DH ✦ Ch 18

✦ Chapter 18 ✦

It was a bright morning, with the sun shining brilliantly over the hill.

Hyun-jae finished getting ready for work and headed to the main house. Before he had even fully woken up, Kwon Seon-jin had called and invited him to breakfast.

If her intention was to praise him for the results of his business trip to England, she could at least have given him more time to recover from the journey.

He remained in a foul mood the entire walk to the main house.

The disappointment he had felt just before leaving the detached house only made it worse. He had glanced toward Ga-young’s silent room on the first floor and felt an unexpected sense of emptiness.

At the entrance, Kwon Seon-jin stood beyond a line of employees who were all bowing their heads.

“Executive Director Shin, you’ve worked hard.”

“I only did what needed to be done.”

Kwon Seon-jin slowly looked over her grandson in his immaculate suit and smiled gently.

“Are you heading straight to work from here?”

“Yes. There are a few things I need to take care of at the company this morning.”

“You don’t have to rush through breakfast, do you?”

“No. I have enough time for that.”

After their composed exchange, Kwon Seon-jin turned first and headed toward the dining room.

Hyun-jae was about to follow when Se-jeong came barreling down the hallway, her footsteps thundering against the floor.

“Oppa!”

She ran straight toward him, but Hyun-jae stopped her by placing a hand against her forehead.

No matter how wildly Se-jeong flailed her arms, she was nowhere close to reaching him.

Prevented from hugging him, she frowned and looked up at him.

“Whyyy?”

Hyun-jae gave her a firm command.

“Put some clothes on first.”

Seeing her dressed in nothing but thin pajamas was enough to make him sigh.

In front of all the employees, too.

As her older brother, it was only natural for him to be strict with his twenty-six-year-old sister, who still had no sense of propriety.

Se-jeong shot him a resentful glare and whined.

“Oppaaa, I missed you so much that I ran out the moment I woke up, and you won’t even hug me?”

“Put some clothes on, and I’ll hug you.”

“We haven’t seen each other in four months, and you care more about what I’m wearing?”

Two years ago, Se-jeong—who had never shown any particular talent for anything—had suddenly become obsessed with painting after graduating from university and insisted that she be sent to Italy to study art.

At least it was better than her running around insisting she wanted to get involved in management, so they had given in to her wishes.

But once she was sent abroad, she lost interest in painting and seemed more interested in enjoying the status of being an international student. She spent nearly half the year lounging around in Korea anyway.

So there was no reason for this ordinary reunion to inspire any deep emotion in him.

“Don’t make me say it twice. Get dressed.”

Hyun-jae had no intention of indulging her childish whining.

Se-jeong couldn’t utter another word. She simply shook her shoulders in irritation before turning away.

A little later, Hyun-jae sat down in the dining room, where breakfast had already been prepared.

“You’ve accomplished quite a difficult task. I’m talking about successfully acquiring Goodstone Europe.”

Kwon Seon-jin’s calm praise continued at length across the dining table.

She was, of course, referring to the results Hyun-jae had achieved during his business trip to England.

Hyun-jae ate his meal, occasionally responding to the predictable compliments.

He was enjoying the neat, refined flavors of the Korean breakfast when Kwon Seon-jin suddenly changed the subject.

“Why is Se-jeong taking so long?”

He had only told her to put on some clothes, but apparently she was decorating herself from head to toe.

If that was the case, she probably wouldn’t appear until the meal was nearly over.

As for her resentment over his cold treatment, a brief hug later would probably be enough to make it disappear.

Hyun-jae brought up the question that had been on his mind since the moment he saw her.

“Has Se-jeong greeted Ms. Ga-young?”

“Apparently, she was curious about what kind of person she was, so the moment she arrived in Seongbuk-dong, she went straight to the detached house.”

“By herself?”

“Yes. She must have been happy to have someone around her own age in the family. Once I heard they had met, I didn’t interfere any further.”

Hyun-jae found it difficult to agree with the idea that someone as arrogant and unruly as Se-jeong would be happy to meet her “young new sister-in-law.”

Still, he let it pass.

His attention was focused elsewhere.

Beyond the floor-to-ceiling glass wall flooding the dining room with sunlight, he spotted Ga-young.

She was wearing a loose beige dress with a rattan basket slung over her shoulder.

It looked as though she was heading toward the vegetable garden behind the house.

As he chewed his food, Hyun-jae followed her movements with his eyes.

Ga-young stretched out both arms and took a deep breath of the morning air before lightly crossing the lawn.

Halfway there, she stopped to greet a gardener who was trimming branches in the distance, using every gesture she could think of to say hello before standing there to watch him work.

When she came close to one of the cleaning staff sweeping the stone path, she bent deeply at the waist and exchanged a few words with them.

The breeze fluttered her dress along the soft curves of her body.

Every time she took another light step, her long hair bounced cheerfully behind her.

“Ga-young, you know…”

Kwon Seon-jin’s voice reached his ears.

Hyun-jae answered absentmindedly.

“Yes.”

“She’s quite an intelligent girl.”

She is.

And she’s pretty.

Very pretty.

The hopelessly doting side of him began making a fuss inside his head.

She was pretty when she did nothing at all.

Pretty when she smiled faintly.

Pretty when she froze up because she didn’t know what to do.

Even pretty when she was completely drenched in the rain…

He remembered the face she had worn when they reunited in the rain the night before, her cheeks flushed a shy shade of pink.

At the time, he had only looked at her face.

He had deliberately tried not to look at the way her rain-soaked clothes clung to her body.

He hadn’t wanted to taint their reunion after a week apart with desire.

That would have been too much like an animal.

Despite his efforts to behave like a gentleman, Ga-young had been rather cold toward him, answering his questions with nothing but brief, indifferent replies.

Her final words, as she held the dripping hem of her skirt in both hands, had been particularly heartless.

“Please sleep in the bedroom on the second floor. Have a restful night.”

Then, after speaking to him as though he were merely one of the household employees, she had immediately fled to the bathroom at the end of the first-floor hallway.

Does she see me as a man?

If so, that was good news.

The nervous Ga-young from the previous night and the cheerful Ga-young walking outside now mingled pleasantly in his mind.

“If the two of you have a child, I think the baby will be exceptionally intelligent.”

Hyun-jae had already made it clear that he didn’t want Kwon Seon-jin interfering in his married life.

It was rare for him to take such a hard stance with his grandmother. And when Hyun-jae became firm, it was essentially a warning to Kwon Seon-jin that he might walk out of the family home altogether.

Kwon Seon-jin had wisely restrained herself, but now and then, her hidden desire still slipped through.

Hyun-jae merely smiled.

“Do you think so?”

His eyes remained fixed on Ga-young outside the glass wall.

The sunlight surrounding her seemed to tickle something deep inside his chest.

So that’s why the past week had felt so unbearably dull.

The realization came to him with startling clarity.

“Mrs. Eom, I picked the chives!”

Mrs. Eom had been busy preparing food since early that morning.

She had forgotten to pick the chives, and Ga-young had insisted on helping, so she had just returned from the vegetable garden.

At some point, the sound of chopping had stopped, and the kitchen counter had been completely cleared.

Mrs. Eom accepted the chives, but unlike earlier, she looked thoroughly deflated.

“Thank you. But it turns out we don’t really need them.”

“Why not?”

“Executive Director Shin had breakfast at the main house. He ate with the chairman.”

“Oh. Is that so?”

“Yes. You said you don’t like having too many side dishes, Madam. Shall I just stir-fry some beef?”

Mrs. Eom had been busy since early morning because she wanted to prepare a nutritious meal for the master of the detached house.

Judging by the fact that she had been in the middle of preparing the ingredients for the main dish, she must have received the news rather late.

Perhaps because she had personally gone to pick the chives, Ga-young felt strangely disappointed as well.

Even though she had been thinking that sitting across from Hyun-jae at the breakfast table would probably make her uncomfortable.

“I’m not hungry, so unless I really need to eat, I think I’ll skip breakfast.”

“Would you like to do that? Then how about having brunch around eleven?”

“That sounds good. Thank you.”

After giving her a gentle smile, Ga-young returned to her room.

She sat cross-legged on the bed and read for a while.

Then she looked out through the wide-open curtains at the window.

Her gaze wandered around the room, drifting here and there, until eventually she found herself resting her chin on the windowsill.

She had noticed something strange.

The atmosphere at the Seongbuk-dong estate seemed different depending on whether Hyun-jae was there or not.

The buildings and grounds were fixed. The countless flowers and trees couldn’t possibly have changed in just one day.

What had changed was the people.

Mrs. Eom in the detached house seemed more cheerful than she had been throughout the past week.

The gardener, who had arrived early for work, tirelessly trimmed the branches and leaves of the tall trees with careful, delicate snips.

The cleaning staff swept the paths with noticeably more energy, as though they wanted everyone to hear them, while the other employees in charge of miscellaneous tasks hurried in and out of the estate more busily than they had the day before.

Ga-young had no idea what Hyun-jae had done aside from having breakfast at the main house, but somehow, the entire estate felt more alive.

It was almost as though the true master of this estate wasn’t Kwon Seon-jin.

It was Shin Hyun-jae.

“That’s ridiculous, isn’t it?”

Because it wasn’t true.

It was probably just her imagination, brought on by the fact that she had become overly conscious of Hyun-jae.

Brunch began a little after eleven.

“I made bibimbap with the chives you picked, Madam.”

The generous bowl was filled with chives, assorted vegetables, stir-fried beef, and a fried egg.

“Thank you. I’ll enjoy it.”

Meals with Mrs. Eom were always delicious.

Until Ga-young had nearly scraped the bottom of her bowl, the meal was filled with good food and warm conversation.

Then a loud voice rang out from the entrance, shattering the peaceful atmosphere.

“Mrs. Eom! Se-jeong is starving!”