The Unwelcome Reunion
“What should I do? First, I should tell Se-hyun Oppa…”
Insurance money… how much will it come out?
No, stay calm. It might be Se-hyun Oppa’s car! There aren’t many people with enough money to casually lend a foreign car like this.
If the car owner is Se-hyun, this mess can somehow be cleaned up.
The problem was… if it belonged to someone else. Then the situation would get complicated. Celebrities generally have terrible tempers.
“I’ll let the president know first. That I drove off and had an accident by mistake. The insurance claim… I’m sure they won’t refuse to process it somehow?”
Yoon Chan tried to shoulder the blame instead of Yusom, even though his own excuse wasn’t great. He couldn’t make good Yoon Chan suffer anymore.
“Oppa, you absolutely cannot. I’m your cousin, after all. You’re a full-blooded man. If you get fired because of this, who’s going to graduate me?”
“Even if I do that, you’re still too young… and it’s my fault too. I shouldn’t have asked you to handle this.”
“No, I’ll say it. Don’t worry about it, Oppa. That mere bumper? Just pay it back with interest if you have to. End of story.”
Yusom had declared it boldly, but she couldn’t suppress the terror creeping up on her. Even though he was her cousin, the age gap with Se-hyun was quite large, and there had been frequent friction because she worked part-time at his company sometimes.
But soon, brave Yusom stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for the top floor of the building.
“I’m sorry, President. I should have taken better care of Yusom.”
Yoon Chan kept bowing his head to Se-hyun and apologizing.
Se-hyun, after hearing the full story from Yoon Chan, looked serious and rubbed his chin while staring at Yusom intently.
“Okay. I’ll process the insurance claim under the company name first. But I have conditions.”
“…What conditions?”
“I’ll think about what conditions to set. The timing is perfect since we’re already short on staff.”
“Why are you being so scary?”
“You were the one who said you don’t want to help with work today. In the end, you ended up scratching someone else’s car and getting away with it.”
Se-hyun seemed to be thinking about how to make useful use of Yusom.
It wasn’t because she was his cousin’s sister; Yusom basically had steady hands and a solid work ethic.
She handled even quite demanding tasks well.
He carefully examined the car condition that Yoon Chan had photographed with his phone camera.
“The bumper is completely crushed. At this rate, it probably won’t even be fixable by painting alone. The repair could keep the car out of use for several months.”
Yoon Chan wasn’t the only one wearing a gloomy expression. Yusom looked white as a sheet too, but she raised her voice to keep her pride up in front of Se-hyun.
“It’s fine. Just pay it back! Who is the car owner?”
“Who knows. I wonder if that guy’s personality will leave Yusom alone.”
Come to think of it, Yusom still didn’t know who the actual car owner was. Could it really be the rotten bastard who had Yoon Chan run a cigarette errand for him?
In that case, Yusom wouldn’t stay silent either.
She would take proper revenge on the one who caused the accident, even if the insurance paid the repair cost.
“Hey, the car owner is coming. Yusom, tell him yourself with your mouth.”
One of the heads in the distance looked oddly familiar. The group approaching slowly finally opened the representative’s office door with floor-to-ceiling glass windows.
It was Baek Eun-geon, Han Teo, and Ha Gang-bin.
Anyone who was a Korean citizen would recognize those faces—the national team athletes.
Among them, Eun-geon looked exactly as he had in the advertisement Yusom had seen earlier.
His bleached platinum hair, eyebrows sharply raised, flashy earrings and silver rings on every finger.
Eun-geon’s face looked more flashy than any idol. Even back in high school, his features had been striking, and he stood out even in school uniform.
“Whoa, it’s Lee Yusom! It’s been so long!”
Of the three, the one with the best personality, Gang-bin, waved first and approached Yusom.
Although he was a Taekwondo athlete and seemed the most aggressive, Gang-bin had a friendliness like a camel that would drink water from a desert.
“Lee Yusom? It’s been fucking ages. In high school, you studied so much we couldn’t even see you. In university, you cut contact saying you were at a prestigious school.”
…That had been because of her own circumstances. Yusom’s face flushed with embarrassment.
Han Teo, the most straightforward among the archers, gave her the usual sharp tongue-lashing.
He was the hardest one to read of the three. Dark, silent, and often acting four-dimensional, it didn’t suit his beautiful face.
They had all been neighborhood siblings since elementary school, middle school, and high school—childhood friends and terrifying older brothers.
The fact that all three national team members were from the same neighborhood had been a huge topic in the public eye.
They had become national team gold medalists at an impossibly young age, turning the neighborhood celebration into a world festival.
From childhood, they had been pretty boys. After puberty, they had grown into handsome young men.
Having always stuck together, there was no need to explain how much her school days had made the surrounding girls’ hearts race.
At that time, the one person Yusom had most dreaded was Baek Eun-geon, who now approached her slowly.
Along with Se-hyun’s bomb of a statement.
“Ah, Eun-geon. There was an accident. The kids were driving around and got it scratched.”
“Scratched?”
She was doomed. The car owner was none other than Baek Eun-geon.
Yusom bit her lip, her face burning red. She had refused to work part-time at Se-hyun’s company because she hated seeing Eun-geon, but now facing him in a major accident made her mortified.
While Yusom kept glancing at Eun-geon to see how he was taking her past mistakes, Eun-geon didn’t even spare her a glance.
“This is the car condition. Take a look.”
Se-hyun handed his phone to Eun-geon. He immediately furrowed his brows and scowled.
Eun-geon wasn’t the type to cherish anything much, but a car only three months old was enough to make anyone irritable.
“This isn’t just a scratch. The bumper is crumpled like cooking foil.”
“…Sorry, Oppa. I didn’t do it on purpose.”
“It’s fine, Lee Yusom. Do you know how much this car is worth?”
That gravelly, low voice was something she hadn’t heard in a long time. Yusom felt a shiver run down her spine, as if her eardrums were being scraped.
She swallowed nervously once, and then Eun-geon flicked the phone to Yoon Chan. Only then did he look Yusom straight in the eyes.
Crushed by his overwhelming height and build, Yusom instinctively took a step back.
“What a fucking nuisance.”
It sounded to Yusom like “this is your whole damn life being a nuisance.” Her heart started throbbing painfully, making it hard to breathe. The shame she had hidden for so long surged hotly in her chest.
“…Just pay it back.”
She wanted to shout how much it would cost, but she already knew the amount and couldn’t bring herself to say it.
“How you’re going to pay. You don’t even have a job.”
Second year of job hunting. Yusom had been looking good on paper for major companies and mid-tier ones alike.
But how had Eun-geon known she was still job hunting when they weren’t even school seniors or juniors?
“I’ll pay it back. I’ll definitely pay you back, so please bring the repair receipt.”
“Yeah. I’ll make sure to get every single won.”
It had been four years since she had seen Eun-geon. Even though only a minute had passed since they had met, Yusom’s anger reached the boiling point because of that useless attitude of his.
“Roughly this much, I guess.”
Teo, who calculated quickly, handed his phone—open to the internet search window—to Yusom. The search results showed at least six or seven million won. Yusom felt despairing.