Chapter 3

After returning home from work, Yeonwoo headed straight to the bathroom. She had planned to go to Seokheon’s house right away but came home to shower and change her underwear.

Even after wiping herself with a tissue after s*x, the c*m remaining inside her body soaked her underwear. Yeonwoo took off her underwear, stiff from drying out, and wiped all traces of him with lukewarm water.

Her relationship with Seokheon started as if she was playing with fire. However, Yeonwoo was constantly worried that her inappropriate relationship with Seokheon would eat her up like a fire that burned everything after being so careless.

On the other hand, Seokheon seemed to want to continue playing with fire.

Their bodies were compatible. She couldn’t compare it to anyone because he was her only partner, but she experienced that mind-blowing sensation she once read about in the s*x section of a woman’s magazine at the hair salon.

Nevertheless, they had to stop now.

「Why aren’t you coming?」

A text came from Seokheon. If Yeonwoo didn’t go, he would definitely come running here.

Apart from Yeonwoo, several other employees lived in this villa fifteen minutes away from work. If Seokheon came here, rumors might spread that he did.

Like water and oil, everything about them didn’t match. Seokheon shone like a pearl among many rocks.

Manager Jeong and her colleagues were already speculating about their relationship; Yeonwoo couldn’t afford to have Seokheon go here and create a more scandalous issue.

「 I’m on my way.」

When Yeonwoo left her place, the snow that had been lightly falling on her way home had accumulated.

She hailed a taxi on the shoulder of the villa and headed to Seokheon’s house, about thirty minutes away by car.

As she made her way to him, Yeonwoo thought that might really be a moth, just as Manager Jeong said.

Even Seokheon’s arrogance seemed brilliant in her eyes, and she couldn’t resist his gestures. It was clear that she would probably continue answering his call as long as she was in front of him.

Yeonwoo arrived in front of his house and rang the doorbell even though she knew his passcode. A moment later, Seokheon, fully-clothed, opened the door.

“Have you eaten?”

“Yes.”

I followed him into the house. I could see the lights of the Han River bridge and the cruise ship crossing the river through the wide officetel window.

Seokheon headed straight towards the wine cellar. He was so well-versed in wine that he had a wine cellar as tall as him installed on one side of the kitchen.

Yeonwoo sat on the sofa in the living room and stared at his back. He usually invited her to his place and would take a while to choose the wine, but he picked one quickly today.

Holding the wine bottle in his large hand, he turned around and showed the label to Yeonwoo. “I got some good wine from Dubai.”

From the moment she saw the fruit and cheese platter on the living room table, she expected they’d be drinking wine. However, unlike usual, flowers and candles also decorated the table.

She looked at Seokheon, approaching her, as he opened the wine with little effort. “Would you like to taste it?”

Standing taller than others, a bottle of wine in one hand and a wine glass in the other, he looked like he came out of a wine advertisement.

Yeonwoo read the wine label on the table as she received a glass from Seokheon.

“It’s good wine.”

She had tasted it once before, thanks to Seokheon’s grandfather. The wine came from a high-end winery in France that only produced fifty bottles of it a year.

They toasted their wine glasses, the clinking sound going on for a while.

Yeonwoo learned from Seokheon’s grandfather that the resonant sound varied depending on the purity and content of the crystals used in the wine glasses. She learned about wine and the know-how of choosing wine glasses from his grandfather, who had become her guardian after losing her family. She spent her last days as a teenager at Seokheon’s house.

“Who knew those b*stards would change their minds even after signing the LOA[1]?”

Yeonwoo listened to Seokheon recount his business trip to Dubai as she drank wine.

“I heard you put a lot of effort into it.”

“It’s not a big deal. Although…”

He continued speaking, but Yeonwoo couldn’t concentrate. Instead of sitting on the sofa, she sat on the floor and watched as Seokheon fiddled with something on the table, his long legs stretched out leisurely.

The red box was the Cartier box that Manager Jeong spoke of a while ago.

‘Why would he buy matching rings, then? Will he wear the other one on his little finger?’

“How’s the wine? I got the same one as that day.”

Her hunch had never been wrong.

“That ring isn’t mine, right?”

She felt strange from the moment she entered his house.

Seokheon rarely dressed up at home. Instead, he would usually shower after work, wear a robe, then fall asleep naked. In particular, he’d always wear a bathrobe because he thought he’d take it off anyway whenever Yeonwoo visited.

But today, he was wearing a dress shirt and trousers. And besides snacks, there was a flower centerpiece and tiny tea lights on the table.

There was no way someone who never bothered bringing garbage into the house would have decorated the living room with flowers and the like for nothing.

“If it’s not yours, whose would it be?”

Her intuition was telling her not to go further, to stop here.

“There’s a rumor about Director Lee in the tabloids. It said your wedding is imminent, considering the matching rings.”

“That’s nonsense. I haven’t even proposed yet.”

“But the person you’re planning to propose to isn’t me, right?”

Seokheon placed his glass on the table and approached her.

“It is.”

“Sir!”

Marrying Seokheon, that was ridiculous.

“Do you think it makes sense for the managing director and me to get married?”

Yeonwoo stood from her seat.

“Why wouldn’t it?”

“What else is compatible with us other than our bodies? Our households? Parents? Assets? Our social standings are completely different.”

Yeonwoo picked up her jacket and bag that had been left unattended.

“We meet each other every other day, and you’re telling me to marry someone else?” Seokheon asked, taking the bag in her hand.

“You have to do it with someone else! Of course with someone else!”

Yeonwoo reached out to take the bag back, but Seokheon, 188cm tall, held the bag above his head and looked down at her.

“Seo Yeonwoo, do you know what you’re talking about right now?” His gaze turned as cold as ice.

“Yes, I do. Please return the bag.”

If she had been just an orphan, it would have been worth attaching herself to Seokheon, and she could use him to climb higher in society.

She could handle people’s criticisms, pointing fingers, family opposition, and the like in exchange for a comfortable life and money guaranteed for the rest of her life.

However, she and Seokheon weren’t just f*ck buddies, so that couldn’t be the case.

“Seo Yeonwoo, are you telling me to live like my father?”

His father was a person who had an arranged marriage yet kept a mistress on the side.

“I can’t marry you because I’ve seen the kind of life you’ve lived until now.”

Yeonwoo had lived in the house of her guardian, Seokheon’s grandfather, and had seen how much Seokheon despised his father and his father’s second wife.

Seokheon’s grandfather hoped that Yeonwoo and Seokheon would live by relying on each other like brother and sister.

That’s why it couldn’t be. Even if they weren’t related by blood, they were raised as if they were.

“Grandfather told Oppa[2] to treat me like a little sister.”

“F*ck, then I must be an *sshole who sleeps with his sister?”

“Please calm down and think rationally. We can’t get married.”

Seokheon seemed to have no intention of returning the bag, so Yeonwoo turned around, leaving him behind. Since her phone was in her jacket, she could pay the taxi fare using that.

Seokheon followed her towards the door, threw Yeonwoo’s bag on the floor, and hugged her tightly.

“It’s been two years since you and I started sleeping with each other. It means more than 300 days we’ve f*cked when we see each other every other day. I’ve made you c*m more than a thousand times. Can you meet another guy with that body?”

“I still regret having s*x with Oppa. If I could turn back time, I would want to go back to the days when Oppa despised and ignored me. I’d rather you despise me just like you did before. I shouldn’t have tried to look good even though you’ve been nothing but hateful!”

Seokheon’s arms, holding her waist, tightened at Yeonwoo’s harsh words.

“What are you saying now?”

“Do you know why I always made sure to call you Director Lee as soon as I moved out of that house and joined the company? Those days when we lived as siblings were so suffocating! I wanted us to be strangers!”

Seokhoen’s heart was on the verge of breaking, like a lamp sitting precariously on edge as the wind blew past it.

“Yeonwoo,” he hurriedly turned her around. “Seo Yeonwoo. Why are you like this? What’s going on?”

Was this woman in front of him right now the real Seo Yeonwoo? Was this the same good Seo Yeonwoo he knew, the one he believed was his?

Seokheon cradled Yeonwoo’s face with a large hand.

“It was wrong from the start. Becoming s*x partners was ridiculous enough. You and I aren’t getting married.”

Seokheon gripped her wrist tightly, Yeonwoo’s arm turning white. But if he let go of her, he felt as if she would disappear forever, so he couldn’t let go.

“Will you let go of me?”

“No.”

“I told you to let me go.”

“Let go? No, I can’t let you go.”

He led her back to the living room table and opened the ring box, still holding onto her wrist.

If he had his way, he wanted to have a one-of-a-kind ring set with at least 3-carat diamonds.

However, Yeonwoo hated Seokheon expressing his feelings in front of others. So, he had no choice but to buy ready-made rings to fit her as much as possible.

He was going to propose to her and wait until she was ready. He prepared the ring to imprint his heart on her, not drive her away.

“Put that ring back.” Yeonwoo’s coldness fueled his sadistic character. “Even if I die, I won’t wear that ring.”

Seokheon’s hand trembled as he held the ring box. In front of Yeonwoo’s feelings, whom he thought was his, his composure was brutally shattered.

“Take it. This ring is yours.”

He grabbed Yeonwoo’s wrist with one hand and struggled to remove the ring from the box with the other.

“What are you doing now?”

“It can’t be anyone else but you.”

That was his sincere feelings.

[1] LOA – Letter of Award

[2] She calls him 오빠 (Oppa), a term used by women to call an older brother or a male friend older than them; it can also be a term of endearment for their love