Chapter 11

Chairman Joo had just finished bellowing Chairman Ryu into silence over his talk of being in-laws — and then he went and topped it himself.

“…Once Do-gyeong gets here, why don’t we all go out to eat?”

With that, the meal location changed from Jaedamjae to a high-end Korean restaurant.

While the attendants scrambled to call ahead to wherever the two chairmen were about to descend upon, I did my best to swallow down my awkward expression.

I’d been so sure Grandfather would be the one to stop this!

But thinking about it, Grandfather had doted on Ryu Do-gyeong like his own grandson since the boy was small. Bold even as a child, and recognized as heir to Seohae Group besides — it was enough to make anyone covet him.

With Chairman Ryu going out of his way to pair his own prized grandson with his granddaughter, Grandfather had every reason to be tempted.

So this is it — if Seohae bows its head first, he won’t say no?

Just as I was deep in thought, Grandfather tapped my arm. Then, wrinkling his nose, he said,

“Sae-i, ride over with Do-gyeong.”

“M-me?”

“It’ll be easier on you two, chatting about this and that on the way, being close in age.”

“Ha, exactly! No point dragging two old men along to make things awkward!”

The moment Grandfather opened the door, Chairman Ryu jumped straight through it.

Business rivals who tore into each other in public one moment and threw an arm around each other’s shoulders in front of me the next — it was a surprisingly fresh sight.

“…I’ll do as you say, Chairman.”

Having no choice but to agree, Grandfather, looking satisfied, finally shook Chairman Ryu off. Then he glanced sidelong at me with a strange expression.

W-what is it now.

Gone was his usual dignified face — in its place, slightly drooping eyebrows and a trembling corner of his mouth. He looked exactly like…

A puppy staring up at you, waiting to be praised?

Yes. That was precisely it.

Surely he didn’t go to all this trouble because he still thought I liked Ryu Do-gyeong?

“Ahem. Anyway, you two — ahem! — have a good talk on the way.”

…It really did seem that was it.

For some reason, he seemed to be putting extra weight on the word “you two.”

Closing my eyes and rolling them a few times behind the lids, I stepped closer to Grandfather and whispered into his ear the words he seemed to want to hear.

“…Thank you, Chairman.”

My guess must have been right, because Grandfather’s face brightened at once. After a couple more rounds of clearing his throat, he jabbed Chairman Ryu in the side.

“Let’s head out first! Us old men can talk business between ourselves.”

“Ah, right, that matter with the Sua Motors sale…”

The two chairmen set off for the restaurant ahead of everyone else, leaving me alone in Jaedamjae’s reception room.

With both chairmen already gone, there was no reason to keep watch over the reception room.

For the sake of a faster trip, I decided to wait for Ryu Do-gyeong just outside Jaedamjae’s front gate.

Maybe twenty minutes passed like that.

Ryu Do-gyeong finally arrived and got out of the car. He looked more unguarded than he had at our last meeting — he must have rushed here.

“…Where’s the Chairman?”

The moment he stepped out, he asked me, our eyes meeting at once.

I explained the whole situation to him — leaving out, of course, the two chairmen’s opinion that someone like Ryu Do-gyeong wouldn’t be a bad match for me.

“…They said the two of us should ride over separately.”

Ryu Do-gyeong let out a sigh, his expression troubled for a moment, before he finally opened the door of the car he’d arrived in.

He didn’t get in himself — just stood there, staring straight at me. Looking faintly puzzled, he spoke up.

“What are you doing.”

“Excuse me?”

“Get in. Here.”

So he’d opened the door to let me in. I’d expected him to breeze past and get in on his own — this was unexpected.

I gave a small, grateful bow of my head and climbed in, and he took the seat beside me.

“Let’s go, please.”

After saying that to the driver, Ryu Do-gyeong fell completely silent for the rest of the ride.

He did say to talk a lot on the way, but…

I didn’t particularly have anything to say to him either, so I kept the silence with him. It felt awkward to be the one to speak first, too… Thanks to that, the inside of the car was dead quiet.

It was Ryu Do-gyeong who broke the silence. Having stolen a glance at me pretending to be asleep, he finally parted his lips, his voice heavy.

“…Joo Sae-i.”

At that cold, low tone, I felt my whole body freeze up.

I didn’t answer right away. It was a reflex drilled into me since childhood. Whenever Ryu Do-gyeong called my name in that tone, it meant one thing without exception — he was angry.

In any case, the best move here was to pretend not to have heard.

Did it work?

It was right then, with Ryu Do-gyeong saying nothing at all, that he let out a long sigh.

“…I know you’re not asleep. Stop fluttering your eyelids with your eyes half-shut.”

Caught!

My shoulders hunched up on their own. I opened my eyes just a little and checked his expression.

When we were children, he used to look at me with such a scary face — now his expression gave nothing away at all.

Unlike me, who’d grown up apart from the Joo family, it seemed that growing up as the heir had taught him how to hide his feelings.

“Open your eyes, then answer.”

“…Yes.”

“You’ve been talking like that — all this stiff, formal talk that doesn’t even suit you, ever since last time—”

He trailed off mid-sentence, then spoke again before I had a chance to answer.

“Forget it. Let me ask you one thing.”

He paused for a moment, as if about to ask something terribly significant. Because of that pause, he probably even heard the sound of me swallowing hard.

Looking troubled, he roughly raked a hand through his hair before his lips finally moved.

“If there’s something I did wrong to you, tell me. Right now.”

“What do you even mean—”

Was this really the question?

There’s nothing you did wrong.

No matter how I thought it over, Ryu Do-gyeong hadn’t done anything wrong to me. And it wasn’t as if I was avoiding him because I disliked him.

Ryu Do-gyeong had been cold, but he’d still looked after me carefully.

He’d put up with me tagging along after him just because I thought he was handsome. And on top of that…

‘I knew you’d be crying here. Joo Sae-i, get up.’

He was the one who’d comforted me, back when I used to cry every single day after my mother’s death.

‘Crying doesn’t change anything. Not every adult is going to be kind to you.’

Ryu Do-gyeong, who’d been born before me, and who’d lost his own family before me.

‘Grandfather told me this. Water conducts electricity well, but ice doesn’t conduct at all. So you have to grow cold and hard. Joo Sae-i, you should take that to heart too.’

Yes — it was thanks to Ryu Do-gyeong that I’d been able to get back on my feet. After that, I’d chosen my own path forward, and that path had been leaving the Joo family to bow to Joo Su-deok instead.

‘Of course, that choice turned out to be a complete loss, but…’

So if I were to be honest about it, the one in the wrong was me. If vanishing without a word on someone who’d quietly stood by my side counted as wrong, then it was wrong.

‘Still, he probably didn’t think much of it.’

Ryu Do-gyeong would have gone on living just fine even if I’d disappeared. In fact, in the future I’d actually lived through, he’d shown up in the news often enough, flaunting how well he was doing.

So there was no need for me to think much of him either.

Shaking off the stray thoughts, I looked at Ryu Do-gyeong. His eyes were waiting for my answer.

“No, there’s nothing like that.”

“Then.”

“To begin with, we were never close enough to wrong each other in the first place.”

Not getting too entangled with Ryu Do-gyeong, the man Joo Su-deok was so desperate to make his son-in-law.

That was the choice available to me, someone clawing her way through survival now in order to plot revenge.

The moment the words left my mouth, I dropped my head low. Ryu Do-gyeong gave no answer for a long while. Just as I was about to lift my head again to check his expression—

“…You’re keeping your distance. From me.”

His face was hurt, and his voice came out hollow as he answered.

That look on Ryu Do-gyeong’s face was something I’d never once seen before, not across either my past life or this one.

The meal was lavish. Glistening Korean dishes came out one after another, course after course.

But the forlorn look on Ryu Do-gyeong’s face back in the car kept surfacing in my mind over and over. I couldn’t even tell how I managed to swallow the food.

Sipping on the plum tea that came out to cleanse the palate, Grandfather spoke to Ryu Do-gyeong.

“Su-deok seems to be fond of you, and so does Su-yeon, from what I hear.”

Instead of answering, Ryu Do-gyeong looked at me. When I averted my eyes, he gave a shallow, almost mocking laugh.

“Who knows. I have to look after my own grandfather. I’m not even at the age to be discussing marriage yet, and I have no interest in it.”

To me, that was an incredibly welcome answer.

Now that Ryu Do-gyeong had put it so properly and made clear he had no interest in women, Grandfather surely wouldn’t push himself for my sake anymore.

“Is that so?”

Grandfather shrugged at Chairman Ryu.

“What do you make of that, Chairman Ryu? You were so eager to get your hands on our Sae-i, and here your own grandson says he has no interest in marriage at all?”

The instant he heard that, something flickered in Ryu Do-gyeong’s eyes. Looking startled, his eyes going wide, he spoke up hastily.

“…I’d consider it an honor to look after Chairman Joo as well.”

Why the sudden about-face…!

The tips of Ryu Do-gyeong’s ears had gone red, and he dropped his head low.

Wait, didn’t you just say you had no interest in meeting anyone!

I had no idea what he was so embarrassed about.

I quickly turned my head to check the two chairmen’s expressions.

Ah…

Like viewers thoroughly absorbed in a romance drama, the two of them were grinning with pleasure, dignity be damned.

A sudden instinct struck me. The instinct that there would be more occasions like this one, more than once.

A cold sweat broke out all down my back.