Please Pity Me
Tae-kyung's narrow eyes rested on Seo-ah for a moment before sliding away again.
"Doesn't look like you have one."
"N-no, that's not it——"
Before she could explain, he pulled the wallet from his jacket and drew out every bill inside it.
"Pretend we slept, take this money, and leave."
Dozens of fifty-thousand-won notes scattered across the table where he tossed them.
"Director, this is——!"
"What, too little? Seems like more than enough for an amateur to me."
She couldn't be thrown out like this. Not after everything it had taken to get here, not after coming this far.
If it was the only thing she could buy, Seo-ah wanted to buy his pity.
"I'm sorry if I displeased you."
"......"
"But, Director. I have a set amount of time. Being sent out just ten minutes after I walked in——"
"Give me your account number."
His phone was already in his hand, poised to transfer the money, and his tone was sharp enough to draw blood.
"That's not why I'm saying this!"
There was raw desperation in the urgency of Seo-ah's raised voice.
"Then what is it?"
She understood instinctively: unless she found some reason, any reason, right here and right now, it was over.
"......Give me a chance to make up for my mistake."
There was no time to lose. Convinced this was her final chance, she was desperate.
"Just once...... Please?"
She looked ready to drop to her knees on the spot, and Tae-kyung squeezed his softened eyes shut.
"Why are you so desperate?"
His voice, thick with what sounded like contempt, cut straight into her heart.
"I paid you already. I told you we don't have to do anything. Don't tell me—— you actually want to?"
"I just...... wanted you to like me, Director. That's all."
A dumbfounded, hollow laugh escaped him, and his gaze slowly darkened.
"You should've said so from the start."
Suddenly he rose from his seat and strode over until he stood directly in front of her.
"What are you doing?"
"......I'm sorry?"
Eyes drained of light, face utterly blank.
At the contempt swimming in those eyes, Seo-ah's body shrank in on itself.
"Stand up."
He seized her arm and pulled her to her feet, then wrapped an arm around her waist and drew her in.
Her frail body pressed flush against his, her face pulled up until it hovered just below his chest.
"If you needed a man, you should have said so from the beginning. You almost had me believing it was about the money."
Her eyes wavered as she looked up at him.
Kang Tae-kyung was finally acting exactly as she had predicted. So why did something feel wrong?
But there was no room to think it over.
Now that the situation had shifted, she had to seize the moment.
What she needed was a single clue—anything at all—connected to the Won Electric affair.
"Just a moment. Let's at least have a drink first——"
Despite the anxiety churning in her, the arm holding her didn't budge an inch.
"Are you kidding me? You cling to me even after getting turned away, and now you're playing coy? Some hostess you are."
"Ho-hostess."
Seo-ah, who had been turning her head toward the liquor bottles, flinched.
She had tried her hardest to look the part, but hearing the word spoken aloud felt strange, and it hurt.
"Well then, what am I, huh?"
Kang Tae-kyung was right.
Even if the unfamiliar label sat in her stomach like a stone, aching in the pit of her chest—for now, that was all she could be.
Resigned, Seo-ah's head drooped.
"I'm sorry......"
Tears felt ready to spill at any moment. Her legs trembled with fear and dread.
But being thrown out now, after coming this far without a shred of evidence, would be far more terrible still.
"I'm not particularly patient. How long am I supposed to wait? Either get on with it or get out."
"I really am...... a first."
Tae-kyung's face contorted in an instant.
"Christ, this 'first time' business. Is it just your work history that's a first? Don't tell me you're about to say sex is your first, too, hostess?"
Had she ever experienced language this crude before? Seo-ah pressed her lips tightly together, her eyes shaking violently.
"So what if it's your first? What do you want me to do about it? Can you even prove that?"
"......"
She had no answer. There she was, stammering random words at a man who'd been trying to throw her out, and getting flustered for it. She was ashamed of herself, unbearably so.
Then his derisive breath touched her forehead.
"Then kiss me. I'll believe you."
"Excuse me?"
Tae-kyung tilted her small chin upward with his fingers.
"Spare me the performance. Consider it me playing along."
His gaze was cold enough to freeze solid.
As he stared down at her, one eyebrow twisted upward.
"Ha...... a first, you say. What, are you into roleplay or something? Fine—how shall I match your tune?"
In that instant, her eyes as they looked up at him welled red with moisture.
"Why are you crying, you look so real about it. Disgusting."
His low voice rumbled like a growl in his throat.
Tae-kyung was barely holding down a surge of fury.
What on earth had happened to Jin Seo-ah in the past month?
The woman he'd seen at the funeral home had weathered a lifetime's worth of misfortune all at once and still refused to break.
Which meant, at the very least, she was not the kind of woman who would cheapen her own pain like this.
Yet the woman he'd been struck by at first sight had appeared out of nowhere as a bar girl.
Worse, she clearly treated him as if he were some depraved pervert obsessed with a woman's "pity."
Where on earth did she get an idea like that?
What was Jin Seo-ah's real story?
A pitiful woman ground down by poverty until she was pushed into this kind of work?
Or a spy, working with an executive at Dongha Motors, sent here to keep tabs on him?
Either way, the situation was a genuinely damned one.
Ha, what a piece of——
No matter how many curses he chewed and swallowed, Tae-kyung's anger would not subside.
What frustrated him most was that he didn't understand why he was angry.
Even after laying out all those reasons, the truth was that his anger wasn't aimed at her at all—it was aimed at himself.
Why?
But the woman knew nothing of this noisy turmoil inside him. She was too busy earnestly explaining the reality of her own situation.
"It's not a lie, and it's not a roleplay either. The truth is, my husband...... was gay."
"......What?"
The story had begun without any warning, and Tae-kyung's expression fractured.
But before he could properly absorb what he'd heard, she went on, speaking as if making a confession.
"When my father's company fell into trouble, an investor appeared. On the condition that I marry their heir."
This was the story Tae-kyung had been dying to know all along—why Jin Seo-ah had become entangled with Dongha Motors in the first place.
"I only found out he was gay...... after my husband died. Through the lover he'd summon night after night, all six months we lived together."
In that instant, the face of a man flashed through Tae-kyung's mind.
The man from the funeral home—delicate to the point of being grotesque.
He hadn't been able to hear the conversation clearly that day, but he'd assumed that if she'd grabbed the man by the collar, there had to be a reason.
He just never imagined the reason was that the man had been her husband's lover.
"It was a short marriage, but because my husband didn't want me, our bed...... was empty. Not even once."
Tae-kyung regarded her in silence for a long moment, then spoke.
"And you?"
"Sorry?"
"Did Ms. Lin ever want it? I'm asking how you feel, being treated like this."
Perhaps the question caught her off guard. For a moment, Seo-ah couldn't answer.
But then she shook her head slowly.
"No. Not even once."
"Why not?"
"Because I didn't love him. I thought things would change with time. But they never did—not for him, and not for me."
At her answer, something in Tae-kyung's gaze deepened.
And soon, Seo-ah's hand came to rest, ever so lightly, on the arm he had wrapped around her waist.
"I wasn't trying to appeal to you with the 'first time' thing. It's just...... tonight, you really are a first for me, Director. And that's why...... I was nervous. I'm sorry."
Ha. Tae-kyung let out a hollow breath.
What an extraordinary temptation this was, truly.
Ordinarily he would have scoffed and brushed it off, or perhaps disarmed it with some flippant mockery.
But the woman before him was Jin Seo-ah.
The woman he'd harbored every suspicion about and still couldn't shake from his mind.
And now that woman was telling him, you would be the first man I've ever had. Of course he was losing his mind.
Meanwhile, even as Tae-kyung waged war with his own conscience, Seo-ah—up on her tiptoes—drew her face steadily closer.
"Please don't throw me out. If I go back to the house like this, I'll be fired. And then there'll be nothing left I can do, Director."
Tae-kyung was on the verge of insanity.
His mind was screaming at him to send Jin Seo-ah out immediately, but his instincts refused, absolutely refused, to let her go.
"Can't you just...... pity me? Please? Director?"
Looking at her face—damp with tears down to her lashes—Tae-kyung felt a heavy heat gathering below his waist.
Ha, this is insane, honestly.
The moment he felt the soft curve of her approaching body was far too dangerous—
—her lips, pressing up into his chest, finally found his, and clung there, pitifully.
"Please pity me, I'm begging you......"
With those words, Seo-ah let the sheer bolero slipping down her arm fall to the floor.