“A senior from college.”
“Senior?”
“I had plans, but I had to come back because of you, noona. It’d be awkward to cancel, so I brought him with me.”
Her eyes softened a little, as if the answer were believable enough. Seizing the moment, Eunseo shot to his feet. How on earth had he ended up… exchanging greetings with Jaeheon’s family, of all absurd things.
“I’m Shin Eunseo.”
“I’m Han Jiwon.”
She held out her hand to the bowing Eunseo and smiled brightly. The smile was so like Jaeheon’s that Eunseo was startled, but he didn’t stupidly miss his timing.
“Taeun’s so energetic — it must’ve been hard for you.”
“Thank you for generously overlooking my brother’s and my son’s rudeness.” With impeccable politeness, Han Jiwon cut the conversation short and beckoned to Jaeheon.
“Come see me a moment.”
Jaeheon followed her inside. Eunseo, standing there dumbfounded, looked down for a moment at the child, still sound asleep through all of this. Did they all take after their mother? He thought of Vice Chairman Han Seongmun’s face, which they didn’t resemble at all, and just shook his head a few times.
Could he go inside? He needed the bathroom. He was standing in the doorway turning this way and that when the housekeeper came out and asked first.
“Can I help you?”
“…Where’s the bathroom?”
“You can use that one.”
The housekeeper kindly pointed to the bathroom at the end of the hall. It wasn’t even a bath — just a toilet — yet the interior was nearly the size of his room, and Eunseo, marveling, quickly took care of business. He spent a moment touching the marble-finished ceramic sink in fascination, shook the water off his hands, and walked back out to the hall.
In a space with only a frame and no door, Han Jiwon and Jaeheon stood together. Eunseo stopped short in the hall, where pretty, bright framed pictures hung.
“That person’s a beta.”
“So?”
“You… did you forget what happened with our brother?”
“How could I forget that.”
Something about Jaeheon’s brother — Eunseo had heard it in passing. That he’d fallen for a beta and run off…
“And you bring a beta into the house? Besides…”
“He’s nothing to me — what’s wrong with bringing him into the house?”
“…He’s nothing to you?”
“Stop with the useless worrying. You’ll get wrinkles.”
“I don’t know what you’re doing, but… handle it well.”
“There’s nothing to handle.”
After a brief silence, Han Jiwon came out into the hall, Jaeheon following. Seeing Eunseo, neither face showed a hint of dismay. Voices and conversation with no attempt at hiding — to them, he was just that kind of existence. Nothing at all.
“Let’s go get lunch, late as it is.”
He knew. He thought he already knew well, so why… Eunseo couldn’t stop his mood from sinking endlessly. Loneliness hit him afresh. His relationship with Jaeheon was a hollow one. Barely hiding his feelings, he greeted Han Jiwon politely, and the faintest pity flickered through her eyes.
“Big bro, let’s go?”
The child, who’d been sleeping soundly until now, came running and hugged his waist. Frozen stiff where he stood, Eunseo stayed rigid until Jaeheon made a gesture like “pat his head.” The fine but abundant hair, soft and fluffy to the touch, wrapped gently around his fingers.
“…Bye.”
At the quiet goodbye, the child craned its neck up to look at him, grinning wide. And hugged him tighter, as if asking to be picked up. Jaeheon, who’d been watching from behind, pulled the child off, said a light goodbye to his sister, then tugged Eunseo’s arm and walked out of the house.
“Do you like kids?”
“Huh?… No, not particularly.”
While he was trying to figure out the intent of the question, Eunseo was dragged along and bundled into the car. Watching Jaeheon start the engine with rough hands, he hastily fastened his seatbelt. The car shot forward the moment the garage door opened. A Northern European SUV surely wasn’t built for this kind of aggressive driving — and just as he found himself gripping his seatbelt with both hands, tense all over, Jaeheon pulled the car to the shoulder.
“What’s with you.”
“…Yes?”
Was he asking because he didn’t know. Did he even know how he’d just driven? Eunseo swallowed the urge to snap back, but Jaeheon asked again.
“You’ve had that stiff face for a while now.”
“…No, I don’t.”
“I wasn’t asking whether or not. I asked why.”
Why would he care about the expression of someone he had no relationship with — someone there wasn’t even anything to sort out with. Eunseo barely pressed down the surging emotion and said again that it was nothing. If anything, Eunseo was the one with things he wanted to ask Jaeheon —
Why he’d tormented him like this since the holiday morning, why he’d lied to get him to come to his house, what he’d even planned to do today in the first place… He’d love to ask him each and every thing, but no matter how private the time they were spending, he was the executive director of his company, the head of his organization.
A brief silence passed, and Eunseo was helplessly drawn in by the hand gripping his chin and pulling. Lips devoured in an instant; his lip, bitten as if in punishment, tasted of iron.
“I thought I’d go crazy wanting to kiss you.” The lips that had swept his wet mouth pulled away briefly, then touched his cheek and lips again.
“Do you know you’ve had such a lonely face this whole time?”
Jaeheon’s fingertips rubbed his cheek with a fairly gentle touch. What was a lonely face. Eunseo felt goosebumps rise on his nape at Jaeheon’s words, which pinpointed exactly what he’d been feeling.
“Room service would be fine for lunch, don’t you think?”
“Because right now you have the face of someone who really wants to be held.”
At the low voice flowing past his ear and the breath tickling his ear, Eunseo bit his parched lips and gripped harder with the hands clutching his seatbelt like a lifeline. He felt the hot body heat. That the person who’d made him the most miserable in the world was the only person who touched him and shared body heat with him — Eunseo was utterly defeated by it.
Eunseo turned his head slightly and kissed the corner of Jaeheon’s mouth of his own will. With nothing on them, the soft, pretty pink lips curved in a gentle arc. The hand that had stroked his cheek and chin for so long finally fell away, and Jaeheon started the car.
***
Even with work hours upon him, Eunseo shook his foggy head, struggling to pull himself together. It was already the third week of spending weekends with Han Jaeheon, and it was so sweet that the aftershocks still hadn’t faded by Monday — that was the problem.
Even to Eunseo, who had zero experience in romance or in relationships involving sex, his relationship with Jaeheon looked very strange. Since there’d even been blackmail, his expectation that Jaeheon would use him as he pleased had been completely wrong.
Jaeheon caressed Eunseo’s body and worked him up to a degree that even lovers madly in love probably wouldn’t — and sometimes he even took the posture of serving him.
If that were all, he’d think it was just his style, but every weekend he drove himself to pick Eunseo up, went to Seoul, then brought him back to the company housing and returned to Seoul himself without minding at all; he looked after Eunseo’s meals and even enjoyed conversation.
“What is he even doing.”
No matter how negatively he tried to see it, wasn’t this dating?… But that couldn’t be. Just weeks ago he’d heard it nailed down — a relationship that was nothing, not even anything to sort out. And during the week, he’d never gotten a single call apart from work matters.
Eunseo shook his head, scattering the absurd imagining. To think this just because he’d been outwardly sweet for a few days — his mind really was shallow beyond words.
He barely hid the two-sided feeling of not waiting for his calls at all, yet sometimes craving them.
“Senior Shin.”
“Yes, team leader.”
Eunseo, half out of his mind, hurriedly gathered his notebook and pen and went to the team leader’s desk. As he walked over quickly, the team leader, who’d been mulling something over, tapped the empty chair as if to say sit.
“Have you wrapped up your current work?”
“Yes, I submitted the handover request last week and handed over all the materials.”
“Good, thanks. On the CBO’s orders we’re putting together a new-business portfolio…” The team leader pulled out two sheets of paper and spread them before Eunseo’s eyes. The format and content were familiar — a glance was enough for Eunseo to fully recall it.
“First, the CBO handed down the big topics.”
“…Yes.”
It wasn’t new — he’d heard it a few times — but Eunseo reacted as if hearing it for the first time.
“Our side got the eco-friendly resin development mission, and I’m thinking PLA might be good.”
PLA was a biodegradable eco-friendly resin based on lactic acid, but quite some time had passed since its development, and it was already commercialized. Of course, there still weren’t many producers, and with the high price, there weren’t particularly many uses for it.
“…PLA seems a bit past its time.”
“A bit?”
“I think it’s a stretch as a new business. There’s already a domestic company that’s started mass production.”
What the team leader pulled out was the PLA market summary Eunseo had written last year. In truth, most eco-friendly resins had already been developed. It was only a question of whether the yield was high enough to commercialize, and whether it matched market prices.
“Still, only one place produces it.”
“But in the US and Europe…”
“If we produce it, we’d have price competitiveness over them.”
‘They all have factories in China — there’s no way we, producing in Korea, would have price competitiveness…’ Eunseo was about to say, but slowly closed his mouth. He knew very well from experience that when the team leader dug in like this, talking did no good.
“Can you go talk to Dr. Jin?”
“…Dr. Jin Seunghu?”
“Yeah. You were in the same lab. You seem close.”
“Ah… yes.”
“Bring me at least an item by today. We can review it later.”
“…Understood.”
“Tell Dr. Jin about the PLA and get his opinion, bring it to me by lunch, got it?”
The team leader clapped Eunseo’s shoulder and stood to leave. Eunseo, sitting there a moment, started and checked his watch. ‘By lunch?’ It was 10:30 now — that left only an hour until lunch.
They’d been freezing out the doctor — whose major and papers were all in eco-friendly resins — with their territorial hazing, keeping him out of the work, and now they wanted his opinion. Eunseo was embarrassed to even go ask, in a situation where even he would be furious and enraged in Jin Seunghu’s place, but as a company man he had no choice.
“Wow. That’s really too much.”
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