Pretending to talk to himself, he spoke without looking at Yujeong. Even at the teasing-sounding voice, Yujeong didn’t react. He only focused on cutting without answering. Seongjo, who turned to look at his concentrated profile, thought briefly then put what he wanted to do into action as is.
Seongjo, who approached Yujeong, lightly rested his head on his shoulder. He could feel his body stiffen slightly. It seemed like the tension and movement of bones and muscles were being transmitted directly from the shoulder.
However, Yujeong soon relaxed smoothly again and began cutting. At the regular reverberation transmitted thunk, thunk from the shoulder touching his cheek, Seongjo somehow felt stable and gently closed his eyes.
As expected, sharing a meal together was the best way to share affection.
* * *
Seongjo had tilted his chair all the way back and had both legs crossed and propped up on his office desk. While leaning his upper body against the chair, he continued his train of thought. His idle hands got bored enough that he pulled paper from a pile of unnecessary documents and even folded airplanes.
Already over ten airplanes completed like that. Just as he was about to finish the new airplane in his hand, a voice came from outside the door.
“Executive Director, may I come in?”
It was a very familiar voice that sounded extremely cautious. When Seongjo answered for him to do so, the door opened.
Seongjo’s secretary Kyeonghun bowed politely in greeting as always. And Seongjo, who’d just finished an airplane, flew it into the air. The airplane that flew while changing its trajectory this way and that stuck right in Kyeonghun’s head.
Kyeonghun, flustered at the feeling of something poking in, smoothed his own hair. Then the airplane that had been stuck between his hair strands fell plop to the floor. Only then did Kyeonghun discover the pile of paper airplanes filling Seongjo’s desk and made a flustered expression.
“P-planes…”
He muttered like talking to himself, but that was it. Even though his superior had been folding paper airplanes during work hours, Kyeonghun wasn’t a bold enough employee to point that out.
He gathered his flustered expression and brought up the topic. First was a work report. Seongjo was folding a new paper airplane even while listening to the content he was reporting.
At that sight, Kyeonghun looked at Seongjo with an anxious face. However, he didn’t raise an objection this time either. Probably because he knew from experience that even if it looked half-hearted, it wasn’t going in one ear and out the other, and he definitely remembered.
Seongjo, who’d heard the entire story, nodded and answered.
“Understood. Good work.”
At the simple word, Kyeonghun bowed his head deeply again in response. The reason he didn’t immediately leave was because there was another matter besides that. Seongjo, who noticed that fact, put down the paper airplane he was making and looked at Kyeonghun as if to say continue.
“President Lee had words to convey. He said you must come home soon…”
“Uh, tell him I won’t go.”
At the answer that came like a knife, Kyeonghun floundered.
“H-he didn’t mean to return completely… it was more the nuance of asking if you’d stop by and at least have a meal together.”
“Uh, still tell him I won’t go.”
Seongjo answered resolutely this time too. It was only a difficult situation for Kyeonghun caught in the middle. A precarious position where he could lose his job whether he failed to follow the father’s words or failed to follow the son’s words. He was probably thinking family fights should be done directly.
Kyeonghun broke out in a cold sweat and spoke again.
“H-he also said this. If you’re really going to keep meeting that bastard… ah, no! If you’re going to keep meeting that person, how about bringing him home to introduce… he said…”
Seongjo’s hands, which had been folding another new paper airplane, stopped at that moment. He looked back at Kyeonghun with a creased brow while letting out an empty laugh. Even knowing that he’d only conveyed his father’s words and bore no responsibility whatsoever.
Seeing Kyeonghun’s slip of the tongue, the term ‘that bastard’ must be a word President Lee directly chose.
Bring Yujeong home? Seongjo laughed with a kuk kuk sound. Before being unpleasant, it was also a funny story. Apparently Seongjo’s father seemed to want to call Seongjo in even if it meant taking the form of introducing a lover to parents.
At first hearing, it wasn’t bad words. Because it sounded like he’d acknowledge his son’s male lover if he did so. Kyeonghun seemed to think so too.
“If it’s alright with you, Executive Director, wouldn’t it be okay to visit once? He might be trying to acknowledge it at this opportunity…”
At those words, Seongjo quietly shook his head. Kyeonghun didn’t continue speaking and just closed his mouth. Seeing that, Seongjo laughed lightly. Even though he hadn’t said this or that, it already showed that Kyeonghun too was thinking of Yujeong as Seongjo’s lover.
It didn’t matter if he thought so. Seongjo shrugged his shoulders and explained.
“That’s what he says, but if I actually brought him, it’d be quick for him to change his mind. I’d be lucky if he doesn’t slip him an envelope of money behind my back.”
Yujeong receiving an envelope of money from his father saying ‘Break up with my son!’…
He didn’t want to imagine it even hypothetically. Though he was a bit curious what reaction he’d show.
Yujeong grew up in a well-off family, so he probably lacked nothing financially. He didn’t seem like a materialistic personality to begin with, so it didn’t seem like he’d waver from receiving money.
However, that was all talk for when Yujeong was really in a relationship with Seongjo. His father still seemed to firmly believe Seongjo had a new lover who was male and a teacher, but in reality Yujeong wasn’t Seongjo’s lover.
‘Not yet… though.’
Seongjo briefly recalled the atmosphere of last evening in his head. Leaning on the shoulder of the person cooking and watching that sight, putting the spoon he fed him in his mouth and tasting the seasoning… following recent terminology, it was definitely at least a ‘some’ relationship.
‘That’s why it’s even more impossible.’
Bringing such a person before a strict chaebol father? It was a situation where even existing favorability would disappear.
While Seongjo had such thoughts alone and reached conclusions from a to z, Kyeonghun continued to stand before Seongjo breaking out in cold sweat. Seongjo looked back at such Kyeonghun and laughed lightly, then flew one more plane in a direction Kyeonghun wasn’t standing. This one didn’t fly long and fell fluttering to stick in the windowsill.
“I really have no intention of bringing him… I’ll contact President Lee directly myself. You don’t need to report separately.”
Hearing those words, Kyeonghun greeted him saying ‘Yes’ with a somewhat relieved face.
It was a situation where he could just let him leave like this, but Seongjo looked at him for a moment then opened his mouth again.
“Jo Yeongbeom’s movements, do you know anything?”
Hearing those words, Kyeonghun shook his head with a surprised face.
“No, nothing special… I only heard he’s preparing for marriage.”
“Is that so?”
Perhaps Seongjo’s face looked serious, as Kyeonghun carefully threw out another question.
“Should I look into it more, Executive Director?”
Seongjo kept silent without answering immediately. He didn’t want to think more about him, so if it had been a while ago he would have answered there was no need, but the situation was different now. Seongjo recalled the words Yeongbeom had said when he came to his house.
‘I feel like I might do something.’
Yeongbeom was a human who thought his own position was more important than anyone, so he wouldn’t be able to pull anything. The moment he touched Seongjo, he himself would be in a difficult situation too.
But still, it weighed on his mind.
“Would it be difficult to attach a person to his side?”
At Seongjo’s question, Kyeonghun showed a surprised expression. After worrying with a serious face for a moment, he slowly answered.
“It’s not entirely impossible, but there’s a somewhat worrying part… hasn’t Jo Yeongbeom-ssi been receiving a lot of expectations from his family recently?”
Because it was correct, Seongjo nodded. From the moment Yeongbeom became ‘that’ Oh Seyeong’s fiancé, Yeongbeom’s father had been openly acknowledging him, who had been a disowned child.
“So if we openly plant our person, it might…”
“Spread into a family matter?”
At Seongjo’s question, he hesitated and nodded with difficulty. Seongjo had also roughly guessed as much. It was just that even knowing, the matter concerned him enough to bring it up once.
“Alright, then just appropriately, well, just to the extent of whether he’s doing anything suspicious…”
However, Seongjo, who was saying those words, stopped right there.
