Episode 14 

“…?”

“You said you need a friend. I can at least do that much.”

Seung-hyun was the one who made Seon-hu call him crying, but he had only given a hard time to Seon-hu’s unlikable fiancé, not Seon-hu himself yet.

It wasn’t a good impression, but seeing him behave like this, he had to say that it made him newly realize how young this man was.

“I can go on trips with you, hang out with you.”

It was a bit early to talk about dating, but it seemed like he could at least do that much. Seung-hyun, who had been blinking at the sudden words, asked back.

“Why?”

“Pardon?”

“We just met today, didn’t we? I don’t even know your name yet…”

Seung-hyun tilted his head and asked. Jae-young, who remembered that he hadn’t even introduced himself yet, scratched the back of his head in embarrassment.

‘I heard he’s famous for having a good memory. Well, I guess it’s because he’s in this state now.’

“I’m Ju Jae-young. My mother is the CEO of Y Hotel.”

“Ju Jae-young… Ju Jae-young?”

Seung-hyun’s reaction as he blinked his eyes was too ambiguous to determine whether he knew Jae-young’s name or not.

“You’re going to be friends with me?”

“Yes.”

“If you want to be friends with me… there are a lot of things you have to do.”

“Even if it’s a lot.”

He’ll be busy working anyway. Jae-young shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly. Unlike himself, who only had to show his face to his mother occasionally and attend a few annoying events, Director Han was a very busy person.

‘At most, it’ll only be once or twice a month. What’s so difficult about that?’

When he showed a triumphant face, Seung-hyun looked up at Jae-young with dazed eyes. Who would think this person was HJ Group’s unique rutting alpha Han Seung-hyun when seeing this?

Well, rumors are always exaggerated. Thinking that, Jae-young looked down at Seung-hyun.

“If you’re going to do what I want… I wish you would do more.”

“Like what?”

The next moment, Jae-young regretted asking. He’s been talking about this the whole time, why did he ask?

“Your face… is handsome. You’re tall too. Also…”

“I’m an alpha. Director Han is also an alpha.”

“I don’t mind.”

The blatant gaze he had felt at the bar swept over Jae-young from bottom to top once again. He had taken him out because he was interested in that gaze. But now it felt a bit burdensome.

“I want to confirm if it’s big too…”

***

“Wait. Wait a minute.”

“Yes.”

“Are you saying I really said those things?”

Seung-hyun dropped the fork he was holding and trembled his hands. He was crazy. Properly crazy. The things he supposedly said were all things he didn’t want to believe.

‘Fortunately, it can be heard ambiguously when combined with the original Han Seung-hyun’s situation.’

At least he was fortunate not to have said things like ‘Actually, I’m not the original Han Seung-hyun, I just had an accident and ended up in a book’.

But that’s just relatively fortunate, not truly fortunate. At the words that made his appetite disappear, Seung-hyun swallowed his saliva without even thinking about picking up the fork he had dropped on the table.

“So I came here a bit late, but to do what you asked.”

“…Don’t lie.”

“Why would I lie about this?”

“Aren’t you close with Lee Seon-hu? And Lee Seon-hu is the spouse of Managing Director Han Taeseong. Aren’t you doing this because you’re worried that if I harm Managing Director Han Taeseong, that harm will extend to Lee Seon-hu?”

“But Director, you followed me of your own accord.”

“Don’t play word games!”

When he spoke sternly, only then did the playfulness in Jae-young’s face disappear a little. But Jae-young’s stance didn’t change.

“I’m not joking either. Well, I know you don’t have a good relationship with the Managing Director, but that’s between you two. You haven’t stepped down from your director position now, have you?”

Why is the person who knows he stepped down from his director position annoyingly keep calling him Director? Seung-hyun spoke with eyes full of suspicion.

“Then, what about those words?”

“What words?”

“Didn’t you say something about me wanting to hide this matter, and that it would become fun if others knew about it? Something like that.”

Seung-hyun growled. Jae-young, who now had an embarrassed face, put down the utensils he was holding.

“…I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Then what?”

“When you woke up… weren’t you sober and not in your right mind? I thought I had to say things like that to hold onto you for now. I really had no intention of spreading rumors.”

The dejected appearance like a dog with droopy ears was a bit funny, and Seung-hyun almost let his guard down. But he soon put his guard up again and asked.

“Didn’t you keep doing that through text messages too?”

“That’s… because I was a bit disappointed.”

“What is there to be disappointed about between us?”

“That’s exactly the part that disappoints me. We spent the night together.”

Seung-hyun flinched at those words. The feeling that his tone was a bit, how can you be so heartless to someone you spent the night with, wasn’t just his imagination then?

“Th-that’s nothing. It’s probably not your first time.”

“It is my first time. Isn’t it Han Seung-hyun’s first time too?”

“…What?”

“Well, I don’t know everything, but at least it seemed like it was your first time.”

“Ju Jae-young!”

Seung-hyun’s face turned red. He had been going on and on about sex when he was drunk, but now that he was sober, he didn’t like even indirect expressions.

‘Well, Ju Jae-young has thought since he was young that he would end up with Lee Seon-hu, and lived only being interested in Lee Seon-hu…’

“It’s not a lie.”

“Yes. I understand.”

But why is he so skilled? Is it a characteristic of a main novel character? Seung-hyun pondered seriously, lost in thought.

Clearly, Ju Jae-young was a character who only showed interest in the main lead Lee Seon-hu. With that face, that body, and being a golden spoon on top of that, to the point of not having a single dating or sexual experience.

“…But why me?”

So it made even less sense. In the novel that he had definitely finished reading up to the end the day before the accident, Ju Jae-young was consistently a character who only loved Seon-hu until the end of the novel.

As if Seon-hu was the only interesting thing in the world. He was someone who maintained a strictly business-like attitude towards others.

“Why Director, you ask? Hmm. I wonder.”

At the muttered words, Seung-hyun pretended to ponder. But he didn’t seem to be really thinking about it. It was just a gesture to tease Seung-hyun.

“Actually, there’s no particularly grand reason. It’s just, I’ve always had this kind of personality since I was young.”

“…A personality that doesn’t listen well to others?”

“Haha. That’s not wrong either.”

Jae-young, who smiled slightly, picked up the utensils again. Jae-young, who had rolled the spaghetti noodles into a bite-sized portion, placed the fork near Seung-hyun’s slightly open mouth and said,

“I’m the type to only focus on one thing. Since I was young, I had a hard time getting interested in anything other than the one thing that piqued my interest. The only subject that had piqued my interest before Director Han… I think it lasted about 20 years.”

For a moment, Seung-hyun felt a chilling sensation down his spine. 20 years. That seemed to be exactly when Ju Jae-young started feeling special about Lee Seon-hu in the original story.

“…Why don’t you keep being interested in what you were originally interested in?”

“It’s now… become something I can’t have. Actually, I knew that, but I couldn’t let go because there was nothing that interested me more than that person.”

The more he heard, the more convinced he became that the ‘thing he was interested in’ was Lee Seon-hu. Seung-hyun shook his head as he watched Jae-young squirm without knowing his own pace.

‘He’ll stop after a while. He was originally an unpredictable character anyway.’

“So, I never intended to blackmail you with your preferences from the beginning. Now that I’ve heard you really quit the company, I became more curious about Director Han to end it with just one night.”

“I understand. I’ll trust you.”

Seung-hyun let out a small sigh. He roughly understood how things turned out, and although it got majorly twisted, this novel was bound to not go as originally planned since he submitted his resignation to the company.

It bothered him that Ju Jae-young happened to be the sub-lead of the original work, but Seung-hyun didn’t have the leisure to chase away the warmth that walked in on its own.

He’ll probably stop after a while, so it should be fine for a while. Seung-hyun, who finished his short agony, said in a small voice,

“Not Director.”

“Pardon?”

“Don’t call me Director. I quit the company, and I don’t want to be called that either. Just… call me by my name.”

At Seung-hyun’s words, a slight flush appeared on Jae-young’s face. Seung-hyun stuffed a large portion of spaghetti, whose taste he didn’t even know, into his mouth with a displeased expression.