I let Hajin do what he wanted and replied to Hahyun’s text.
[I told you to send messages only once an hour.]
[Hasn’t it been an hour? Oh, that’s strange. It has been an hour. Since I set an alarm, there’s no way I could be wrong.]
[Don’t you count our phone call as contact?]
[Wow… where is that a thing? A phone call is a phone call, and a text is a text.]
[Well, at least I replied, so we’re good, right?]
[No, we’re not! Tell me you love me. If you say you’ll do it with me tonight, I’ll wait two hours.]
[Just contact me once an hour. I love you.]
[ㅠㅠ]
Pfft, I must have laughed because Hajin complained.
“What’s so funny? You’re only irritable when talking with me.”
“Then why don’t you try acting cute too, Mr. Hajin? I’ll laugh for you.”
“Wow… you get more shameless by the day, you.”
“I know.”
The jokes continued after that, and it didn’t take long for the jokes to turn into dirty talk, and the dirty talk to transform into intense skinship. Between my moans as Hajin sucked on my neck hard enough to make wet sounds and stuck his hands inside my shirt, the doorbell rang.
“Looks like your wife is here.”
“Pretend we’re not home.”
“Say something that makes sense. They obviously know we’re home, how can we do that?”
“Ha… you’re really something. Really something else.”
Hajin reluctantly got up and went outside. I also shook out my completely wrinkled shirt to smooth the creases and followed him. Hyunwoo was leaning against the entrance wall with a deeply furrowed brow.
“Seo Hajin, didn’t I tell you that if you miss work one more time without contacting me, I’d write a resignation letter?”
“I know you won’t. Because you’re my wife.”
Hyunwoo shook his head with a disgusted expression at Hajin, who was talking nonsense with a shameless face.
“Enough of this. Hurry up and get dressed. How can the CEO be absent when we need to prepare for the fall fashion show?”
“I think it might be time for you to become CEO instead of me…”
Hajin muttered as he went to the dressing room. I belatedly greeted Hyunwoo.
“Have you eaten breakfast?”
“Yeah, how long are you going to keep using formal speech with me?”
“…Well, I suppose my memories will return gradually? It’s still a bit awkward for me. Come in for a moment. You know how fussy Hajin is and how long it takes him to get dressed.”
Hyunwoo looked at his watch with a troubled expression before taking off his shoes and entering the house. Even though we’d seen each other quite often since the busy period ended, I still hadn’t become very close with him. When I tried to excuse myself by offering to bring tea, Hyunwoo stopped me.
“I don’t have time for tea… will you sit down for a moment?”
I sat across from Hyunwoo.
“Is something wrong?”
“Yeah, kind of… but I feel awkward because of Hajin.”
“What is it? If there’s something happening at the company that he told you not to tell me about, please tell me quickly. Or you could send me a text… Ah, maybe he installed another hacking program?”
“Juwon, how long are you going to stay here without doing anything?”
“What? If you mean work…”
I couldn’t immediately understand Hyunwoo’s question and was thinking about it when I finally realized that he was talking about modeling work.
“I don’t plan to go back to modeling.”
“Why? Because of Hajin and Hahyun?”
They say Yoon Juwon was passionate about modeling and had talent for it. Since it would be hard to believe that such a person would suddenly refuse to model anymore, I subtly used Yoon Juwon’s past as a weapon.
“It’s not that… It’s just that I think there were more bad experiences than good ones while modeling. So I don’t want to do it again.”
Hyunwoo nodded as if he understood.
“If that’s really how you feel, there’s nothing I can do… but isn’t it a waste? You have a good physique, and you’ve built up a reputation…”
“I was too greedy when I was modeling. I don’t want to be like that anymore.”
Hyunwoo’s facial muscles twitched around his mouth as if he still had something to say. Then he continued with difficulty.
“Juwon, are Hajin or Hahyun threatening you or…”
I burst out laughing before he could finish. Hyunwoo stopped speaking and looked at me with confusion. Just then, Hajin came downstairs and answered for me in an aggrieved voice.
“We’re threatening him? I’ve never felt so wronged. Why would we threaten him and risk facing consequences…”
I laughed even harder at Hajin’s words. That’s because lately, I was the one threatening the brothers.
Threats like not sharing a bed with either of them for a week if they fought with each other, or prohibiting them from approaching me that day if they bothered me by not going to work without a good reason.
Hyunwoo smiled and asked.
“Is that true? Or are you just afraid of Seo Hajin…”
“It’s true. I’m the one doing the threatening.”
“With what?”
“Things like not holding hands, not giving kisses.”
Hyunwoo shook his head with a disgusted expression and stood up.
“I’m the fool for asking. There’s a limit to how much you should rub it in… sigh.”
“So who barges into a couple’s home first thing in the morning?”
“That’s enough!”
As Hyunwoo slammed the door on his way out, Hajin laughed and kissed me.
“I wanted to stay with you, but I guess that’s not happening.”
“If you hadn’t gone to work today, you would have been banned from approaching me anyway.”
“I know. That’s why I’m going to work.”
Even after kissing me, Hajin only went outside after Hyunwoo’s voice was heard several more times.
* * *
After they left, I thought peace had returned, but I had to suffer from inexplicable anxiety. I kept an eye on reporters visible through the curtain gap, then suddenly got hungry and bit into a sandwich Hahyun had made, then turned on the news… I was so scattered that I could barely keep my thoughts straight.
It was all because of those reporters. They should at least give people room to breathe while covering a story…
If it were a wanted situation like before, I might understand, but now I wasn’t even a criminal, and being confined like this was really unbearable.
Biting my nails, I concluded that I couldn’t live like this anymore. So I kicked the door open and boldly stood in front of the reporters. Those who had been fighting for the front position stopped arguing when they saw me standing still in place without going anywhere.
I was nervous in a situation where so many people were focusing their attention on me. To calm my nerves, I looked around at the reporters surrounding me.
Cameras I hadn’t seen in a while, and women holding those cameras, and women holding laptops in front of them, and women holding microphones behind them… the reporters were all women.
Was it my imagination that the scene before my eyes seemed artificial?
Feeling that something was strange, I opened my eyes wide and looked again. If they were from entertainment news teams or internet news agencies, their company names should have been written on the cameras. There’s no way they would bring personal cameras for official coverage.
Decisively, it was strange that people who were supposedly so eager to cover a story that they were camping outside my house weren’t asking any questions when their subject was right in front of them.
Now that I think about it, it was also not particularly common for them to be staking out here instead of covering the background of the murder case, which was drawing more attention at this point.
When I considered everything one by one, there wasn’t just one or two strange things!
Could this all be the brothers’ scheme? These bastards!
As a cold shiver ran down my body, my mind suddenly lit up as if someone had turned on a light.
Having reached a conclusion, I pushed through the people who were trying hard to act like reporters and went back inside. I drank cold water to calm down and sat on the sofa, thinking calmly.
About how I should get revenge on these brothers to satisfy my anger…
* * *
I was so upset that I didn’t even hear the brothers coming in and was lying in my room. When I came downstairs after hearing something crash on the first floor, Hahyun was crying sorrowfully, and Hajin was looking at me like he’d seen a ghost while holding his phone.
When Hahyun, who had just noticed me, wiped his tears with his sleeve and tried to run toward me, I stepped back and held up both hands to stop him. Hahyun looked at me with a shocked expression.
“Hyuuung… Why, why are you avoiding me? Why didn’t you answer my messages when you were home? I thought you had run away. So I came home and… there was no sign of you in the living room… You always came down when we arrived…”
Seeing Hahyun sobbing with his chest heaving as if just thinking about it made him sad, I momentarily felt weak and considered overlooking the “reporter show,” but I quickly pulled myself together. If I was going to continue to be with them, I needed to correct this kind of behavior.
Hajin’s voice came from beside me.
“It seems like you have something to tell us…”
“That’s right. Both of you, sit down.”
As soon as I finished speaking, Hahyun, as if guilty about something, quickly ran to the sofa and sat down, and Hajin sat next to him with some space between them. When I sat across from them, Hahyun suddenly gasped and started begging with both hands raised above his head.
“Hyung, I’m sorry. Really… I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.”
