Why Me?

“…….”

Seo-won did not take his eyes off Yuju, who was taut with nerves. It was a dangerous gaze, the kind that looked ready to devour her the second she let her guard down.

Ordinarily he was a man who allowed not a single crack in his composure. But in bed he cast aside the mask of the good man he wore everywhere else and let his instincts show.

It was a side of him she had once sworn she would never see. Feeling how thoroughly their relationship had changed made Yuju’s heart pound.

“More.”

When she timidly opened her upper body as ordered, his low voice drilled into her eardrums, urging her on. Even so, Yuju was not afraid the way she had been earlier.

This was the moment when Seo-won was most completely absorbed in her. Afraid of causing her even the slightest pain, he caught every tiny change in her, endured, and held himself in check.

That was why her heart seemed to race all the harder. Before she could even think, she wound her arms around his neck and pressed her mouth to his again, sealing the lips that had briefly parted.

“Ha….”

Their breathing tangled together, hot and frantic. It was the behavior of two people who had completely lost their minds over this.

Could you really call this sense of duty?

The question rose in Yuju’s mind. She shook her head almost at once.

Looking at him like this, it could never be duty.

Then pity?

That wasn’t it either.

She could not call this pity.

The tangled emotions left her thoughts in an uproar. Then they locked onto a single idea.

For now, I’m the only woman he can do this with.

She decided Seo-won had no reason to lie to her. So when he said he had never had a woman before, she found it remarkable—but she did not doubt him.

It was a ridiculous thought to have about the two of them, and still Yuju found the fact deeply satisfying.

“Haa…. Ha….”

Just before she felt she might truly stop breathing, their roughly tangled breath stilled. Yuju naturally sank against his broad chest and tried to catch her air.

Seo-won waited for her. Even so, he made no effort to hide the wicked desire blooming thick in both eyes.

Yuju liked that. It was because of the thought that, at least to Seo-won, she was a woman.

As if she could not bear to pull away, she buried herself more deeply against him. But where Yuju was tender, Seo-won was utterly savage.

“Ah!”

On the bed he drove her again and again into a sensation so dizzying it left her tingling.

His mouth and hands found places so damp and secret that no one else—not even Yuju herself—had ever reached them.

The sensation of being filled so tightly.

The firm muscle under her hands, so different from her own soft skin.

The heat of his body, hot enough to melt her entire frame.

Every time she joined her body with Seo-won’s, it was as if new nerves were sprouting; she sank into a damp, luminous rapture.

It felt good, and it hurt.

It hurt, and it felt good.

Swept up in a sensation she could not define with a single word, she found herself overwhelmed by the man who had already raced so far ahead of her that tears sprang to her eyes.

“Wait….”

As he pressed deep into her and then began to pull away again, Yuju drew him back into her arms. Only then did Seo-won halt his fierce movements, and her wet breath melted against his ear.

“Just for a moment—hold me like this.”

Yuju forced out each syllable with difficulty and swallowed a damp sound. The plaintive plea made him wonder if she was hurt, so he simply waited for her.

Thump. Thump.

Through the upper bodies locked together without a gap, their violently beating hearts reached each other.

This moment, which pleasure alone could never explain, felt so good that Yuju thought she might cry.

Seo-won opened his eyes to a hot sensation spreading through his chest.

A bare Yuju had crawled into his arms. Her loose long hair wound around his arm like vines, and Seo-won was thoroughly bound by her.

“Mm….”

In her sleep she smacked her lips and stirred. The Yuju who had clung to him so tenderly had returned to her original, innocent face.

The closer he spent time with his friend’s little sister—someone he had thought he already knew completely—the more new sides of her appeared every day. What he had seen of her today had been especially varied.

He thought Yuju was rather pretty. He had never paid much attention to feminine beauty, and yet his gaze lingered on her for a moment.

Heh.

Even to him it was a ridiculous thought. Seo-won smiled faintly and pulled the blanket up to cover her bare back. She did not so much as twitch; she must have been sleeping very deeply.

“Why me of all people?”

Yuju looked as if someone could have carried her off without her noticing. As he gazed quietly down at her, Seo-won suddenly remembered the words he had heard earlier.

He still had no idea why that story had come up. But something even stranger than the suddenness of her question had taken root.

The doubt that had sprouted from that question was pointing in a direction even he could not understand.

Bzzz. Bzzz.

The thought stretched on, one idea leading to the next. Just as he felt a strange sensation in his chest, his phone suddenly began to vibrate and whine.

Still holding Yuju—who showed no sign of peeling away from his body—Seo-won groped across the nightstand.

When he finally got the phone into his grip and brought it to his ear, a familiar voice came through.

It was Secretary Lee, whom he had sent home earlier.

The moment Seo-won confirmed who it was, he held his breath. A call at this hour meant something extremely serious.

In other words, spreading their relationship to the world had all been done after consultation with his grandfather.

He had thought something felt off. Beom-su looked simple at a glance, the way he flaunted his greed without shame. But he was never an easy man.

He had climbed to that position not only through outstanding professional skill, but because he was quick to read a room and knew precisely when to act and when not to. Even elated, he would not have moved right away.

Now that he could seize even greater power, he had apparently gone and prostrated himself first before Seo-won’s grandfather, the one who held real authority, even in the midst of his delight.

In-laws were free to talk to each other. The fact that they had kept it secret did not seem like a good sign.

Even so, Seo-won handled the suspicion with calm composure.

“We expected this. Report immediately if you see any unusual movement.”

The call with Secretary Lee did not last long. Seo-won glanced at Yuju sleeping in his arms. She was still sprawled out, as if the day had worn her thoroughly down.

Looking at her like this, she’s every bit a kid.

The gap between this and the way she had behaved at the banquet earlier made Seo-won’s thoughts stretch on for a moment. All the more so because of the voice of Yuju that had followed after.

“If I don’t do it right, Father will scold me….”

Even as her words trailed off, she had seemed to be recalling some day from the past.

What lived inside those words was a sense of helplessness and fear accumulated over a long time. He had seen the same thing countless times in Tae-ju as well.

He had known without being told every detail what kind of environment the siblings had grown up in, but the intensity of it seemed far harsher than he had imagined.

He knew perfectly well who stood at the center of it. And there was someone uncomfortably similar in his own life as well.

A wicked thought welled up in Seo-won: he wanted to tangle his grandfather and Beom-su together more deeply than he had planned.

“Yuju, did you get a boyfriend?”

She had been buried in her studies, clutching a stomach burning with stress, when the abrupt question made her lift her head. Only then did Yuju notice all the attention fixed on her.

“I saw a ring I hadn’t seen before.”

It was exam season, and she was studying for a while at a classmate’s studio apartment. Everyone was exhausted, and she seemed to have been chosen as the topic for a little airing-out.

This really doesn’t feel like the time…. Once the suspicion started, it lengthened, one question feeding the next. Inside it, Yuju was forced into the role of unwilling main character.

“Suspicious. You’ve been zoning out a lot lately, too.”

“Right? And sometimes someone drops you off at school and picks you up, yeah?”

“But if you’re exchanging rings, you’ve been together a pretty long time, haven’t you? Since when?”

Yuju had not agreed even once, and already several rumors were taking shape in the air.

Sitting there like this, she truly felt like an ordinary college student. Trading little bits of dating gossip, studying alongside her classmates—the kind of ordinary she had once only pretended to be on the surface, never in reality.

Yuju realized all over again that, thanks to Seo-won, she had finally been given her freedom.