Are You an Idiot?
Tae-yul stretched his long legs toward Pax, the suit he wore exceptionally striking. He had chosen it to shake off the foul mood that showed no sign of lifting.
The way she had collapsed against his chest and clung to him—he could let that pass.
Before the shock had even faded, his reflexive embrace around her waist met with skin so fragile it delivered the full impact straight through him.
Whether it was the soft brush of her blouse against his palm that had slipped beneath the thick jacket, or the way his far-too-easily-aroused body grew heavy without any conscious thought, he ignored it all.
He even felt a faint pang of regret for unleashing every raw, violent emotion on her frail frame that looked one breath away from fainting—something quite unlike him.
But then. What?
“Huh? It’s the young master?”
The strength with which her arms locked around his neck in the blink of an eye was so fierce that, if he exaggerated only slightly, he couldn’t even consider prying her off.
He never imagined the nutritional supplements Dr. Hwang had recommended—administered on schedule after the IV drip helped her sleep deeply and find some stability—would show their effect like this.
The price for staying up all night, turning on the humidifier he usually despised, adjusting humidity and even optimizing temperature and air density, felt utterly absurd.
As the distance to the Pax building shortened while he remained lost in thought, Tae-yul’s steps gradually slowed.
Ha. What was this growing discomfort the more he turned it over in his mind?
Anger was definitely rising from deep in his chest, yet it wasn’t exactly rage.
His face kept burning, his breathing refused to steady. If he had to name it, the sensation resembled the frustration of being utterly wronged, yet it was not that emotion at all.
It was neither resentment nor fury, but the urge to identify the source of this uncontrollable anger was driving him insane.
“Welcome back, sir.”
Facing Manager Cho waiting at the Pax entrance, Tae-yul rubbed a hand over his face.
“Manager Cho, how old are you this year?”
It had been nine years since he’d had a private meeting with the man, so the question was a polite formality meant to clear some space in his cluttered head.
“Exactly fifty.”
The realization of how much time had passed brought faint memories drifting up from the distant past.
“When I was little, I called you uncle.”
“Yes, you were very fond of me.”
From what he remembered, that fondness had lasted even into his high-school years. Unlike his authoritarian father, Manager Cho had been easy to talk to, and that comfort had extended to his heart.
“What kind of child do you remember me being?”
“Whether it was sports or studies, you were a model student who excelled at everything.”
“Model student.”
A phrase his late mother had often said to him as a child rose to mind. You don’t have to be good at everything. So it’s all right to stop trying so hard.
Back then, he had hated hearing those words. Why tell him not to make an effort? He didn’t want to lose to anyone in this world.
“One day after the rain stopped, you saw an earthworm on the backyard path and got so scared you jumped into my arms. I believe you were about twelve at the time.”
“So I was a coward.”
“I thought so too, but then you suddenly asked to be put down, ran over to protect Chief Ahn, and I realized my first impression had been wrong.”
“I see.”
“The chairman is waiting.”
Tae-yul’s eyes grew darker as he walked alongside Manager Cho, who had stepped back respectfully.
The scattered fragments of long-buried memory began fitting together like puzzle pieces.
A nine-year-old girl in a pale violet dress, snowy white stockings, and bright red shoes.
He had run over because it frustrated him to see her standing motionless before the earthworm that had terrified him, sobbing her heart out.
She could have run away or avoided it like he had, yet even while crying she stared at the worm—close enough to touch the tip of her shoe—with wide, round eyes.
You idiot?
He remembered shouting as he grabbed her hand and pulled her in the opposite direction, only to stop when she suddenly burst into giggles.
Why are you laughing?
Instead of answering, she kept laughing with a missing tooth, looking as if the world was the most delightful place, and the absurdity of it made him laugh along.
All the while thinking to himself, Wow, her clothes are really tacky.
After laughing like that for a long time, something strange happened. The tackiness began to look beautiful—an utterly ridiculous turn of events.
That was when he realized the real idiot wasn’t the tacky little girl blinking tear-filled eyes while smiling brightly, but himself, whose heart had been strangely ticklish from the very beginning.
Tae-yul only set the perfectly completed puzzle aside once he had stepped into the study.
“You’re here. How is Chief Ahn?”
“Still not well.”
“She didn’t fall ill once in three years.”
Perhaps it was because she was so resilient. Dr. Hwang had said there was no particular problem, but that she required careful management.
“Isn’t it true that people who rarely get sick suffer badly when they finally do?”
“You were exactly like that as a boy.”
“I’ll hear the matter at hand.”
“Take your pick.”
Tae-yul glanced at Manager Cho, who slid a tablet toward him and began flipping through pages at measured intervals.
The more he looked, the less he understood what category these photos belonged to.
“What is this?”
“To proceed safely, it would be best to choose a marriage partner first, wouldn’t it?”
“Ah.”
“Family background is of course first-class, with top-tier specifications and the highest-grade appearances carefully selected.”
To Chairman Kang’s heated endorsement, supported by Manager Cho’s earnest delivery, Tae-yul could only offer a faint, crooked smile.
It was so absurd he couldn’t even think how to respond—until a memory surfaced.
Those large eyes blinking rapidly in surprise, yet the arms around his neck never loosening. That fevered face.
The scent from his own pillow that had seeped into her pale cheeks.
And the clumsy, fumbling act that seemed determined to pry apart her tightly clenched teeth.
All of it combined, and the reaction below his waist began to stir once more.
He now had reason to turn his back on these people and their ridiculous nonsense.
“They’re all unimpressive.”
“Do you have someone else in mind?”
“Manager Cho, do you suppose I might prefer men?”
Leaving the two men with their eyes widened in shock, Tae-yul slipped away, his gaze sliding past them with subtle indifference.
Seol-hye descended the second-floor stairs and let her gaze drift in the direction that drew her. It was the space where the late madam had always worked.
She could still see her mother clearly, never leaving the madam’s side, attending to her every need.
The madam and her mother—whom she would never see again—had departed for another world only ten days apart.
People said the madam had volunteered at the welfare center for unmarried mothers and, upon meeting her mother who was nearing delivery, could not simply pass by. As women of similar age, both raising children, she had brought her to the Kang family home.
After that, for nearly twenty years of shared joys and hardships, her mother and the madam had sometimes seemed like sisters, sometimes like the closest of friends.
Though the hierarchical gap between them was vast, as far as Seol-hye knew, the madam had never once treated her mother with disrespect.
Of course, her mother had always served the madam with the deepest reverence, regarding her as far more than a benefactor.
That was why Seol-hye herself had been able to come and go from Lux without hesitation, and the young master she naturally encountered there had been her first in everything.
The voice, the scent, the beads of sweat, the touch—every mystery that came from a male being, he had let her hear, smell, see, and feel for the first time.
Moreover, he was the one who had given her the first taste of every emotion a woman experiences toward the opposite sex.
Things like fluttering, trembling, wanting to touch, wanting to reach out—those impossible, unreachable longings.
It had gone irreversibly wrong long ago, yet only now did the full weight of it hit her anew.
The relationship between the young master of that time and the little brat she had been was twisted beyond all repair.
“Where are you going?”
According to the servant who had come upstairs with porridge and medicine, the voice that should have been at Pax now fell from behind her.
Seol-hye finished descending the remaining steps before turning around.
“I’m certain I told you the doctor said you should rest a few more days.”
“I was on my way to Veritas.”
One step. Two steps. Perhaps it was because his descending figure was so dazzling that her eyes refused to leave him.
The bright orange suit paired with a white shirt matched perfectly. The black necktie accented with gold leaf played the decisive role.
Was he on his way somewhere?
“Then I’ll finish the remaining tasks and move in officially.”
“Officially.”
“I’m truly sorry about yesterday.”
Seol-hye bowed deeply in a respectful greeting but could not lift her head, her gaze fixed on the floor.
A dark shadow drew steadily closer until slippered feet appeared in her line of sight.
“What are you doing? Aren’t you going?”
Following after Tae-yul, who turned toward the front door first, Seol-hye moved with slow, measured steps.
Until that moment, she had no thoughts at all.
Not about the burdens she would have to bear from now on, of course.