“Take care, Eunwon.”
“Yes. I’ll be back....”
He wished time would move a little more slowly, but before he knew it, the moment had come for him to leave the house. Eunwon trudged outside. After exchanging one last goodbye with Madam Seo, who had come to see him off, he climbed into the car. Chauffeur Oh confirmed the destination once more before pulling away from the house.
“....”
It’s okay. I can do this. Meeting someone isn’t difficult. There’s nothing to be nervous about.... I’m not going there to get married, so why am I this nervous?
Eunwon drew in a deep breath and slowly let it out, then closed his eyes and tried to calm himself before looking out the window. It suddenly occurred to him that he might have been more at ease back when he spent his shifts dealing with one nightmare customer after another.
After about a thirty-minute drive, they arrived at S Group Gallery. They had said it would be better to meet at the gallery, which happened to be closed that day, than somewhere full of prying eyes. A single employee was waiting outside.
“Good afternoon. It’s an honor to meet you. I’m Lee Woojae, Executive Director Cha’s secretary.”
“...Hello. Um... I’m Seo Eunwon.”
“Please come inside.”
“...All right.”
Eunwon got out of the car and followed the secretary, who smiled kindly as he led the way. The man Secretary Lee had called Executive Director Cha appeared to be the person Eunwon was meeting today. The name should have been unfamiliar, yet he felt as though he had heard it somewhere before.
Where was it...? Where have I heard that name...?
It felt as though the answer was on the tip of his tongue, but it refused to come to him. He wanted to search for it, but given the circumstances, he could hardly pull out his phone and do that now. As he followed Secretary Lee through the gallery toward the meeting place, Eunwon kept turning the name Cha Sejin over in his mind.
Secretary Lee led him to a café on the fifth and highest floor of the gallery. The entire floor seemed to be occupied by the café and a restaurant. All four walls were made of transparent glass, allowing the bright afternoon sunlight to pour inside and shimmer across the interior.
Eunwon had never seen such a beautiful place in his life. For a moment, he forgot why he was even there and drank in the sight of the café, empty except for the bare minimum of staff.
“Executive Director Cha arrived about thirty minutes ago.”
At the secretary’s words, Eunwon tore his gaze from the light spilling through the windows and looked ahead. Beyond Secretary Lee, who was walking in front of him, he could see the back of a man seated at a table by the window.
“....”
Tension abruptly wrapped around his entire body again. Eunwon took a deep breath and pressed a hand firmly over his heart.
“Executive Director Cha, I’ve brought Seo Eunwon.”
Before he knew it, Secretary Lee had reached the table and announced his arrival. Overcome with nerves, Eunwon lowered his gaze. He saw the man rise from his seat and turn toward him. Eunwon quickly bowed his head slightly and greeted him first.
“...Hello.... My name is Seo Eunwon....”
“You should look at me when you say hello, sweetheart.”
The voice falling over his head sounded strangely familiar. The man who had come into the convenience store, said bizarre things, and behaved even more bizarrely flashed through Eunwon’s mind. He jerked his head up.
“....”
“What took you so long? Did you hate the thought of marrying me that much?”
Eunwon stared blankly at Cha Sejin’s face, squeezed his eyes shut, and opened them again. He needed to make sure the person standing in front of him really was that nightmare customer from the convenience store.
He thought there was no possible way, but no matter how many times he blinked, nothing changed. The face looking down at him with a bright smile belonged to the same man who had put the lollipop in his mouth.
“...Why are you here...?”
“Why do you think? I told you. I’m getting married soon.”
“....”
“Oh. Did I forget to mention that I was marrying you?”
Calling himself flustered could not begin to describe what Eunwon was feeling. Unable to say a word, he could only absorb each statement Cha Sejin tossed at him so casually, as though none of it were remotely significant.
“Sit down. It must be hard looking up at me.”
Cha Sejin gestured toward the chair across from him, then sat down first. Eunwon stared at him before moving on legs that had gone weak for an entirely different reason and lowering himself into the opposite chair.
“What do you want to drink?”
“....”
“You’re completely out of it.”
Cha Sejin clicked his tongue at the sight of Eunwon looking as though his soul had left his body. He told the waiting secretary to bring a white-chocolate frappe and a slice of cake. Secretary Lee bowed in acknowledgment and moved away from the windows.
“Pull yourself together. I understand that you’re shocked, but now you need to get a grip and make sure you land me. Are you really going to let me slip away while you sit there spacing out?”
“...How... did this happen?”
“It’s exactly what it looks like. I came because I’m going to marry you, and you came because you’re going to marry me. I went to see you because I was curious about the person I was marrying. You just didn’t know who I was.”
“I-I... didn’t come here to get married.”
At the trembling words that barely escaped Eunwon’s lips, Cha Sejin crossed his long legs and leaned forward.
“Then why did you come?”
“...They said I should meet you... just once....”
“You only came to meet me?”
“Yes....”
Cha Sejin slowly tilted his head at Eunwon’s withdrawn, visibly nervous demeanor. This was not a casual meeting where they would simply see each other once. It had been arranged so they could formally introduce themselves as prospective spouses. Yet Eunwon looked as though he had no idea what this meeting meant.
“Fine. Whatever. A meeting’s a meeting, no matter what it means.”
Cha Sejin took a sip of the coffee he had ordered earlier and quietly studied Eunwon, whose already pale face had gone completely white. Now that he had been taken in by his wealthy family, he should have been eating better, sleeping better, and living more comfortably. Yet somehow, his face looked slightly thinner than it had at the convenience store.
Usually, losing weight in the face made someone look sick or haggard and unpleasant to look at, but not Eunwon. It gave him a more delicate, forlorn beauty, making him pretty in an entirely different way than before. Cha Sejin genuinely could not imagine ever growing tired of that face, even over an entire lifetime.
“You heard, right? That we’re getting married.”
Flustered by the certainty with which Cha Sejin spoke of marriage, Eunwon parted his lips. He could not say he had heard nothing, because he knew that S Group wanted an arranged marriage. But saying he had heard about it made it sound as though he, too, had agreed that they would definitely marry, which left him hesitating.
“...I was told nothing had been decided yet....”
“Really? Then we can decide today before we leave.”
“I-I don’t think it’s something we can decide... after meeting once....”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s... important.... This isn’t just anything. It’s marriage....”
Cha Sejin uncrossed his legs and rested his chin on one hand this time, nodding openly.
“Yeah. I want to marry you.”
“...Why...?”
“Your face is exactly my type.”
Eunwon was left speechless by the sheer flippancy of the answer. He had come here thinking that the other person might lose all desire to marry once he saw someone as painfully ordinary as Eunwon. He still had not recovered from the shock of finding the perverted nightmare customer from the convenience store sitting in front of him instead, and every time Cha Sejin spoke about marriage as though it were nothing, Eunwon’s head rang.
“...How can you decide to marry someone over something like that...?”
“There’s something you’re forgetting, sweetheart. What we’re talking about isn’t an ordinary marriage. It’s an arranged marriage.”
“....”
“We only got this far because all the terms both sides wanted already matched. And once things have come this far, marriage is inevitable.”
“....”
“We’re getting married anyway. I like your face, and obviously you’re going to like mine. There’s nothing bad about that. Do you know how important it is for the face you see every day to be exactly your type?”
And I don’t like fucking someone facedown where I can’t see their face. So yeah, the face is fucking important.
There was more he wanted to say, but he kept it to himself. If he said it aloud to a stammering twenty-year-old who had gone white with fear, Eunwon might genuinely run away.
“Here are your drink and cake. If you need anything else, please press the call button. We’ll wait outside so you can speak comfortably.”
An employee returned with the drink and cake Cha Sejin had ordered and placed them on the table before leaving the café. Cha Sejin pushed the drink in front of Eunwon a little closer to him.
“Drink.”
Eunwon looked down at it, then wrapped both hands around the tall glass and put the end of the straw between his lips. The white-chocolate frappe rose through the clear straw and moistened his mouth, which had gone dry from tension and shock. After drinking something cold and sweet, his thoughts, which had been lurching wildly in every direction, grew a little clearer.
“...I only moved into my father’s house recently, and I hardly know anything about... any of this. You’ll probably find me very... frustrating.”
“That’s what makes it even better.”
“...What?”