Suddenly he remembered the day he proposed to him. What had he answered when Jaeha asked him to marry him?
“I don’t fucking get it.”
“…”
“Do you like me?”
That day, Lee Jaeha couldn’t answer, “Yes.”
At the time, what mattered was what he could show Jang Taegun. He thought he needed grounds for Taegun to accept his proposal.
So all he could think to do was put forward his terms. He wanted to say what he had, what he could do for him, and what gains he would have if he married him.
He thought then Taegun would recognize his sincerity. He wanted to explain the necessity of his being at his side, but what actually came out of his mouth was nothing but a list of the wealth and power Lee Jaeha possessed.
That, it seemed, was the problem. Jang Taegun hit the core.
“So not what I’d get. Tell me what you get.”
Should he have said it then? That what he wanted was Jang Taegun the Alpha, as he was. That that was why he was in the middle of an absurd proposal to his fiancé’s lover.
“You said you don’t even like me. Then what are you marrying me for. Can you read faces, Director? What are you trusting to hand your life to a thug.”
“That’s not it.”
“Then what. What makes you act like marriage is easy.”
Leaning back loosely, as if advising someone who lived life in ragged chunks, Taegun clicked his tongue. His easy manner almost made him forget he was the older one, and that what he was talking about was marriage to this man.
But that line lodged in his ear. Easy, marriage? Even if every marriage were easy, marrying you would be nothing but hard.
Who ever finds marriage easy in the first place. He’d only thought of persuading the other party; it had never crossed his mind they would ask why he had to marry, and he parted his dry lips.
“What I get is…”
He couldn’t say on the spot that he liked Taegun, that from the first meeting he had never once erased him from his thoughts, that he even dreamed of him and hadn’t known what that meant.
He didn’t have the courage to admit he’d been burning up to steal away his fiancé’s lover and claim him first.
He thought Taegun would find him strange. And even if he said it, he doubted Taegun would believe his heart.
It wasn’t only Taegun’s problem that those words lacked credibility. From the instant he recognized his feelings, it was hard for him to have faith in that feeling himself.
They had met only a couple of times. The first moment he saw him, he felt odd. Because he went into rut that night, he’d thought that oddness was a change stirred by pheromones.
Next, there was Jang Taegun, sitting in the seat of his fiancé’s lover. By Jaeha’s common sense, that made no sense.
Seeing someone else while not finished with the person you were with. Whether the engagement was for strategy or how deeply Sumin had been involved with Taegun was irrelevant.
There was no love for his fiancé, but there was trust. Even if it was Sumin who broke that first, ordinarily Jaeha would at least have taken some time before approaching Taegun.
He always had enough reason to judge right and wrong. If the man Sumin had brought as his lover that day had been anyone but Taegun, he would have made the rational call as usual.
No matter how taken he was with his fiancé’s lover, he would have broken off the engagement, let some time settle, then contacted him. No—there was no reason he would ever fall for his fiancé’s lover in the first place.
But he hadn’t. Before he even realized he was acting strange, he was absorbed in Taegun.
He was like a racehorse wearing blinkers. In Lee Jaeha’s life, it was the first experience of its kind. All those feelings running headlong without even knowing what they were. It made him dizzy. All the more because he couldn’t stop.
So he had no confidence he could persuade Taegun. What he was going through was exactly the feeling he had denied all his life.
If there were such a thing as love, he had vaguely believed his mother would not have suffered so much.
What he’d seen in books or on screen wasn’t that. Sticky and clinging, sometimes dank, mostly gloomy. He had denied for a lifetime that this was the other side of love.
Which is why, even after his desire for Jang Taegun submerged all the habits and notions he had lived by until that day, he still didn’t realize it. Read this novel at novelping(.)com for the best experience.
A feeling that to even himself was nothing but vague. A nature that trusted stark distinctions of right and wrong, zero and one, light and dark, applied the same metric when he cut his own feelings.
So he had no confidence he could persuade him. If he himself didn’t understand, how was he supposed to sway that mountain of a man and win consent to marry. It was nothing but daunting.
To confess that he liked him after barely a day, that he had dreamed of him since then, that from that point he loved him—and to expect that to be accepted—he had no confidence for that.
To Lee Jaeha, his heart was no different from a business plan with pathetically thin grounds.
The person before his eyes had become the most important to him. He couldn’t dump something so shoddy on someone like that.
In such times, a little lie is better. He set his face and presented his position with the look he wore when facing a buyer. A face frozen into an old habit.
“…Marriage with Manager Jang is an escape for me. I’ve worked and tried until now, but I find myself wanting to stop. Marriage with Manager Jang will be a direct or indirect expression of that intent.”
“No, Mr. Lee Jaeha.”
Taegun cut down that flimsy ground in an instant. Even with the honorific tacked on at the end, the way he said his name felt like a slur.
Jaeha curled his lips in, because Jang Taegun was narrowing his eyes and looking at him like he’d eat him alive.
Was he found out. Maybe Taegun had already sensed his feelings. In this world, he thought, there might be marriages where assets move, but marriages where hearts move could not be trusted.
He only hoped it didn’t show to him. What his heart was, and how he was looking at Taegun.
Pheromones lay low around his ankles, voicing their master’s anger in his stead.
“There are plenty of options like that besides me. What, I’m the only thug in the country.”
He seemed angry. Even his pheromones said so. …Why was he angry? Maybe he only vaguely wondered.
“Say properly why you want to marry me. Out of all the thugs strewn on the pavement, why does it have to be me.”
He felt like he would burn up under that gaze. In the end, like a turncoat broken by torture, Jaeha had no choice but to open his mouth.
“…Manager Jang was involved with Kim Sumin.”
“Who? …Ah, that Omega.”
With one eyebrow cocked as if gauging something, he let out a small laugh and pushed the inside of his cheek with his tongue.
The way just that one cheek rounded up suddenly felt feral. Few around Lee Jaeha were like Taegun.
“This is a first, hearing an answer that makes my heart skip. So. You’re marrying me to screw him in advance in case I end up his Omega mistress?”
His pheromones rippled in a single flood. It was strange how they had sharpened all at once. He spat the words out, chewing them.
“So who the fuck are you jealous of to cook up a cute little stunt like this? Spell it out. I’m just about to feel like shit.”
“No… That’s not it… If it comes out that I married the Alpha who was involved with Kim Sumin, my family will give up on me. What I want is freedom from my family.”
No. He had never once thought of anything like freedom. But third-generation heirs tended to spout that line. I want to live free, too.
Even Lee Jaeho spouted such lines. So his spiel about freedom wouldn’t sound strange, right. For the first time he was using all his strength to persuade someone. His palm was sweating.
Taegun’s eyes narrowed again, as if deciding whether his words were true. Under that cool gaze, his heart pounded like it would leap out.
He’d thought up a couple more excuses, but either way he had to make this marriage look like a gain for him.
He had to strip away Taegun’s suspicion and, if possible, add a little to what he could give him. The truth was, yes, he was marrying out of desire, but in that desire was also a wish to grant everything Taegun wanted.
So he had to make him recognize this marriage was for his own benefit, and what Taegun received was a fair price. All except for the one clear reason—his feelings.
“There’s only one thing I want from marrying the Director.”
“Throw away everything of Yushin and come. Then who knows. Maybe I won’t care that you’re an Alpha.”
But the answer he returned was only ambiguous. Throw everything away and come? Otherwise I’ve got nothing to give you. Enjoying the story? Read on at g.com.
In this marriage, what overflowed on his side was what Taegun would receive; what he would get was only one thing—Jang Taegun.
So even today, if Taegun asked for a reason, he had to answer the same way. He must not speak his feelings.
He wouldn’t accept it. In that brusque tone, he might even sneer, “Director, do you do cute little stuff like that?”
He had to answer as if he had a clear reason to take down Myungwon that wasn’t love. He parted his lips again and again, and finally spoke, hoping his words would sound like the truth.
“...Myungwon once bid to build Yushin’s shopping center. At the time they led the bribery and influence-peddling to the relevant executives, and using that as leverage, they blackmailed one of them—he later killed himself.”
“And?”
“…That executive’s nephew is Lee Jaeho, my half brother.”
The facts were facts. It hadn’t been suicide; crushed by gambling debts and driven to alcohol addiction, he had fallen to his death.
He was something like Kim Ranhui’s cousin on her mother’s side. Even Lee Ikhyeong had scolded Kim Ranhui for seating that inadequate man there.
To Lee Jaeho, he’d be an uncle he’d barely seen a few times, but in matters like this, Jaeha never hesitated to sell his brother’s name.
It was one of the excuses he had used time and again; it looked thoroughly like the truth. He wasn’t the type to make trouble, but when he did shift even the smallest mistake, it often landed on Lee Jaeho.
Lee Jaeho still believes it was he who, during winter break of sixth grade, broke the Joseon white porcelain vase his grandfather Lee Wonung cherished by horsing around in the living room. Because Lee Jaeha said so. He’d even teared up while his half brother scolded him with that neat, judgmental face, Why weren’t you careful.
But even putting all that together, the number of times Jaeha cleaned up after Jaeho’s messes was far higher, so it balanced out.
“…You and your brother-in-law were that close? That’s a surprise.”
With a measuring look, Taegun studied him. Silently, he endured it.
Counting the beats inside, he added one more lie that he could believe.
“And… there was a request from Grandfather.”
It was a lie that he had cut up Myungwon for that reason; it wasn’t a lie that Jang Changsik had made that request.
A perfect lie needs truth mixed in. After checking hard inside to see if any loose end of his hidden true feelings had poked out, he waited for Jang Taegun’s reaction.
Even if he got angry, there was nothing to be done. He had been told many times to ignore Jang Changsik’s request and hadn’t listened. He had nothing to say on that point.
But even after hearing him out, Taegun didn’t erase that familiar bored expression.
Instead he stared straight into both his eyes. They still hadn’t opened any distance.
There was more contact than not. Bearing the gaze pouring over his face, he waited for what he would say.
“Ha. So you’re going to chew up what little life they’ve got left.”
He spoke through clenched teeth, but that wasn’t aimed at Jaeha. Staring up from below at the jut of his lower jaw and masseter, made prominent by the set of his mouth, Jaeha snapped back to himself and said,
“…So it wasn’t without a reason.”
That was what he wanted to say. The biggest reason was, you got hurt and I saw red. He wasn’t some middle schooler in puberty, but his vision flipped and he couldn’t sit still.
So yes, there was a reason. One he couldn’t voice.
“Yeah?”
He asked back. Again, through the places where they were touching, his voice came through like a vibration.
He liked it terribly. In the middle of all this. With a hum in his throat, he said,
“I don’t get it.”
“…What do you mean?”
“I figured you did it because you like me enough to take revenge on those bastards.”
With that same bored tone, Jang Taegun hugged him a little tighter. Jaeha liked that, but worried he might press against the wound.