Should I Devour You or Something?
It seemed he hadn’t looked this way yet. Thank goodness.
She quickly closed the curtains and turned to leave, but her gaze caught on the single cigarette pinched between his index and middle finger.
Back then, when she had first seen him behind the funeral hall building—repeatedly putting a cigarette held between his thumb and index finger to his lips only to pull it away again—she had thought, Wow, that’s sexy.
It was absolutely not a situation that called for such thoughts, and the action itself was clearly not meant to look cool, yet her heart had suddenly started pounding.
The ‘little kid’ who used to trail after him, calling him ‘young master’ until her mouth went dry, had been that naïve.
It also meant she had to be different now.
Because the man standing there with his back still turned, smoking, had changed more than enough from back then.
—You said my very existence makes you uncomfortable.
The image of his face, as if wondering why she found him so displeasing, rose clearly in her mind.
Even though she knew it was perfectly normal and natural, an ugly resentment began to swell inside her.
But you know, your existence makes me just as uncomfortable.
Even from this distance, just looking at his back was enough to make it hard to breathe properly. How could she possibly feel at ease?
Overwhelmed once again by a surge of unfairness, she yanked the curtains shut and turned away.
Ding-dong.
It seemed the members of Pauto, the special team dedicated to the family, had arrived right on time.
Seol-hye quickly gathered her staff and took her seat at the conference table.
“For the next month, all of you will be working here at Veritas twenty-four hours a day.”
Information Security Director K, Media and Public Relations Lead J, and P, a former prosecutor in charge of legal affairs.
They were key figures based in the essential and core areas of risk management for the owner family.
“From now on, all reports and risk-handling approvals related to the family must go through me, not Director Jang.”
In other words, they would no longer operate as a collaborative support team under the group’s special task force, but would move under her direct orders and control.
“You have already signed the contract and are fully aware of the responsibilities that follow any breach of the confidentiality clauses regarding all matters concerning the owner family, as well as everything that happens within the Kang-an family estate. I won’t explain it again.”
Ever since she had moved into the Kang-an estate, she had handled every internal risk that the outside world could never know about, all by herself.
It was a matter that required such thoroughness that it could not be omitted from the first briefing.
“Now, everyone, please follow me this way.”
Seol-hye led the team on a complete tour, showing them the security room and archive on the first floor of Veritas, then the residential wing prepared in Zone B on the same floor.
Exactly one hour had passed as scheduled, and it was time to move on to the next task.
She had to gather the documents and head over to Lux.
“Please head to your assigned rooms, unpack, and we’ll hold the first meeting at 2 p.m.”
Once everyone had moved to the residential wing, Seol-hye went back up to the second floor.
For some reason, her outfit had been bothering her the entire time, and she felt she needed to change.
She thought it would be better to dress a little more neatly and refined from now on.
Once she moved into Lux, she wouldn’t be alone anymore—not during the day, and certainly not at night while she slept.
This was so she could always be ready to jump into work mode, no matter what might happen.
J had once told her, calling her a role model:
Even if she wore clothes that were almost suffocatingly modest, her beauty couldn’t be hidden, and when she worked she looked like a total professional. If J had been a man, she probably would have proposed on the spot.
A proposal? The more she thought about it, the more absurd it sounded, but it wasn’t exactly an unpleasant thing to hear, so she had replied, “Thanks for seeing me in such a good light.”
Originally, she wasn’t the type to engage in idle chatter with other employees or communicate privately.
But Chae-yeon—the one they called J within the organization—was around the same age and the same gender, so it had been hard to cut off her blunt remarks from the very beginning.
Once a crack had formed, Chae-yeon started calling her “unnie” and acting affectionately, which wasn’t all that annoying.
At one point, Seol-hye had even envied that personality. Especially the way she never lost her bright, radiant smile.
She used to hear people say, ‘She’s so pure and cheerful, like a kid without a single worry in the world.’
She laughed so much that even when she cried, the slightest comfort would make her beam again. She had been teased about it constantly.
Yet now, she couldn’t even remember the last time she had smiled wide enough to show her teeth. She had no memory of lifting the corners of her mouth until her cheekbones rose.
Suddenly, she wondered if she could ever go back.
It wasn’t that she wanted to return. She was simply curious.
Whether a time would come again when she could smile, and face someone with a smiling face.
Had the path from Veritas to Lux always been this short?
She felt like she had just stepped out the front door, yet her hand was already close enough to reach the doorbell.
Seol-hye fiddled pointlessly with the scarf around her neck. Perhaps because an unexpected tension was slowly creeping in, she seemed to be sweating a little.
Is the scarf color too bright?
Then she suddenly wondered if pairing a deep navy outfit with a beige scarf had been a bad idea.
Should I go back and change?
Seol-hye turned her body and lifted one foot to step forward, then set it back down on the ground.
There was no need for this. So what if the scarf was bright? And so what if, as Chae-yeon said, her fashion sense was terrible?
She turned back around, smoothed her already perfectly neat clothes once, twice, three times, then reached for the doorbell.
Ding-dong.
The cheerful sound was so bright that her scattered mind, which she hadn’t even realized had drifted, snapped back into focus.
Recalling the layout of Lux from memory, if he was on the second floor, it would probably take him about a minute to come down the stairs, cross the living room, pass through the entrance hall, and reach the front door.
Seol-hye hugged the tablet in her arms to her chest and began counting sheep—the same way she did when she lay in bed unable to fall asleep.
She had counted about a hundred when, with a clear click, the front door swung wide open.
Organizing the thoughts swirling in her head, Seol-hye walked forward while looking wherever her eyes landed, then stopped with her feet neatly together.
And then.
“Hello…?”
Her lips froze on their own.
It was because of his nonchalant gaze as he stood there in a loosely tied bathrobe.
She tried to find somewhere else to look, rolling her eyes around, but there was nowhere appropriate.
His damp hair, still wet, the faint red flush on his face, and the muscular physique visible through the gap in the robe filled her field of vision without mercy.
Seol-hye quickly pulled her gaze away from the well-defined abs that her eyes had traveled down to.
It was almost like a survival instinct.
“What’s with the full armor?”
When he opened his tightly shut eyes, he seemed to be pondering where to rest his gaze.
If she had gone back to change when the scarf color had randomly started bothering her earlier, maybe she wouldn’t have had to face this sight.
Seol-hye slowly lifted her eyelids. The safest place she chose to land her gaze was on his bare feet wearing indoor slippers.
They looked damp, so he must have just come out of the bathroom.
He had walked all the way to the front door in nothing but a bathrobe without the slightest hesitation.
Was that why?
She couldn’t begin to guess what was going through his mind as he pressed his lips together and ran his fingertips along his jawline.
Anyway, for the next month they would be living together in this Lux, watching each other’s every move. What did a mere bathrobe matter?
She steadied her heart, trying hard to remain calm, and lifted her head.
He had been staring at her as if observing some decorative object, then slowly parted his lips.
The crude words slipped out without any filter, and that thought crossed her mind.
Well, judging by the current situation, he certainly looked like he had every intention of devouring her properly.
The utterly vulgar remark pierced her ears like a needle.
That was why.
The heat in her body that she had barely shaken off last night began to rise again.
More than the cheeks she could feel turning red, the dampness between her legs was the bigger problem.
It seemed she had reached a more serious state than she thought.
Kang Tae-yul’s return was not a simple threat.
It might just keep tripping her up all the way until the moment she reached her goal.