The Safest Person in the World
When she opened the door, two pairs of shoes sat in the entryway.
One pair of dress shoes lay scattered any which way, caked in the grime of an exhausting day; the other rested in perfect alignment, without so much as a speck of dust.
Similar in design, utterly different in presentation. Yuju knew at a glance who was in the apartment just from the shoes.
They belonged to that man — born into everything, noble in a way common folk like them could never be.
"Haa…"
Yuju steadied her breath and stepped into the living room. Even that short distance left her staggering.
She forced her eyes wide against a spinning field of vision, but the alcohol refused to leave her.
Yuju had never taken to the drink-hard, party-hard culture of university life. Even when she went along with her peers, she couldn't understand why anyone would pay money for something so bitter and tasteless.
Lately, though, she'd been drinking far more often. Ever since that incident, her mind had been in turmoil.
"Ah."
Lost in thought as she walked, a shadow suddenly fell across her feet. She stopped and looked up — and found herself face-to-face with the man who must have just put her brother to bed.
Her brother's childhood best friend. Choi Seo-won.
A young master who had never once had to fight for anything in his life.
His sharply drawn features fixed on her. Even under that sometimes oppressive gaze and imposing frame, Yuju didn't shrink.
If anything, his magnetic presence had once made her secretly harbor feelings for him in her teenage years.
It had been that instinctive pull — the natural way the eye is drawn to a striking member of the opposite sex.
As she grew older and came to understand just how extraordinary he was — a tree she could never dare look up to — she had let it go.
"Did my brother drink again?"
Her brother had always seemed like a man who would die if he weren't upright. That formula had begun to crack some time ago. A man who never used to drink had taken to living in a bottle.
Yuju understood the uncharacteristic behavior. She was doing things she never used to do for the same reason.
"Oppa, will you marry me?"
In that moment she lost her balance and stumbled. Seo-won caught her without missing a beat.
Reflexively she lifted her head. Their eyes met, and the words slipped out before she could stop them.
"Once I graduate, I'll probably get sold off to some stranger I've never even seen, just like my brother."
"Sold off?"
"That's right, isn't it? Our dad clawed his way up from absolute poverty, and he's so obsessed with those 'connections' of his that he's forcing my brother into a marriage. Why would I be any different?"
"…"
"No — I might get sold off before I even graduate. He never wanted me in this major, so the diploma won't mean anything to him. He might already be looking for a groom. The way he keeps calling me to formal events lately…"
Remembering the impure gazes of men far older than her at those public functions made nausea rise in her throat.
Their father had always insisted that a person must choose their connections wisely. That creed hadn't stopped with his generation — it would pass to her brother, and to her.
He had carefully selected a family that could serve as a stepping stone to higher places. Her brother's wishes had nothing to do with it. Unwanted marriage was withering him day by day.
That would soon be her future.
From the start he had never wanted her in her current major, and he seemed to be waiting for any chance to make her drop out.
"This isn't the Joseon Dynasty. I don't want that. At the very least, I want to marry someone whose face I actually know."
Until her brother's help got her into the university she wanted, she had never lived a single day on her own terms.
The schools her father wanted, the hobbies, even friends who only looked long-standing on the surface. Her own will had never entered into any of it.
Leaving her father's house, she had thought she could finally breathe a little. Now she feared she might be forced to marry a man like her father and live forever as a doll.
Watching her brother's situation only made her more certain. Right now, if she could escape this reality, she would sell her soul to the devil.
"Why me, of all people? There must be plenty of guys just among your classmates."
It was the kind of thing you could laugh off as a drunk's joke. But Seo-won took her words seriously.
Under ordinary circumstances, the unexpected reaction would have set off warning bells. But drunk Yuju was incapable of normal thought.
"Because you look like the safest person in the world."
At those words, a crack appeared in Seo-won's expressionless face — a face that never showed so much as a ripple. But nothing registered in Yuju's eyes now.
"They say your nickname is 'asexual,' 'AI,' right? That you have zero interest in women. With you, I feel like I could share a bed and nothing would ever happen."
Maybe it was the alcohol. Yuju said all sorts of things to Seo-won, whom she normally found difficult to approach.
Even remarks that might bruise a man's pride drew no reaction from him. He seemed to regard it all as mere drunken rambling.
"And if it was the son of a family as impressive as yours, Dad would welcome it with open arms, right?"
Yuju had been joking around when the alcohol suddenly hit her hard. She thought she said more after that, but every memory grew hazy, as if she had walked into fog.
She fell asleep on the sofa without even making it to her room — never knowing that Seo-won was watching her with a look she couldn't have deciphered.
Yuju had been sitting in front of her rice for a while now, staring blankly as if performing a ritual offering.
Her mouth felt too dry and rough to want food. The grains she forced in tasted like chewing sand, so she finally set down her spoon.
"Not going to school?"
Tae-ju, who had been watching her silently, finally spoke. Yuju, who hadn't even noticed her brother enter the kitchen, startled.
She looked as if she'd seen a ghost. Tae-ju paid no mind to his sister's sharp stare as he ladled soup and rice and sat across from her.
The brother in front of her felt unreal.
"Eat up. You've still got time. I'll drive you."
After the marriage talk started, her brother had lived as if he'd given up on life. He came home late every night after drinking, and overslept and scrambled to work more often than not.
Sitting face-to-face like this was rare. True to someone who had lived only for the family, he had recovered quickly.
I don't know if he's actually okay, or just pretending to be.
Despite the large age gap, the two of them got along better than most real siblings — more bonded than bickering. That was why, the moment Yuju became an adult, she left their father's house to live in her brother's place.
For a while she had suffered alongside her brother as he struggled with the forced marriage. But today, someone else entirely filled her thoughts.
"Did Seo-won oppa say anything about me?"
"Why is Seo-won's name coming out of your mouth? How many words have the two of you even exchanged?"
That was fair. She had known him for a long time, since her brother's school days, but calling her and Seo-won "close" would have been a stretch.
She'd seen him often because of Tae-ju, and his little gestures had made her heart race more times than she could count — but she had never once let it show.
If anything, she had worked hard to hide her feelings, afraid of making things awkward between the two men.
In all those years of crossing paths, that night had probably been the most they had ever spoken. Maybe that was why Seo-won had been drifting through her mind for weeks whenever she had a spare moment.
She was sure they had talked for a while, but she couldn't remember what about. She had the feeling something she shouldn't forget had been said.
"I think I might have made a little mistake while I was drunk."
"A mistake?"
"I ran into him the night he brought you home…"
Yuju groped through her memory. She had hoped some of it would come back with time. No matter how hard she tried, every recollection was in fragments.
"You won't regret it?"
Seo-won's voice, asking the question with unexpected seriousness, floated up.
What could she possibly have to regret — especially involving Choi Seo-won? The idea that the two of them could do anything together was absurd to begin with.
But the memories that came after were anything but ordinary.
"This is my…"
She thought she had fumbled something out to hand to Seo-won. Beyond that, the memory was gone — as if someone had stolen it.
With no answers forthcoming, Yuju kept her silence. Then the phone she had set on the table buzzed.
Yuju frowned at the random text. She tilted her head, then quickly arrived at an answer.
"Phishing scam?"
"What is?"
"Must be spam. Anyway, if Seo-won oppa brings me up, tell him I'm sorry."
As if her brother would cut off a lifelong friend just because his little sister made a fool of herself.
Yuju decided to leave the fretting there and resumed eating. But before long her hands slowed again.
Her eyes fell on the phone screen. The unsettling message kept pulling at her.
She forced herself to dismiss it — it was probably nothing. But this was not something she should have brushed aside so lightly.