The Young Lady Wants That Dog 11
"Woo Tae-kyung. Woo Tae-kyung."
At the sound of his name, Woo Tae-kyung, who had briefly dozed off, cracked his eyes open to find a pair of white fingertips brushing past his face, almost touching him and then not. He checked his watch. Not quite six in the morning. So she really had dragged him to the parking garage and slept here of all places. Lee Do-hee was still face-down against the headrest, looking at him, and she broke into a sparkling grin as if she'd never slept a wink in her life.
"Let's go to school."
He was so mentally frayed that pure irritation boiled up; he'd shut his eyes for a few minutes and she'd spent them chirping nonsense. She'd ordered enough liquor to party all night at the club, hadn't managed to drink a single drop, and now she wanted to go to school.
It looked like she was about to start skipping school the way she skipped meals, yet here she was demanding they go first thing in the morning — was she trying to screw him over, or what?
"You know what… forget it."
When Woo Tae-kyung, suddenly exhausted again, answered in a voice cracked from sleep, Lee Do-hee beamed. Only then did she flip herself over to the other side.
Climbing out of the back seat, he slid into the driver's seat and looked at the red impression pressed into her cheek. She'd apparently slept exactly as he'd laid her, because the headrest's mark remained stamped on one side of her face. The car's logo was embedded there, clearly legible against her cheek, and he barely suppressed an absurd laugh.
"You're going like that?"
He asked as she hiked her top back up — even draped in his jacket, the neckline had already slipped halfway down her chest, the back of it gaping wide open.
"I'm going home first, then out. Find my phone for me. Before the club closes. I clock out around six, so the back door should still be open."
Leaving Lee Do-hee where she was, Woo Tae-kyung drove to the club and found the back door without any trouble. When he gave her name, the employee immediately fetched the phone she'd left behind. And at the tentative mention that the bill hadn't been settled yet, Woo Tae-kyung — who'd been smoking a cigarette in the back alley during that brief interval — finally burst out laughing.
This absolute lunatic.
Before changing his clothes, he'd grabbed only his phone and wallet, so he dug lazily through the pocket of his slacks.
Then he pulled a card with no spending limit out of his wallet and handed it over. Jang Hee-jo had nagged him endlessly about making one while he was at it — make it now, he'd insisted — so it was just as well he had. The clothes she'd had him wear yesterday couldn't have cost more than a few pennies, and in a single day the interest had already snowballed.
Truly her father's daughter — the man infamous in this world as the ultimate loan shark.
The moment the black card appeared, the employee vanished, then returned just as quickly, pressing the receipt back into his hand and fishing bills from the wallet for him, since he'd apparently be staying through the morning.
"Thank you, sir!"
Normally Lee Do-hee always settled up before leaving, and with her identity beyond question the money would come eventually — but the employee, stuck shuttling a phone back and forth at dawn as the last punishment of his shift, had cautiously brought up the bar tab hoping against hope, and walked away with a tip on top, in an excellent mood.
Woo Tae-kyung finished his cigarette, then pulled every last bill of cash out of his wallet.
The employee's eyes went round as saucers.
"I'd like to use the showers, if that's all right."
He was the only one left locking up anyway, so the employee flashed a grin at a tip nearly equal to his monthly salary.
"If the staff shower's acceptable, sir, of course! We have all the toiletries too, everything's complimentary!"
"Won't take long."
"Take all the time you need, sir."
He hadn't been able to muster any annoyance at the man who'd walked in right as he was about to go home, saying he was there to pick up a phone. The scar on the man's face registered first, then his height and build — both bigger than his own — and the unmistakable air of the gangsters who ran this whole district. So he'd treated him with maximum courtesy, and the man had been generous in return.
Considering it covered by the interest she owed, Woo Tae-kyung headed into the shower room the employee had shown him to.
Fifteen minutes was plenty to wash up.
Under the cold water, the reason he'd somehow set aside for a while came back to him, and the exhaustion drained away with the dirt.
He didn't bother drying his hair, just put his clothes back on — without the underwear.
"Have a good night, sir!"
With a slight nod at the employee's send-off, Woo Tae-kyung walked unhurriedly toward the parking garage where Lee Do-hee would be waiting.
"Why are you so late?"
The moment he opened the door, Lee Do-hee snapped at him. The car logo still stamped on her cheek made her look like a walking billboard. Objectively speaking, her looks were so dazzling and lovely that billboard might not be far off the mark. She was mid-tirade when she caught the water dripping from his hair and thrust her lips out in displeasure.
"You showered? Why. Was there an employee you fancied?"
He checked his watch again — just over twenty minutes, and he'd done everything.
What goes on in that head of hers, that she just hurls words out like this.
Woo Tae-kyung tapped the steering wheel with a finger. He'd thought the cold shower had washed most of the tangled emotions out of his skull. Apparently not.
"Lee Do-hee."
"If you knew there was a shower in there, you must have played around plenty in your day."
"In my entire life, you're the first woman to think a man who just got his brains fucked out would take only twenty minutes to shower."
So now she's moved on to a different flavor of insult. She had a real talent for stomping on the exact spots that make men snap, this woman.
"Twenty minutes is more than generous."
"What the hell is in your head, seriously."
"You leave me here, and you can't even wait — you go hook up? You even shower and come back? Woo Tae-kyung!"
He was genuinely curious what kind of men Lee Do-hee had spent her life around. He stared at her, expressionless, at how casual she was about trampling his manhood.
"Keep talking. See what happens."
"What are you so smug about! I bought you! Why do you think Jang Hee-jo left you here with me!"
"Quit yapping, Lee Do-hee. Keep it up and the dog you're raising runs away."
"Then I'll chase it to the ends of the earth. You think I can't?"
"You'd probably be very good at that."
Woo Tae-kyung said it as he turned the ignition.
"Don't do anything without my permission! Don't see anyone!"
Lee Do-hee shrieked like she was having a seizure. Her bare feet kicked at the space beneath the dashboard, again and again. She raged like a madwoman, like someone who couldn't control her own temper to save her life. Twenty minutes ago she'd woken him with a smile, telling him to take her to school. Twenty minutes. That was all it took for Lee Do-hee's switch to flip.
"I'm not seeing anyone."
He never had been. Swallowing the last part, Woo Tae-kyung said it flatly.
"Oh right, how could you be, when you're with a different woman every time! You change daily, so of course there's nobody you're 'seeing'!"
Lee Do-hee grabbed the steering wheel roughly just as he was about to pull out.
A stray thought flickered through his mind: someday, he might take this woman somewhere with a cliff and step on the accelerator instead of the brake.
"Lee Do-hee. You worked that hard, with that much passion, to seduce me — for a ten-minute? Twenty-minute? lay? You're trying to ruin my whole life over twenty minutes? Hey. When I decide to sleep with you, I put everything on the line. You think that ends in twenty minutes? Do you ever think before it comes out of your mouth, or do you just spit?"
He knocked her hand off the steering wheel as he spoke.
"…What?"
"Everyone in this world knows Chairman Lee hates gangster trash more than anything — even though he came up as one himself. Whoever you mess around with, if he's gangster trash, his dick goes in a blender first, my lady."
"So that's why you won't play with me?"
"I'm not quite ready to bet my life on it."
Lee Do-hee clamped her mouth shut. Then she punched a different address into the navigation. It was in Apgujeong, not far from here.
"Drive there."
Taking that as comprehension, Woo Tae-kyung moved the car without a word. The roads, still ahead of rush hour, were sparse by Gangnam standards. When the car pulled into the apartment complex in Apgujeong — an aging place that commanded the highest price tags in the area thanks to redevelopment rumors — Lee Do-hee, who had been biting her tongue the whole way, finally spoke.
"Then, if I get my dad's permission, can I do it with you?"
Screech.
An apartment slated for redevelopment meant barely any parking, and as Woo Tae-kyung was scanning the area, he slammed the brake hard for an instant. When her upper body pitched forward despite the seatbelt, he shot out one hand, blocking her with practiced ease so she wouldn't rock too violently.
"You've got to be—"
So she's made up her mind to ruin me.
"I've been thinking about how to make you desperate for it."
She'd said yesterday she'd been thinking about how to wreck him — clearly the crazy woman had thought a hell of a lot. Woo Tae-kyung ground the inside of his cheek and shot her a dangerous glare. But Lee Do-hee wasn't laughing at all; she was eyeing him with a slick, gleaming look.
"Getting Dad's permission. I'll get it."
"Fuck — and why would I?"
Utterly dumbfounded, Woo Tae-kyung fired it right back.