We're in Love!

The moment lecture ended, her classmates burst into noisy chatter. Even when they moved as a group, Yuju alone seemed out of place in the mood.

Until recently she had at least looked like an ordinary college student on the surface. But ever since she heard about her brother's forced marriage, Yuju had grown strangely gloomy.

Now, with other problems stacking on top of it, she found herself spacing out at the slightest provocation.

Choi Seo-won.

The man with whom something had clearly happened that night refused to leave her mind for even a second.

Just what on earth did I do?

People were allowed to make the occasional mistake. Of course, the problem was that the other party was her brother's friend—someone so far out of her league it was almost laughable.

Still, Seo-won would never hurt her. Yet a corner of her heart remained uneasy. Instinct whispered that she absolutely could not let that night's events slide.

"Huh?"

As she had been doing whenever she had a free moment lately, Yuju was thinking of Seo-won. Then she suddenly spotted a familiar car, and her eyes went wide.

A foreign luxury car that did not belong on campus.

She had seen that model a few times before. Her brother's friend's car, occasionally parked in the lot. Even Yuju, who knew next to nothing about cars, recognized it as an outrageously expensive high-end vehicle.

So there really are other people in the world who drive cars like that. And on a college campus, of all places.

Yuju thought idly. Yet somehow the person stepping out of the car looked familiar.

"Seo-won oppa?"

"Oppa?"

The words Yuju had unconsciously let slip drew every one of her friends' gazes. They seemed to have mistaken Seo-won for the older brother about whom so many rumors swirled.

"Sorry. You guys go on ahead."

She had no idea why the man who had been stirring up her mind for so long had appeared here. Moreover, the gaze fixed squarely on her declared that he had come to see her.

Yuju excused herself from her friends and started walking. Seo-won was approaching her as well; they met in the middle.

"Oppa, what brings you here…?"

"Let's go."

Seo-won cut her off without ceremony and seized her wrist. The implication was clear: he meant to take her somewhere.

Blinking stupidly at the incomprehensible situation, Yuju asked,

"Where… to?"

"To Father."

"Father? My dad?"

After the sudden appearance of Seo-won came the equally sudden mention of a person. Looking at Yuju's blank face as she failed to grasp the situation, Seo-won wore an expression that said he was the one more puzzled.

"I've already called the prosecutor's office."

"What on earth have you been talking about this whole time…?"

"You should have received a call today."

"What call?"

"The marriage registration results."

"What? What registration?"

Yuju asked back in shock. At the same time, the fragments of hazy memory that had been making her uneasy for weeks began locking into place one by one.

"These are my ID and seal. You'll need them if you go file the marriage registration alone."

It was a memory that had refused to surface for days. But the moment she faced Seo-won, everything became vivid, as if it had just happened.

Yuju felt a chill run down her spine. She finally understood what outrageous act her past self—needlessly meticulous—had committed.

"If you don't do it for me, tomorrow I'll just grab any classmate and do it."

She seemed to have blubbered something like that while sobbing her eyes out.

Yuju understood the unease that had clung to her for days. And the identity of the incomprehensible text that had arrived that morning.

"N-no, a marriage registration form isn't something so simple that someone else can just fill it out for you…"

"You filled it out."

"Me?"

"You said you brought one from the district office because you thought you'd need it."

Her mind went pure white. Even in this crisis, Yuju had been trying to argue the rights and wrongs of it—until she froze completely, like a paused screen.

She remembered. The seal. The marriage registration form. She had prepared them as a way to threaten her father, desperate to stop her brother's forced marriage somehow.

There was no way that Yuju, raised under such strictness, would actually present that to her father. Of course she had never intended to marry just anyone either.

It had been nothing more than a timid act of rebellion she prepared and carefully kept… and she had handed it to Seo-won. Even drunk, she should not have been capable of causing an accident this large.

The biggest mystery was that Seo-won had actually submitted it. As Yuju stood speechless amid the bomb of a situation, her phone vibrated.

"Dad?"

Confirming the caller, Yuju finally came back to herself. A call was coming from her father—someone who almost never contacted her at this hour, or any hour.

Yuju sensed an unknown foreboding. With trembling hands she pressed the call button. Before she could utter a single word, a shout exploded through the receiver.

She had barely managed to hold onto her sanity. No sooner had she than a second shock slammed into her. Every trace of color drained from Yuju's face.

Seo-won snatched the phone that looked ready to slip from her hand and hit the floor.

"This is Choi Seo-won. I've reserved a restaurant nearby. We'll see you shortly. I'll send the address."

Seo-won seemed to have anticipated that the moment this news reached Beom-su, a call to Yuju would follow at once.

He said he contacted the prosecutor's office earlier. Why on earth? And before that—why the marriage registration form…

Yuju was dumbfounded. In the meantime Seo-won quickly ended the call and guided her into the passenger seat.

She moved as he led her, still in a daze. But nothing about what was happening registered with her at all.

Their destination was a restaurant near the prosecutor's office where Yuju's father worked—a thoroughly private space composed entirely of private rooms.

The moment they arrived they were shown inside. Yuju deduced that her father was already there, and her face turned deathly pale.

Just as she expected, as soon as they reached the room her father's enraged shout rang out.

"Han Yuju!"

Beom-su was waiting for the two of them at the entrance without even stepping inside. That alone made it clear he had been thoroughly prepared ever since hearing the news.

Yuju unconsciously hid behind Seo-won. She knew full well that hiding would solve nothing. But right now, normal thought was impossible.

What could a girl who had barely turned twenty do in a situation like this? Especially when the other party was the person she feared most in the world—her father, who went beyond patriarchal and was sometimes violent.

Yuju thought it would be better simply to faint on the spot.

"Let's go inside first. There are many eyes watching."

Seeing the terrified Yuju, Seo-won stepped in to mediate.

He seemed to have deliberately chosen a restaurant near Beom-su's workplace. Knowing that Beom-su, so conscious of surrounding gazes, would at least restrain himself here.

As Seo-won expected, Beom-su, who had been hesitating, quietly entered the room. But Yuju remained paralyzed with fear.

That was readable even in Seo-won's eyes. Her father, who had watched his daughter all her life, knew everything yet refused to let it pass.

"The two of you married? What kind of nonsense is that. It's obvious you're not that kind of couple, and you know perfectly well I've been looking for a marriage partner for you. Don't tell me you're rebelling against me right now?"

Freed from others' gazes, Beom-su berated his daughter.

Seo-won frowned. Though he had not laid a hand on her, the entirely coercive attitude was no different from violence.

As a legal professional, his actions toward his own child were not lawful in the slightest. It made sense why the children had obediently gone along with such absurd things all this time.

And also why Yuju was so restless now.

"That's… I mean…"

"Speak properly!"

The words Yuju had managed to open closed again. Unlike someone who had boldly prepared a marriage registration behind the scenes, she was terrified of her father.

And of course she was—though she had intended it to remain an attempt, she had caused this entire mess with the meticulously prepared materials meant for rebellion.

Afraid of further interrogation, not knowing what aftershock would come if she spilled the whole truth, Yuju's entire body trembled like an aspen leaf.

She felt certain she would faint right then. It was the moment Seo-won grasped her hand under the table, trying to calm her.

Like a spring that shoots upward the instant it is touched, Yuju suddenly sprang to her feet. As every gaze in the room snapped to her at once, she shouted into the empty air.

Yuju's voice rang out thunderously through the spacious room. Amid the silence that followed, she squeezed her eyes shut.

Whichever way it went there would be aftershocks—but her father would be far more furious about her spending a long time preparing to rebel against him than about doing something impulsively, blinded by love.

It was something she had done thinking only that she had to escape the current situation first. Yet somehow, far from settling anything, the more she stepped forward the bigger the matter seemed to grow.