The First Adult She'd Ever Met

Sung Ji-hoon was the first true adult I-eum had ever met.

I-eum had grown up alone.

Her mother, who had been her entire world, ran away before I-eum even finished elementary school, and her father, Yeon Chang-shin, dumped her at a relative's house as if brushing her off his hands.

The grief and confusion of having both parents vanish in an instant. The terror of being abandoned. Unable to adapt to an environment that had changed overnight, I-eum never learned how to make friends.

"She got completely frozen out in elementary school, they say."

The isolation followed her into middle school, and by the time she reached high school, she had all but forgotten how to befriend anyone at all.

She was bullied, too. It began the day she turned down the public confession of Koo Sung-joon, one of the school's delinquents.

Refusing to lose, she put on a tough front every single day — but the truth was, she was scared and exhausted.

Home was worse.

After her father remarried and they finally lived together again, there was no place for her in a household that now included a stepmother and a stepsister.

So she spent her long hours at school.

Even after classes ended, she stayed in the school study hall, and dinner was bread and milk she'd bought in advance from the school store.

Sitting in the schoolyard, listening to the crickets chirp, staring blankly out at the dark and deskeletal athletic field — those hours of vaguely dreaming of a future lived differently from the present were the only rest she was ever given.

"What are you doing here instead of going home?"

That day, a deep, weighty voice drifted over to her.

She should have been startled by the sudden presence of a stranger, but I-eum didn't flinch.

It was a voice that, oddly enough, made her feel safe.

She turned to find a long-legged man standing there. The streetlamp's light was swallowed up behind his back, leaving his face in shadow — and somehow that made him all the more striking, this grown man, this adult in the flesh.

"I-eum. Your name is Yeon I-eum?"

But from where he stood, she was apparently in perfect view.

"Yes."

"What year, what class?"

"Who are you?"

Only then did the man seem to remember that introductions come first. He strode over and dropped down beside her.

A refined cologne drifted faintly from him — nothing like the sweat smell that hung around the boys in her class. Just as I-eum lifted her eyes to study him, the streetlamp's glow finally caught his face, and his features came into sharp focus.

"You haven't heard of me? I'm famous around this school."

Ah.

Even without those words, if she had seen his face from the start, she would have recognized him at a glance.

Sung Ji-hoon.

He was an owner of the Haeseong Group and serving as a managing director at headquarters — or so she'd heard, until he caused some incident and got demoted to Haeseong High School.

In a word: chaebol. A different class of existence entirely.

And perhaps because of his twisted circumstances despite his wealth, Ji-hoon's popularity among the students was nothing short of explosive.

His overwhelming physique and strikingly handsome face alone would have made him famous — but it was the designer suits he changed daily and his coarse, sharp-tongued way of speaking that made him the very embodiment of the manly adult the kids couldn't help but admire.

Clean-cut, smelling wonderful, with a slightly crooked glint in his eyes — I-eum's heart fluttered at him too.

He's really, really handsome.

Afraid the thought might tumble right out of her mouth, she bit down hard on her lip.

"Where do you live?"

"Shinhee-dong."

"Are your parents coming to pick you up?"

She shook her head.

At that, the illustrious Sung Ji-hoon stared at her steadily for a moment, then raised his wrist to check the time.

"You know why our school doesn't have night study sessions?"

"……"

"Don't stay out this late again. You may be all grown up, but you still have to be careful on the streets at night, brat."

Brat……

In a few months she would sit for the college entrance exam and become a legal adult, and yet he was the first adult ever to call her a brat. No — in a life where she'd always had to be poised and composed beyond her years, this was the first time anyone had given her a nickname like that at all.

Maybe that was why she couldn't tear her eyes away as he rose on those long legs and sauntered off into the dark, unhurried and careless.

Only after he had vanished completely into the night did I-eum press her hand quietly over the left side of her chest.

Could this be what they call love at first sight?

For the first time in her life, her heart went thump, thump, thump.

After that day, the days she crossed paths with Ji-hoon multiplied.

On her way to school, when she drifted into the cafeteria late and alone, even when she sat quietly in her classroom — he would pass by down the corridor beyond the window.

Then one day, he happened to catch Koo Sung-joon tormenting her.

Ji-hoon turned that classroom upside down — no, the entire school.

Thanks to him stepping in, Koo Sung-joon, who had always held his chin so high, knelt before I-eum for the first time in his life, and even his parents, who'd strutted around flaunting their money, came running and bowed their heads to the ground before her.

It didn't stop there. Under the weight of Sung Ji-hoon's imposing presence, the whole pack of delinquents who made a sport of thuggery turned as docile as lambs.

"Why do you let those guys walk all over you?"

And when he became the only person to ever acknowledge the grinding struggle she'd endured all this time —

I-eum couldn't help but love him.

It was her first time feeling an emotion that swelled larger by the day, and it was overwhelming. So, just like any other girl would, she went to him and confessed.

But Ji-hoon waved her off as though she were a nuisance.

"Go drink your mother's milk a few more years first."

All of it — every bit — happened within the short season called summer.

"I-eum. Help your father out, will you?"

Time flowed on, and autumn arrived.

The day Yeon Chang-shin came to her room, fewer than fifty days remained before the college entrance exam.

When she returned home at midnight after studying at the study hall, the living room light was, strangely, still on — and Chang-shin was awake, waiting up for her.

Her father, who never exchanged a word with her beyond a curt greeting.

Even before her mother had left the house, he had never been much of a family man; these days he spoke to her less than her stepmother did.

And yet.

"Help with what, all of a sudden?"

"You know Grandfather's been struggling lately, right?"

"No. You're going to make me do something weird again, aren't you?"

As a child, shuttling between relatives' houses, she had stayed at her grandfather's place too.

For over a year, probably. She would admit it was the longest she'd stayed anywhere — but it was because of that that she hated how, whenever her grandfather needed help, she was the first thing he sacrificed.

Dressing up in a pretty dress to make appearances before strange older men. Receiving an allowance like payment for the show. Having to smile as sweetly as she could manage, no matter how unpleasant it felt, because she had to be a credit to the family name.

She truly never wanted to do any of it again.

But Chang-shin shook his head, insisting it wasn't what she thought.

"It's nothing like that. Just this weekend, you meet one person, have a meal, and come home. That's all."

"Who is it?"

"Well……"

Chang-shin fidgeted with his lips, wearing a troubled expression, then said,

"It's someone you know. You only have to eat and come back, so don't feel burdened. Just remember — as long as Grandfather thrives, so do we all."

With those parting words, Chang-shin turned and left her room, leaving her no opening to refuse.

Left alone, I-eum let out a long sigh.

When will I ever be free……

The weekend was supposed to be for extra studying, too.

Did her father even remember that his daughter was a student cramming for exams?

Rain had been falling since early that weekend morning.

Sung Ji-hoon's expression was positively murderous as he strode out of the hotel lounge café.

"Just one cup of coffee. Please?"

Scrambling to keep up behind him, his secretary, chief Ju Min-jae, tried to placate him with a strained smile.

Ever since his name had gone onto the arranged-marriage market, Ji-hoon had spent every weekend meeting women.

Like a series of interviews conducted on a fixed schedule with only the partners rotating — that was his matseon. To a man who couldn't care less whom he married, this endless indecision over a bride was maddening, yet he had kept silently obeying his grandfather Chairman Sung's orders, because he owed a debt for his sins.

"Don't even dream of setting foot back at headquarters until you've picked your own match yourself."

If that was the tune, then going through the motions was the only way to win his old position back. He had no intention of wasting his precious time rotting away at that milk-smelling school forever.

Except today's very first appointment happened to be the one woman in the world he had no desire to see.

The very woman who had gotten him thrown out of headquarters — Kang Ri-won.

He had refused her with a scene of thunderous protest, and yet here she was, showing up as his arranged date. The woman was not normal.

"Thirty minutes. No — twenty!"

"I won't give you even one."

Min-jae hunched himself up like a shrimp thrown into a whale's path and begged.

"I understand it's unpleasant, but the Chairman ordered you to meet every single one of them without exception. Do it for my sake, just for a moment! Ten minutes — no, five! Five minutes, sir? Please?"

At that, Ji-hoon stopped dead in his tracks and gave Min-jae a once-over with icy eyes.

"Looking at your face makes me want to even less."

"Agh!"

Min-jae leapt back and started wailing that the matseon roster was already in the Chairman's hands and there was nothing to be done.

That was when it happened. Ji-hoon's feet stopped dead.

"What is that."

He could see a woman in an ill-fitting mini dress walking into the hotel.

A slight frame, skin so pale it looked bloodless, black hair bobbed at the jaw……

Yeon I-eum?