OTMG 10

Chapter 10

“You guys are just too embarrassed to admit it—that I’m a total goddess.”

Taebeom let out a snort of laughter.

“A goddess? More like an elementary school kid.”

“Elementary? Says the preschooler.”

“You’re almost thirty, and somehow your childishness keeps evolving. You really are the perfect example of an elementary kid—no, a preschooler.”

At Juni’s mockery, the two of them shouted at the same time.

“Why am I an elementary kid?!”

“Why am I a preschooler?!”

As if to say see?, Juni shrugged.

As expected, the real high-level player was Go Jun. It had been four years since he left for Paris and returned, yet the dynamics between the three of them hadn’t changed at all.

Whenever he and Chaeyun snapped at each other, Juni would sneer on the sidelines.

Chaeyun felt happy. Laughter bloomed naturally. For four years, weighed down by the pressure to succeed and the obsession with winning, she hadn’t laughed freely even once.

But today was simply fun.

And her heart fluttered. Even more than four years ago.

When she first landed at Incheon Airport, she hadn’t felt this excited. But the moment she saw Gojun’s face, her heart started pounding like it might burst.

Paris—the dream she’d run to four years ago, abandoning his feelings—hadn’t actually made her heart race.

As the days passed, the excitement faded. Surrounded by flying, crawling geniuses, she couldn’t stand out.

Gojun, whom everyone admired and adored. Standing beside him, she’d always stood out too.

His outstanding looks, elegant physique, unmatched presence, an aura of refinement—and even just enough sociability to draw people in.

From the moment she first saw him, she’d thought, This high schooler is something else. Like a fully formed, already complete human being.

Maybe that stirred a desire to crack him open just a little.

So she kept hovering around him, and they grew close. She happened to draw, and Juni happened to know how to look at drawings.

Sitting in the back seat of the car, she gazed at the back of Juni’s head in the front and asked casually—or rather, in a voice carefully made to sound casual.

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

Taebeom, who wasn’t curious at all, answered first.

“I’m single.”

“Oh. Congrats. What about Juni?”

Once again, Taebeom answered when she didn’t want him to.

“For Juni, it’s not a girl he’s seeing—more like a woman he’s going to marry.”

For a moment, her mind went blank. The answer was so unexpected it felt like the part of her brain that processed understanding had vanished.

Was Taebeom just joking again? Trying to see her freak out?

“What kind of joke is—”

But the atmosphere between the two men didn’t seem joking at all.

“Is it… true?”

“It is. Chairman’s orders. We had a formal meeting today. The families already talked it through—today was just for the two of us to see each other’s faces. But if the parties themselves absolutely refuse, there’s nothing that can be done.”

She looked at Juni’s cool, ambiguous profile and asked,

“So… how was she? The woman you met. Did you… like her?”

Juni glanced at her once and answered simply.

“No.”

Whew. She let out a deep breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.

For a split second, the thought of Gojun marrying another woman had made her dizzy.

Gojun giving his heart to someone else was something that couldn’t happen—something she couldn’t even imagine.

But then Juni said something even more unimaginable.

“But I’m thinking I might go through with the marriage.”

“What… what?”

Had she heard wrong? No way.

“Seriously? You’re… getting married? To who? That woman? I mean—why all of a sudden, marriage?”

Questions spilled out in a rush before she could stop them. It was embarrassing even as she spoke, but she couldn’t help it. She was that shocked.

Her agitation must have reached the two of them.

As expected, it was Taebeom who responded to her protest.

“At this rate, you’re about to shout, ‘I oppose this marriage!’”

“I oppose this marriage!”

“Why? Shouldn’t Juni get married?”

“He shouldn’t. You can go off and get married anytime, sure. But isn’t he too valuable to marry already?”

“Am I not valuable? What’s so valuable about Juni?”

She stared at Juni’s indifferent profile and said half-jokingly,

“His looks.”

“……”

“Juni’s on a whole other level. It’s a waste to give him to just one woman.”

“Gojun isn’t public property.”

Juni hadn’t said a word about the situation, but Taebeom kept poking at her, making her irritation flare.

“Are you Gojun’s spokesperson or what?”

“I’m his secret line.”

“Gojun. I think you need to explain yourself directly about this situation.”

She snapped sharply at Juni. She resented how he’d thrown a bomb and was now just watching the fallout.

You’re getting married while leaving me behind? That doesn’t make sense. Someday, we were supposed to look at each other.

Deep down, she’d believed that. That in our hearts, there was solid trust and affection for each other, and that in the end, we’d reach one another.

And now Gojun was shattering that belief.

“Why do I need to explain? Marriage isn’t a congressional hearing. Is it something that requires justification?”

His calm, mocking tone made it feel like her heart was shattering into pieces.

“This isn’t the feudal era… an arranged marriage? Sure, this field encourages marriage as business, but I never thought you’d lead the charge. You always did whatever you wanted. You even left home to do what you wanted.”

Chaeyun tried to persuade him. Her protest sounded almost desperate.

Had Shin Chaeyun ever sounded this earnest? She was always earnest only when talking about her dreams.

So why, on the day Gojun talked about marriage, was Shin Chaeyun aching and desperate like this?

“I’m just thinking of doing what I want. Getting married.”

She was beyond flustered—she was dumbfounded. Faced with Gojun’s languid attitude, as if choosing what to eat off a menu, she couldn’t find the words.

“That’s not something you just do because you feel like it. You said you didn’t like her.”

“I didn’t say she was bad. I said she wasn’t my type.”

“That’s the same thing. Can you live your whole life with her? You’re saying you can’t.”

He cut her off coldly, correcting her.

“I didn’t say ‘whole life.’”

“Then what… you’re marrying while already thinking about divorce?”

Sure enough, Gojun couldn’t possibly be serious about a political marriage.

Maybe he was testing her feelings. Or maybe he’d chosen such an extreme option to make her realize how she felt about him.

From her perspective, that was the only explanation that made sense. Otherwise, she couldn’t accept it.

But Juni replied indifferently, with eyes that gave nothing away.

“You don’t really need to care about my marriage.”

“I do care!”

Without realizing it, she blurted out the truth—then quickly wrapped it in a bright, joking tone.

“We’ve been friends since high school. Isn’t it natural?”

And you liked me back then.

Don’t you anymore? Or was it all just my imagination? You never let other women sit next to you.

All the scandals you had while I was gone were fake, too. And even if they weren’t, in the end, we were supposed to be each other.

Selfish thoughts she couldn’t voice rattled through her head.

“Yeah—thanks for caring, my friend. Happy now?”

“No, I’m not. Are you really… going to do it? Get married? To a woman you don’t love?”

She’d never pressed him like this before. If he had a girlfriend, she’d just ask to see her once and be done. But marriage? This was on a completely different level.

It stuck in her throat, impossible to swallow.

“You might grow to like her, living together.”

“What is this, Gojun? Have you turned into a system-compliant human while I wasn’t looking? Why marry when you might just divorce?”

Because he couldn’t sell the traces of his mother. That was his only priority.

For a fleeting moment, the kiss with that woman, Madosil, lingered in his mind—then evaporated.

“Guess I’ve become system-compliant.”

Juni replied as if annoyed, and inside her, something seemed to rot black.

“So you’re doing it because your family told you to? That’s the whole reason for your marriage?”

“Yeah—”

“She must’ve been pretty, then?”