Don't Do It Alone

Heeseo sent her roommate out and pulled her hair up into a tight knot. She hadn't wanted to resort to this, but just as Kim Jonghyeop had feared, the spirit occupying Kim Jeeon's body was an exceptionally sharp one.

"Marrying me even knowing from the start that I was a fake—you're no ordinary stray ghost."

When exactly had she been found out? And knowing full well that Lee Heeseo was an exorcist sent to drive him out, what on earth had possessed him to go through with the wedding so obediently?

Questions without easy answers tangled through Heeseo's mind.

"Doesn't matter. I still have to get rid of you. First things first—I need your name."

She hurried into the bathroom. Traces of his recent presence lingered everywhere. The scent that clung to Kim Jeeon—whether it came from body wash or simply from the moisture-heavy air—was already familiar.

A ghost with a cleanliness fetish, of all things…

Not a single strand of hair lay on the floor, and the marks where foam and water had been carefully wiped away were unmistakable. Even the sleepwear he'd left out for laundry had been neatly folded. From among those things, Heeseo found his underwear without any trouble.

Eureka! She snatched it up at once and bolted out—only to freeze mid-stride.

"……!"

"……Lee Heeseo-ssi."

Eureka, indeed. She hadn't even managed a few steps before she came face-to-face with the owner of the underwear clutched in her hand.

"……Didn't you leave for work?"

"I left something behind, so I came back to look for it."

Dressed in a formal suit, he looked devastatingly sharp. Without meaning to, Heeseo looked him up and down, still gripping the underwear.

Even first thing in the morning, the man was unfairly handsome. She didn't bother holding back the remark that rose to her lips.

"You could have just called."

Meaning: one phone call from him and half the staff would have come running barefoot.

"Seeing what Heeseo-ssi is holding, I've forgotten what I came looking for."

Not exactly something an underwear thief had any right to hear—but the exchange hung between them all the same.

"Don't tell me you forgot you were going to put these back on?"

"Hardly. I doubt a husband married only two days would want to go around improperly dressed in front of his wife."

Marriage. Proper. Husband. A string of words that had nothing whatsoever to do with Heeseo. She let out a hollow laugh at the brazen spirit who never lost a single verbal exchange.

"A man already possessed by a ghost shouldn't be shocked over a missing pair of underwear. You might owe an apology to the original owner, but I don't care either way."

As if dealing with the possessed were anything new. Heeseo had seen every kind of spectacle imaginable—one pair of underwear barely registered as a joke.

But her opponent was Kim Jeeon. More precisely, the ghost of unknown name and origin currently occupying Kim Jeeon's body.

"You should care."

"What?"

In that instant, Kim Jeeon closed the distance in a single stride. Close enough that if she lowered her head, their faces would touch. Heeseo frowned before she could stop herself.

Meeting that furrowed expression, Kim Jeeon smiled—an unreadable smile.

"At the very least, for as long as I'm your husband."

His hand reached toward her, and her body reacted first. The moment Heeseo tried to step back defensively, her wrist was caught in a flash. Instinctively, her free hand clenched into a tight fist.

"……Don't put your hands on me without permission. Next time, I won't hold back."

The only reason she didn't throw the punch was simple: he hadn't used force.

He wrapped her wrist with almost gentle care, plucked his underwear free, and withdrew as smoothly as if he'd never approached at all.

"I apologize for touching you without leave. But I wasn't exactly eager to hand over my underwear that easily, either."

She didn't particularly want to put herself in a ghost's shoes—but if someone had tried to steal her underwear, she wouldn't have stood still either. Fair enough, when she thought about it. Heeseo answered flatly.

"Then want to sell them to me?"

The easy smile that had lingered on Jeeon's face slipped, just slightly. Then, with a small huff of laughter, he shot back,

"I didn't realize you had a hobby of collecting your husband's underwear, Lee Heeseo-ssi."

"I picked it up today. So sell them to me."

"Hmm……."

Kim Jeeon looked down at the underwear in his hand and pretended to deliberate. If it hadn't been a dark pair of briefs dangling from his fingers, the whole tableau might have looked like a scene from a film—impossibly elegant.

Of course, the underwear pushed the genre firmly toward the erotic.

"These aren't ones I'm particularly attached to, so I have no intention of selling them for money."

"……."

Since when does underwear get ranked by how much you treasure it? While Heeseo was still processing that,

"The ones I'm wearing right now, though—those I'll sell. To you."

"What?"

"Go ahead and take them. I'll collect the money later."

Click. At the unfamiliar sound, Heeseo dropped her gaze. It had come from Kim Jeeon's belt. There was no mistaking it—this was a provocation aimed squarely at her.

Is this guy seriously……

A muscle jumped in Heeseo's dry cheek.

Being made a laughingstock by ordinary people was unpleasant enough. Being toyed with by some low-grade stray ghost was infinitely worse.

And unfortunately, Lee Heeseo's composure had a habit of shattering right in front of things like this.

"Don't regret saying that."

A hand large for a woman's seized Jeeon's waist. Without a second's hesitation, Heeseo yanked his belt free.

With a heavy thud, the belt hit the floor and skidded away. The lips that had been curved in a constant smile released a laugh that sounded almost like a sigh.

"You're the one who told me to take them."

The expressionless woman whispered it from beneath his chin. A moment later, her long, firm fingers undid the buckle and drew the zipper down—

"Oppa, what are you doing that it's taking this long? We have to finish preparing for the meeting before the Chairman gets in——!"

"……."

"……Ah."

"……Hyeon-a. Even so, you should at least knock first, don't you think?"

Ah, damn it.

The door burst open with a racket, and silence crashed down. When Heeseo turned her head with a murderous expression, her eyes locked with the woman standing in the doorway. The woman's face was pure mortification—and somehow familiar.

Where have I seen her before? Right—the wedding. Kim Jeeon's cousin. Said they work at the same company. So why is she looking at me like I'm some kind of molester? It's pissing me off.

Heeseo's gaze sharpened further. In that same moment, Jeeon gently stroked her hand. Only then did Heeseo realize she had been one second away from stripping off his pants.

……I'm going to lose my mind.

Heeseo fell silent. Then, like a robot with a broken joint, she creaked backward a step. Cold sweat ran in a vivid trail down her spine.

To the woman frozen solid in place, Jeeon whispered with a show of bashfulness,

"We'll finish what we started tomorrow, Heeseo-ssi. I need to get to the office a little early today. I'll be heading out, then."

He retrieved the belt from the floor, straightened his clothes, and smiled softly. Unfortunately, Heeseo was still too frozen to appreciate it.

On his way toward his cousin, who remained petrified in the doorway, Jeeon paused and turned back. Then he came close again……. Peck. A dry warmth brushed her cheek and was gone.

"No using my underwear alone. Understood?"

It was far too loud to count as a whisper. Thud. The door shut.

Beyond the closed door, Kim Jeeon's laughter carried on.

"What was that earlier?"

"What?"

"What I just walked in on."

His reflection stared back at him from the spotless elevator doors, not a speck of dust on the glass.

Jeeon smiled lightly and adjusted his tie. Fussing with a tie that wasn't even crooked was one of his mild obsessive habits.

"Even if we are cousins, this is a newlywed household. Walking into the master bedroom without knocking is a bit rude, don't you think? Especially toward your new sister-in-law."

The words sounded like a scolding, but carried no real weight. Jeeon kept letting out pointless little laughs, as if something endlessly amused him. He'd always been quick to smile, but this particular brand of smug amusement was entirely unfamiliar.

"What on earth are you thinking?"

Because of that, Seo Hyeon-a crossed a line she normally never would. It had nothing to do with her—and yet Jeeon's behavior felt so alien that she couldn't help herself.

Kim Jeeon. The only real flaw in the man she called cousin was a personality that bordered on pathological fastidiousness.

For all his gentle image, he drew firm, unyielding lines around other people. The reason he'd never once been caught in a scandal—despite the endless stream of women who approached him for his looks and his background—was precisely that fastidiousness……

And yet here he was, acting like that toward someone he'd married for pure convenience. If she hadn't seen it with her own eyes, she would have dismissed it as nonsense.