Just Don't Get Her Pregnant

I'd still planned to leave it in Kang Sa-eon's hands and wait. What he'd asked of me was a fake relationship—not to clear up any misunderstandings about him being gay. I'd carry out exactly what I'd been asked, fill my own selfish desires along the way, kill off whatever lingering attachment I had left, and then leave.

But looking at how Kang Sa-eon was handling things... no.

This wasn't it.

Honestly, I'd expected to be dragged all over the place starting from the day I took the money. We weren't nurturing some precious, blossoming romance here. This whole thing had started so we could spread rumors—so shouldn't we be showing ourselves off?

But Kang Sa-eon didn't so much as contact me for a full week. He lived such a busy life that I wasn't disappointed by the silence itself.

For all his faults, Kang Sa-eon was a capable third-generation chaebol. He ran the Strategic Planning Division brilliantly, and his reputation was solid among everyone from the executives down to regular employees like me.

Of course it was. He worked hard, for one thing. Koreans have always been generous toward people who are good at their actual jobs. There were plenty of third-generation chaebols who slapped on a title and spent their days fooling around. Compared to them, Kang Sa-eon—who came in early and stayed late, glued to the office—was admirable.

But that was that, and this was this.

Our typical third-generation chaebol, who had almost certainly never watched even five minutes of a drama in his life, was a lifelong singleton.

Maybe people imagining he had a boyfriend was actually doing him a favor. A lover? He'd been dutifully showing up to blind dates, sure—but had he ever actually done anything physical? He'd be lucky if he'd even held someone's hand. I was certain of it. That kiss I'd laid on him had been his first.

A man who went around calling women praying mantises actually having had sex? That would have been a miracle in itself.

Everyone expected him to carve time out of his packed schedule for a debauched private life, but Kang Sa-eon's days consisted of work, exercise, work, work, and more work. Calling a Princess like that a playboy—no wonder Uncle had laughed at me.

Even without being close to his son, it wouldn't have been hard for him to figure out what kind of life Sa-eon generally led, given that he spent all his time at the company. The secretary team assisting Executive Director Kang Sa-eon ultimately reported to the Chairman himself.

To a gynophobe who could barely hold a woman's hand, Uncle was too high and too thick a wall. According to Sa-eon's offhand complaints, Uncle was quite the womanizer himself. Honestly, Uncle was far more like the male lead in a romance novel than Kang Sa-eon ever was. The arrogant, handsome, terrifying kind.

I may not look it, but I'd dated three people, a week each. I'd held hands, gone on dates, and in college I'd even gotten as far as a kiss. I wasn't completely inexperienced, okay? The guy had slobbered all over my lips and shoved his tongue in, and his breath had been so disgusting I dumped him the second the date ended—but experience was experience.

Of course, considering I was thirty-three, it was a rather pathetic track record. I consoled myself that at least I was doing better than Kang Sa-eon, but honestly, I'd be embarrassed to tell anyone. At least Sa-eon had a physiological aversion as an excuse. Me? I'd spent from fifteen to thirty-three floundering, unable to give up a hopeless unrequited crush, and that was how I'd ended up here...

Pathetic.

Being only human, I decided to downplay my own shameful parts and magnify Kang Sa-eon's weaknesses.

The conclusion being that, when it came to dating experience, I had him beat...

Come to think of it, maybe he'd be better off just getting married.

Thirty-three was a perfectly reasonable age for it. But I stopped myself from thinking too deeply. Unrequited crush or not—even if I'd decided to kill it off—I was still in love with Kang Sa-eon, and I didn't want to imagine him marrying someone else. He probably had his reasons. Reasons ordinary people couldn't possibly understand.

I flipped my phone face down.

Taking a half-day off had saved me—not from work, but from myself. The moment my meeting with Uncle ended, I clocked out—the half-day already filed—and the messages poured in. Had my number been handed out to this many people? Even someone I'd exchanged a single greeting with texted me, pretending they weren't fishing for details about my relationship with Kang Sa-eon. But I'd been prepared for this much.

Drawing on everything I'd absorbed from novels, dramas, comics, and every other medium, I kept my replies consistent with those of a woman in love. It wasn't even hard, honestly. I really did love Kang Sa-eon, so all I had to do was answer based on the delusion that we were actually dating.

That way, when six months passed and I was cruelly dumped, as everyone would expect, and I quit the company and vanished—nobody would find it strange. I lay on my stomach on the sofa, pondering.

"Hey, it'd be more convincing if we said you confessed first, right?"

"Are you insane? Obviously you'd be the one who confessed to me."

"No, if I confessed and you just went along with it, that doesn't look great either. Doesn't that make you look too easy?"

"And me liking you first makes me look like a challenge?"

Fair point.

Kang Sa-eon had just gotten out of the shower, shaking out his wet hair with a towel as he grumbled.

I lifted only my head to look at him. Kang Sa-eon was, at least, fully dressed in a white short-sleeved T-shirt and pants—probably because I was here. Concealing a small pang of disappointment, I put my head back down and stared at the ceiling. He walked past me toward the fridge, cracked open a bottle of water, poured it into a glass, and drank. If it were me, I'd have just put the bottle straight to my mouth.

"Don't chaebols wear bathrobes around the house or something?"

"You've been watching too many dramas."

You should watch some dramas. If you don't have any experience, you could've at least studied some audiovisual materials.

"What? A surprising amount of it is pretty accurate. You live in a nice house, drive nice cars, eat nice food."

Kang Sa-eon let out a hollow laugh.

"That's all nonsense. You actually believe that stuff? Dramas are just that—wish-fulfillment videos of lazy people fantasizing about trapping some out-of-their-league rich guy without lifting a finger, so they can live well for the rest of their lives."

You are seriously twisted...

I often got called cynical myself, but I was nowhere near Kang Sa-eon's level.

"Have you even watched a single drama before saying that?"

"I don't need to. Every woman I meet expects me to act like some male lead. Women."

I almost shot back that it wasn't only women who said things like that, then held my tongue. We'd already fought about this countless times. I'd called his remarks discriminatory; he'd countered with his own experiences.

It was also true that most of the women who approached him were a different breed from those who wanted to advance women's rights. The ones hoping to land a rich man and change their fortunes, or the ones straining to impress him on their family's orders.

Not every daughter of a wealthy family was like that, of course. But the ones who didn't fall into that category were usually too busy carving out their own lives with their family's capital to show up at blind dates on their parents' orders. A vicious cycle, really.

"More importantly, how long are you planning to lie there? You barged in this late at night saying we urgently needed to talk."

"I used up a precious half-day off because of you, so I figured I'd make you hang out with me—and also come up with a plan for dealing with Uncle."

I beamed up at Kang Sa-eon, who was looking down at me. His face went a little blank.

The strategy I'd chosen to survive as Kang Sa-eon's friend was to be a comfortable person. In front of him, I avoided anything that would highlight my gender, and I never dressed in a way that could be read as romantic appeal. If he was going to think of me as a little-brother kind of friend—the way he'd snapped at his old military senior—then I'd act the part.

"You could've done that over the phone. It doesn't look good, a grown woman coming and going from a man's house whenever she wants..."

"The whole world already knows I'm seeing you, you realize? Did you give me five hundred million won just to drink coffee a few times and go on a couple of dates?"

Even if you're a chaebol, is your spending really that extravagant? They say even a ruined rich family lasts three generations—and look, you're the third. Gangju Group is going under.

"That's not it."

Kang Sa-eon looked thoroughly unconvinced.

It wasn't like he was worried about my marriage prospects, and it didn't seem like he was annoyed that I'd invaded his territory, either. If that had been the case, he would've just booked a hotel room from the start.

I'd even come over to his place plenty of times before. Considering the things he said to me, the reason was obvious. He only ever said things nobody else should overhear, so it was better to just come to his house. It was only possible because we were thoroughly, unambiguously friends. I even had loungewear waiting for me at Kang Sa-eon's place.

This was where my ugly insides showed. Using the excuse that he had gynophobia and wouldn't keep women close, I was doing exactly the kind of female-best-friend thing I'd hate most if some other woman were hanging around my man.

"Be honest. After I left, Uncle grilled you, didn't he?"

We were a team. I goaded him like an overbearing club senior, or a teammate on a sports team.

"You didn't seem like a boyfriend at all today."

"He didn't seem to know it was a lie."

Kang Sa-eon perched on the very edge of the sofa. He kept so much distance he wouldn't even brush my toes. Feeling spiteful, I sat up properly.

"So what did he say?"

"Just don't get her pregnant."

I was moved.

I guess he does care about me, after watching me grow up since I was a kid.