Chapter 94
I hesitated for a moment, fiddling with the glass in my hand.
As if asking what I was doing instead of getting up quickly, the man gestured at me. His face, wearing a somewhat fishy smile, seemed confident that I wouldn’t refuse this proposal.
When I swirled the glass once, the ice clinked inside my hand making a clear sound.
Yoon Juho’s hand, standing to my left, settled on my shoulder with spine-chillingly affectionate gentleness.
“Let’s go. You wouldn’t want to be alone here with me either. Hmm?”
Looking up, he had slightly raised his eyes with a smiling face.
Isn’t there an option for you to leave this place and let me be alone?
After swirling the glass once more, I poured all the barely diluted alcohol into my mouth. I got up from the stool with a whatever-happens-happens mentality.
He was the man who had been following him like a shadow. There was a high probability that he would be where this man was leading us.
While moving, I wondered several times whether I should just run away. Because it seemed like he would think I was shameless for coming to a place where I could fully expect him to be…
But contrary to expectations, he was nowhere to be seen in the private room. Whether I was disappointed or relieved by that fact—I couldn’t tell this time either.
“Please sit.”
I took the seat with my back to the entrance as the man suggested. The sofa was wide and excessively soft, making it impossible not to relax my posture. In fact, most people sitting around the table were enjoying their drinks in almost half-lying positions. Not wanting to become disheveled, I sat with my bottom on the edge of the seat and my back straight.
A few people acknowledged Yoon Juho, but he didn’t go to their side and instead pressed himself down in the seat next to me.
Most of the people gathered in the room appeared to be of similar age in their late twenties. They looked more maturely dressed than typical late-twenties people. Even without seeing a single luxury brand logo, a certain level of wealth emanated richly from them.
Only one man sitting close to a woman looked young, like he was in his early twenties. Looking closely, he seemed to be a member of some idol group.
“What would you like to drink? On the rocks?”
“Yes.”
At my answer, the man picked up a decanter from the table and poured me an on-the-rocks. Yoon Juho poured whiskey directly from the bottle without adding ice. We each began drinking without any toast.
His associate, sitting in a seat around the corner from me, only pretended to put his lips to his glass and glanced this way.
“I couldn’t acknowledge you upstairs earlier, but you remember me, right?”
I felt Yoon Juho’s gaze looking at me with confusion from the left. He was probably suspicious about what connection there might be between Knox Hotel team leader’s closest associate and me.
Before I could answer anything, someone from inside asked with interest.
“Huh? Yujun-ssi, were you acquainted with actor Jung Jiin?”
“No. Not me, but Han knows him. Ah… should I say he knew him.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? Sounds mysteriously meaningful.”
People giggled with alcohol-laden voices. Most seemed privately close to each other. It wasn’t an atmosphere mixed with business purposes.
The man’s eyes alternately looked at me and Yoon Juho.
“Come to think of it… you two are appearing in the same project this time?”
“Yes, that’s how it turned out.”
“Appearing in two consecutive projects together. How fateful. That’s what you call destiny, right?”
It was clear from any angle that the man wasn’t friendly toward me. Not only was the smile that stayed on his face the entire time cynical, but his eyes were full of hostility close to contempt.
It wasn’t that I couldn’t guess why this man, his closest associate, was being so sharp with me. Even if I hadn’t heard the details, he probably knew the general situation that we had broken up. But that was ultimately a matter between him and me.
“You must be busy enough with just hotel work. Despite appearances, you seem quite interested in entertainment industry gossip.”
Hearing my response, the man lowered his head and laughed. Though he hunched his shoulders as if crumpling his large frame, tension flowed through his body like a beast ready to attack at any moment.
“I’m in the PR team. Events like this… or we can’t use people who might be problematic for advertisements. I always check important issues. Stories about celebrities’ behind-the-scenes… affairs…”
The man’s words trailed off. His face looked up toward my left, toward the entrance. I unconsciously shifted my gaze following his.
“……”
With disheveled steps, he—Hancheoeum—was just entering the private room.
His appearance was much more disheveled than when he was at the upstairs event venue, with no trace of public composure. He wasn’t wearing his jacket, having left it somewhere, and a couple buttons of his shirt were undone. His tie knot had loosened accordingly.
Having taken off his glasses and holding them in one hand, he roughly tousled his hair with the other. And before he could even take two steps, he stopped as if he had stumbled on something.
“……”
His face, looking down at me with narrowed brows, looked like he had seen a ghost. He didn’t hide his confusion.
Yoon Juho’s gaze was alternately taking in me and him, but I didn’t have the luxury to worry about that.
“You came? I thought you’d gotten angry and gone straight home. Sit down.”
The man spoke to him in his characteristically cheerful tone. Then he looked at me and finished the earlier conversation.
“Stories about celebrities doing what foolish things where… well, those kinds of stories reach your ears even when you don’t want to hear them.”
It was as if he knew all about where I was going around doing foolish things. The man’s attitude of being presumptuous as if he could see right through people was more uncomfortable than Team Leader 1’s easily understood arrogance from earlier.
“You’re quite brazenly talking about digging into and sharing entertainment industry workers’ private lives.”
At my words, the man chuckled again.
“It’s not that I dig out of personal curiosity, but because of work I have no choice. It’s not work I particularly enjoy either. Dramas can involve tens of millions of won per episode, advertisements can involve hundreds of millions… from an employer’s perspective, you need to know at least whether they’re managing themselves to meet the value of that money before you can confidently assign work.”
Even with imprecise pronunciation, the man’s Korean skills were excellent. The man, who spoke fluently with an annoyingly smirking face, smoothly swallowed the alcohol he had only been holding.
Every time he swallowed, the scar where a tattoo had been removed writhed above his left nape, visible over his shirt collar.
“Ah, come to think of it, I heard the competition was fierce until the end for the role Jung Jiin-ssi took. I heard you landed the part. Congratulations.”
“……”
I didn’t feel like returning thanks.
“I hope the drama does well.”
The man raised his glass to me and Yoon Juho as if proposing a toast. But neither of us responded to that toast. The man stretched out his arm himself and clinked his glass against ours in order.
He, sitting across from the man, was buried deep in the backrest and silently drinking. He wasn’t looking this way, but he wasn’t blocking his ears either.
The woman next to him picked up the glasses he had placed on the table and tried them on. Then she asked the man sitting to her left whether they suited her.
They all seemed to be privately somewhat close friends. Probably children from similar families, or friends who attended famous private elementary and middle schools together before he went abroad to study.
“Let me try them too. Horn-rimmed glasses really suit me. Give them here.”
A woman sitting with the man who appeared to be an idol member, from a more distant seat, stretched her arm long to receive the glasses. The man beside her grabbed her arm and shook it, complaining in a sulky voice.
“Ah, noona, why are you trying on another man’s glasses?”
“What, are you jealous? These are glasses. It’s not like I’m going to sleep with him.”
“Still… don’t wear them.”
“Geez, our baby is too jealous.”
Pretending to give in, the woman returned the glasses across the table.
The man was showing possessiveness toward the woman like ordinary lovers. But strangely, they only looked like a spoiled pet dog and its owner who found it cute and indulged it.
If my guess was correct, she already had an abnormal, sponsored lover in her late twenties.
The woman who got the glasses back tried them on once more and looked at herself in her phone. Then she asked him, sitting to her right, whether they suited her too.
When he waved his arm dismissively as if annoyed, the man to her left pulled the woman’s arm.
“That bastard’s wasted. Just leave him alone.”
Yujun, who had been watching the commotion for a moment, looked at me again. And he frowned while pointing at my lips.
“That on your lips. It must hurt.”
“It stings a little but it’s nothing serious.”
“Yoon Juho-ssi was applying something to your lips earlier. Wow… that was amazing. People liked it so much I thought it was some kind of performance.”
“Yujun, stop it.”
It was his voice.
Though it was tightly locked with alcohol, his tone was firm, close to a command.
In any case, I thought he wouldn’t interfere in what was happening on this side. That he couldn’t casually speak to me, but also couldn’t leave his seat. Like me.
My chest tightened as if that command to stop was being directly given to me.
But of course, it was an attempt to stop the man’s provocation to protect me.
Buried in the sofa with his glass-holding hand drooping on his knee, he was looking down at the edge of the table. The clear rise and fall of his broad chest, breathing slowly and deeply, was evident.
“What, I can’t even show concern?”
“No.”
He looked up briefly to answer the man’s sarcasm.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
