Reading the other person’s agitation, Yeon Haejeong smiled with a grin, as if to rub it in. At that, Rep. Chu’s shoulders trembled as she clenched her fist with all her strength. Her neatly manicured nails dug into her flesh.
“…What are you talking about?”
Yeon Juhyeok, who had no idea what was going on, asked in puzzlement. Something felt off — Yeon Haejeong’s triumphant, knowing air and his mother’s suddenly hardened expression made the atmosphere distinctly suspicious.
“Well then, is the conversation over?”
Having shut the other person up with that one blow, Yeon Haejeong slowly rose from his seat. He was the picture of ease.
“Marriage was always going to be something you’d have to face eventually. You knew that.”
Rep. Chu drained the force from her voice and continued, as though trying to coax him. It was clear she had no intention of backing down like this.
“I didn’t know that. Why do I have to get married off like I’m being sold? Go sell your firstborn whose marriage already fell apart.”
Yeon Haejeong shot back with a sneer.
The truth was, Rep. Chu hadn’t expected Yeon Haejeong to refuse the match this stubbornly. She had anticipated some defiance — but she hadn’t anticipated him exposing something with that kind of loaded implication, not even a single word with that nuance, in front of others, just to make his rejection clear. On top of that, when it came to marriage, he had been fairly compliant. He’d always known it was a duty that came with being born into a chaebol family, something to simply accept. Even Rep. Chu, who paid him little attention, knew well enough that he wasn’t the type to get hung up on romance. He played around recklessly — but he was never the type to genuinely fall for anyone.
And yet — seeing Yeon Haejeong go so far as to bring up her own weakness in order to slip away from this situation, Rep. Chu sensed something was not right, and narrowed her eyes. Reading his intent sharply, with a look that said surely not, she opened her mouth once more.
“…Don’t tell me, you.”
“…….”
“Is there someone you’re seeing?”
Rep. Chu fixed her gaze on Yeon Haejeong with suspicious eyes. There was a faint, unmistakable flicker — Yeon Haejeong’s composure faltered, just barely. Rep. Chu caught even that subtle shift, and reached out again as if to probe further — but she was cut clean off by his blunt reply.
“…Is that why you’re going this far against what I’m saying….”
“Whether there is or isn’t — what does it matter.”
“Ha…. Don’t tell me you’re seeing someone seriously?”
“If there is someone, will you throw us a wedding?”
“Do you think I’m playing word games right now?”
“So I’m asking, what does it matter.”
“There really is someone, isn’t there. That’s why you’re….”
At the clever, deflecting answers, Rep. Chu grew certain and let her words trail off. A boyfriend — a man he was seriously seeing. It was absurd. He wasn’t some youngster in his early twenties — at his age, a male lover. And that was the reason he was jabbing at his own mother’s weakness, trying to slip out of this situation so cleverly.
“Ha…. Shit.”
As if furious that his true feelings had been seen through, Yeon Haejeong’s face — which had been expressionless throughout — visibly crumpled.
“You…… can’t.”
Rep. Chu said it plainly, her refined eyes flaring. Yeon Haejeong understood exactly what she meant by can’t — and pressed the bridge of his nose, raising his voice sharply.
“What business is it of yours!”
“Is it a man? Is it a man?!”
“So what if it is!”
“How can you say that?!”
“Why can’t I say it? Shit, am I not even allowed to like someone?!”
“……Ha. I, I can’t believe this…….”
Rep. Chu covered her agape mouth with her hand, her face a picture of shock. Watching him throw a tantrum demanding to know what the problem was, she was so dumbfounded the words wouldn’t come.
“It’s my choice. Who I like, who I see — it’s my choice!”
“…What kind of nobody are you seeing, that you’d act like this…….”
His stubbornness looked downright deranged. Just who on earth could it be, for him to do something this disgraceful…. Rep. Chu was so shocked she couldn’t even finish her sentence.
Yeon Haejeong caught the words the other person had let slip carelessly, and furrowed his brow fiercely.
“Watch what you say.”
“You…!”
“What right do you have to talk about someone’s background?!”
“You’ve really lost your mind.”
“Just figured that out? I’ve always been out of my damn mind.”
“…Ha―.”
“But I’m already at my limit right now — even without you. So if you don’t want to see me go even further off the deep end….”
“…….”
“Don’t touch me.”
Yeon Haejeong snarled it out, throwing a fierce warning. Just from the vein standing out at his temple, you could tell this was absolutely not an empty threat. Her son had always been improper, rude, and insolent — but he had never come at her like he was ready to kill. Just who on earth could this person be. Rep. Chu bit down hard on her back teeth as she glared ferociously at Yeon Haejeong kicking back his chair and standing up. Kicking the chair back wasn’t enough — he proceeded to kick away whatever chair was in his path. As if once wasn’t enough, he shouted “Shit!” into the air and kicked the chair several more times, then stormed toward the office entrance with thundering footsteps.
There had been scandals here and there, but he was never the type to seriously see someone — and even if he did, he’d never let it show. Even if he was always in and out of relationships, he’d never been hung up on one, never showed his true feelings for anyone. And yet — watching him dig his heels in and throw a tantrum like this was genuinely shocking. He’d never dragged a romantic partner into family matters before. Without ever saying he absolutely wouldn’t see anyone, he was storming out fuming — Rep. Chu watched his back disappear with a hollow, bewildered gaze and let out a rough, exasperated breath.
“Juhyeok.”
Rep. Chu, watching the back of her unruly son as he slammed the door hard enough to break it and vanished, called her firstborn to attention with a look of disbelief on her face.
“Find out right now who that bastard is seeing.”
And once more, a cold and venomous gleam settled into her sharpened eyes. Yeon Juhyeok, who had only been watching the series of events unfold, swallowed a sigh. He had sensed that a fire was once again slowly kindling between those two — his mother and his half-brother, mortal enemies — and felt the precarious stillness of a storm about to break. But he had no choice but to nod obediently at his mother’s words. She was the most powerful figure in this family, someone no less unstoppable than Yeon Haejeong himself — impossible to defy.
**
Yeon Haejeong, who had left work early and come home, stood loitering in front of the door, unable to go in. He kept raising his hand toward the door lock and lowering it again — and then let his forehead knock against the door once, twice. Had his head ever ached like this. Even when he found out his mother had had an affair with his big uncle, and that he himself had been born from those two — even then, his head had never hurt like this. He had no idea what he was supposed to do right now. He had no answer for what to do with that idiot who claimed to like him, and yet dared not to want more. He couldn’t even yell at him given what had already been said, and walking back what he’d said was even more impossible.
Looking down on Im Munyeong, treating him as beneath him — that had always been natural to Yeon Haejeong. No parents, raised in a facility, too dim to even spell things right — the truth was that he himself was far too good for that idiot. It was absurd from the start that a guy like that could even like someone like him.
He knew. He knew it perfectly well, in his head — and yet he couldn’t forget those composed eyes that had confessed feelings for him and given up on him in the same breath, or that voice that had deliberately sounded bright and fine. And at the same time, for the first time in his life, Yeon Haejeong felt something he had never felt before — regret. It was a word that had never existed in his entire life. Someone as selfish and rotten as him, someone people called a sociopath, a psychopath — he, of all people, was having his very life shaken apart because of one measly guy.
Why does he have to know his place so well. Im Munyeong, who had confessed feelings and given up on him in the same moment, was probably the type who would leave without a trace of lingering attachment once the debt was cleared. He’d never seen someone who claimed to have feelings for a person and yet had so little attachment to that person. Because of that, he was the only one losing his mind over this. That was why he had made up his mind — absolutely no debt clearance. Was it even right, to begin with, for the one who got confessed to to be this rattled, while the one who confessed was perfectly fine?
Yeon Haejeong knocked his head against the door again with a thud and quietly muttered a curse. He had absolutely no idea how to go about turning Im Munyeong’s feelings around. The image of that forlorn face, hurt by his own words, floated up and made it awkward even to look him in the eye. His head was already tangled enough as it was — and now marriage talk on top of it — he couldn’t think of any immediate solution, so he knocked his head against the door again. And again.
It was then. A beep — the door lock disengaged, and the door slowly opened from the inside.
“……Haejeong…?”
What appeared through the gap was Munyeong, neatly dressed in an apron. He had gently opened the door to check the source of the thumping — and came face to face with a visibly troubled Yeon Haejeong.
“…What are you doing…?”
