“I reported it right away. I gave a statement since I knew who took it but… I’m sorry. It was my fault. I should’ve been more careful.”
With each word, Yeon Yiseo’s head dropped a little lower. By the time he finished speaking, he was practically bowing. He was scared of how Alexander would react.
Would he be angry? Would he be dumbfounded? One way or another, he had to face it.
A soft tapping sound broke the silence—Alexander’s fingers drumming lightly on the table.
Then came the sound of movement, followed by something being placed on the table with a faint metallic clink.
Yeon Yiseo’s eyes instinctively followed the sound—and when he saw what it was, his breath caught in his throat.
It was the bracelet. The bracelet. The exact one he’d lost.
There was no way he was mistaken. Had Alexander bought another one just like it?
…No. It was too specific. A bracelet with a pink diamond in the center wasn’t something you just happened to find again. But that made it all the more impossible—how did Alexander have it?
“That’s the same bracelet I gave you yesterday,” Alexander said, as if confirming Yeon Yiseo’s thoughts.
“…How…?”
Yeon Yiseo’s eyes, still fixed on the bracelet, shifted to Alexander’s face. His brows furrowed in disbelief. And when he finally met Alexander’s gaze, his lips parted slightly in shock.
Gone was the warm, familiar smile he always wore. In its place was an expression Yeon Yiseo had never seen before—cold and unreadable. A chill slid down his spine.
“There’s something I want to ask you, Yeon Yiseo. Will you answer me?”
In those ice-blue eyes—so much like a frozen sky—Yeon Yiseo could see his own reflection.
“What’s your relationship with Jeremy Laird?”
His heart dropped with a thud. His mind went completely blank. He hadn’t imagined—not for a second—that Alexander would say that name. How could he have possibly predicted this?
Yeon Yiseo, stunned, realized Alexander was still staring at him, waiting for a response.
“Uh… Y-yes, I know him. But how do you know Jeremy—no, more importantly, how do you… how did you get that bracelet?”
“That’s not an answer to my question.”
Alexander’s voice remained perfectly calm. But Yeon Yiseo was starting to sweat. He wasn’t even sure he was hearing things correctly anymore.
Alexander asked again, gently but firmly,
“I asked what your relationship with him is.”
Yeon Yiseo couldn’t process the question right away. What his relationship with Jeremy was? There wasn’t even a word that fit. Nothing that could be summed up in a single sentence.
One thing was clear—this wasn’t the kind of question Alexander should’ve been asking. It made no sense.
Why would he even want to know that? What did he think Yeon Yiseo and Jeremy were to each other?
He couldn’t let it slide. His mind raced with guesses and doubts.
“Your… relationship, what do you mean by that…?”
“You keep answering my question with another question.”
Yeon Yiseo fell silent.
There was an invisible wall now between them. Alexander’s voice hadn’t changed from his usual calm tone, and yet the temperature had dropped to freezing. The emotional distance between them felt impossible to close.
“Are you refusing to answer? Or do you not understand what I’m asking?”
His words were so flat—no emotion, no inflection. It was like he was talking to a stranger. Yeon Yiseo shook his head quickly, denying it.
“No, it’s not that. There’s nothing going on between me and Jeremy.”
“Oh? So you regularly send most of your salary to people you’re ‘not involved with’?”
“……”
Yeon Yiseo couldn’t speak.
This version of Alexander—so unrelenting, so cold—felt like a stranger.
And the fact that he knew something Yeon Yiseo had never told him made it all the more unsettling.
“So are you saying you did all of that out of… fondness? What exactly do you know, and how do you know it? Why are you even asking me all this?”
“I want to hear about your long-standing relationship with this Jeremy person.”
Yeon Yiseo’s brows drew together.
‘Long-standing relationship’? That wasn’t even close to what he had with Jeremy. That wasn’t the word for it.
But Alexander wouldn’t have chosen that phrase at random.
Yeon Yiseo had never told anyone about Jeremy. Not Alexander, not anyone. Which meant the only way he could’ve found out… was through deliberate investigation.
The more he thought about it, the more obvious it became—Alexander hadn’t just recovered the bracelet. He must have caught Jeremy, too.
What the hell had Jeremy said to him?
Yeon Yiseo didn’t want to be misunderstood.
Even if, after hearing everything, Alexander told him, Why would you let someone string you along like that?, even if he got frustrated with his indecisiveness—Yeon Yiseo had made up his mind.
He would lay everything bare, no matter how ugly.
“Jeremy and I… we’ve known each other since we were kids. His parents… their deaths, I was involved. At least… it looked that way. So I’ve been helping him out. Out of guilt.”
“And giving him a gift I gave you—was that part of the help, too?”
Alexander tapped the table near the bracelet.
Yeon Yiseo froze.
Had he heard that right?
Alexander had mocked him.
From Yeon Yiseo’s perspective, this was him laying it all out, shame and all. Admitting he’d been dragged around, unable to cut Jeremy off. That he’d been pathetic.
And Alexander’s response was this. Colder than anything he’d imagined.
He thought he’d prepared himself to endure whatever reaction Alexander might have. That was a lie.
And now he realized—he had been hoping Alexander would at least say, So that happened, huh? That much, he’d been clinging to.
He replayed Alexander’s words in his mind, but they just wouldn’t sit right. Even though he’d acknowledged his own feelings, the emotional whiplash was hard to handle. He didn’t want to lash out. He really didn’t. But Alexander was making that almost impossible.
“I don’t know what kind of misunderstanding you have, but that’s not it. Give it to him? Of course not. Like I said, Jeremy took it on his own.”
“And what about the flowers he brought? Or the fact that you let him into your home? Those, too?”
Yeon Yiseo’s brow tightened.
Only he and Jeremy could’ve known about the flowers. He’d never told Alexander. There was only one possible source.
If Alexander really wanted to know about their relationship, he could’ve just asked him. But he didn’t. Instead, he went behind his back, gathering information Yeon Yiseo never offered. That wasn’t something you did without a reason.
Did Alexander not trust him? Had he failed to earn that trust?
These thoughts spiraled—until something clicked.
He hadn’t even gotten a call about the investigation himself. So how had Alexander found out first?
Yeon Yiseo lifted his gaze from the floor and looked at him.
“The police were quite diligent. They contacted the store to get an exact description of the bracelet—and the store called me. So I asked them to inform me if the culprit was caught. Since they knew you and I were connected, the police agreed to let me know.”
Alexander’s explanation cleared up Yeon Yiseo’s confusion—and added something new.
“So… the reason you went out earlier today was because of this.”
“That’s right. The man—Jeremy—said you gave it to him. Just like that.”
…Jeremy.
Yeon Yiseo bit down hard on his lip.
If that bastard had been in front of him right now, he’d have punched him square in the face. He clenched his fist.
That could wait. Right now, he had to focus on fixing things with Alexander.
It wasn’t like he didn’t have reasons to feel wronged—but explaining things was still his responsibility.
He had no idea what kind of crap Jeremy had spewed to Alexander. But when he thought about what might’ve been said, it wasn’t hard to understand why Alexander was being so defensive.
If he were in Alexander’s shoes, maybe he’d feel like he’d been lied to, too.
