Chapter 03
“I’ll wash up quickly and come out. The dress room is in the back there, right?”
“Yeah.”
“If you open the second door from the left, there’s a necktie console. Pick out a tie for me there.”
“…Me?”
“I thought I’d try wearing whatever my fiancée picks out.”
The man grinned and pulled his T-shirt off in one swift motion.
“Why, why are you taking your clothes off without, without saying anything!”
“I said I was going to wash up.”
Before the bathroom door closed, the man let out an affirmative answer: “My name is Yoon Jae-gyeom, that’s right.”
As he disappeared into the bathroom with a chuckle, Ji-su found herself taking a deep breath. The body she had just seen still seemed to linger in her pupils. Muscles nicely positioned… Nice to look at. You’re crazy, Im Ji-su. Forget it. You didn’t see anything.
Anyway, so his name is Yoon Jae-gyeom. Yoon Jae-gyeom…
No matter how many times she repeated it, she couldn’t remember him at all.
With that height, that body, that face, and a name that uncommon, there was no way she could have forgotten him.
Besides, as the man had said earlier, Gyechon High School was small. It was a rural school barely managing to stay afloat… She had only studied and had a narrow circle of friends, so she barely knew any male classmates, but even so, the name Yoon Jae-gyeom was still unfamiliar.
“I should ask Eun-mi.”
Her classmate Eun-mi had been the broadcasting club president at Gyechon High during their school days. She was also the actual club leader of the broadcasting team, but thanks to her outgoing personality and wide connections, she was like a school-wide SNS that encompassed news about all grades and teachers. If it was Eun-mi, she would probably know about this man for sure.
“Second from the left, I guess this is it.”
There was no particular reason she had to fulfill Yoon Jae-gyeom’s request to coordinate his tie, but since he was willing to pretend to be her fake boyfriend for someone connected to him only by the label of “high school classmate,” she gladly moved her feet into the dress room and stood in front of the necktie console. Looking at the neatly organized ties, Ji-su organized her thoughts.
Sorry, but for this evening only, she would introduce twenty-eight-year-old Yoon Jae-gyeom as thirty-five-year-old Kim Yeong-baek. She would show his face to her mother just once, feed him a simple meal, make an excuse about an urgent matter, and then get out as quickly as possible.
The moment she left her mother’s house, it would also be goodbye to Yoon Jae-gyeom. And as soon as she got to Seoul, she was determined to cleanly settle things with the “human turd car” Kim Yeong-baek that Jae-gyeom had euphemistically described.
Her gaze was scanning the beautifully colored ties, but her head was full of regret.
“As expected. Did I decide to get married too hastily? I shouldn’t have come down so recklessly like this.”
Marrying someone she didn’t love enough to marry—she had tried to force it because her mother suddenly collapsed and she’d grown weak-hearted, so it was only natural that something like this would happen. Thinking it was rather fortunate that things had gone wrong before the wedding, she was continuing to look at the ties when—
“Did you pick? Which one should I wear?”
“Ahh, you scared me!”
The man, covering only his lower body with a towel, came up right behind Ji-su and pressed close. He had both arms braced on the necktie console, so she was trapped. Their bodies were almost touching, and Ji-su froze, unable to even breathe properly.
He tilted his head toward Ji-su’s right ear. It was as if he were hugging her from behind, or resting his chin on her shoulder and leaning on her. But still, the two of them weren’t touching.
“Taking this long to pick? There aren’t even that many.”
Not even that many… It felt like she was in a necktie shop.
Ji-su squeezed her eyes shut, feeling her face growing redder. Then she pointed at some random spot on the transparent glass cover.
“Th-this one.”
“This one, for going to greet someone? This is what you wear to a funeral.”
Seeing that her index finger happened to be pointing at the darkest one of all, Ji-su’s fingertip hurriedly moved.
“Ah! Ah. No. Then this one.”
“Okay. Does your mother like red?”
The man pressed closer and asked, and a drop of water fell from his hair onto Ji-su’s ear. That dizzying, strange sensation made Ji-su’s body flinch.
The realization that she couldn’t stay this close to him in a space with just the two of them came too late. Ji-su took a deep breath so she wouldn’t stammer.
“Um, could you move aside? I’ve picked them all now.”
“You’re the one who should move aside. This is the dress room.”
“No, right now you’re the one with your arms—”
“Ah.”
Jae-gyeom withdrew one arm from the necktie console and stared intently at Ji-su. It was a hot, searching gaze. Ji-su’s eyes were no different. As if playing with that taut tension, Jae-gyeom continued the conversation in a playful tone.
“If you want to keep looking, you can stay.”
The moment he finished speaking, he untied the knot of the towel hanging at his waist.
Ji-su couldn’t even scream and quickly fled to the living room. From the dress room, the man’s laughter didn’t stop.
“Wow, Yoon Jae-gyeom or whatever, he’s seriously a weird guy.”
Certainly, he couldn’t be normal. A normal person wouldn’t have taken on something like this. Before she could even loosen her bewilderment and tension, the phone rang loudly. Come to think of it, the estimated arrival time she had told her mother was almost up.
— Sweetie, where are you? Is traffic heavy? I thought it was about time, so I called.
“Mom. Why are you talking like that?”
— No… Well, if you’re driving, I thought you might be on speakerphone or something. Then your boyfriend might hear. I have my image to think about. Hehe.
Our mom, who was still so girlish and cute like this… It was truly a relief that she wouldn’t hurt her. I take back what I said about Yoon Jae-gyeom being weird. He’s a grateful person. A good person.
“Mom. I think I’ll be there in thirty minutes. See you then.”
— Okay. Come carefully. Drive safely! Let’s meet soon. I love you, my daughter.
“Mom… stop. Did you take your medicine?”
— Don’t worry. I’m taking it regularly. Hehe. See you later.
The call ended with her mother’s embarrassed laughter.
“Wow.”
Jae-gyeom appeared before her eyes.
Ji-su let out an exclamation without realizing it, and couldn’t even close her open mouth as she looked at Jae-gyeom.
He had been handsome when he was wearing work clothes earlier too, but seeing him in a full suit, an exclamation of admiration had burst through her lips on instinct.
Even the way he stood holding the necktie in his hand was beautiful. Would saying he looked like a model be too cliché?
“To be Im Ji-su of Gyechon High’s pride’s husband, I should at least be this much. What’s there to be surprised about.”
Come to think of it, what had Kim Yeong-baek worn today? She couldn’t remember exactly, but it hadn’t been a suit. Right, she had never expected this level of courtesy from him, but it was also infuriating and hurtful that he hadn’t even thought of it in the first place.
“Thank you.”
A sincere greeting burst out once again. Because they were in an awkward relationship, the formal speech came back out.
“If you’re grateful, tie this for me. It’s been so long that I can’t remember how.”
The words he said while holding out the necktie to Ji-su seemed like an obvious trick, but she found herself willing to oblige. The man bent his body toward Ji-su, who had received the necktie, and even gently closed his eyes. But no matter how long he waited, no touch came, so he slowly opened one eye.
“Huh… Im Ji-su, what are you doing right now?”
Ji-su had the necktie around her own neck.
“I’ve never tied someone else’s necktie before. But I was good at tying our school uniform ties.”
Muttering quietly to herself that her school tie wasn’t a zipper type so every morning before school was busy, Ji-su, with the burgundy necktie Jae-gyeom had handed her around her own neck, quickly formed a knot and then widened the neck loop to pull the tie back out.
“Here.”
Looking at Ji-su’s face as she proudly held out the necktie, Jae-gyeom was dumbfounded.
“You do know that when a man asks a woman to tie his tie, that’s not usually what he means, right?”
“……”
“I’m asking if you knew what I was expecting.”
“Yeah. I thought I knew… but wouldn’t that be my ego being too inflated? I concluded that a man who saw everything that happened to me today wouldn’t try any tricks on me.”
“Tricks. Right. I think I want to try that on you.”
“Don’t. Do it to someone else, not a woman like me.”
At Ji-su’s words, which squarely pushed him away, Jae-gyeom showed a perfect smile. At the same time, he gave a small shake of his head, as if to say he would not accept those words.
