AGR 06

Chapter 6

Outside the car window, the woman was walking while talking on the phone with someone.

“What is that?”

Her slow, unhurried walk got on his nerves.

He had heard tonight’s temperature was 11 degrees below zero.

Walking in this freezing weather wearing just a coat? Even after losing her muffler?

Isn’t this the kind of weather where anyone would hail a taxi, no matter how short the distance?

How was he supposed to interpret this?

Was it really a new kind of tactic, just as Yoon-gi said? Was she walking in hopes that he would follow behind her?

All sorts of thoughts struck and passed through his mind.

Should he stop the car and pick her up?

Should he hold onto her using the muffler as an excuse and have sex?

Standing blankly without crossing the street even though the light had changed—it almost felt as if she was hoping he would grab her.

Then, his interest cooled rapidly.

He hated it.

If it was the same obvious, run-of-the-mill playing hard to get like other women, he would politely pass.

“Honk the horn.”

“Pardon?”

The valet holding the steering wheel looked at him through the rearview mirror.

“Honk the horn once so that woman snaps out of it.”

All of a sudden, he felt the urge to sweep that woman out of his sight.

“Ah, yes!”

Honk!

He saw the woman, startled by the loud noise, cross the street.

Jae-eon, dropping the muffler in his hand as if throwing it down, lowered his eyelids to cut off his interest.

Feeling a suffocating sensation, he tried to pull down his tie, but there was nothing in his hand to grasp.

He wasn’t even wearing a tie, yet he felt as if his neck was being strangled.

Seeing Kwon Jae-eon in person—a man she had only encountered in documents—was quite an alien experience for I-seo, as well as a considerably shocking event.

Arriving home, I-seo took a hot shower to wash off the cold winter night air.

Even so, her mind was occupied with thoughts of Kwon Jae-eon the entire time.

The image of the man barging recklessly into her space and sitting down without permission was not easily erased.

His deep, dark eyes meeting hers and the arrogant curve of his lips played on repeat like a broken video.

“Leaving?”

“What’s your name?”

“One spot is open—should I let you join?”

His gaze, which looked bored yet strangely glinted, and his low voice, which wrapped around her eardrums as smoothly as cream while striking her ears sharply, were alien yet excessively alluring.

“……Are you crazy?”

Alluring? What on earth are you thinking right now?

Wiping her wet face roughly with both hands, she squeezed her eyes shut.

Then, as if the man’s image was taxidermied inside her eyelids, that rotten moment came to mind once again.

Offering her a spot in a threesome?

Doing it with three people?

To say that casually to a woman he was meeting for the first time?

Was he that confident?

No, he was just that much of a piece of trash. He had proven it himself.

In fact, even the modifier “trash” was a waste.

“A whore.”

Yes, “whore” suited him best.

Turning off the shower, I-seo pulled a large towel from the shelf and wiped her body dry.

Wrapping herself in a thick terrycloth bathrobe, she stepped out of the bathroom.

Even so, the man named Kwon Jae-eon would not easily leave her mind.

Drying her hair roughly and changing into pajamas, I-seo sat in front of her desk and opened her laptop.

Staring quietly at the blinking cursor in the search bar of the portal site, she typed in the three letters: “Kwon Jae-eon.”

Hitting enter, information about the man popped up at the very top.

[Current CEO of TS Motors]

[Member of the Korea Shooting Federation]

[Registered Amateur Athlete of the International Equestrian Federation]

[Member of the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA)]

[Former Formula One (F1) Driver]

Opening each item and reading through them carefully, I-seo soon found herself reading up on the man’s various leisure activities and scandals, as well as his career during his time as an F1 driver.

It was laughable.

Since when did Yoon I-seo voluntarily show interest in something?

It was no exaggeration to say this was the first time in 11 years.

Starting from the spring of her eighteenth year, I-seo changed so completely that it was fair to say she swapped her personality, losing all motivation for everything in the world overnight.

The bright, curious eighteen-year-old I-seo had no choice after losing her only blood relative, her older brother.

Her brother’s death was literally like a bolt out of the blue sky.

The eighteen-year-old girl who lost her only family couldn’t even properly grieve her brother’s death, dragged here and there to deal with the “big ordeal.”

Following her brother loaded into the helicopter to the hospital, waiting through a 7-hour surgery.

After that, recovering the body, returning to the country, the funeral, settling the estate, and so on.

Looking back now, she had faced things at a young age that were hard to handle properly all at once.

Then, when she came to her senses, her brother was already gone from her world.

“Study. You just…… study.”

“So no one can look down on you. So the fact that you have an older brother like me won’t eat away at you.”

“I hope you become a doctor, judge, or prosecutor. A lawyer is fine, too. Nothing else.”

Before the Grand Prix took place, the words her brother left behind as he departed Korea ultimately became his last will.

Following her brother’s wishes, I-seo seemed to have done nothing but study frantically from that day on.

Sending her brother off, burying her brother, forgetting her brother.

Passing through painful times as if scraping away her very bones, I-seo killed her desire to do anything, cut off her curiosity, and built a wall against joy.

Perhaps because that became a habit.

Before long, the Yoon I-seo prior to eighteen vanished without a trace.

Only a stiff, boring, and indifferent Yoon I-seo, who didn’t even know how to smile, remained all alone.

For such a person to be so absorbed in something.

If Won-i found out, she might sing about how hurt she felt.

Like that, I-seo delved into Kwon Jae-eon until late into the night.

Then, she came to learn.

That the tournament where he seized the trophy during his F1 driver days was the Monaco Grand Prix.

“That was the year the accident happened.”

He competed in the same Grand Prix in the same year as my brother?

Then could that Kwon Jae-eon…… know my brother?

Formula racing F3, F2, and F1 organized by the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile.

Unlike her brother, who steadily expanded his domain starting from F3, Kwon Jae-eon stepped straight into the highest tier, F1, and captured the Monaco Grand Prix in just two full years.

Even though I-seo’s brother, who was a champion contender that year, sacrificed his life in that rough racing.

Pressing down firmly on the corners of her lips, I-seo barely suppressed the curiosity flaring like a wildfire and closed her laptop.

Ultimately, what greeted I-seo—who came to work without a wink of sleep all weekend—was yet another scandal broken by Kwon Jae-eon.

“This time it’s a man.”

“A man?”

The main duty of Legal Team 3 at Taeseong Group, to which I-seo belonged, was the image-making of Taeseong Group—in other words, cleaning up after the owner’s family.

Thankfully, because the Taeseong Group family lived relatively elegant lives, Team 3’s work was concentrated on Chairman Kwon Seok-ho’s second grandson, Taeseong Construction CEO Kwon Soo-hyung, and third grandson, TS Motors CEO Kwon Jae-eon.

In short, the two were regular customers of Legal Team 3.

Of course, there was a slight difference in the nature of the trouble the two regulars caused.

Kwon Soo-hyung, a cousin three years older than Kwon Jae-eon, mainly caused violent incidents, while Kwon Jae-eon’s main problem was his messy private life.

As if they had made a pact, the two took turns causing trouble, but this time, Kwon Jae-eon had caused trouble back-to-back.

To top it off, this time it was trouble involving a man.

“It seems he attended some party on Friday evening, and someone filmed him kissing a man there and posted it on SNS. The problem is that even if we request to take the video down, it will take a considerable amount of time, but the Chairman wants the video down immediately.”

Listening to the team leader’s explanation, I-seo grew somewhat dazed.

If it was a party on Friday evening, it was Won-i’s party held at Club Ryun.

That day, as far as she knew, Kwon Jae-eon appeared late, stayed for a very brief moment, and left.

When did he have time to cause trouble?

Besides, a problem with a man?

Surely…… hadn’t they said he left following behind a woman?

As the youngest member of Legal Team 3, I-seo sat at the very end of the meeting table, scribbling words on a notebook with a pencil while rolling her thoughts back and forth.

Did he leave from there and go to another party, then?

“……This is the video in question.”

Because the team leader had just projected the video onto the screen, I-seo raised her head as well.

Huh?

I-seo’s brows narrowed thinly.

It wasn’t another party after all—it was indeed Won-i’s party. The space and music in the video were familiar.

The room where I-seo had been sitting that day—Kwon Jae-eon was sitting right in that very seat.

On top of the table, the cocktail and finger food she had left behind remained intact.

If there was one thing that had changed, it was that Kwon Jae-eon was together with some man.

A pretty man with delicate features closed the folding door while holding champagne, and Kwon Jae-eon, with a cool face, smirked while looking at the man.

It seemed as though the closing door completely blocked the field of vision, but the focus of the camera lens dug into the gaps between the louvered slats of the folding door with extreme precision.