Returning What Was Borrowed
After drying her wet hair with a hair dryer, Dajeong carefully stepped out of the Alpha Room.
Taekyung's oversized T-shirt kept sliding down her frame. The collarbones it left completely bare felt awkward under the light.
The symptoms of hypothermia had vanished without a trace, and now her body felt so overheated that a wave of dizziness rolled through her.
The clearer her mind became, the more vividly the charged atmosphere between them returned. Then her eyes landed on his bed in the room, and heat flared through her all over again.
……Could she really face, in broad daylight, the man she had been pressed against bare-skinned only moments ago?
Surely he wasn't going to come onto her asking to finish the kiss they had almost shared?
"I'm letting my imagination run wild."
Fanning her cheeks with rapid little flaps of her hand, Dajeong swallowed dryly and stepped out into the living room.
"Um……."
But every worry she'd had just a moment earlier proved to be pure fantasy.
Taekyung had claimed one end of the large dining table and was looking only at his laptop screen. He didn't even spare Dajeong a glance.
"You're leaving."
Tap-tap-tap. Taekyung pounded at the keyboard, looking extremely busy.
"Yes. Thank you for lending me the clothes."
Still, she ought to look him in the face when she said goodbye. Dajeong carefully took a position opposite him, the man still buried in his laptop with every appearance of diving straight into it.
The situation had grown a little ridiculous. Here she stood in someone else's oversized clothes, just staring blankly—neither waiting for him nor exactly watching him.
With his simple silver-rimmed glasses on, Taekyung had returned to his default setting: indifferent and cool.
That was just the kind of man he was. There was no reason to take offense…… so why this faintly stirring sense of disappointment?
Am I the only one left feeling restless and unsettled?
Only a little while ago they had been pressed together bare-skinned in that dark pavilion, on the verge of a kiss. And now, in an instant, he had flipped completely—so detached that she wasn't even worth a second thought.
Ah. Just recalling that moment sent heat surging through her for no reason at all. Dajeong hastily covered her cheeks under the pretense of a cough.
It felt unfair. The way he had leaned in for a kiss, the charged atmosphere that had grown so charged under the excuse of warming her body—she seemed to be the only one who had reacted so sensitively to all of it.
……She had been shaken to the core, rendering her vow never to fall for him completely meaningless.
Well. Judging by how skillfully he handled women, he must have met countless people; a kiss probably meant nothing much to him.
Once her thoughts reached that point, something like stubborn pride welled up in her.
I'm fine too. Absolutely fine.
As she was sorting through her tangled thoughts, Taekyung's eyes flicked up over the top of his laptop.
"Is there anything else you wanted to say?"
"No."
"Alright. You can go."
His unreadable, impassive gaze returned to the laptop screen.
It was an utterly businesslike, dry attitude—as if he were trying to make up for all the time he had wasted with Dajeong until now.
With an explicit dismissal hanging in the air, lingering any longer would only have been more absurd. Dajeong gave a quick bow and left his quarters.
The day she returned to her routine after finishing the unsettling volunteer work.
"I'm going to stop by somewhere for a bit. You go on ahead."
After eating with her classmates, Dajeong took a different elevator alone.
In her hand was a small paper bag. She intended to return the clothes she had borrowed that charged night, now washed and folded.
"Hoo."
Standing before the nameplate that read CEO's Office, Dajeong took a deep breath. Just standing in front of this heavy door made every fine hair on the back of her neck stand on end.
……On top of that, the hot breath that had been right against her back that night rose vividly in her mind.
"Please, Yu Dajeong."
First aid. It had been first aid. Just hand over the clothes and leave. That would be the end of it.
Repeating those words to herself several times, she knocked—tap, tap—on the door.
But the secretary who opened it said something unexpected.
"I'm sorry, but the CEO is busy at the moment."
"Ah, yes……."
Of course. It would have been stranger if the CEO had the free time to see a junior employee whenever she dropped by.
"Is that something for the CEO? I can pass it along for you."
Seeing the paper bag in her hand, the secretary offered a kindness.
"Then I'll leave it with you. Thank you."
Just as Dajeong was handing the paper bag to the secretary—
"Excuse me for a moment."
Along with a piercing blast of strong perfume, someone shoved past Dajeong's shoulder as she stood in the doorway and strode into the CEO's office.
Click, click. Confident high heels. A sophisticated beige pantsuit that hugged her curvy figure just right. A sharp bob.
Even from the back, the woman radiated glamour. She was clearly a stunning beauty.
She'd bumped into her and hadn't even said sorry. Feeling a twinge of annoyance, Dajeong was turning away when—
"Come in."
The inner office door opened, and Taekyung himself came out to greet the woman.
The man, showing off another flawless full-suit fit today, even flashed a small smile as he held the door for her.
After the two of them went in, the sharp click of the door closing grated on her for some reason.
"……."
That sound lingered like an afterimage, tormenting Dajeong the entire way back to the ward.
Fine. She could accept that he was too busy to spare even the thirty seconds it would take to show his face and take the paper bag from her.
She could accept that his prior appointment with that woman took precedence.
So why did she feel so rotten?
Walking with her eyes fixed on the floor, the childish decorations on her slippers irritated her especially.
The woman he had personally received had been wearing elegant high heels.
A voice calling for the distracted Dajeong reached her ears. It was a little patient.
"Teacher Dajeong! Let's play tag!"
And so Dajeong was stuck on the ward for a while.
She was smiling brightly, hard, at the children, trying to hide the inexplicable heaviness weighing her down, when—
"As expected, Teacher Yu Dajeong is so kind, just like her name."
The guardian's praise made her solar plexus ache as if someone had pressed a thumb into it.
"Right? Our Teacher Dajeong has a pretty face and the best personality, too."
"Any man who takes a teacher like this must have saved the country in a past life."
Even the nurses' continued praise didn't register in her ears.
Kind, my ass. I should just change my name to Yu Mujeong—Heartless.
Someone once said she didn't live up to her name.
Ah. The moment she thought of him, a sudden wave of disappointment washed over her. Her solar plexus throbbed again.
Why, exactly?
"……Thank you."
Barely managing to open her lips, Dajeong kept stroking a child's hair.
She was flustered. By the way this sense of disappointment kept bubbling up out of her.
It's just a kiss. I had something I needed to confirm.
He'd said it was "just" a kiss. And they hadn't even actually done it.
Confirm? Cooperate? What did that even mean to her? Apparently that weird line worked well enough on other women.
That day she had simply been kind to someone with hypothermia. Because she was his employee.
An employee he didn't even regard as a romantic prospect.
When the branches of her thoughts stretched that far, a hollow laugh escaped her. No—it wasn't funny.
Did I want to date Jang Taekyung or something?
There was more than enough evidence that she and he were nothing special to each other. After that charged night, neither of them had even contacted the other.
What am I even hoping for?
A third-generation chaebol crown prince and an orphanage graduate. The stark gulf between them made her fantasy laughable.
She really was…… pathetic beyond measure.
Had she already forgotten the brutal lesson she'd learned from Jeon Minwoo—what happened when she halfheartedly opened her heart to whoever happened to sway her?
She should have stayed careful to the end. The sprout of excitement that had grown without her even realizing it left her both flustered and melancholy.
I won't be swept away.
She hadn't fallen for Park Hyeonwoo's act and had handled that fine—why should Jang Taekyung be any different?
Just live the way she always had. Eyes only on her career, working hard, grinding it out.
Back in the residents' office, Dajeong sat down at her desk at once. There was a mountain of work to do, and a truckload of papers to read.
Days of nonstop busyness cleared Dajeong's head completely.
And today, a difficult patient and guardian left her even less room for stray thoughts.
"The VIP rooms at Seohan Hospital really have a terrible layout."
A middle-aged woman with carefully styled, voluminous short hair burst out with a complaint.
"And the air purifier is a Hanju product? Bring in a famous German brand or something."
Swipe—her index finger scraped along the windowsill; a thick pearl ring that matched her earrings glittered elegantly on it.
Then she spun around and looked Dajeong up and down.
"You're our attending physician? Yu Dajeong?"
She was a guardian who radiated a born-to-pull-rank energy.
"Yes, I'm the attending."
Disbelief filled the eyes that scanned her from head to toe.
"No professor-level available? Well, the pediatrics department head was dragged out under ugly circumstances—things must be a mess."
Who on earth was she, that she knew all the internal affairs? The medical staff quietly exchanged glances.
"I'll take excellent care of Heeju so you won't have to worry."
While Dajeong was speaking calmly, the door opened and Park Hyeonwoo strode in.
"Mother, I heard Heeju was admitted?"
The difficult guardian's identity was revealed in that instant.
"My youngest! You look even more handsome out in the world."
Park Hyeonwoo's mother, who had wiped away every trace of her earlier scene-making, beamed brightly.