The exhibition scheduled to open in a building in central Manhattan was primarily meant to display and unveil the collection of some wealthy collector. Apparently there were plans to sell pieces as well, though only the comparatively less valuable items had been classified as merchandise. In other words, it was shaping up to be an event where a collector incapable of letting go of his greed would indulge in showing off.
I tucked my tablet against my side and walked around the exhibition hall. The unfinished space was chaotic, but the overall concept had mostly taken shape.
While smoothly discussing the lighting installation, the exhibition manager, Connelly, brought unpleasant news.
“The client requested that this accessory be displayed somewhere prominent.”
“Ah, that thing. Honestly…”
“Tacky, right? We’re all thinking the same thing, so feel free to say it. Seriously, what are we supposed to do with this?”
Just as troubled as she was, I massaged my aching head while examining the wall to the left. I’d been planning to shove the damn thing somewhere out of sight if possible, but clearly that plan was ruined.
The collection was already overwhelmingly flashy to begin with, and each piece had such a strong individual character that making them feel cohesive as a single exhibition was the real challenge. And now I’d been saddled with an additional problem I definitely hadn’t wanted.
Suppressing a groan, I looked around trying to figure out where to put the troublesome item when my gaze suddenly drifted outside the glass windows.
That bastard and I had reunited out there.
The harmful memory resurfaced, and I bit my lip, frowning deeply. It was as if the replay button in my head had broken and pressed itself on its own.
It had been around three weeks ago that Eden Reed came crashing back into my life.
At the time, I’d been in a good mood after landing the exhibition planning job, and I’d been excited at the thought of amplifying my heated spirits with some hot sex.
I had just finished signing the contract and was leaving the exhibition hall when an unfamiliar figure blocked my path. The man had appeared soundlessly, and even from behind his proportions were absurdly perfect. Long, elegant limbs. Straight posture. A suit jacket draped over broad shoulders.
I slowly looked him up and down and thought to myself:
I want this guy tonight.
Maybe I should try talking to him first. If it doesn’t work out, whatever. If this is fate, I’ve got nothing to lose.
And not long after, I realized how wrong I’d been.
The moment the man slowly turned around and looked at me—the moment my gaze met those emerald-green eyes through the lenses of his black horn-rimmed glasses—I genuinely thought I was hallucinating.
“…Eden?”
I regretted saying his name immediately. My brain had short-circuited from the shock, and failing to ignore him had been a fatal mistake. Eden Reed was devastatingly handsome; if he stole your attention even for a moment, you were trapped.
The man standing before me caused an earthquake in my memories. The foundation I’d spent years stabilizing shook and cracked apart, and the neat, carefully buried man hidden in the deepest, darkest corner burst back out after brushing off the dust.
The colors that made up the man were clear and bright. It was cliché, but his skin was pale enough to look almost white, while his light blond hair carried the freshness of flowers blooming in summer. The emerald eyes that completed his beautiful face possessed a bewitching quality that stirred the imagination.
At first glance, he resembled a prince from a fairy tale or a sparkling-winged fairy. But if you held his gaze for too long, you might start suspecting him to be the incarnation of a vampire sustaining his youth and life by seducing humans and drinking their blood.
The fact that he wasn’t a vampire was only proven years later.
Because Eden Reed now stood before me carrying the fully ripened maturity of perfectly aged fruit.
My eyes drifted uncertainly between the man in my memories and the man before me now. The slightly youthful version from the past had faded into something obsolete, while the present one was real, yet somehow still didn’t feel real to me.
Honestly, if he’d stayed exactly the same, I could’ve dismissed him as a hallucination and walked away.
The changes weren’t dramatic, but they were unmistakable. Eden Reed’s beautiful eyes and hair hadn’t lost their distinctive color during the years of separation between us, but the atmosphere in his eyes and even the length of his hair had changed.
At some point, his eyesight must have worsened too, because black horn-rimmed glasses now rested on his high nose bridge, giving him an intellectual air. He no longer needed to carry books tucked under his arm to look smart. On top of that, the suit he wore suited him perfectly, making him look like a polished office worker.
He looked so natural that he could’ve pulled a business card out of his jacket and handed it to me at any moment without seeming out of place.
That was, if he and I had been complete strangers.
Unfortunately, we weren’t. We’d met before. I knew him, and he knew me too.
“It’s been a while, Somerset.”
The voice flowing into my ears was slightly lower and deeper than I remembered, and only then did I barely regain my senses. I admired my own patience for not punching Eden while he casually greeted me like that.
Yeah, it had been a while. Quite a lot of time had passed since you disappeared without a trace. You vanished one day like smoke, and now you show up out of nowhere as if you dropped from the sky and dare to greet me? Fucking insane.
My teeth ground together in fury.
Despite throwing me into horrific confusion, Eden remained shamelessly calm.
“You haven’t had dinner yet, right?”
“And if I haven’t, what? You want to eat with me? Why the hell would I do that? I’m busy. I have plans.”
I was so dumbfounded that my mouth escaped the management of my brain and started talking on its own. Realizing it too late, I clamped my lips shut and instinctively put up my defenses, causing Eden’s mouth to curve into a long smile.
“You don’t have plans.”
Fucking stalker. Creepy bastard digging around in people’s lives behind their backs. I should’ve asked how he knew that.
Eden simply looked at me without the slightest trace of agitation. His unwavering gaze irritated me immensely.
It was ridiculous.
Until he apologized properly and earned my forgiveness, he had no right acting so shamelessly innocent. Eden Reed and I were not people who could exchange cheerful greetings, and the person responsible for ruining things that badly was none other than him.
Didn’t he realize how humiliating it was that I still remembered him? That I hadn’t managed to erase my memories of him? Did he truly not understand the humiliation and degradation I felt because of that?
“I’d rather starve to death than sit across a table from you and have a cozy meal.”
Unable to suppress the irritation raging inside me, I snapped at him.
If he’d at least looked hurt by my words, maybe I would’ve agreed to dinner just once.
But Eden merely shrugged.
Son of a bitch.
I brushed past him and headed toward my parked car. Leaving first had been my own way of putting a period at the end of it.
“Quinn. Is there something outside?”
Connelly’s question pulled me back to reality. I brushed it off as nothing while once more glancing beyond the glass windows.
Across the street sat a sleek black sedan.
It was the same car that had been tailing me nonstop for nearly three weeks now, which meant Eden Reed was probably inside.
No matter how I thought about it, the entire situation was far beyond the realm of comprehension. He’d vanished like a champion hide-and-seek player, impossible to track down no matter how hard I searched. And now, not only had he suddenly reappeared, but he was following me everywhere.
What the hell was happening to me?
“Ah…”
In the end, I let out a groan and rubbed at my furrowed brow. I hoped his tires would burst.
While silently cursing him, I said coldly:
“There are a lot of crazy people in the world. Even people who look perfectly normal can be insane, so you really have to pay attention.”
Unable to grasp any context from my advice, Connelly tilted her head while glancing around at the others nearby.
“You’re not confessing that you’re one of those people, are you, Quinn?”
“Of course not. But even if I were, it’s not like I’d honestly admit it, so you still shouldn’t let your guard down.”
I pictured Eden’s beautiful face.
He didn’t look like the type to pitifully stalk someone around. If anything, he looked more suited to playing the role of some divine being punishing creepy, malicious bastards like that.
“An angel…”
“Hm?”
“Did I say something?”
“You said ‘angel.’”
“No way. I couldn’t have.”
There was no way I’d compared Eden Reed to an angel. Even subconsciously, that was absurd.
“Anyway, Quinn’s advice does make sense. You can’t let your guard down these days. Especially in a city as inhuman as New York.”
The bitter truth in Connelly’s words drew wry smiles from the others. Dixon’s expression—he’d recently been talking about apartment hunting—was especially dramatic.
In a city where people would practically slit your throat in your sleep for profit, you could never afford to relax. Repeating to myself like a life lesson that there were no trustworthy people in the world but plenty of lunatics, I started walking again.
After touring the exhibition hall, we wrapped up the schedule with a brief meeting. When they invited me out for dinner afterward, I promised another time and slipped my tablet into my bag.
Dixon glanced sideways at the bag and whistled.
“That’s definitely authentic, right? Do models get discounts or something? Or do they pay you in handbags?”
“Well, depends on the situation and the person, but I bought this one with my own money.”
I wasn’t bragging about how capable I was—that was simply the truth.
The designer of the brand had shown interest in me from the moment preparations for the show began, so if I’d asked, he probably would’ve happily given me a bag for free. But I hadn’t even brought it up because I was worried he’d use it as an excuse to hit on me.
I’d even bought it under my manager’s name to avoid him trying to get personally close to me.
I’m the sort of person whose views on sex are loose enough that I consider it the most straightforward and convenient form of communication, but I’m actually fairly picky about sexual partners.
I have two conditions.
First, naturally, they have to be physically attractive to me.
Second, any relationship born from sex must never develop beyond friendship.
In other words, if someone failed to meet my aesthetic standards or wanted something emotionally serious, they were out.
Getting tied down by emotions only led to betrayal. Experiences like that were better off never happening at all.
One of the teachers at the private school I attended once said this:
“Scars become the foundation for growth, so don’t fear failure. It’s okay to fall. It’s okay to break after colliding with something. It simply means you’ve gained the driving force to move forward.”
At the time, it had sounded convincing enough. But looking back now, I absolutely refuse to accept his teachings.
Foundation for growth, my ass.
He clearly didn’t even understand what “driving force” meant.
A wound is just a wound.
Painful. Infuriating. Bitterly cold.
“I’ll head out first. See you next time.”
Shaking off my thoughts, I left the exhibition hall. As I pulled out my car keys and turned around, the window of the car parked across the street lowered slightly, almost as if it had been waiting for me.
It was absurd. It practically looked like he wanted me to acknowledge his presence.
What kind of stalker acts like that? He wasn’t even pretending to follow me secretly.
Stalker
[You’re going home, right?]
He even messaged me.
I coldly ignored it and kept walking, and Eden’s car slowly followed after me.
“What are you having for dinner?”
The voice drifting through the cracked window was so excessively sweet that it irritated me all over again.
Aren’t stalkers usually creepy, disgusting guys?
The kind whose voices sound metallic, with dark circles under their eyes, greasy skin, and lips so chapped they bite them until they bleed—people disgusting enough that merely standing near them makes your skin crawl.
But by unfortunate coincidence, Eden Reed completely defied that image. He was the sort of man you couldn’t believe would ever do something like this.
“Somerset.”
“……”
“Dinner menu.”
“I’m not eating with you, so why do you need to know?”
Reluctantly, I finally stopped and looked at Eden. He pulled the car over to the curb and stepped out.
When I’d seen him outside my apartment this morning, he’d been wearing a lightweight black jacket, but now he had on a dark gray jumper. It looked slightly oversized, like it belonged to someone else, yet annoyingly, it still suited him perfectly.
