Chapter 426

Side Story (43)

I sent the manager home for the day, then headed to Choi Jeokhyeon’s house in Yoo Jay’s car.

As I got out of the car, I asked Yoo Jay if he wanted to come with me, but he just scowled and said, “Don’t be ridiculous“, so I sent him on his way without a second thought.

Then, I strode toward Choi Jeokhyeon’s front gate as confidently as if I were entering my own home and tried to open it without hesitation. A bodyguard hurriedly rushed out and stopped me.

“Please don’t go inside right now…….”

‘He must have called ahead to tell them to keep me out.’

Judging by how he couldn’t even finish his sentence properly, the poor guy seemed to be having a rough time walking on eggshells in the middle of our clash.

“Is that so? I’ll make sure to tell him you tried your absolute best to stop me.”

I replied with a benevolent smile, then opened the gate again as though nothing had happened.

“Uh, uh, wait…….”

When I simply went straight ahead and tried to force my way in, the bodyguard couldn’t physically push me back and awkwardly stepped aside. He probably knew that using force would turn this into an irreversible disaster. Particularly where his employment was concerned.

‘Did he really think I’d listen just because he suddenly told me I couldn’t enter a place I used to frequent like my own home? He was the one who told me I could drop by whenever and use whatever I wanted. What’s the big deal about some silly photo anyway.’

Leaving the bodyguard behind as he anxiously stamped his feet, I entered the passcode and strode right into the house. After neatly finding a pair of slippers and putting them on, I went upstairs to the floor with the study.

The moment I flung open the study door, a familiar scent rushed in and tickled my nose.

It was a calm, grounded fragrance; a rich blend of dominant rose notes mixed with heavy scents of leather, wood, and musk. It was one of the perfumes Choi Jeokhyeon frequently used.

He didn’t seem to use any air fresheners, so the scent probably lingered because of Choi Jeokhyeon himself. Perhaps that was because this was where he spent most of his time.

‘If it weren’t for the perfume, this place wouldn’t even look like a human being lives here.’

It was something I thought every time I visited, but the place really was a bleak space.

There wasn’t even a golf club set, the kind of thing every rich bastard supposedly displayed somewhere in their home. Only the absolutely necessary furniture had been arranged neatly, every piece perfectly aligned. If Seo Yuseong’s room was practically an empty lot with nothing in it, Choi Jeokhyeon’s house was like a model home, with not a single personal belonging on display.

‘How is it possible for the furniture to be this free of dust?’

The housekeeper did clean the place every day, but his perfectionist tendencies must have played a considerable role in keeping the room so pristine.

Ah, but don’t underestimate him just because he only kept the necessities.

Every single piece was custom-made by famous overseas furniture designers using the finest materials, which meant they were ridiculously expensive. Buying luxury goods so extravagantly wasn’t my style, but … since spending money like water was that man’s hobby, I supposed I had to respect it.

“Oh.”

As I casually scanned the table, which I was afraid to learn the price of, I spotted a familiar fountain pen.

‘Looks like he’s still using it.’

I’d given it to him so long ago that I’d assumed he would have gotten tired of it by now. I was rather surprised that he was still using it. The Choi Jeokhyeon I knew was the sort of person who rarely kept using things for very long, so seeing that he hadn’t thrown it away made me feel oddly proud.

‘I wouldn’t have minded if he’d just shoved it in a drawer and left it there … is he actually the type to care about things like this more than I thought?’

No, that made no sense.

“Aren’t you going to open this? The person who brought it over asked me to convince you to at least accept it instead of throwing it away. It’s a gift from your father.”

“I don’t need it. Or do you want it?”

“…Do you think I’m crazy? Why would I steal someone else’s gift?”

“Haha, if that person sent it, it must be worth something. I’m not going to open it, so throw it away or keep it for yourself. Do whatever you want.”

I’d seen him toss gifts straight into the trash without even opening them countless times. Even all the fancy tea-time snacks and gift baskets that arrived at the company ended up in the mouths of the Pantheion kids, didn’t they? Given all that, it was a miracle that the fountain pen had survived.

As I wandered around looking for the album, I must have accidentally knocked something over, because I heard a soft flutter as something fell.

Turning my head, I saw a leather-bound notebook.

‘His secretary manages his entire schedule, so he shouldn’t need something like a planner. And with a housekeeper around, he wouldn’t leave anything he didn’t want others to see lying around like this.’

Choi Jeokhyeon was a digitally optimized person who handled most of his work on a tablet. Even this study was stocked with every model of electronic device released by his own company—laptops, phones, and tablets alike. Of course, some of them might have been there for product testing, but it also meant that electronic devices were deeply integrated into his everyday life.

‘Did giving him a fountain pen he barely uses just add another useless item to his collection?’

But why would he need an analog notebook?

What on earth had he written in it?

Trying to look as though I wasn’t interested, I lifted my head and stole a glance at the open page. Neat handwriting filled the page with the following entries.

[20xx. xx. xx. Health Checkup]

[20xx. xx. xx. Start Quitting Smoking]

[20xx. xx. xx. Failed to Quit Smoking]

…Let’s stop investigating that.

I carefully closed the notebook and returned it to its place. Then I bent down to check the drawer beneath the table. Something like an album would almost certainly be tucked away inside the drawer.

‘Here it is.’

When I opened the large compartment at the very bottom, I saw a black cat plushie that looked practically brand-new, the cigarette packs he had confiscated from me, the very first album I had ever autographed, and an old framed photograph of Choi Jeokhyeon as a child, among other things.

“Ha, why on earth would anyone dress an eight-year-old in a crisp button-down shirt? And making him wear a suit and dress shoes on top of that? How is a child supposed to put up with such uncomfortable clothes? Tsk. Seo Yuseong was just wearing comfortable tracksuits at that age…….”

I quietly grumbled to myself as I pulled out the frame, which—unlike the other pristine items in the drawer—was smudged with a bit of dust and staining. There was no way Choi Jeokhyeon himself would have let it get dirty, so whoever had printed the photo and framed it must have done a terrible job storing it.

‘Was it Choi Jeokhyeon’s mother…….’

Choi Jeokhyeon wasn’t the type to dirty something clean, but he wasn’t the type to clean something once it got dirty, either. Unable to hide my bitterness, I gently brushed my fingertips over the grime on the frame.

“…His neck is spotless, at least.”

Unlike the person he was now, young Choi Jeokhyeon had worn a much more expressionless face, his gaze cold and distant. He looked like someone who neither needed a guardian nor knew how to take an interest in other people. He was probably looking toward the camera not because he wanted to have his picture taken, but because he was trying to judge the person taking it.

‘Though perhaps it would be more accurate to call it an evaluation than a judgment.’

Looking at him like this, I thought he resembled Seo Yuseong a little.

I carefully returned the frame to its place in the drawer, then took out the large album with a black hardcover that had been lying at the very bottom.

At last, I had found what I was looking for. Without giving it much thought, I opened the album.

But the moment I saw page after page densely packed with photographs of me, I was left dumbfounded, unable to say a word.

“…What is all this?”

Fortunately, they weren’t secretly taken photographs.

Most of them were pictures taken with my knowledge that Choi Jeokhyeon was photographing me.

What overwhelmed me, however, was the sheer number of photos and the fact that he’d gone through the hassle of printing out solo pictures of me, without himself appearing in them, and neatly compiling them into an album. Most people wouldn’t go that far, would they? Most people wouldn’t go that far, would they? Not unless they’re your parents, that is.

There was something else that felt a little strange too. The album even contained photographs of me from much earlier, when I was a child, long before I met Choi Jeokhyeon—pictures I had completely forgotten about. It seemed he had dug them out from where I’d carelessly shoved them into a corner and organized them all in here.

‘So they hadn’t disappeared after all. This was why he’d tried to keep me out of the house.’

With complicated, conflicting feelings, I turned through the album until I stopped at a particular photograph.

“So, there are pictures like this too.”

Judging by the fact that I was carrying Seo Yuseong’s bag and had short hair, this photo must have been taken not long after I met Choi Jeokhyeon.

I wasn’t particularly interested in keeping photos of myself, so I didn’t have a single picture from that time left. Seeing one again after so long gave me a strange feeling of nostalgia.

‘That plushie is definitely…….’

In the photo, I was holding the cat plushie I’d found in the drawer earlier in the hand that wasn’t carrying the bag.

Looking at the picture finally unlocked a long-forgotten memory.

When Choi Jeokhyeon first took me in, he was so inexperienced at the very act of giving gifts to others that he would randomly thrust plushies, toys, and other things that only much younger children would like into my arms. Since he was such a perceptive person, though, he quickly learned to give me things appropriate for my age.

That cat plushie was one of the very first gifts he had ever given me.

‘I could’ve sworn I kept that plushie stored away with Seo Yuseong’s photos … he must have secretly took it out and brought it here. Was he embarrassed about it?’

Just as I thought that and crookedly lifted the corners of my mouth, someone suddenly grabbed me by the shoulder from behind.

“Whoa, f**k!”

Startled out of my wits, I turned around and found Choi Jeokhyeon standing there.

‘He’s supposed to be at work right now, why is he here?’

Having hurled such crude profanity right at that refined face of his, I felt as though I’d done something wrong. Like littering on a beautiful, spotless street.

And quite apart from that, my heart was pounding like crazy from the fright. This wasn’t some thriller movie, but I felt as though I’d snuck into a criminal’s house to collect evidence, only to get caught red-handed.

“Why are you sneaking around so quietly!”

Still holding my shoulder, Choi Jeokhyeon gently brushed the hair caught in his hand away before replying calmly.

“I walked in normally. I even called your name, but you were so distracted that you didn’t notice me.”

“And how could I not be distracted! What is all this!”

“Your photos.”

“…Right, but why on earth did you hoard so many photos of me?”

At my question, Choi Jeokhyeon tilted his head slightly, his eyes blazing … not with a cold glare, but with an almost fiery intensity.

“Is that not allowed?”

…Uh, wait, why is he acting so confident?

He looked so utterly unbothered that I almost felt like I was the one in the wrong.

Thinking about it, Choi Jeokhyeon had practically been my guardian when I was young. So, wasn’t it only natural for him to have a lot of photos of me?

‘Then why are there no pictures of Seo Yuseong?’

Sure, it wasn’t unusual for friends to have plenty of pictures of each other in their albums. No, even still, people usually didn’t go so far as to print them all out and meticulously organize them like this, did they?

‘Ah, right, Choi Jeokhyeon is also my fan…….’

Common sense and nonsense collided inside my head, leaving countless question marks floating around.

“Hyung … you’re way more defenseless than you think. Especially around the people close to you.”

“…Am I? I don’t really think so. Aren’t I pretty sensitive usually?”

“The problem is that you get worked up over trivial things, but when it comes to important things, you just brush it off with a, ‘Eh, it’ll probably be fine’ and ignore all sorts of weird stuff! No wonder you’re the kind of person who followed a strange adult you’d never met before!”

But Choi Jeokhyeon looked so perfectly calm that I began to wonder if I was making too big a deal out of this.

“There’s … nothing wrong with it, I guess.”

In the end, I murmured those words absentmindedly and nodded.

Then I suddenly came to my senses, showed him the photo I’d been looking at and the cat plushie, and grinned. It was time to launch my counterattack.

“This is why you tried to keep me from coming over, right?”

“……”

What was that look supposed to mean?

Use your words. Your words.

When he tried to snatch the plushie back without saying a thing, I hurriedly held the photo up in front of him and changed the subject.

“Look at this. I looked like an absolute mess, didn’t I? Didn’t I look so much older than my age? I feel like I’ve had this same face from back then all the way until now.”

“…You don’t.”

After remaining silent for a moment, he finally couldn’t resist taking the bait.

“Back then, I didn’t have money to go to a hair salon, so I’d just hack away at my hair with scissors and roughly sweep it aside. Then I’d leave it alone until it covered my neck, and repeat the whole process ……. it was literally a bird’s nest.”

“I gave you a card. You should’ve gone and gotten it cut.”

“No, isn’t it a bit much to spend someone else’s money so freely on something that isn’t a necessity like food, clothing, or shelter?”

“…….”

“Still, maybe it’d look a little better if I got it properly cut at a salon now. Seras keep asking if I can cut my hair just once… and besides, there’s no company I need to rebel against now.”

“So?”

“So, what do you think? Do you think it’d look good if I cut it?”

At my casually tossed-out question, Choi Jeokhyeon’s eyes widened.

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Translator’s Corner:

Is it bad if I support him cutting…..

Sorry again for late updates … there’s literally no water coming out of well in my place now ….. I can’t believe I really live long enough to experience firsthand the effect of global warming they warned us in elementary school ????? Is everyone else doing okay? It feels like the weather is weird everywhere

Thank you amer for the Coffee!