Is It Because of Me?
Yuju slipped out of the bedroom as quietly as she could manage.
The living room, packed with luxurious furnishings from end to end, filled her vision at once.
Even after staying here for several days, she still could not quite believe she was inside Seo-won’s space.
On the day she had boldly declared in front of her father that they were in love—whatever other nonsense she had thrown in—Seo-won had packed only the bare essentials and brought her straight to his home.
He had gotten ahead of things before she could run into Tae-ju. The moment Tae-ju started interrogating her, she would have spilled every last detail. No matter how gentle Tae-ju was, he was a prosecutor; if he pressed her properly, she would never have been able to dodge.
Unlike the meticulously calculating Seo-won, Yuju had been swept along into his house the same way she had been swept through everything else that day.
When her mind finally cleared later, she could no longer tell whether any of this had been the right choice. She had only meant to take some time alone until her thoughts settled… yet somehow that period had stretched on and on.
While she kept sighing, completely at a loss for what to do next, her phone vibrated.
A message from Tae-ju. He seemed to have been relentlessly harassing Seo-won this whole time. When that failed to work, it was apparently her turn.
She had nothing to say if she met her brother. Yuju could not bring herself to send any reply at all. A late, uneasy question also rose in her mind.
Doesn’t he even care what kind of person his grandson suddenly married? With Osong Group’s information network, there’s no way he doesn’t know about his grandson’s affairs. Father would have told him everything beforehand anyway.
She had once overheard her brother mention that Seo-won’s parents had both passed away when he was young, leaving only his grandfather.
Unlike her own household, which had erupted into chaos over the sudden marriage, Seo-won’s side remained utterly silent even though their only grandson had gotten married.
Seo-won seemed to have driven the situation this far because of the pressure to marry; in that case, he ought to dislike how things stood now.
“Uh…”
The more she thought, the deeper the questions sank into a labyrinth instead of resolving. Lost in thought, Yuju let out a startled sound the moment she spotted someone entering the house.
Seo-won—who had not shown so much as a glimpse of his face for days after hurling a bomb into her life and vanishing—had appeared.
“…Why are you here?”
Even as the words left her mouth, Yuju knew it was a stupid question.
This was Seo-won’s house. Of course the homeowner would come home. She had been so focused on the awkwardness of facing him after that day that she had forgotten the most obvious fact.
Smiling awkwardly, Yuju met Seo-won’s gaze as he stared straight at her. His eyes, steeped in fatigue, looked extremely dangerous.
“I’ll be coming home regularly starting today.”
Why did those words sound as if he meant they would be sharing a bedroom from this day forward?
Maybe she was overinterpreting, yet under that chilly gaze Yuju instinctively shrank into herself.
“That’s…”
Does that mean we’ll sleep together starting today?
Yuju was genuinely curious, but she could never ask something like that outright unless she had lost her mind.
Somehow it felt as though Seo-won were pressuring her—as if he intended to settle the score for the pride-wounding words she had spouted that day.
According to everything she had clearly heard from her brother, Seo-won was an asexual, indifferent not only to the opposite sex but to people in general.
It had looked that way to her eyes as well, and she had never once heard any dating rumor worth mentioning.
It would not have been an exaggeration to say she had known him for half her life. Unable to grasp the inner thoughts of the friend of her brother’s whom she had confidently believed she understood completely, Yuju felt like crying.
Yuju gripped a cup packed full of ice tightly in both hands.
The cold spread through her palms, yet she did not even register the discomfort. Focused entirely on the crisis right in front of her, every other sense had gone dull.
“Wait at the café in front of the school.”
Yuju recalled the phone call she had shared with her brother before arriving here.
She had never heard his voice so low and rough. Realizing that someone so gentle by nature was properly angry made her fingertips tremble. A terrifying interrogation seemed to be waiting just ahead.
Should I just honestly say even now that it was a drunken mistake?
He was the type who, quiet as he was, specialized in catching people completely off guard. Even criminals spilled every secret in front of her brother; her clumsy insides would be exposed in no time.
Yuju, who had briefly considered surrendering early, quickly shook her head. That would only make the situation worse. Her brother would never leave this matter alone.
“I told him we started dating right after high school graduation. Stay completely silent no matter what. You could never fool Tae-ju.”
Those were the words Seo-won had left that morning when he briefly stopped by the house.
She had expected as much, yet it seemed a great deal had happened between the two of them in places she knew nothing about.
And even after that he still couldn’t reach a conclusion, so now my brother is trying to approach me instead.
If he learned the whole truth, her brother would try to set everything right, and a fight with their father would become inevitable.
In the end the one who got hurt would be her brother. Hadn’t she watched it play out through countless experiences? His rebellions against their father never amounted to more than throwing eggs at a rock.
The marriage registration had already been filed. They were legal spouses now.
Right now the best path was to keep her mouth shut exactly as Seo-won ordered and search for some kind of compromise.
Thinking rationally at last, Yuju was able to set her tension aside.
“You’ve lost weight.”
While she was steeling herself that way, she sensed a presence across from her. Tae-ju had arrived while Yuju was still lost in thought.
Her brother, speaking in a worried voice, looked somehow far thinner than she—the actual party involved in this mess—did.
Yuju was certain this was not the same appearance he had worn until now because of the forced marriage. The look in his eyes as he regarded her held an undeniable complexity he could not hide.
“So you married Choi Seo-won.”
He was not angry. Yet Yuju found that completely flat voice even more frightening.
Not knowing how to answer, she could only roll her eyes. Unexpectedly, Tae-ju did not press her sharply.
“Choi Seo-won said the two of you dated. For quite a while, at that.”
Unlike Yuju, whose every emotion showed on her face, Seo-won was pure poker face.
Having been unexpectedly entangled with him and watching him up close, she felt she understood it even better now. He was absolutely not someone whose insides you could ever read.
Her brother would agree with that. Seo-won had played completely dumb, so of course he had come after the easier target—her.
An interrogation in all but name would follow any moment now.
Yuju clenched the hand that was already spasming from tension into a tight fist. Then a calm voice completely different from what she had braced for struck her eardrums—a voice that also seemed faintly seized by fear.
“Is it… because of me, by any chance?”
Even as Tae-ju asked, his gaze wavered anxiously. At the suspicious question Yuju’s brow furrowed tightly.
“The arranged marriage fell through.”
“……!”
The countless words swirling through Yuju’s head vanished in an instant.
There was no way their father did not know that her brother was growing thinner by the day, that he called him at the drop of a hat and worked him like a dog. Even so, their father had never shown the slightest sign of correcting his stance.
But now he’s saying the arranged marriage was canceled?
Yuju somehow sensed that the situation was flowing in a strange direction. No longer driven by the impatience to escape this moment, she immersed herself fully in her brother’s affairs.
“It seems Choi Seo-won’s influence was involved somehow… He’s not the type to meddle carelessly in other people’s business.”
That was something she knew perfectly well herself. Even though he possessed both the power and the authority to help, he always stepped back one pace and simply watched.
As if to say your problems are yours to solve.
It seemed he hoped Tae-ju would shed the hard shell he had wrapped around himself. That applied this time as well.
Which was exactly why Seo-won would never step forward. She could not understand why their father had suddenly changed his mind.
Could it be… because I became a means to seize even greater power?
Hurriedly searching for their father’s true intentions, Yuju suddenly had that thought.