“If you just allow me this once, I won’t bother Dowon-ssi anymore from now on.”
Yeohwi pleaded earnestly with his momentum somewhat dampened.
“I won’t send texts anymore, and I won’t make noise either. Just as you want… That’s right. I’ll live like we’re people with no emotions or relationship. So just this once. Even just once.”
“……”
“I… All I really want is just that.”
“……”
Silence flowed.
Dowon stared intently at Yeohwi for a long time. His jet-black eyes without any light scrutinized every detail, and his reason optimized for efficiency analyzed Seong Yeohwi.
At first, he thought it was a shallow ripple. A bothersome existence that annoyingly wet his ankles.
But what was blocking his path now wasn’t a ripple, but a wave with considerable height.
It was fearlessly crashing head-on into the breakwater he’d built up his entire life. The splashing sound rang out loudly enough to be irritating.
Still clumsy, emotional, the desperate struggle of a kid who knew nothing of strategy.
But that complicated Dowon’s calculations.
‘Against a kid who didn’t even know how to kiss.’
But he had to acknowledge it. Seong Yeohwi was a much more uncontrollable variable than he’d thought, and his outcry wasn’t simple bravado.
If let loose at the party venue, rather than pissing himself, he’d be the type to pour wine in Do Jingyu’s face. In that case, it would rather be better to really…
‘A leash.’
Dowon let out a hollow laugh at the thought that came to mind.
‘How pathetic.’
He slowly raised his left hand to check his wrist. The Patek Philippe Calatrava white gold case reflected the sensor light.
“…Fine.”
Dowon, taking his eyes off the watch, spat out concisely.
“I’m late for work. Let’s talk in detail when I get back.”
Dowon reached out his hand to push Yeohwi away.
The moment his hand touched Yeohwi’s shoulder, Yeohwi reacted hypersensitively with a start.
“…!”
Like someone burned by fire, he flinched his shoulders and stepped back two steps, leaving Dowon’s hand suspended in midair.
Dowon wore a puzzled expression for a moment, but he had neither the time nor reason to pay attention to that subtle reaction. He immediately passed by Yeohwi and left through the entrance.
The heavy entrance door closed forcefully. Yeohwi’s legs seemed to lose strength as he immediately plopped down on the spot.
“Whoa.”
I-is this a dream or reality?
Yeohwi buried his face in his knees.
‘He said fine?’
I’m going crazy.
A feeling of not being in his right mind.
His heart pounded as if it would burst. At the same time, a sense of immorality and thrill rushed in as if he’d done something he shouldn’t have.
‘He said let’s talk… Dowon-ssi, Dowon, hyung, said he’d talk to me when he gets back…!’
Yeohwi clenched his fists and covered his mouth with both hands to swallow the exclamation bursting out.
His entire face, no, his whole body from head to toe was bright red. Especially his pointed ears were redder than any fruit he’d seen that morning.
The fresh, unripe fruit that had only tasted bitter was gradually ripening. Soon to become lusciously sweet.
***
Back and forth here and there. Looking around nervously.
Seong Yeohwi was anxious all day.
The joy he felt sitting collapsed at the entrance in the morning. That gradually changed into a calm anxiety as time passed.
‘Let’s talk in detail when I get back.’
Thinking about it calmly, those words could mean a positive ‘Okay, let’s go together,’ but conversely, they could also be a fierce warning of ‘Where does this kid dare to challenge me? Let’s see when I get back.’ He couldn’t guess Dowon’s true intentions at all.
So Yeohwi wandered around the first floor all day, just waiting for the entrance door to open.
Well past dinner time, when it was nearing midnight, Dowon, whom he’d been waiting for, finally came home.
Yeohwi greeted him on the first-floor stairs in front of the house like before.
“…You’re back?”
Unlike Yeohwi, who was roughly wearing a t-shirt all crumpled from anxiously waiting all day, Dowon was in a gleaming suit just as he’d looked when he left in the morning. But heavy fatigue seemed to press down on his shoulders.
Dowon glanced at Yeohwi, then roughly grabbed and loosened his necktie as he muttered.
“Follow me.”
The plan to welcome him saying he must have had a hard time working, must be tired, and welcome back was ruined. Yeohwi blinked his eyes and silently followed behind Dowon.
“Yes…”
‘But, where are we going…?’
Dowon strode ahead. Yeohwi looked at his back and urgently moved his steps so as not to lose him. Dowon climbed the central staircase leading to the second floor, not to the bedroom.
And at the end of the corridor they arrived at. He saw a familiar door.
It was in front of the tightly closed mahogany door he’d even taken a photo of and sent a few days ago.
‘No way.’
Yeohwi’s heart pounded loudly with a thump thump.
While he held his breath and waited, Dowon took out a key from his pocket and opened that door that had been like an impregnable fortress.
‘Woaaah…!’
The moment he stepped into the study, Yeohwi suppressed the exclamation about to burst out.
Seeing it with his own eyes, this place wasn’t just an ordinary room. It was a huge command center.
The smell of paper and the bitter scent from antique wooden furniture, the faint smell of coffee beans. And finally, Dowon’s smoky cedarwood fragrance.
The air it exuded was different, and the things visible to the eye were amazing.
On one wall, wooden bookshelves packed tightly with books from floor to ceiling without a single gap were lined up in a row, and on the opposite wall, complex affiliate status boards and charts of KD Group were posted.
And in the center, a massive wooden desk that appeared to be Dowon’s desk was spread out boldly like a throne.
Leaving Yeohwi looking around behind him, Dowon took off the suit jacket he was wearing and casually draped it over the chair back. Then he unfastened the cufflinks on his shirt sleeves and rolled up the sleeves a couple of times.
Yeohwi’s gaze was unconsciously stolen by the lean muscular forearms revealed outside the shirt and the flow of veins running along those forearms to the back of his hands.
The study was one thing, but Dowon standing in this space was truly amazing.
“Since we’ve decided to go to the party, there are things you need to know.”
Dowon didn’t even invite Yeohwi to sit down.
In the first place, there was only one chair in this place. As if only Dowon could come and go.
He leaned diagonally against the huge wooden desk and pressed the power button. Then the screens of five monitors attached in a circle around the desk all turned on at once.
“Y-yes.”
Yeohwi approached Dowon’s side with a tense expression and looked at the monitors together.
“This isn’t just a simple party. It’s not the kind of friendly social gathering you’re thinking of.”
And the cold, businesslike voice that followed.
He said let’s talk when he gets back, but this was closer to a briefing than a conversation. Like delivering business matters.
To use an analogy, it was like a director tone hurriedly throwing an intern employee who knows nothing into a huge major project and explaining the minimum project overview.
Naturally, there was no expectation or emotion contained in it.
He tapped the keyboard and brought up a screen on the monitor. Floor plans of the party venue, and photos and profiles of various people appeared on multiple monitors at once.
“Do Jingyu.”
Dowon pointed to the first photo among them.
“You’ve already met him. He’s my eldest uncle. He hates me to death.”
He listed only the facts without any filter. Yeohwi quickly asked. Somehow it felt like an atmosphere where he should raise his hand and ask, but he didn’t.
“Because of succession? Because he feels you’re a threat?”
“Right. Uncle is a stupid pig bastard.”
“Ah…”
Wow. The criticism toward me wasn’t even criticism.
Yeohwi somehow felt good. The cold words he’d heard from Dowon until now suddenly felt like warm consideration.
“When I looked up his background, it was impressive. From a prestigious university with an MBA.”
“You can do anything if you throw money at it. Donation admission. Bought the degree too, ghostwritten thesis.”
“But he didn’t get caught?”
“Yeah, he’s good at lobbying.”
Soon he moved to the next photo.
“This one is Do Jingyu’s son, Do Jinsang.”
The face of a young man smiling arrogantly appeared. He resembled Dowon in an oddly unfortunate way, but to the point where the expression ‘resembled’ was unpleasant—a completely different, frivolous and vulgar-looking impression.
To put it simply, there was grease in his pupils. It seemed like he’d smell fishy.
“He’s my cousin. Not only is he stupid, but his temper is dirty and violent.”
Dowon’s voice dropped even lower.
“Since our school days, he targeted and bullied me. Because I was better than that bastard in every aspect.”
“……”
“Now his eyes have basically rolled back. Since I got to the executive position first.”
Yeohwi couldn’t say anything about Dowon’s hellish past that he poured out matter-of-factly in a dry voice as if it were nothing.
