“What?”
The man was telling me he wasn’t sorry — with the same tender eyes he used when he whispered that he loved me. I had to wonder if I was still dreaming. That was how far removed from reality his answer was.
Even as I gaped at him in disbelief, he didn’t so much as blink.
He bent his knees and knelt down to meet my eye level, then began rubbing my flushed cheek. Softly, with his thumb, like stroking a feather. Looking at that shameless face at the same height as mine, I felt, for the first time in my life, a genuine urge to hit him. That was how great the anger rising in me was.
“You’re not sorry?”
I smacked away the hand that was touching me so gently, as if handling something fragile. This time, I wasn’t sorry about it at all.
Just moments ago I’d been happy over a cup of honey water, and already my emotions had sunk to the floor like a mouthful of muddy water. Confused by a heart that kept swinging between ice and fire without a moment’s rest, I bit down on my lip out of habit, grinding it between my teeth.
At that, the man reached for my lips again.
As if it hadn’t bothered him at all to be pushed away, he lightly stroked the bitten lip, then only withdrew his hand once he’d confirmed it hadn’t broken skin.
“I’m not sorry — but I am a little angry. That it got found out like this……”
Those words sounded to me like he had intended to deceive me for the rest of his life.
Blood rushed to my head. He felt so unfamiliar it made me wonder whether the person I’d known all this time and this person were really the same.
I was confused.
His face and his manner were still the same — still my beloved Kang Jaeho.
But listening to the words coming out of his mouth, he was Director Kang Jaeho through and through.
All those times in the past when I’d been frantic and on edge, terrified of being found out — those memories swept through the room like a tsunami. Along with them came the sense of betrayal toward him — knowing he’d been watching it all.
“……I see. I guess there’s no need to explain myself to you, then.”
I had hidden everything because I wanted to be a good person. But this man was acting like someone who had simply decided to deceive me. That made me start to doubt even his love for me.
Had everything he said and did — all those times he said he loved me — been real?
No, before that — was even this man’s name real?
“Where does the truth end and the lie begin. You — is your name really Kang Jaeho? Your age? You didn’t lie about that too?”
Mounting distrust drove me to shoot the words at him sharply. But he didn’t waver in the face of my fierce barrage of questions.
“My name is Kang Jaeho. And being 12 years older than Lee Gang is true too.”
“Ha — why? Why didn’t you lie about that? Did some conscience you don’t usually have show up just for a moment back then?”
My insides twisted, and I mocked him with words I didn’t really mean. I’d laid on the sarcasm thick, intending to wound him — but the man considered it with complete seriousness.
“Hmm…… you followed me around so well, calling me ajeossi, ajeossi, so I figured the age gap wouldn’t be an issue.”
He stroked the protruding bone on my knee with the hand resting over it, then murmured, and as for the name — as if turning it over in his mind.
The way he looked gave the impression he was debating whether or not to tell the truth, and before I knew it I was pressing him on.
“The name?”
“Because I wanted you to call my name during sex.”
“What kind of reason is —!”
The corners of his lips curved up into a dazzling smile that had absolutely no business being on his face in a moment like this.
His unfiltered words and behavior were no different from a street thug’s.
“So if it hadn’t been for that reason, you would have lied about it too?”
“Mm—”
As if struggling with that, he gripped my knee hard, then leaned his cheek against it. His hair fell naturally loose, and he looked up at me with mild, calm eyes, quietly watching my reaction.
I didn’t need to hear the answer to know.
Ah — this person. If none of this had ever happened, he’d been planning to keep making a fool of me indefinitely.
“Ha. My name is mine too, for the record.”
I said it in an annoyed tone, looking down at the top of his head, and he lifted his face and met my eyes again.
“Lee Gang. That’s my real name, and being 23 — 12 years younger than Jaeho — is real too. What. You think younger is better? You’re welcome, then.”
“Lee Gang……”
“My height’s 178.2 — tall for a beta. The proportions are good so you can just round it up to 180.”
He tilted his head, apparently finding the sudden change of direction in the conversation strange. That gesture looked so much like a puppy that my hand moved on instinct to pet him — but who did he think I was? Patience is Lee Gang, Lee Gang is patience. I held back with everything I had and kept going.
“My face? I don’t lose anywhere I go — people call me handsome. Sometimes I get mistaken for an alpha, you know? Saying more would just be a waste of breath. But there is one thing — just one — that I lied about.”
I rattled off the words and then stopped short, holding my breath for a moment.
“I never really thought much about what I do for a living. But in front of you, I was endlessly ashamed of it, so I lied. Yeah. I’m a gangster. Oh — but Director Kang would know that better than anyone, right? Then — how much do you know? Do you know all of my pathetic past, even from long before I started following you around, Jaeho? Do you?”
“Lee Gang.”
He said my name as if telling me to stop, and the steady, unwavering black of his eyes drained the fight right out of me.
All this time, what had I been straining myself to hide it all for.
“You don’t have to say any more.”
“Yeah. You don’t.”
He seemed to be trying to console me in my distress, but it wasn’t working at all.
Of course it wasn’t. This man was the very source of everything making me miserable.
“Then let’s stop talking — and now I’ll apologize.”
It was absurd — he was the one on his knees, yet I was the one apologizing — and a laugh broke free.
A bitter snicker, just a small huff of air — and the man’s brow furrowed ever so slightly.
“I’m sorry. To you — to Director Kang. I was really sorry. You got caught up with someone handsome but young and ordinary-type — forget marriage, I can’t even have children. I must have seemed so unreliable because I’m too young, and so……”
Every time I lied to you, I felt guilty. My own lies kept stabbing me.
I kept talking while hitting his chest.
“But what? You’re not sorry? Not sorry? How can you not be sorry — to me?!”
I shoved at him again and again, and he, who hadn’t shifted an inch despite it all, gently closed his hand around my wrists.
“I simply thought those things didn’t matter between us.”
I don’t know why only endlessly cold words kept coming out of such a tender man’s mouth.
What did he think of me — someone who lied like he breathed? Who whined about working overtime during phone calls, while regularly walking into scenes with a bat in hand. What the hell did you think of me, that’s what I want to know!
The man kept calling my name over and over, trying to get a response out of me as I did nothing but fume at even his own excuses.
“Babe — hmm?”
I quickly clamped both hands over his mouth.
I was suddenly scared — afraid of what sweet, warm words he’d use next to lure me in, nestled between those ice-cold ones.
“Don’t call me that.”
It was a name I’d gone around proudly using myself, delighted by it.
My boyfriend. My babe.
But until I found the thread where our relationship had started to tangle and worked it loose, I didn’t want to hear it.
“It makes me want to forgive everything.”
The man’s eyes, still quietly held in my hands, widened just slightly.
When he called me our Lee Gang — it felt like gaining a thousand soldiers, like receiving divine grace, like I held the whole world in my arms. But damn it — it turned out that wasn’t it at all. It was the backing of the Gangho faction.
Similar, if you looked at it a certain way, I supposed.
“Were all the words saying you love me lies too?”
I asked him without taking my hands away from his mouth.
“Are you playing games with someone 12 years younger than you? Damn it, I genuinely loved you — I gave you all my firsts! You’ve been around the block so many times I wasn’t even your first!”
Ugh, this is so unfair it’s killing me!
Whether the alcohol was rising again I couldn’t tell, but my emotions kept spiking up and down and I couldn’t rein them in.
He seemed to find it funny — I felt a suppressed laugh flutter against my palms.
You’re laughing? You can laugh right now?
The tickle of his breath made me ease my hands away slightly — and he, as if he’d been waiting, took both of my hands and laced his fingers through mine, pulling them close.
“Babe. Do you want my first?”
“And what if I do. It’s not like you can give it back now!”
Who is it. Who the hell took his virginity.
I unconsciously leaned back, pulling away from the man who was drawing closer.
At that, he rose from where he’d been kneeling and stretched both arms out on either side of me, caging me in.
“Should I give you my bottom, Lee Gang? Hmm? Would our babe let it go then?”
“What……”
An emergency alarm blared through my head, which was already spinning with noise.
I had never so much as imagined such a thing, not even in fantasy.
Putting mine into Jaeho……?
“H — how would I even know if it’s really your first!”
“Hmm, I just haven’t met anyone gutsy enough to go after my ass yet. Probably — you’d know once you put it in. I could tell right away when I put it in Lee Gang. It was so hot, and impossibly tight — I thought my cock was going to snap in half.”
I wanted to clap my hands back over his mouth — the man who was saying things like this in a more casual tone than someone talking about mixing rice into soybean soup.
“How can you say something like that so easily?!”
“But it’s true……”
It was a complete and utter defeat.
I had no idea how to fire back and was just sitting there in stunned silence when the man started undoing his belt buckle.
