Why Do Men Sleep Half-Naked
After a stretch of time that could be considered either short or long, Taemin answered in a detached voice.
“I’ll just accept your kind intentions, Jeha. It feels like unnecessary advice.”
In the eyes that met his, groundless confidence overflowed. Jeha stared back with a hazy gaze.
As he had told Gong Juhee, he had no twisted hobby of touching his friend’s woman. Women were everywhere; there was no need to go after one in particular.
But if someone kept flaunting her like this and then abandoning her, the story changed.
If he had decided to marry her, he should treat her properly. Why did he keep leaving her alone and making her stand out, forcing others to notice? Why did he keep exposing her vulnerabilities? Why did he keep making people want to slip through those cracks?
That was why Jeha had gathered every ounce of friendship in his body and even offered advice. To cherish her while he still had her. To not lose her and regret it later.
He had gone out of his way to give advice, yet instead of gratitude, Taemin responded with sharp hostility.
Within their locked gazes, a taut tension rose, the kind that seemed it would snap at the slightest touch.
Yet neither of the two men looked away. It was as if the thumping music could not reach them, as if in this space packed with people, only the two of them existed.
Jeha was the first to break the silence.
“Unnecessary advice, huh.”
When Jeha’s expression turned amused, Taemin shrugged.
“You know it too. Since she was a kid, she’s had eyes only for me. That hasn’t changed even now.”
Jeha’s brow furrowed faintly. The image of Gong Juhee, who might carry the name of a princess but acted like Han Taemin’s loyal dog, came to mind. She should at least play hard to get or tease him the way she did with Jeha. Instead, she laid her heart completely bare, which only made Taemin treat her worse than a pebble on the roadside. It was unpleasant.
“You’re overflowing with confidence.”
“There’s no reason not to be.”
Han Taemin had always been like this when it came to Gong Juhee. Beyond confidence, he held absolute faith in her. That must be why he could leave his woman on display and still sit there so casually.
“You must be busy, yet you’re even worrying about the woman I’m marrying. Thank you, Yoon Jeha. I’m truly honored.”
When Taemin lifted the bottle, Jeha raised his glass. He was well aware of the true meaning behind Taemin’s roundabout words: since you’re so busy, mind your own business.
Han Taemin was riddled with inferiority complex down to his bones. It had been that way from their first meeting. When Seonghoon introduced them, his smiling lips had said “let’s get along,” but his eyes had cursed him as a lucky bastard who was born with a golden spoon. No matter how kindly Jeha treated him afterward, that twisted inferiority would always bare its thorns.
The ever-optimistic Seonghoon probably never noticed, but to Jeha, who had learned to read the room from a young age, it was painfully obvious. Still, he had accepted Taemin as a friend because the guy was genuinely decent.
Most people twisted when raised in bad environments, but Taemin had gone the opposite way. He was the textbook model student everyone acknowledged. No matter how hard things got, he never gave up and achieved everything he wanted through sheer relentless effort.
But what truly moved Jeha’s heart was something else. In a cold world where even blood relatives would devour each other without hesitation, Taemin had cared for the girl next door—who shared not a drop of his blood—like family. When Jeha once asked what his dream was, Taemin had answered without hesitation: to succeed and make his mother and the girl next door happy.
Jeha had thought there really were good people in the world. He wanted to support Taemin’s dream, so he let him into his circle and helped whenever he could. Unlike the immature Seonghoon, Taemin had plenty of qualities worth learning from.
After emptying his glass cleanly, Jeha lifted the bottle toward Taemin again. The eyes staring back at him were defiant. It was as if they were asking, Are we doing this today? As if to say, You won’t win even if we fight.
Finding it ridiculous, Jeha let out a short laugh.
“Yeah. I didn’t realize it myself, but I guess I’ve been paying her a lot of attention.”
“……”
“Maybe it’s because it’s been a while. She feels different.”
“……”
“That kid has become a proper woman now.”
To Taemin, whose face hardened in an instant, Jeha asked casually.
“I’ve never been in love, so could you tell me, Han Taemin? What is this feeling of constantly being bothered, irritated, and unable to stop thinking about someone?”
Did he love Gong Juhee? Not yet. But she no longer looked like a child to him. Unaware of the seed buried deep inside, he had been steadily fertilizing it, and now a sprout was breaking through.
By leaving her alone, making her cry, and abandoning her, he made her stand out. By carelessly prodding at emotions she hadn’t even recognized, he had peeled away her shell and exposed the tender flesh beneath. As Taemin glared at him fiercely and remained silent, Jeha poured him another drink and asked again, as if it were nothing important.
“What? Are you scared she’ll be taken away?”
“Yoon Jeha, your joke is going too far.”
The answer finally came after a long pause. The corners of Taemin’s mouth, forcing a smile, trembled violently.
“It’s not a joke.”
With an annoyingly calm expression, Jeha brought the glass to his lips. Even as he slowly swallowed the full glass of liquor, he never took his eyes off Taemin. Taemin did the same. Without breaking eye contact, as if unwilling to lose, he emptied his own glass. Jeha lifted the bottle again, and Taemin raised his glass.
“Don’t worry. I’m not the kind of bastard who steals his friend’s woman.”
The two glasses were quickly refilled.
“But Taemin.”
With only a table between them, the two men’s gazes collided fiercely in the air. It was as if invisible sparks were flying.
“I don’t have a hobby of stealing, but I do seem to have a habit of picking up what’s been dropped?”
He had no intention of doing anything underhanded, but if it was a fair fight, that was a different story. Openly. Honorably.
“So don’t drop her.”
Jeha grinned and emptied his glass in one go. Without further conversation, the glasses moved rapidly between the two men, and empty bottles began to line up. It was the beginning of a pointless battle of pride. Of course, neither man dreamed that the woman each was thinking of was not the same.
Juhee got out of the taxi at the entrance to her neighborhood and headed straight for the nearby real estate office. Checking the property prices posted on the dark signboard, she let out a sigh.
“Prices have skyrocketed, but how is it that house prices haven’t gone up at all?”
Compared to twenty years ago, they had risen by a few thousand, but after taxes and various expenses, only pocket change remained. It could hardly be called an increase.
Still, she felt no lingering attachment. She had no interest in real estate investment, and now that she had sorted out her feelings for Taemin, this neighborhood had become utterly sickening. Just then, her phone rang.
The moment she read Taemin’s message, her face crumpled.
“Crazy bastard. Where do you get off acting so generous?”
The train had already left the station.
Juhee saved the real estate agent’s number in her phone. Although her mind was already made up, she planned to tell Hye-sun first before putting the house on the market. As the saying went, the arm bends inward. If she listed the house and left without a word to Hye-sun, she would be the one accused of being ungrateful. Since it was the neighborhood where she had been born and raised, leaving without saying anything would be no different from tarnishing her late grandmother’s name.
Tomorrow evening, after talking with Hye-sun, she would list the house and roughly explain the situation to the agent before leaving. As if to say that since Han Taemin was marrying another woman, she was simply going her own way. Even if people whispered behind her back, she would make sure the blame fell on Taemin and his mother, not her. She would leave cleanly, without any loose ends.
Once home, Juhee washed up cleanly as usual and lay down in bed.
“Sleep deeply, wake up, and start anew.”
You can do it. Making the firm resolution once more, Juhee tried to sleep even though sleep refused to come.
Morning chased away the night. Juhee woke up an hour earlier than usual and finished preparing for work while looking at the bluish predawn sky.
The corners of her eyes, dried of tears, felt rough, and her steps felt as if she were floating on clouds. Still, perhaps because her complicated mind had been cleanly organized, her head at least felt clear.
That was enough.
“Shall we go wake the CEO now?”
When she arrived at Yoon Jeha’s house by taxi, it was 5:30. She knew it was too early to barge in, but Juhee had no choice.
What Chairman Yang wanted from her was not a simple secretary role. It was close care for perfect image-making. Turning the habitually late-sleeping Jeha into a morning person was part of that.
Her title was secretary, but in reality, it was the Yoon Jeha Reformation Project.
She expected an unfavorable reaction from Yoon Jeha, but she decided not to worry about it. Thanks to Han Taemin, she was more than ready to walk a path of thorns. The expression “nothing to lose” was perfectly accurate.
After showing her ID at the security office and registering her fingerprint, Juhee passed through several more doors, including the main gate, before boarding the penthouse-only elevator.
“This is no joke.”
Letting out a small exclamation, she took a deep breath. The person she served had changed, so the territory and scale had changed as well. The place where Jeha now lived was a super-luxury 25-story apartment completed only about two years ago. With only one unit per floor, each apartment was 290 pyeong, and Yoon Jeha lived in the penthouse.
She had known he was a third-generation chaebol, but this was the moment it felt most real. The elevator reached the target floor with a ding and opened. With a mix of anxiety and anticipation that this would be an unforgettable day, Juhee stepped inside the house, and her pupils widened dramatically.
“Oh my god, there’s even a sky garage.”
Setting aside the vast, prairie-like space and luxurious interior, one entire wall was floor-to-ceiling glass, offering a full view of the 25th-floor scenery. In front of it were parked two supercars—one in intense red, the other in sleek black. One of them was the car she had ridden in two days ago.
For a moment, Juhee stared in rapt fascination at the cars bathed in the morning sunlight like a halo. Then she recalled the floor plan of the house she had seen last night and began to walk.
Although Jeha’s official appointment as CEO was still a few days away, she planned to come every single day.
“I need to fix his bad habits first.”
As Chairman Yang had said, despite his outstanding work ability, Yoon Jeha’s daily life was a complete mess. He usually slept in late and started his schedule in the afternoon, and he changed his plans according to his mood. That might have been fine overseas, but this was Korea, swarming with hyenas. Even the smallest flaw could be used against him, so she had no choice but to instill good habits in advance.
Above all, the final line Manager Kang had added to the email was stuck in her brain like a nail.
It was written as a reference, but it was practically her first mission. She had no choice but to accomplish it somehow.
When Juhee reached the bedroom door, she knocked out of courtesy. As expected, there was only silence beyond the door. Juhee opened it without hesitation. A long beam of light slipped through the half-open door and illuminated the dark space. She pressed the third switch on the wall to turn on the auxiliary lighting, and the spacious bedroom revealed itself under a soft glow.
The moment she saw the man sleeping face-down, buried in the pure white bed, Juhee squeezed her eyes shut and thought,
“……”
Why do men sleep half-naked?