DH ✦ Ch 28

✦ Chapter 28 ✦

While driving, Hyun-jae frequently glanced over at Ga-young in the passenger seat. Ga-young looked fidgety and unsettled, like a child who had just been scolded. He had meant his compliment about her looking pretty as a roundabout remark, but she completely missed the meaning.

The place Hyun-jae took her to was a one-table restaurant in downtown Seoul. Inside the cozy, brick-walled space, Hyun-jae pulled out a chair for Ga-young and asked, “Is there any particular food you like?” “Not really.” “Still, there must be something you’ve wanted to eat.” “Uhm… pork cutlet.”

A soft laugh escaped him at Ga-young’s hesitant answer. He had thought she looked unusually mature today, yet here she was showing such childishness. Hyun-jae placed an order with the chef, who had stepped out personally to take their table settings. “I’ll add one more menu item. Pork cutlet is possible, right?” “Do you mean a pork cutlet?” “No. Gyeongyangsik [Korean-style retro] pork cutlet.”

The chef let out an “Ah” and bowed his head with a look of understanding.

Sitting across the round table with a small distance between them, Ga-young was still in a tense state. Glancing shyly at Hyun-jae, who was watching her with amusement, she spoke first. “You must be a regular here.” “Why do you say that?” “Because you seem to know the chef well. You even had him accept an off-menu order.” “I don’t come here often, but I do have a long history with this place.”

For Hyun-jae, this was a place steeped in memories from his school days. “It’s completely transformed now through remodeling, but back then, this place was a rundown old silbijip.” “A silbijip?”

Judging by her blank expression, Ga-young didn’t know what a silbijip was. Feeling a sudden sense of self-reproach for seducing such a young woman, Hyun-jae added an explanation. “A pub where you only pay for the drinks and the side dishes are unlimited. There used to be quite a few places like that back then. Haven’t you heard of them?” “Uhm…” “There’s a generational gap.”

Even though it was a natural definition, Ga-young bristled. Her timidly lowered head snapped upright as she met his gaze aggressively. “There’s only a ten-year difference between us.” “A gap wide enough to change rivers and mountains once.” “You must have been called a kkondae [old-school nag] ever since you were twenty, right?”

Bullseye. That was right around the time Shin Se-jung had called him “Kkondae Oppa.” Hyun-jae let out a dry, amused snort. Ga-young slightly furrowed her brows and continued her pushback. “The teaching assistant in our department is two years older than you. But his mental age is lower than mine, so I always put him in his place.” “Oh? This is interesting.” “How?” “I’d nag him every time we met, telling him to stop messing around.” “And when he talked nonsense, I’d smack him in the back of the head.” “How did you smack him? Show me a demonstration.” “That is…”

Ga-young blinked, struggling with herself before biting down hard on her lower lip. She seemed to have judged that if she backed down here, she would keep getting treated like a kid. She reached her hand out toward the back of Hyun-jae’s head. Because her small hand merely grazed his hair and whipped back in a flash, Hyun-jae almost burst out laughing. She didn’t even have the courage to hit him hard enough to wake him up, yet her pride was intact.

Swallowing the laughter threatening to erupt, Hyun-jae deliberately put on a straight face.

“Isn’t this a form of caressing? Did you stroke that assistant like this every time you met him?”

Ga-young’s eyes widened as if asking what on earth he meant. “How unpleasant. That assistant, what kind of bastard is he?” “Pardon…?” “Is he better-looking and richer than me?” “…”

At the question thrown to fluster her, Ga-young’s eyes darted left and right. Can I answer this? She moved her lips as if hesitating. Then she took a brief glance at Hyun-jae’s face. Only after her gaze wandered in several different directions did her pretty lips calmly open. “I don’t know if he’s rich, but a man better-looking than the Executive Director…”

An awkward, faint smile brushed across the corners of her lips.

“I have never seen one.”

Embarrassed after saying it, Ga-young’s head snapped away to the other side. I lose, Hyun-jae thought, smiling faintly. This feeling of an itch deep inside his chest was excitement. He had always looked down on clumsy women, but to think that woman could grip and shake Shin Hyun-jae’s heart with just a single word.

Sensing his quiet, steady gaze, Ga-young’s ears heated up clumsily.

Right on cue, a salad was served as the appetizer for the course meal. Intent on changing the subject, Ga-young picked up a piece of vegetable with her fork and chewed on it crisply.

While eating the appetizer, Hyun-jae began to calmly spin the tale of his past. “When I was a high school student, I used to come to this silbijip almost every week.” “…” “You know Secretary Gil Byeong-su, right? He’s my elementary, middle, and high school classmate, my closest friend to this day, and back in high school, my drinking buddy. I always came here with Byeong-su.” “You were high schoolers, but you frequented a pub…” “Back then, ID checks were pretty lax there. Both of us were on the taller side, so they just took us for college students. Every time we came here, we’d drink ourselves blind and smoke a ton…”

That was what a late-teen Shin Hyun-jae was like. Though he couldn’t openly show it to the Chairman who had raised him since infancy, inside, he was a teenager full of rebellion. The fact that his future was decided from birth. The fact that he had to inherit the crown of a chaebol group. An extravagant destiny that made others burst with envy was, to the young Hyun-jae of those days, a shackle he wanted to shake off.

As he told his stories, occasionally chuckling, he could feel Ga-young gradually becoming engrossed. Her stiffened shoulders relaxed, her awkward expression melted away, and the eyes that had been eager to dart away to her surroundings lingered on Hyun-jae’s face for long stretches of time. “My dream in high school was to be a space scientist. Do you know Carl Sagan’s Cosmos?” “I only know the title. I’ll read it later.” “You don’t have to read it. It’s not particularly entertaining content if you aren’t interested. I only read it until the pages were worn out because I thought it was my duty as an aspiring space scientist!”

Ga-young’s hand holding the fork had settled onto the dining table at some point. The pork cutlet ordered because of Ga-young was cut piece by piece with a knife by Hyun-jae, who slid it over in front of her. “Listen while you eat.” “Thank you.”

Ga-young picked up a piece of pork cutlet with her fork and popped it into her mouth. Her cheeks puffed out adorably because the piece was too large. Imagining a Yoon Ga-young in front of a high school snack bar being immensely cute, a smile tugged at his lips.

Hyun-jae continued his stories from his school days. Ga-young didn’t seem particularly interested in the food. Whenever Hyun-jae gestured toward her plate, she would pop a piece into her mouth, but more than that, her eyes shone with brilliance as she immersed herself in his tales. Starting around when they ate the main course, the steak, she occasionally tossed in an “Oh” or “I see.” She couldn’t curb her curiosity and even asked questions first. “So, did you completely give up on your dream of being a space scientist?” “Once I started seriously studying business administration in college, I found that way more fun. Space science was nothing more than a delusion born of teenage rebellion. When I joined GB Group’s US subsidiary in my junior year of college, I realized I had completely found my aptitude.” “You joined the company in your junior year of college?” “The moment I turned twenty-two. Now it’s my 12th year with the company.” “I misunderstood. I thought the Executive Director was a parachute [nepotism hire].” “Not quite a parachute, but it’s true I climbed onto a super-speed elevator.”

Waffles topped with gelato wedged themselves into the midst of their amicable conversation. It was the final course of the meal. Because Ga-young’s responses were so good, the time had flown by, and their rambling talk had accumulated to nearly an hour.

Hyun-jae set down his dessert spoon and looked straight at Ga-young. “Why do you think I went on and on talking about myself?” “Why did you?”

To Ga-young, whose smile had not yet faded, Hyun-jae said earnestly,

“Because it feels like we know too little about each other.”

Ga-young’s expression stiffened rapidly. “How did Yoon Ga-young live her life?”

As if harboring a secret shrouded behind a silver screen. Avoiding his probing, steady gaze, the smile she forced out was meager. “I don’t have much to talk about. I only studied. I wasn’t smart, so I had to earn scholarships.”

Hiding something was proof that there was a story behind it. But Hyun-jae didn’t press further. He didn’t want to lose the cheerful brightness Ga-young had inadvertently revealed. Besides, he didn’t necessarily have to hear it from her lips. I can just find out myself.

Outside the restaurant, it was full-blown night. Orange street lamps illuminated various spots of the quiet, serene building. Only a few pedestrians lingered here and there in the alleyway or passed by at a slow pace.

Ga-young’s mind was as dark as the landscape crouching in the shadows. Objectively speaking, it had been a good time. Hyun-jae’s stories from his school days were so fascinating that it felt a waste to miss a single word. The long-playing cadence of Hyun-jae’s low baritone voice was as pleasant to listen to as calm classical music. If not for the uncomfortable question at the very end, pure enjoyment would have been all that remained.

Even while acknowledging that she had nothing much to talk about, Hyun-jae’s eyes—which seemed to pierce straight through the abyss—bothered her. She hoped that look wasn’t suspicion, but simply a sense of unfairness felt because the amount of information they had each shared wasn’t equal.

To change her mood, Ga-young took a deep breath. Right on cue, Ga-young’s cold hand was completely enveloped in a warm touch. It was Hyun-jae’s hand, returning a little late because he was saying goodbye to the chef. The moment her hand was caught by his, her heartbeat accelerated. Over the wild pulsation of her wrist, Hyun-jae stroked with his thumb and asked, “Are you uncomfortable?”

Instead of answering, Ga-young turned her eyes aside. A pleasant smile was tied to the corners of Hyun-jae’s lips.

“Get used to it. It’s going to be like this always from now on.”

Entwined with the hand he gently held, the man’s thick fingers wove securely between hers.