DERH 15

Chapter 15

Kind Sena

“What did you say?”

“I appreciate that you were worried about me, but I can choose the kind of people I spend time with.”

Kang-hyun slowly raised his head, and his expression looked serious. His cold, dark eyes shone as if he were about to devour Sena.

Slash, slash, slash, slash.

Under his merciless knife, the thick steak was being cut to pieces, and instead of meat juice, bright red blood was filling the plate.

“Euuuuugh!!!”

Sena suddenly woke up with a gasp and jumped up from her bed. She breathed heavily and held her pounding heart. Cold sweat ran down the back of her neck as if she had just had a nightmare.

The piece of meat covered in blood went into Kang-hyun’s mouth, and he chewed it slowly.

Sena felt as if she had become the piece of meat inside his mouth.

It was far too vivid for a dream, and goosebumps covered her entire body.

A bright red sports car entered the parking lot of L Wedding Hall at high speed and found an empty space. The car stopped as if it had suddenly moved forward, then immediately reversed and parked perfectly within the lines in one try.

The parking attendant could not help clapping at the owner’s amazing parking skills.

Bang!

At the sound of the car door closing, the parking attendant’s eyes widened when he saw the owner.

She was wearing dark black sunglasses, a black H-line dress that covered her calves, and bright red lipstick.

The woman dressed completely in black was wearing black high heels as she walked toward him. Just the atmosphere around her was enough to make his body flinch.

He could not say for sure, but it looked as if someone might die today.

The problem was that this was not a funeral hall.

It was a wedding hall.

“Ha. How clever. This is the kind of thing young people do these days.”

In Sena’s hand was the wedding invitation she had received by express mail two days ago. It had the usual words written on it:

“Please celebrate the beautiful season and the day when two people become one.”

She had received it without knowing who the unfamiliar name belonged to. But when she opened it, she was shocked.

There was a caricature that captured the man’s facial features perfectly. Thinking, No way, she opened the inner page.

As expected, it was the wedding invitation of the man she had broken up with a month ago.

He would not have sent this invitation himself. He was not brave enough to do something like that.

The person behind this nasty little trick was his young bride.

She had completely forgotten about the man after their breakup, but since this woman had gone as far as doing something like this just to provoke her, Sena felt it was only right to accept her challenge.

Besides, her dreams had been strange lately.

So this worked out perfectly.

I, Gi Sena,

“When someone comes looking for a fight, you should not avoid it. There is an old saying: You don’t avoid shit because you’re afraid of it; you avoid it because it’s dirty. But in the battlefield of life, where everything is so fierce these days, it doesn’t matter whether you roll around in a field of shit or a field of thorns.”

She had wanted to paint even her fingernails black, but she had not had enough time. That was her only regret.

The moment she stepped out of the elevator, she headed straight toward the man who was receiving congratulations with a foolish smile on his face.

The sound of her high heels echoed across the marble floor. People turned around to look, but her fierce presence made them split into two lines like the parting of the Red Sea.

When Sena arrived in front of the man who was dressed up from head to toe, she pulled her sunglasses up onto her head and smiled brightly.

The pupils of the man in the tuxedo trembled like the last leaf shaking in a storm.

“Your expression is quite something.”

“Ho… how did you get here?”

“I came to congratulate you and wish you a happy life. Is this somewhere I shouldn’t come? I even received an invitation.”

“No… Sena…”

“The food here isn’t good. I guess you couldn’t find a better place because you had to hurry and hold the wedding?”

“……”

“Can I consider the money I’ve spent on you until now as your wedding gift? I don’t really want to pay for bad food.”

Before the man could stop her, she quickly turned around and entered the wedding hall.

She did not hesitate even for a moment while looking for a seat. She took a seat where she had the best view of the stage in the center.

Before the ceremony began, a video showing the couple’s love story was playing on a screen hanging on one side of the wall to entertain the guests.

They had not been seeing each other for only a day or two.

It did not matter anymore when he had started cheating on her. Their vague relationship before dating probably started much earlier.

Their relationship was already over.

Whether the people in the video were happy or not did not matter to Sena, and her heart did not hurt at all.

The most important thing to Sena was winning this fight.

She could hear people constantly whispering around her, but she did not care at all.

First of all, the groom’s nervous appearance after seeing Sena was amusing.

And she was looking forward to seeing the expression of the young bride who had sent her an invitation and was proudly showing off her beauty in the bridal waiting room when she saw Sena.

She must have wondered, Will she really come?

But Sena really had come.

She was even willing to watch the ceremony until the very end and take pictures with them.

Where else could you find an ex-girlfriend who was willing to leave her face in wedding photographs that a couple might take only once in their lives?

Whether they later wanted to cut her face out of the photographs with a knife or not, what did it matter?

As long as Sena felt relieved, that was enough.

The young bride who had picked a fight with Gi Sena without knowing what kind of person she was would regret this day for a very long time.

It would not even be bad if they ended up having a fierce fight at their expensive honeymoon destination.

An incident where no one could laugh or cry.

Sena boldly put her face into the photographs with the bride’s friends, the groom’s friends, and even the group photograph.

Since she was already doing something crazy, she decided to do one more thing.

Just as the bride was about to throw the bouquet, Sena caught it in midair and threw it hard onto the floor.

Thud!

The bouquet, which had cost hundreds of thousands of won, was instantly ruined.

“Dear young bride. Next time you pick a fight with someone, first find out what kind of person they are. This big sister came here herself to teach someone who can’t tell right from wrong a lesson.”

It was the most refreshing and thrilling thing that had happened to Sena in a long time.

She truly understood what people meant when they said it felt like ten years of frustration had finally been washed away.

Whether people thought she was crazy or not did not matter. She would never see any of them again anyway.

Leaving behind the young bride who had collapsed and was crying loudly, and her ex-boyfriend who stood there completely stunned, Sena walked out.

She had gone to the beauty salon early that morning and carefully curled her hair. Now she let her hair fly behind her as she walked down the white flower-covered aisle, stepping on it as if she were crushing it beneath her feet.

The wedding music suddenly stopped.

Only the guests’ whispers and the bride’s sharp crying filled the hall.

Sena waited for the elevator with a posture that would not have looked out of place on a fashion show model and a proud expression on her face.

She just wanted the elevator to hurry up, take her in, and bring her down to the parking lot.

She was barely holding back the urge to burst out laughing until her eyes became sore once she was alone in her car.

Then—

“Your personality isn’t very good.”

Someone approached from behind and whispered beside her ear, as if the words had simply dropped there.

The emotionless voice sounded very familiar.

Like a robot that needed oil, Sena’s neck slowly turned with a creaking motion.

Eventually, her eyes met the owner of the voice.

“Does kind Sena take weekends off?”

By now, she should have been used to it.

Whenever Sena took off the mask she wore to pretend to be a good and elegant person, there was always one man who appeared.

“……Why are you here again, Senior?”

Judging by his clothes, Ryu Kang-hyun had also come to this wedding hall as a guest. He was wearing a neat suit.

The wedding Kang-hyun had intended to attend was the ceremony immediately after the one Sena had just caused trouble at.

Because of the timing, he had planned to simply give his wedding gift and leave. But when he noticed the chaotic atmosphere in the hall, he stayed to see what was happening.

And just in time, he witnessed Sena throwing the bouquet onto the floor.

Even though hundreds of guests were watching her, Sena did not care at all. She said everything she wanted to say and simply walked away.

Watching her, Kang-hyun ended up laughing again.

At this point, he almost felt sorry that she was only this bold.

If she had specialized in criminal law instead of divorce law, she could have become a formidable opponent who would have made prosecutors dread dealing with her.

No, rather than being a lawyer, she might even have suited the position of a prosecutor in the criminal division.

The elevator was empty.

Only Gi Sena and Ryu Kang-hyun were inside as it descended toward the underground parking lot.

The small box, barely five square meters in size, was filled with silence.

For some reason, an old song came to Sena’s mind.

“Why do I become so small whenever I stand in front of you?”

The confident attitude she had shown just moments ago disappeared like magic, and her mind was filled with nervous tension.

Why him? Again?

She wondered what the man standing silently beside her thought of her.

Should she just leave things like this?

Should she try to show him her charm as a woman?

They had barely reached the point where she was wondering whether she should or should not appeal to him, and now he had seen her terrible temper with his own eyes.

There was no way a woman who ruined someone else’s wedding could look good to a man.

If only she had shed tears and looked pitiful, she might have been able to bring out his protective instincts.

But now, it seemed impossible to fix things.

Unable to find anywhere else to look, Sena stared intensely at the elevator display as the floor numbers changed.

Then Kang-hyun spoke first.

“The person you used to date?”

“Is it impossible for us to pretend we didn’t see each other today?”

“If you want.”

There was no way he could pretend not to have seen what happened, but when he readily agreed to do as she wished, Sena relaxed her tightly hunched shoulders.

Her image had already been ruined, whether ten years ago or now. There was barely any difference.

But she did not want him to see her worrying about it.

“He cheated on me, so we broke up. As you can see, he even married that woman.”

“Unexpected. I thought you wouldn’t care.”

“I didn’t care. I wasn’t interested in him either.”

“Then she must have provoked you first.”

Sena had expected him to laugh at her or say something like, Did you really have to go that far?

But after hearing his simple reply, she closed her mouth.

She had been thinking of all kinds of excuses, but there was no need anymore.

Ryu Kang-hyun sometimes said exactly what she wanted to hear.

Wondering what he was thinking, Sena looked at his reflection in the elevator doors.

If it had been someone else, they would probably have looked surprised or disappointed by Sena’s new behavior.

But Kang-hyun’s expression remained completely emotionless from beginning to end.

Ah, he simply doesn’t care about me at all, so none of this matters to him?

That was a problem in its own way.

While Sena was thinking about what she should do, the elevator reached the third basement floor.

The doors opened, and Kang-hyun stepped out first.

Sena followed him.

They did not say anything to each other as they walked toward where their cars were parked.

It was a beautiful weekend day.

And this unexpected meeting.

Perhaps this was a chance to have an honest conversation with him.

Sena was not the type to avoid a fight that came looking for her.

And Kang-hyun had no hostility toward her.

There was absolutely no reason for her to be afraid of him.

So if she wanted to know something about him, today was the perfect opportunity.

“Then.”

Kang-hyun was the first to say goodbye.

Sena instinctively bowed her head.

But after hesitating, she called out to him just before getting into her car.

“Senior, have you eaten?”

Kang-hyun turned around to look at Sena, but instead of answering, he raised one eyebrow.

“Would you like to have a meal with me?”

Kang-hyun’s eyes narrowed slightly.

The woman who always seemed desperate to avoid him whenever she saw him was now asking him to eat with her first.

That was unexpected.

Before answering, he checked the time.

His scheduled plans and a meal with Gi Sena.

The two sides of the scale inside his mind remained perfectly balanced for a moment before finally tipping to one side.

“Send me the address by text.”