Chapter 114
As soon as he finished speaking, our lips overlapped again. His hand gripping my neck gently stroked along the jawline with his thumb. My eyelids closed at the drowsy sensation and a sweet sigh escaped.
“Ah… hng…”
Because he passionately pushed deeper between my parted lips, I had to tilt my head back as far as possible.
I only learned after reuniting with him that when he caressed the tender flesh inside my cheek, the space between my legs would tingle and grow heavy. I didn’t know I’d discover a new erogenous zone after turning thirty.
“Mm… hmm.”
The prolonged kiss left me short of oxygen. It wasn’t that I was trying to act innocent. I didn’t know that after turning thirty, I’d feel suffocated from being unable to control my breathing during a kiss.
I gripped his chest tightly and gently pushed him away. He hesitated reluctantly but slowly withdrew his tongue from my mouth.
“Hah, hah…”
Swallowing the sticky saliva from both of us that had pooled in my mouth, I wiped the corners of my mouth with the back of my hand. He was still in the same position, looking closely at my face. As soon as I moved my hand away, his approaching lips pressed down on my upper lip once more.
“I’m not cool when I act like this, am I?”
It was an uncertain voice and a dejected expression. I gently stroked his arm and shook my head.
“If someone like Yoon Juho had been next to you… I probably would have… shown an even uglier side.”
“……”
As if he had heard something completely unexpected, his widened eyes fixed on me. As if he could feel jealous because of me, but the reverse situation was unimaginable.
Whenever I discovered this aspect of him lacking confidence in our relationship, an aching pain would surge from around my chest toward the center.
I cupped his cheek with the hand that had been touching his arm. Gently caressing with my thumb the cheek that drew thicker, sharper, and stronger lines than when he was twenty, I added.
“So don’t think it’s because you’re lacking.”
If I was going to come back like this anyway, I shouldn’t have pushed him away. We both knew that that one rejection had made him more anxious and weaker in the face of jealousy. We just weren’t saying it out loud.
His hand flowed from my neck to my shoulder, then down my arm. He overlapped his right hand on my left hand and lightly intertwined our fingers. His face as he leaned his head against the headrest and looked at me seemed more comfortable than before.
The motion of bending and straightening the fingers intertwined between mine was ticklish.
“I know Yoon Juho is the only one getting worked up over hyung. But I still get angry. When hyung is with me, it’s better… but seeing you two together…”
“……”
“I really couldn’t control myself for a moment.”
As if his own impulsive behavior had been unexpected even to him, he dropped his anxious gaze to our hands.
I gripped his fingers tightly with force.
“He’s not getting worked up over me. He’s just… not used to situations where the other person says let’s end it first, so he’s being stubborn like a child.”
His gaze returned to my face.
“He’s lived continuously in a world where having all decision-making power is naturally accepted. The very fact that someone would reject him first and turn away probably doesn’t sit well with him.”
This time he frowned with displeasure. He lifted his head from the headrest and turned his body more toward me.
“I really hate that you understand that bastard like that too?”
Since I didn’t expect him to react this way, light laughter burst out unconsciously.
“Why are you laughing? I’m really angry at hyung right now. This is separate from Yoon Juho chasing after hyung. Why are you understanding another man in front of me?”
“Sorry. That wasn’t my intention… What I wanted to say was…”
I barely suppressed my laughter with a cough and looked at him. I changed the direction of the hand he was covering and interlaced our palms together.
“Whatever Yoon Juho’s feelings are, that’s Yoon Juho’s personal problem. I have absolutely no intention of making it a problem between Yoon Juho and me. I promise… I will never create a situation where you would seriously feel jealous or angry.”
I could see his eyes gently settling. But he didn’t seem completely reassured. Since Yoon Juho had stirred things up so much… it wasn’t a problem that would end just with me having no interest in him.
He leaned against the center console with his elbow and leaned his body this way. After a brief kiss, he rubbed our noses together and whispered.
“Don’t be alone with him.”
“Okay.”
“Never again… don’t let him kiss you.”
“……”
I was a little surprised since he had never asked about or pressed me regarding the cause of the wound that had remained on my lips. But he seemed certain it was because of Yoon Juho.
While a quick answer didn’t readily come from my slightly flustered mouth, he didn’t seem to have any intention of holding me accountable from the beginning.
He pulled up our clasped hands and kissed the back of my hand, then glanced at the car’s clock.
“At this rate we’ll really arrive at dawn. Shall we depart?”
As if conscious of the commotion that had occurred before leaving Seoul, we deliberately chose only light topics to discuss as we moved south. After driving for about an hour like that, we stopped our car at a rest stop on the West Coast Highway.
Since the parking lot was quite empty and there seemed to be few people, we decided to get out together for a moment and get some fresh air.
Without going inside the building, we chose snacks from a store operating as takeout on the outside. Since it was late, the selection wasn’t very wide. We chose instant bread that was famous in this region. We chose a good mix of three flavors: vanilla, corn, and chocolate. They were sweet snacks that normally wouldn’t have caught my eye.
Like a couple who had just started dating, we were conscious of each other, so strongly scented foods weren’t very appealing. While being alone together in the car was sweet, it was also accompanied by tension, so we didn’t feel much hunger. It was still a time when being together brought more tension than comfort.
“I’ll buy coffee. Do you want to roughly find a seat at a table and sit?”
Looking around at the white tables lined up in front of the store, I nodded to him.
The woman who appeared to be staff or a part-timer glanced back and forth between him and me, but didn’t approach us to talk.
As I watched the back of him hurrying to buy coffee, I suddenly realized I had been smiling without knowing it. I rubbed the corners of my mouth with my hand as if erasing my expression and turned my head.
The emotion that had been defensively exposed on my face in a moment I wasn’t even conscious of felt strange and embarrassing.
It didn’t take long to put the pre-baked bread that was still warm into a paper bag. The woman kept examining my face until the end with an uncertain expression. It made sense since I hadn’t appeared much in dramas that middle-aged people would know. I thanked her, received the bag, and quickly left.
The quite numerous tables lined up in a row were all empty except for one or two. I found a seat at a table in front of a store that had already closed, on the side where there were no people.
Since it was late August and the rest stop was located at the foot of a mountain, I hardly felt any heat. When wind blew down from the direction of the mountains, my arms exposed under short sleeves felt slightly cool.
While waiting for him who had disappeared toward the franchise coffee shop, I habitually took out my phone to look at it.
Unexpectedly, several messages had arrived. About six or seven messages sent at intervals, except for one from Jaewoo, were all sent by Yoon Juho.
《Is the guy you said you liked really him? Lee Hancheoeum?》
《No way, right?》
《You’ve lost your mind.》
《You acted like being treated as a sponsored actor was terrible, but you’re going down to Haenam to offer your ass to that bastard? Isn’t sleeping with advertisers also sponsorship?》
《Being in sponsorship rumors with me, an actor, is terrible, but it’s okay if the other person is a chaebol?》
《I heard everything from your manager. Filming starts the day after tomorrow, but only you and that bastard are going down today. Hey, are you really going down to Haenam to roll around with that bastard?》
We’ve already rolled around countless times, you bastard. What are you going to do about it?
During the hour or so it took to arrive at this rest stop, Yoon Juho had continuously sent messages at 10 and 20-minute intervals. Fortunately I had it on silent, otherwise the atmosphere might have turned cold again because of this bastard.
The last message had been sent just 10 minutes ago.
《Did he catch some weakness of yours? Or do you need money? How much do you need?》
I let out a hollow laugh as I looked at the message from him who had suddenly changed the direction of his thinking, wondering what kind of novel he had written by himself.
I thought that perhaps to Yoon Juho and other people around me, the current me might appear to have suddenly changed.
Dating a chaebol. It would probably be the situation that Jung Jiin until now would have most wanted to avoid.
But if I approached it that way, the appearance of Yoon Juho acting so desperately was equally strange and unfamiliar to me, like a different person.
Are you going to quit acting and write scripts now? Please stop caring……
I stopped typing the reply up to that point and deleted all the content. The best strategy for me was to not care what he said and not react.
I turned off my phone entirely. I didn’t want our day to be interrupted any more.
Not long after I put my phone back in my pants pocket, he stood in front of the table with coffee in both hands.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
