Don't Cross Over

Ah… that just now probably came out like some bratty kid’s whining.

The moment regret started to creep in, Yeon-ha—whom he’d fully expected to push him away—adjusted her grip on his hand and pulled him after her instead.

“…So?”

“You said you were cold, Noona.”

“…….”

Watching her fall silent, Je-yoon decided this was his chance. Standing at the foot of the stairs, he looked up at her and gently swung their joined hands.

“The floor’s hard, the sofa’s too narrow, there’s no blanket… I’m cold too.”

Yeon-ha glanced down at him and let out a small, pained sound. Even if there was a throw on the sofa, it would be laughably small for Je-yoon.

She couldn’t help but feel bothered by it.

“…Just don’t cross over.”

Figuring he was never going to get any sleep anyway, Je-yoon quietly followed behind her. So the bratty act actually worked. The corner of his mouth twitched upward like he didn’t know what to do with the itch of a smile.

Yeon-ha lay on her back staring at the ceiling. Je-yoon lay on his side facing her.

“Noona. Asleep?”

“No.”

“I woke you up for a second, so now you can’t sleep.”

“A little?”

In the darkness, Je-yoon could just make out her face. He lightly tugged down the pillow she had propped up the moment she climbed into bed—some pathetic little barrier that barely counted as one.

“Want me to touch your ear?”

“No.”

“You said you have a meeting first thing tomorrow afternoon. You need to get some real sleep, even if it’s late.”

Worried he might end up keeping her awake all night, he let out a low breath.

“Fine… go ahead and touch it…”

His hand immediately slipped across. Je-yoon was lying on her right, so he’d expected to stroke her right ear—but the hand that came forward gently pressed and rolled her left earlobe instead.

Last time it had been ticklish enough to raise goosebumps, but tonight, maybe because of the alcohol, it simply felt good. Sleep even seemed to be creeping in.

His fingertips massaged her ear with soft, careful pressure. As the tension melted out of her, Yeon-ha’s soft mumbling gradually quieted.

“Noona.”

Propping his head on one arm, Je-yoon kept watching her face while he continued stroking her ear. At some point she had fallen asleep, and in her sleep she turned toward him.

“You fall asleep way too easily.”

With me right next to you. Do I not even register as a man to you…?

Still, he was fine with that.

Je-yoon gazed at her sleeping face. He didn’t want to miss a single second of the soft, even breaths. Relief that she seemed to be sleeping deeply mixed with something colder; he dragged a hand down his now-stark features.

There was more than one thing eating at him. Conflicting feelings collided hard inside his body.

A boiling crisis. A crisis that turned his blood ice-cold.

The first came from a heart that knew nothing but Song Yeon-ha. The second had been born from a single question.

So many you couldn’t even begin to count… that’s how many times you did it with that Yankee bastard…

No matter how hard he tried to brush it off with composure, this one refused to be easy.

The next day, Yeon-ha boarded the plane. She and Je-yoon were on the same flight, but they sat far apart and gave no sign they knew each other.

No one would ever guess they had spent the previous night in the same bed.

Pretending she needed the restroom, she glanced at his seat; Je-yoon never once lifted his eye mask and slept soundly the entire way.

Yeon-ha, by contrast, had slept more deeply last night than she had in a long time. Feeling oddly self-conscious about the ear-touching, she returned to her own seat.

During the short flight she checked everything that had happened while she was away on her tablet. Wanting Retail wasn’t only because it was the affiliate her father had built from the ground up in his younger years; she also wanted the products of the brand that held her dream stocked exclusively in Songhwa Premium Mall.

She knew full well that claiming both would not be an easy challenge.

While Yeon-ha had been on Jeju, there had been a personnel shift inside Retail. Choi Jeong-seon, the professional manager her grandfather had installed, had taken the new CEO seat at Songhwa Retail. Even as articles about the appointment dominated every portal, he kept every personal detail—photographs, age, background—strictly hidden.

She had already heard what kind of man he was from the strategy-team leader who had worked with him at the U.S. branch. Extremely rational, they said, and value-driven.

So Yeon-ha had stripped out every section about design history and collection previews and added projected revenue increases for Retail tied to Premium Mall VVIP membership instead.

Even though the materials quietly declared that she had no intention of letting go of Retail, the new CEO’s response had been positive enough to genuinely surprise her.

The risk might be high, but for people who placed value on scarcity, it was a rather tempting venture—that had been the reply.

Outside the domestic arrivals gate, camera flashes went off nonstop. Fans and reporters had come for Go Je-yoon. Of course a few photos of Yeon-ha were taken as well, but Je-yoon’s draw was on another level entirely.

Yeon-ha climbed into the waiting sedan. She rolled the window down for air; just before they pulled away, her eyes met Je-yoon’s as he passed her car.

When he gave her a small, crooked smile, she whipped her head the other way.

“Shall I close the window?”

the driver asked.

“No. Close it once we’re on the road.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

No one saw that, right? Her heart hammered. He wasn’t even wearing a mask—how could he just smile like that? Determined to erase the afterimage of Je-yoon, she stared at her tablet the entire way to the company.

The meeting with Choi Jeong-seon, the product division head, and the head buyer ended. Aside from those three, the working-level staff gathered in the conference room looked rather startled.

Their mouths had fallen open at the news that the major shareholder and outside director who had been pushed from the representative seat had designed everything herself; once they saw the stone selection, the master craftsmen she had personally scouted in Belgium, and the prototypes she had brought back, they shut their mouths and focused.

Some even voiced open admiration for the decisive way of working they had only heard about through rumors. Still, because fine jewelry carried customer preference rooted in a brand’s unique heritage, there were also employees who remained pessimistic.

“Everywhere has to have a first time, doesn’t it?”

Fortunately—or perhaps not—Choi Jeong-seon’s single remark silenced the concerns.

Yeon-ha glanced at him. When her eyes met Choi Jeong-seon’s as he flipped through the PR team’s documents, a question came flying straight at her.

No doubt because the brand-model page in the report still read “TBD.” She had told the PR team she would select the model herself, after all…

“So, do you have anyone in mind for the model?”

Je-yoon flashed through her mind at once, but she shook her head.

“Not yet.”

You could almost hear the mental gears turning as everyone considered who might be suitable. A few domestic and international celebrity names were floated, but Choi Jeong-seon didn’t look particularly impressed.

Then the name that left his mouth made Yeon-ha startle.

“Among domestic models, Yun seems like he’d suit it well. What do you think?”

He gestured to his secretary. The secretary immediately searched for Je-yoon and put photos up on the screen. The multifaceted charm of the man in the images stole every gaze in the room, Yeon-ha’s included.

Choi Jeong-seon quietly observed the subtle shift in her expression. She looked interested. A model who possessed both restraint and a languid quality underneath—exactly who had come to mind the moment he saw Yeon-ha’s designs.

“Director Song, what do you think?”

“I’d like to look into it a little more carefully. I’ll put him on the list.”

At the unexpected answer, every eye in the room swung toward her at once.

“Is that the only reason?”

“Yes.”

“Hmm.”

He leaned back against his chair with a look that said he didn’t quite understand.

“I would have thought the real stimulation of consumer desire comes when a model like that is the one wearing it.”

Stimulating consumer desire… Yeon-ha no longer wanted to drag Je-yoon any deeper into her work. Besides, she already had a few other models in mind excluding him.

“Min Hye-kyung would be fine too, and Ilana Orvitch would suit it. For a male model, Alessandro fits as well.”

Those listening quietly nodded. Choi Jeong-seon, however, never took his eyes off Yeon-ha.

“Well, all right for now. Let’s leave it here for today.”

Once she stepped into the elevator, Yeon-ha pulled out her phone and opened the message thread with Je-yoon.

She started to type, The meeting went well. Thanks to you. Yesterday…

She deleted everything she had written, intending to say I slept well yesterday.

He was a ghost… Yeon-ha huffed a soft laugh and replied, “Who knows.” Almost immediately the phone rang.

“I think I’ll just grab something light at the studio.”

“You need to rest too.”

“Okay.”

The moment she hung up, another message arrived.

Along with the adorable message came a green-onion character sticker winking and firing finger guns. Yeon-ha let out a short laugh.

But the smile vanished the second another call came in from someone else entirely.

It was Kevin. Yeon-ha hesitated a moment, then answered.

“Worried?”

She climbed into the sedan the driver held open for her, quietly asked to be taken to Seongsu-dong where the studio was, then turned her attention back to Kevin’s voice.

“…It was Grandfather’s decision.”

“Forget it. He’s not the type who reverses decisions. And who do you think you are anyway.”

The call with Kevin—whether he was trying to provoke her or actually offer help, she couldn’t tell—dragged on longer than expected. Feeling her chest tighten with frustration, Yeon-ha sighed and rolled down the window.

“…….”

Click. Yeon-ha mercilessly ended the call and shoved the phone into her bag.

“Getting back together, my ass…”

He still didn’t seem to understand what he had done wrong. No matter how open-minded she tried to live, the moment he cheated, the seed of any possible reconciliation had rotted without a single chance of sprouting.

It wasn’t as if they had even been in love.

At the end of that thought she unconsciously pictured Je-yoon, then shook her head hard to clear it.

Kevin might be crazy, but she felt a little crazy herself. Maybe it was last night. All day long Je-yoon had kept poking through. Even when she threw up a thick curtain, he peeked around the edge and pried her heart open again and again.

“Ha…”

The driver stole a glance at the back seat. She looked troubled, yet her face was still beautiful. He flushed quietly, unnoticed.

The gaze was impossible to miss, but Yeon-ha pretended not to see it. She had no desire to increase the number of people who knew the studio’s location. She wasn’t about to replace someone just for the occasional stolen look.

Once she arrived at the studio, Yeon-ha sat straight down at her desk. She needed to reply to the email from the European director. At least one thing was going smoothly; that was a relief.

It was only everything around her that felt chaotic.

While she sent off the work email she deleted Kevin’s accumulated messages in one swipe, then powered off the computer entirely.

Leaning back in the chair, she kneaded the stiff muscles of her neck. Unable to fight the steadily growing weight of her eyelids any longer, Yeon-ha fell asleep.