Bang Head Here

The call had come in the dead of night and stretched on for nearly thirty minutes. He'd said he was coming to see her, and she'd laughed it off as a joke. She'd told him to go to sleep and hung up without letting him get a word in—and now Jae-gyeom had actually shown up at her door.

"Im Ji-su, you must be out of your mind. Just die. Why do you even bother living?"

She smashed her own forehead against the table, where a graveyard of empty beer cans rattled at the impact. No mercy, no coddling—she brought it down hard. The cans clinked and jangled with every *thud*.

"Ugh... shut up. What are you even doing?"

Ji-su answered Eun-mi's sleep-drunk scolding with the blank despair of a lost soul.

"You're right. What *am* I doing? I want to die."

The memory was too vivid, and that was what was driving her insane. If her head was going to pound like this and her stomach was going to churn like this, then at the very least the memory should have evaporated. In every drama and movie, the heroine conveniently loses her memory—so why was hers perfectly intact? She rammed her forehead into the table again with another resounding *bang*. That finally forced Eun-mi out of her seat.

"What! What is wrong with you!"

What Eun-mi saw when she looked at Ji-su was a bizarre sight: a blazing red forehead, a phone clutched in her hand, and a face on the verge of tears. No way...

"Im Ji-su. You didn't actually call Kim Young-baek, did you?"

"Aagh! No? Absolutely not!"

"Ha... thank god."

Once Eun-mi said it, a sudden chill ran through Ji-su too.

Right. Calling Yoon Jae-gyeom was a hundred times better than calling Kim Young-baek. A genuine stroke of luck. She threw her arms around Eun-mi's neck.

"Choi Eun-mi, thank you. Really. Your reframing skills, your winning attitude—they're no joke."

"What are you talking about?"

"Let's get hangover soup. You've more than earned it today."

The hangover soup Jae-gyeom had apparently bought for them came in an astonishing variety—dried pollack, soybean sprout, pork bone, even blood sausage soup. Eun-mi, blissfully unaware of its origins, had just taken her first slurp when Ji-su's sudden confession nearly did her in.

"The day I went down to the countryside to greet his parents with Young-baek, the car broke down in town. He said it was hot and he was annoyed, so he just grabbed a taxi and went back up to Seoul by himself. The guy who ran the repair shop helped me out, and I thought he was an old classmate, so I fell asleep."

"Khack! Kehk!"

Eun-mi choked on her hangover soup and coughed for a good long while.

"There's so much to be shocked by I don't even know where to start. Kim Young-baek got in a taxi and did *what*? You did *what*? With *who*? Are you actually Im Ji-su?"

"...Turns out this soup was bought and left here by that man."

"WHAT? That man hand-delivered it all the way to your apartment in Seoul? Did you meet him yesterday while I was asleep? What on earth are you saying right now? Hold on just a second!"

Unsurprisingly, the two women's entire morning conversation was consumed by one topic: Yoon Jae-gyeom. She came clean about everything—how he lived in the neighborhood above Gyechon Reservoir, and how he'd posed as her boyfriend to greet her mother.

Eun-mi promised to dig up whatever she could learn about Jae-gyeom through the classmates and juniors she still kept in touch with in Gyechon.

"Hoo. While you were dating Kim Young-baek—a man you wouldn't date even if someone *paid* you—for six years, all you ever did was hold hands, so I thought, 'Sure, sex can be scary.' But now I see it. It wasn't the sex our Im Ji-su was afraid of—she just found doing it with Kim Young-baek so repulsive she'd rather die."

"No, that's... why are we back to this again?"

"Then how else do you explain this inexplicable one-night stand?"

Ji-su had no answer. It struck her as ridiculous now, how certain she'd been that he was a decent person simply because he was a classmate and a local. Why had she trusted him? That sense of security he'd given her from their very first meeting, or the pull she'd felt toward him... it was all made up of feelings that rational thought couldn't explain.

As she gathered up the soup bowls along with the beer cans, Eun-mi asked with grim resolve.

"Hey. We're not minors, and it's your private life, so there's nothing more to say really... but your unnie is worried about you, so I'm asking exactly two questions, and you'd better answer straight. Did you use protection, properly?"

"...Yes."

"And is he handsome?"

Ji-su answered with a nod, her face flushed to the point of bursting. Eun-mi nodded back with an equally dreamy expression.

The hangover had left its mark, but thanks to a proper recovery meal the two of them were in decent shape by the time they headed outside the studio apartment building to throw out the empties. They were strolling toward the recycling bins beside the building, chattering away about whether to hit the bathhouse or a comic-book café like old times, when a figure appeared—and both of them screamed at the same moment.

"AAAH!"

"Ji-su. It's oppa. Why are you screaming like that? Why won't you ever answer your phone? You didn't block me, did you? Hmm?"

Kim Young-baek stood waiting in front of Ji-su, holding an enormous bouquet. He was even decked out in a crisp suit.

The Pyeongchang-dong Residence where the Daeyun Group chairman's family lived was heavier with tension than ever, because the chairman and his wife were seated at breakfast alongside their only son Sung-shik—and Jae-gyeom as well.

The conversation at the table was steered entirely by the chairman and his wife. Between occasional business talk and commentary on politics and current events, Sung-shik was busy expending every ounce of his strength agreeing with whatever his parents said. The only one eating in silence was Jae-gyeom.

"Let's all have dessert in the living room. I have something to say about Jae-gyeom in particular."

Madam Jin Song-hwa, wife of Chairman Yoon, was an active participant in the group's media relations and public engagements as its mistress of the house, and also chaired the Daeyun Cultural Foundation, which ran galleries and performance venues. Only one person tensed up at hearing what might come out of her mouth next: Sung-shik.

"Once the establishment of Daeyun Motors is finalized according to your father's wishes, Jae-gyeom will be appointed immediately. He'll be living in Seoul from now on, so Sung-shik, I trust you will look after Jae-gyeom warmly and take care of him as brothers should."

Sung-shik turned red and blue in the face, unable to utter a single word of protest. Having to divide what he had—and what he stood to inherit—with Jae-gyeom clearly galled him, but having already been chewed out by his father the night before, he swallowed it down.

"And Jae-gyeom, make sure you throw out everything you own before you come. After all, you'll need to start preparing for your wedding as soon as you arrive."

"I'm sorry—what?"

This time it was Jae-gyeom's face that hardened.

"You may be the same age as Sung-shik, but your birthday comes first, after all... The sooner you marry and settle down, the better, wouldn't you say?"

No sooner had his stepmother finished her elegant pronouncement than his father added his two cents.

"Finding a spouse who benefits the company in one way or another is part of management, as they say."

At the notion that they intended to force him into a marriage arranged to their own tastes, Jae-gyeom finally lost his composure and rose from his seat.

"If you're telling me to come up to Seoul and learn the business, I'll do that. But stay out of my marriage. I'll handle it myself."

"Mother, Father, look at this brat. Look at him, getting up first with all his elders still seated. Honestly... no manners, no knowledge. I suppose it's bred in the bone—no foundation, no roots. Our Daeyun Motors' future really does worry me, I must say."

When Sung-shik seized the moment to jump in and open his mouth, Jae-gyeom gave as good as he got. He looked down at Sung-shik with boundless contempt and answered with a sneer.

"What roots exactly am I missing? My mother has passed on, but my father is alive and well right here. Half of those meager roots are shared with you, so don't sell me short. Father, that must hurt your feelings, doesn't it?"

"What did you say, you brat?"

"And you know my birthday comes first, don't you? Born the same year, so I won't ask you to call me hyung—but do try to think once in a while. About who it was that wedged herself in between my late mother and my father, for instance."

Whatever colors the chairman and his wife's faces turned, Jae-gyeom didn't care. Having said his piece, he could stand no more; he yanked his tie loose and pulled it off.

"I'll be going now."

With a stiff bow, Jae-gyeom walked out of Pyeongchang-dong without looking back.

He missed Im Ji-su.

"Ji-su. I was wrong. I'm sorry."

Young-baek held out his penitent bouquet to Ji-su.

Every elder in the family had adored Ji-su. His parents, desperate to brag to everyone about a daughter-in-law who'd graduated from Hankuk University. His grandfather had gone so far as to say he would only pass down his inheritance if Young-baek married her. Which was exactly why he'd had no choice but to come see her. He needed to hand over this bouquet fast, smooth things over, and then take her to his mother to prove the two of them had made up. But the bouquet never reached Ji-su—blocked by Eun-mi, who planted herself squarely between them.

"Mister. Stop the creepy act, please."

"Eu-Eun-mi. We haven't seen each other in ages and you've forgotten me already? *Mister*? I'm your oppa Young-baek, remember?"