Seohan turned their conversation back over in his mind. When exactly had he done something Cesare disliked?
But no matter how hard he thought about it, nothing specific stood out. Or rather — there were actually too many things to narrow it down.
This was only his second time meeting Cesare. But in those two brief encounters alone, how many things had the man said he hated?
He hated people who changed their words. He hated people who acted cheap, or who came to him having been around the block. Judging by the way he’d gotten irritated rummaging through the minibar and coming up empty, he also seemed to dislike cocoa.
Seohan stared down at his nearly empty cocoa cup. It seemed like Cesare had been put out by having to go out of his way to get something he didn’t even stock. But it wasn’t as if Seohan had asked him to buy it.
“Cocoa…… you drink it?”
Seohan murmured with his mouth barely moving and pointed at the cocoa cup — and Cesare threw down the fountain pen.
“Are you joking?!”
“N-no.”
Seohan scrambled over and picked up the pen rolling across the floor, quickly shoving it into his pocket. He was afraid that Cesare might add a new clause to the contract at any moment.
“Th-then what? You have to tell me so I know what——”
“I said I hate cheap the most, didn’t I? If you’re thinking about running around with just anyone while you’re under contract with me, forget it.”
Cesare growled with his jaw set tight, laying down the warning. The startled Seohan waved both hands frantically trying to explain, but Cesare wasn’t listening to a word of it.
“I never thought that……!”
“Don’t make me laugh. Thinking of using me as an excuse to fool around? Practice with a friend — give me a break.”
Cesare shook the contract, arguing that wanting to practice was no different from wanting to sleep around. He had a remarkable talent for twisting things.
Cesare kept at it, insisting it was obvious Seohan was planning to use pheromone relief as an excuse to mess around.
And it didn’t stop there — he pushed further, saying how could someone who’d go that far with a friend call that person a friend.
“Suc — wh-when did I ever say I’d do something like that!”
“Didn’t you say you were going to go practice with a friend? Did I mishear just now? Or are you a goldfish who can’t even remember what you said two minutes ago?”
“I was only going to ask about how to use lube! That and — what you described, th-that — those are completely different things. Worlds apart!”
“How is it different? So basically, you’re saying you’d drop your pants and go learn. That’s what you’re saying.”
“I was not going to drop anything!”
Seohan jumped up, stomping his feet. He was losing his mind from frustration. The longer the conversation went, the more his chest caved in and the more his energy drained.
Is this what it’s like to hit a wall. Cesare flatly refused to listen to a word Seohan said. And that wasn’t even all — the man was a champion at digging in and refusing to budge.
He felt like he was going to go insane from the injustice of it. On top of everything, the reason he’d even wanted to practice was to look better in Cesare’s eyes. Because if he came back next time as hopeless as today, he was guaranteed to get an earful.
“Fine, I won’t practice. I misspoke.”
“Too late. Give me the fountain pen.”
Seohan hastily tried to backtrack, but Cesare pointed at the bulging pocket of his trousers and held out his palm. Seohan looked back and forth between his pocket and Cesare.
“But……”
“I said give it to me.”
At the cold edge in his voice, the corners of Seohan’s eyes drooped. Losing his place of residence over the single word “practice” was too much.
“That’s not——”
“Want me to have you taken in for theft?”
But there was a limit to how long Seohan could hold out against Cesare Herald on his own. The man was a champion at digging in — and equally skilled at threats.
“Here.”
The word “theft” sent a bolt of fear through Seohan, and he quickly pulled the fountain pen out and placed it in Cesare’s waiting palm. Cesare Herald was exactly the kind of person who could manufacture a crime out of nothing and make it stick. There was absolutely nothing to gain from pushing back.
Having retrieved the pen, Cesare produced a fresh sheet of paper from somewhere. His hand moved without hesitation as he wrote out the clause regarding place of residence.
“Colin.”
Satisfied, Cesare read through what he’d just written and passed the paper to Colin outside the door.
“Add this and reprint it.”
“Yes, Executive Director.”
Through the open door, Colin’s neat reply came — and then his retreating figure disappeared. At this point, Seohan was starting to resent even Colin, who had done absolutely nothing wrong.
Seohan looked down at the contract on the table — the one he’d read through again and again just moments ago. He wanted to change Cesare’s mind before Colin came back with the revised version.
“How can you just do this. We already finished signing the contract. Look — right here, even the signatures are——”
Seohan held the contract up in front of Cesare’s face. Worried he might pretend not to see, he even jabbed his finger at the section with the signatures and kept it there.
But Cesare fixed his gaze on his own handwriting with a face that showed not a flicker of emotion, then shifted his eyes to Seohan on the other side of the contract.
“So then, what about you?”
“What? What do you mean I——”
“Was what you just did so clean? This — I mean this.”
Cesare crossed his legs leisurely and pointed to the contract term that had been revised to three months. At his observation, Seohan had nothing left to say.
And rightly so — it had been Seohan himself who’d signed the contract without properly reading it first. Then he’d requested changes and received a new contract to sign again. That was what Cesare was pointing out now.
Utterly petty. Was it really acceptable for the Executive Director running Herald Financial to be this small-minded? Or did someone have to be exactly this small-minded to become rich enough to run a financial company? Seohan genuinely, sincerely wondered.
“You can change things on your end, but I can’t on mine?”
“That’s different from this……”
“How? In what way?”
“Because you agreed to mine…… it was a mutual decision…… what I mean is, we both agreed.”
Seohan scrambled to add explanations in disjointed, scattered words. But Cesare gave a careless snort and raised an eyebrow.
“And?”
“So — I’m saying I haven’t agreed to living in your home……”
However frightening he was, wrong was wrong. This was a different matter. Three months out of the four he had left — that was no small thing.
Seohan’s request had only been possible because the person it concerned — Cesare himself — had readily agreed to it. And Seohan had no desire to stay in Cesare’s home.
But no matter how much he pushed back, there was no way he could ever have an equal conversation with Cesare. It wasn’t as if he were in any position to argue with the man in the first place.
Maybe that was why. Every time Seohan finished laying out his argument, Cesare would tilt his head to one side, let out a small smirk, and ignore him entirely.
By this point, Seohan was even starting to wonder if the man was simply enjoying his reactions. If that was the case, he was truly a wretched person.
“Is that so? Then I never agreed to shortening the contract term before adding the extra clause either.”
“But the signature — your signature is right here——”
It was all he had to hold onto. Seohan knew he was repeating himself, but the only thing he could do was keep clinging to that handwritten signature.
Whoosh —
After the same exchange had gone around about three times, Cesare snatched the contract away as if to put an end to this dragging conversation once and for all.
“Oh……?”
Rrip —
With a sound Seohan didn’t want to hear, the contract was torn clean down the middle in one long stroke. And Cesare didn’t stop there — he tore the paper again and again.
Seohan stared at the scene with a hollow, shell-shocked expression.
The section with the contract terms was torn to pieces. The line showing 600 Krang was shredded along with it. Both Cesare’s signature and Seohan’s were reduced to the same fate. The mangled scraps of paper drifted softly through the air before landing in a scattered mess on the floor.
“Gone now, isn’t it?”
Cesare tossed the contract’s remains aside carelessly and held up both empty hands — as if he were a magician who had just performed a remarkable trick.
“Y-you ma——!”
Madman.
Seohan stopped mid-sentence and clamped both hands over his own mouth. If he hadn’t, those words from inside his head would have certainly come tumbling out.
“Mmph.”
With tremendous effort, Seohan pressed down hard on the words trying to claw their way up his throat. Cesare watched him, and then spoke in a voice that sounded almost sympathetic.
“That’s just how contracts work. A signature doesn’t make it final. It only becomes real when the contract is in your hands.”
The way he carried on as if he were doing Seohan a great favor was infuriating.
Dazed, Seohan reached out with listless hands and gathered the torn pieces of the contract, trying to piece them back together — but Cesare snatched those away too.
“There’s nowhere in the Graven Federation as safe and as good as my home. I guarantee it.”
Having been nothing but shameless up until moments ago, Cesare now shifted into a coaxing tone, soft and gentle, as if soothing a small child.
That Cesare’s home was an exceptional place — Seohan knew that himself. Expensive furnishings filled every corner at a glance, and it towered into the sky looking down over the entire Graven Federation.
Environmentally, it was incomparably better than his current place with its recurring mold problems. He also wouldn’t have to keep making the trip back and forth from District 4 — which would save him time.
“B-but…… still……”
But Seohan genuinely didn’t want to. What good was the luxury? Not with a landlord who had a personality this catastrophic. Cesare’s home might be the safest in the Federation — but Cesare himself was its most dangerous person.
At this point, Seohan began to think rationally.
He had four months left. He’d been willing to sign a three-month contract driven purely by the desire to spend even one month without worrying about money.
But was the value of that one remaining month really worth mortgaging three of his months to someone this unhinged?
After a brief moment of deliberation, Seohan reached his decision quickly. The answer was no.
Eddie had been right. Cesare Herald was beyond what any rumor had managed to capture — the man was genuinely unhinged. There was nothing good that could come from getting tangled up with him.
It seemed best to undo the whole thing entirely. The pheromone relief, the contract — all of it, cancelled.
Even now the man was pushing him around and doing whatever he pleased — if they were under the same roof every single day, how much worse would it be for his nerves?
A look of something unmistakably resolute crossed Seohan’s eyes. Clear enough that Cesare, sitting right across from him, could see it plainly. Seohan swallowed, held Cesare’s gaze squarely, and opened his mouth to voice the decision he’d made.
“I’d like to call all of this——”
“Eight hundred.”
But Cesare cut across his words and stepped in. If that voice hadn’t swallowed his, he would have been able to finish the conclusion to the resolution he’d just made.
“Eight hundred Krang a week.”
Cesare crossed his arms and leaned back into his chair — as if daring Seohan to still say no.
“Which room do I get?”
And the truth was, Seohan had never had any pride or backbone to speak of.
