eyes out.
‘Without any plan. Without any preparation or scheme whatsoever. Do you think you’re prepared to handle this?’
Dowon slowly laid Yeohwi down on the bed filled with piles of documents. And he gazed down at the exhausted Yeohwi with sharp eyes.
‘That fucking idiot…’
He’d let him go, told him to go his own way, taught him the definitively correct answer so clearly.
What kind of treatment was he trying to get by dipping his feet into this rotten muddy water?
Crawling into a garbage dump would only result in his entire body getting filthy, nothing more.
No matter what he expected and rushed at, it was obvious he would eventually crumble and break down.
This damn festering marriage, he could guarantee it wouldn’t last even a year before falling apart. They were going to end up in a relationship where they’d only hear resentment and shoot blame at each other anyway, so why was he so desperate to clash already?
‘…’
Just then, Yeohwi’s lips, which had been breaking out in cold sweat, twitched.
His pale, dry lips exhaled weak breaths and moved desperately. He seemed to be having a nightmare.
“…I don’t want to.”
“…”
“Don’t go…”
The lightless pupils briefly wavered.
“Dowon-ssi, I don’t want to… I don’t want to divorce…”
“…”
“Please…”
Dowon clenched his fist hard. Hard enough that Dowon’s shoulders trembled faintly. After a moment, having regained his composure, he turned his hand and roughly swept down his face.
***
Only after the personal physician left was a clear diagnosis made.
Extreme stress and sleep deprivation. And dehydration. It was absurd.
“I must have startled you a lot because of me…? I’m sorry.”
The awakened Seong Yeohwi muttered with a parched face. Transparent IV tubes dangled from his forearm.
The IV solution slowly dripping into his veins. Drip, drip. Dowon, standing beside the bed, watched the regularly falling transparent droplets with a murderous gaze.
He had only roughly loosened his necktie, still in his dressed suit. Though his eyes were hollow as if he’d stayed up all night, the jet-black pupils within them shone razor-sharp.
Yeohwi opened his mouth in a weak voice.
“To make an excuse, it wasn’t on purpose. I was concentrating and didn’t realize I was starving, and time just passed by. Without me knowing, whoosh…”
“Whoosh, you say.”
“Yes… whoosh…”
“So.”
“Yes?”
“That pathetic excuse—is that all?”
Dowon asked back in a voice like icicles forming in midwinter.
“I thought you were doing a hunger strike. Just from concentrating? The result of holing up in your room for days without eating is this?”
Dowon’s gaze swept over the pile of documents messily scattered on the bed and the thick specialized books rolling around on the floor.
“Cut the crude protest. Ruining your body with this kind of thing only hurts you. Don’t try to manipulate my guilt with your self-harm.”
At those words, Yeohwi’s eyebrows twitched. His drooping eyes, which had been sagging with remorse, hardened taut like a drawn bowstring.
“…Dowon-ssi.”
A dry, dead-leaf-like sense of futility seeped into Yeohwi’s voice.
“You really don’t have even the slightest intention of looking at me, do you?”
That night, in the bathroom, he’d clung so desperately, kissed him, scraped together and poured out even his soul.
Yet the man before his eyes was dismissing his sincere efforts as self-harm or manipulation.
“Well, yes. Of course that would be your reaction since you planned to divorce from the beginning.”
Disappointment and bitterness showed nakedly on Yeohwi’s face. And he realized. That sincere feelings or appeals didn’t work on this man. The way Yeohwi had been doing until now, trying to convey his heart through conversation, was merely noise to Dowon.
He was someone who didn’t understand the language of emotions. In that case.
“But I don’t have even the slightest intention of obediently divorcing you.”
Yeohwi raised his wet eyes and stared straight at Dowon. A cool defiance flickered in his light brown pupils like a pale bluish moon fragment had shattered. It was a thorn sharper than reproach.
“I don’t intend to obediently do as I’m told either. I won’t be scared and meekly step back.”
“…What?”
Yeohwi reached out and picked up one of the bundles of documents sprawled by the bedside. And he tossed it at Dowon’s shoulder.
“If you want to divorce me that badly, do as I say. Pros and cons, calculations, deals… You like things like plans and schemes, don’t you?”
“What is this?”
“Read it.”
Dowon glared at Yeohwi with sharp eyes. After staring murderously for a while, he slowly lowered his head. The end of his gaze went to the documents that had fallen to the floor, spread open.
It was a summary Yeohwi had written himself, titled ‘Inheritance Status and Strategic Operation Plan.’
The moment he read down a few sentences, Dowon’s pupils hardened. It wasn’t a simple asset list.
Each letter running across the paper was like a sharply honed blade.
He picked up the documents and turned the pages.
It contained details on how to weaponize the massive liquid assets Yeohwi possessed, major urban real estate, and prime unlisted stocks at this point in time.
How those funds could be used to secretly purchase friendly shares of KD Group under borrowed names.
And critically, it contained aggressive analysis on how to track and pressure Do Jingyu’s weakness—his overseas slush funds.
Moreover, the total amount of inheritance Seong Yeohwi had received was of a threatening scale, far exceeding the level known to the world by dozens of times.
“I’m not so helpless that I’d resort to self-harm just because I was abandoned.”
Yeohwi said in a dry voice.
“You said so, Dowon-ssi. That this marriage is just an arranged marriage arranged by Chairman Do, and that I’m not even worthy of being prepared for it.”
“…”
“But, you know. I’ve been sitting on a pile of money since I was born. After my parents died and even my only remaining grandfather became ill, I had no one on my side in the whole world, and it was crawling with hyenas trying to leech off my money.”
Yeohwi laughed self-deprecatingly. His face, precarious like cracked glass, glowed faintly with a mixture of sadness and resentment.
“All kinds of people only saw my money, not me. Since it was an astronomical amount for a child to handle, they’d say they’d manage it for me, or ask me to invest. They swarmed in like flies until I couldn’t tell if I was a person or a money bag.”
Dowon stopped turning the pages and looked at Yeohwi.
“So… I didn’t want to be like that with you, Dowon-ssi. Even knowing it was an arranged marriage, at least you, my husband, my spouse—I wanted you to look at just me, not my background. Without any benefit, I just hoped you’d smile at me and treat me kindly as the person Seong Yeohwi.”
Yeohwi’s voice, dragged out from his throat, trembled faintly. It was deep and painful.
“But in the end, I kept getting ignored, playing the trophy, and even got divorce notice…”
“…”
“Whatever, Dowon-ssi is right. No matter how much I hate it and hold out, we’ll end up divorcing forcibly eventually anyway. When Chairman Do passes away and the time you want comes.”
Yeohwi raised the hand with the IV and pointed to the documents Dowon was holding.
“So until then, make a deal with me.”
“…A deal?”
Dowon’s gaze stared at Yeohwi persistently. It was a cold, probing look.
“I’ll let you use everything I have as stakes. To crush President Do Jingyu and take over KD Group, I’ll bet my entire inheritance.”
Yeohwi continued resolutely.
“It’s fine to treat me like a money bag. If that’s my only use, I’ll gladly become that. This measly money doesn’t mean anything to me anyway, so instead…”
“…”
“Until we divorce, treat me as your husband.”
Dowon’s eyebrows twitched. It was an unexpected demand.
“Just like I played the trophy husband. This time, you properly play the spouse.”
Yeohwi bit down hard on his trembling lips and released them. A red mark remained where they had pressed.
“Understand? Share a bed with me, contact me regularly, like real couples do. Become my person. At least until we divorce.”
“…Ha.”
Dowon let out a hollow laugh as if dumbfounded.
Strength entered the hand gripping the documents. The paper rustled and screamed.
“You want to bet this enormous inheritance just to play such house games? When it’s the only thing you have left to be proud of?”
“Why not?”
Yeohwi didn’t back down. Rather, he raised his head even more proudly.
