Chapter 71
[……Do you have something going on?]
It was a voice filled with suspicion.
[What do you mean what?]
[With your skills, there’s no way you could have made a boyfriend or anything. Did you make another partner because I’ve been too absent? No, that can’t be. Since debut, I’ve been your only partner.]
The tight tension in Yoon Juho’s voice released. This time it was a tone of certainty. Beyond certainty, I could even feel some confidence.
Could it be that Yoon Juho had been misunderstanding all this time why I didn’t seek other partners besides him? That it was because I had feelings for him?
It felt like the slight buzz I’d barely gotten was completely fading. I pressed my forehead around my eyebrows and sighed.
[Does the reason matter? We’re not in a relationship where I need to explain such things. Just know that there won’t be anything between you and me from now on, and accept it.]
Silence continued for a while. The words that came from Yoon Juho’s mouth at the end of that silence were completely different from what I expected.
[……I’ll see you at the script reading.]
With that, the call was unilaterally disconnected. His Royal Highness’s phone etiquette remained the same. And it wasn’t just his phone etiquette either.
“What are you doing? Why are you ending it? What did Yoon Juho do wrong?”
While I clicked my tongue looking down at the disconnected phone, Taeyoon came to Yoon Juho’s defense.
“I was going to tell you to really try hard with him since you’re working together again this time.”
As if Yoon Juho might reappear from inside if he looked closely enough, Taeyoon who had snatched the phone from me clicked his tongue and peered at the screen.
“You’re being fooled by Yoon Juho’s looks. Since you were just occasional sleeping partners, you’ve come this far, but you couldn’t handle him as a romantic partner.”
I shook my head while picking up a piece of transparent sea bream. Meanwhile, Taeyoon refilled my empty glass.
“He’s lived as a top star since he was young. So you have to understand that his mindset is somewhat different from ordinary people. His feelings for you are genuine, you know? In his own way, you’re special to him.”
“How do you know? You’ve never even met him.”
We clinked our newly filled glasses and emptied them simultaneously. The sea bream lightly dipped in soy sauce was savory and chewy.
“Do you have to meet someone to know them? I’ve been hearing about him from you for years. And you don’t know well because you were in Italy the whole time, but I’ve been watching him since he appeared in historical dramas at age four saying ‘Father Emperor, please restore Mother Empress!’ It’s not something just anyone can do – maintaining a top star position for 25 years without a single scandal.”
While pouring soju into his own glass that he’d just emptied, Taeyoon continued.
“Either he’s someone whose background is actually clean enough that no dust would fly even if you shook him out, or he’s someone who thoroughly cleans up his dirty tracks so he doesn’t leave a single footprint. Either way, I think we have to acknowledge that thorough self-management.”
I agree with that point. I’m not trying to deny Yoon Juho’s advantages as an actor. Not only did he have stable acting skills, but despite his solid top star position, he was respectful to seniors and never demanded unreasonable treatment from production teams.
But that didn’t mean Yoon Juho was a humanly warm person.
Yoon Juho was completely accustomed to situations where people around him moved according to his wishes. He didn’t know how to naturally empathize by finding commonalities and differences with others in their stories, or how to fill and complement each other’s gaps.
To Yoon Juho, others were relative beings divided into objects of his desire and those who weren’t.
I was one of the objects of desire, and Yoon Juho simply wanted me to move according to his expectations. When we were just sex partners, that was still okay. But he wasn’t someone to expect more than that from.
“Dating is ultimately about how you care for the other person, and that has to match each other. Someone who enjoys expressing their feelings of liking someone and someone who thinks that’s making a fuss can’t last long no matter how much they’re attracted to each other. Let’s say Yoon Juho considers me special ‘in his own way’ as you put it. Even so, he and I fundamentally don’t match in how we like people.”
“How does someone who’s never properly dated know so well?”
“Direct experience isn’t the only kind of experience.”
Before I knew it, only about one glass remained in the third bottle. Whether the pace was faster than usual or because it was daytime drinking, my body warmed up pleasantly. Only then did drowsiness wash over me.
Against my profile resting my chin on the table, Taeyoon continued his discourse on how ‘special’ I was to Yoon Juho in my own way. Sometimes I couldn’t tell if the guy was my friend or Yoon Juho’s spokesperson. When Yoon Juho himself had never even brought up anything about dating me.
“Whether male or female, there must be plenty of people around who’d want to sleep with Yoon Juho at least once out of curiosity. But for such a Yoon Juho to stay with one partner for 4 years is already special, you know? What kind of fuck buddy relationship lasts 4 years? If a fuck buddy relationship lasts 4 years, it should be recognized as common-law marriage.”
I knew it wasn’t meant to be funny, but I burst into hollow laughter at Taeyoon’s ridiculous logic. Fuck buddies becoming common-law marriage… there’s a limit to how far you can stretch logic.
I looked back at Taeyoon while putting strength into my eyelids that were about to droop. Seeing me with my cheek pushed up by the hand supporting my chin, making a funny face, Taeyoon was delighted, saying ‘this bastard is drunk.’
I now had an official boyfriend. He was no longer a partner just for sex. So there was no reason I shouldn’t tell Taeyoon. I hadn’t planned to report this so quickly, but it seemed a confession was necessary to make Yoon Juho give up.
Since it was Taeyoon, my mouth didn’t open easily. A barrage of questions would definitely pour out, and I could clearly picture him mischievously teasing me while watching my reactions as I struggled with such conversations.
To steel my resolve, I downed another glass of soju and rolled the empty glass in my hands as I started.
“You asked me before if I was dating, right?”
“……”
Taeyoon, who had been shaking an empty bottle, stopped and looked at me.
“What kind of guy is it?”
That was Taeyoon’s first response.
“Someone you don’t know.”
“Not an actor? Then what, a cameraman? Magazine editor? Designer?”
Taeyoon listed the occupations of people who had directly or indirectly shown interest in me. Though he looked fine on the outside, he too wasn’t free from the effects of three bottles of soju split between two people. His eyes looking at me had an unusual gleam.
I needed more alcohol. This time I got up to bring a new bottle.
“Someone unrelated to the entertainment industry.”
“Ah… that… Actor Jung over there, what an act. Pretending to have not even a speck of interest in romance, what’s this about?”
From behind me as I headed to the refrigerator, Taeyoon shouted loudly with a voice full of mischief, as expected.
Even after taking out new alcohol, I stood in front of the refrigerator for a moment. I leaned my forehead against the glass door of the commercial liquor refrigerator that transparently showed its contents and sighed.
As soon as I came back from the kitchen, I had to face Taeyoon who was grinning widely with the face of someone who had caught something interesting. I needed to prepare myself.
As soon as I sat down, I filled a new glass and immediately emptied it. Taeyoon’s question flew right away.
“Where did you meet?”
The first place that came to mind with that question wasn’t the courtyard of the Bangkok hotel or the event hall of Knox Hotel Seoul. It was the dark-faced boy sitting on the terrace of ‘Mio Palazzo’ restaurant overflowing with sunlight. Come to think of it, I could say it was someone Taeyoon knew.
“In the past… I briefly knew him in Paeli, and we coincidentally met again in Seoul.”
“What, what? Jung Jiin. You had a past you didn’t tell me about?”
“I did tell you. The guy who front-kicked Luca in the stomach at the square fountain.”
“What? Your first man?”
Taeyoon, who had been grinning while tilting his chair back on its back legs, slammed his chair back down with a bang.
After reuniting with Taeyoon in Seoul, I had once spilled his story while very drunk. It was the only romantic topic I could talk about. Though not in great detail, Taeyoon knew the general events.
“He’s younger than you!”
“He is younger. By four years.”
“You don’t like younger guys!”
“He’s mature. Sometimes to the point where he doesn’t seem younger.”
“……Does he have money?”
Taeyoon’s face asking that was so serious for a moment that even his drunkenness didn’t show.
Since I didn’t know his specific wealth either, I simply told him about his background within what I knew.
“Team leader at twenty-seven? Isn’t he actually Knox’s son? Huh?”
Taeyoon’s face, brightening his eyes without hiding his expectations at all, was extremely honest. It felt more honest than materialistic.
“Sorry to disappoint, but that’s not the case.”
I didn’t know much detail about the management structure of Korean conglomerates and wasn’t particularly interested. I only roughly understood the owner family related to Hanseo Group, specifically Knox Hotel.
Hanseo Group, which owned Knox Hotel & Resort, was operated by the founder’s children who divided various affiliates among themselves. The group’s holding company and core enterprises were owned by the second son’s family, who was the founder’s successor.
The founder’s second son had also passed away, and he had 2 sons and 1 daughter.
I didn’t know the name of his successor and 3rd generation manager, the eldest daughter. She was completely unrelated to me, so I hadn’t paid attention. Among the two sons, the older one was Lee Seogyeong. And the younger one had a very unusual name. I only remembered that it was a very unusual name, though I forgot the name itself, but I was confident I’d recognize it immediately if I heard it. What was certain was that it was definitely not Lee Han.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
