TGMD 4

Chapter 4

When the Mad Dog Barks

Chairman Jung Young-jae looked as though he was on the absolute verge of clutching the back of his neck and collapsing on the spot.

Yet deep down, watching the man who had just gleefully turned her engagement party into a complete and utter disaster—exactly as she had secretly hoped—Yoo-joo briefly found herself transported back to when she was seventeen.

Back then, Do-kyung would do anything to protect her. Even if it landed him in serious trouble, he couldn’t have cared less. It was as if his mind was programmed with a single priority: ‘Jung Yoo-joo.’ He was fearless.

Hiding behind his back, Yoo-joo had felt a simultaneous rush of security and butterflies. Foolishly starry-eyed, she felt like the leading lady in a teen romance movie.

She truly believed that as long as she was with Do-kyung, she could face anything. Even if it was a barren desert or a rough, unpaved road, holding his hand made her feel like she didn’t need a red carpet.

Looking back now, it was a pathetic, naive illusion—but back then, Do-kyung was the center of her universe.

And you cruelly crushed that girl under your heel.

So why is it so strange? Now that a moment like this has come again, I feel an uncontrollable urge to grab your hand and run away from this place. Why do I still catch myself hoping you might take me somewhere better than here?

Do I still have feelings left for you? Or am I just that stupid—foolish enough to need another harsh lesson before I finally wake up? Or maybe I’m just desperately looking for an excuse to escape reality.

Whichever it is, the fact that the person in question is still you fills me with despair.

“It’s a special day, everyone. How about a toast?”

Whether he was aware of Yoo-joo’s chaotic inner turmoil or not, Do-kyung raised his champagne glass and took control of the room. Cowing under his natural, overpowering presence, the guests glanced nervously at Chairman Jung before hesitantly raising their glasses.

Gazing into the translucent liquid, Do-kyung spoke with a sly, playful grin.

“To my heartbreak.”

The toast that followed threw the room into an even more unsalvageable tailspin.

The guests’ eyes darted back and forth as they frantically tried to decipher the hidden meaning behind his words. Ha-jin knitted his brows in annoyance at what felt like a joke taken way too far. What the hell is wrong with this guy?

And Yoo-joo felt as though the strength in her legs was about to give out completely, threatening to send her collapsing onto the floor.

“I, too, used to have a massive thing for Director Jung.”

That was the exact moment the mad dog officially started barking at the crowd.

That day, Yoo-joo’s wedding announcement was completely buried.

Unable to stomach it any longer, Chairman Jung prematurely ended the event. Yoo-joo couldn’t even remember how she managed to see the guests off or smooth over the atmosphere afterward.

She was simply left standing alone in the empty hall after the storm had passed. Looking at the spilled champagne and the lavish food that hadn’t even been touched, she let out a long sigh.

She reached into her bag, rummaging around as if searching for something.

What came out of her luxury handbag wasn’t expensive perfume, a handcrafted designer wallet, or the key to a supercar.

It was a small bottle of liquid cold medicine—an item that looked entirely out of place. Poping the cap open with practiced familiarity, she brought it to her lips.

“Hey, that stuff is basically a drug for you.”

Before the bottle could even touch her lips, a large hand reached out and grabbed her wrist. The bitter-smelling liquid spilled across the back of her hand and splashed onto the floor.

Since she didn’t have a spare, a sharp wave of irritation flared inside her. She glared at the owner of the hand—Do-kyung. She had assumed everyone had left, but clearly, he hadn’t.

Still looking uneasy, Do-kyung snatched the bottle away from her completely.

“Excuse me, Executive Director Han Do-kyung.”

“Drinking this out of habit when you’re not even sick, using the haze of medication to run away from reality… That’s no different from doing drugs.”

Of all her small rebellions, this had been the only one she had left after everything else was confiscated. Having even that stolen away made her chest feel suffocatingly tight.

“Then go ahead and call the police,” Yoo-joo snapped defensively. She needed to act even colder toward him, if only to mask the foolish impulse she had felt earlier. I have to learn how to live without you now.

“Tell them Director Jung Yoo-joo of Yuha Air got caught abusing cold medicine.”

Instead of answering, Do-kyung placed his palm against her forehead. Yoo-joo immediately slapped his hand away, but he had already gotten the information he wanted.

Her skin didn’t feel even slightly warm.

“You don’t have a cold. The moment you take it without being sick, it stops being cold medicine. It just becomes a drug.”

Whenever Yoo-joo felt anxious or overwhelmed, she turned to cold medicine. At first, it was a preventive measure, since she had a knack for falling ill right after going through something traumatic. But the original purpose had drifted over time, and opening a bottle of cold medicine had gradually turned into an automatic reflex. Ridiculously enough, the mere act of taking the medicine gave her a psychological sense of comfort.

“You haven’t changed a bit. Not even this habit.”

And that was the one habit of hers Do-kyung had despised most while they were dating. He had tried endlessly to break her of it.

“It’s hilarious hearing that from someone who doesn’t even have the right to worry about me.”

Shaking off Do-kyung’s touch, Yoo-joo pulled out a handkerchief to wipe the back of her hand, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

“Is enduring things in such a foolish way still the best you can do?”

“Listen here, Executive Director Han. You just stepped way out of line. It’s a little too late for you to start worrying about me now.”

When she truly needed Do-kyung, he wasn’t by her side. How dare he act like this now?

“It’s over now. That bastard chose his family over you. If you don’t believe me, go out there and see for yourself. I won’t stop you.”

Even when her father issued that cold, unfeeling warning, Yoo-joo hadn’t believed it. She was convinced Do-kyung would never abandon her. Just as she would never abandon him.

Yet on that day, Do-kyung never showed up. Yoo-joo sat beside her heavy luggage and waited for him until the break of dawn.

Just as her worry turned into anxiety, her anxiety into tears, and her tears into rage, the woman who was Do-kyung’s biological mother showed up—delivering the final, soul-crushing blow of reality.

That afternoon, Yoo-joo took the plane ticket her father had already booked and headed straight to the airport. And she prayed. She prayed that by the time she eventually returned to Korea years later, the existence named Han Do-kyung would have faded into nothing inside her. Or better yet, that she would never have to face him again for the rest of her life.

“If you had truly loved me, you wouldn’t have abandoned me.”

Resenting her life for never going the way she wanted, Yoo-joo spoke with icy detachment. Her razor-sharp voice tore through her own heart before it even reached Do-kyung.

“I don’t repeat the same mistakes. I’m not going to sit here and try to understand you for barging back into my life out of nowhere. I have no intention of dancing to your tune, either. I’m not seventeen anymore.”

She was no longer naive enough to fall in love when it came bundled with the constant terror of being abandoned all over again.

Holding back the tears that threatened to spill, Yoo-joo tried to brush past him. Do-kyung, staring down at the small amber bottle in his hand, spoke in a voice that sank significantly lower.

“I never abandoned you. Not for a single second.”

A genuine laugh escaped her lips at those words. Yoo-joo laughed like someone who had completely lost her mind.

“Then why didn’t you show up back then? On the day you asked me to run away with you?”

“That was…”

Then, without a single warning, her laughter cut off entirely. Turning back around, Yoo-joo’s face froze into a cold, rigid mask that looked almost alien on her.

For someone who made an effort to be kind to almost everyone, it was an expression she had practically never shown before.

“If you tell me you had no choice because of the circumstances, does that somehow make it a valid excuse?”

Yoo-joo’s words cut into Do-kyung’s skin, as sharp as the edge of the bottle cap.

“If you claim you genuinely loved me, but things just happened to turn out that way… does that mean you didn’t abandon me?”

He almost wished she would just cry. The fact that she wasn’t crying made her look so much sadder.

“It doesn’t change anything. The bottom line is that you abandoned me, Sunbae.”

“…”

“Even if you loved me, I was never the most important thing in your world. That’s what makes it so much worse.”

Blood welled up in Do-kyung’s palm, dripping steadily onto the floor from where the glass had cut him. Yet he couldn’t feel a shred of physical pain. Somewhere else inside him hurt far worse.

“I’d rather you just tell me you never loved me. At least then, I could lose whatever feelings I have left for you.”

When did our lives get so twisted up like this? Do-kyung thought as he stared at Yoo-joo, who believed with every fiber of her being that she had been abandoned.

“So, I’m going to marry Go Ha-jin.”

“…”

“He doesn’t love me, but he needs me. At least that way, I won’t end up getting hurt. How can you get hurt when there’s no love involved? We’ll just use each other for what we need, and that’ll be that.”

And here I was, believing all this time that I was the one who got abandoned, Yoo-joo.

“You have far too much for me to ever love you, Sunbae.”

“…”

“Sometimes, I even find myself wishing for it. Wishing you’d lose everything and end up completely ruined.”

Excessive love often resembles destruction. Loving each other so fiercely, they now found themselves desperately wishing for each other’s ruin.

How did two people who loved each other this deeply end up feeling so utterly abandoned by one another?

“Can you ruin yourself for me?”

Even her venomous words came out sounding breathtakingly beautiful.

“If you can’t do that, then don’t ever show me love—or anything remotely like it—ever again.”

With those final words, she turned on her heel and walked away, the sharp click of her heels echoing through the empty space.

Do-kyung quietly watched her receding figure from behind, then carefully slid the tiny medicine bottle that had cut his hand into his pocket.

By the time he raised his head again, Yoo-joo was already gone.