Chapter 14

The sheer nerve on the man’s face was hard to believe.

Hah. She let the disbelief out in one breath, but her face had gone hot enough to burst long before that.

“Your face has gone red.”

Sa-heon tipped his head to one side with the faintest trace of a smile and waited for an answer. Ji-an swallowed dryly and shook her head, hard.

“I don’t want to, okay?”

“Why?”

He looked as if he honestly didn’t get it.

Why, though? Sa-heon leaned back on both hands and tilted his head, plainly displeased, yet so perfectly composed about it that for a moment Ji-an couldn’t find a word to say.

That face, that body, and the pedigree and the family on top of it all. For Lee Sa-heon the college student, getting women must have been a piece of cake.

There must have been a whole line of women he could take to bed with a plain ‘Let’s sleep together.’

Out of nowhere, Ji-an remembered a classmate from her department who’d been the most popular person in the whole school back when she was a student.

His looks, his height and his family all fell short of Sa-heon’s, and still his popularity was bursting at the seams. She’d once happened to sit next to him and caught sight of his phone, and the screen was crammed with messages he’d just let pile up.

If a classmate who was barely above average could be that popular, what on earth must it have been like for Sa-heon?

Maybe that was why the thirty-something Managing Director Lee Sa-heon she’d worked for lived a life of nothing but work and iron restraint. He’d already done all his playing when he was young.

Once her thoughts had got that far, Ji-an shot back at him with a faintly incredulous look.

“I don’t like men who’ve been around, okay?”

Sa-heon faltered for a moment, then burst out laughing.

“Ah… that’s priceless.”

He laughed for a good while. Then he lifted a hand off the floor, took Ji-an by the jaw where she’d turned her face away, and brought her eyes back to his.

“I’m not a used rag, you know.”

Her jaw burned in his grip as if it had been scalded. Sa-heon kept his eyes on her faintly trembling lips and went on.

“My honey’s got it wrong. I’m brand new. I don’t even need a wash. It feels kind of unfair, actually.”

Liar. Ji-an knocked his hand away and turned her head, so Sa-heon leaned in and whispered by her ear.

“I’ve been saving my first time for someone I actually like.”

It was an innocent thing to say, completely at odds with that oily delivery, and none of it sounded sincere.

Even if it was true, the reason was surely closer to ‘Who would dare, when it’s Lee Sa-heon?’ than to saving himself for someone he liked.

Ji-an was too stunned to answer, so he whispered again, as if he were luring her in.

“Sex. I’ve been curious what it feels like. Won’t you teach me, Noona?¹”

Ji-an’s lips parted. Sa-heon looked at the back of her neck, gone scarlet, and let out a pfft of laughter.

“I’m twenty-one, remember.”

“A t-twenty-one-year-old, and completely shameless. Th-there’s nothing you won’t say.”

She’d meant to say it firmly, so why was she stammering like this? She knew every word out of Sa-heon’s mouth was nonsense, yet she still felt herself being drawn in. Ji-an looked away and let the rest trail off.

“And you’re six whole years older than me…”

“All right, baby.”

A sting flared at the back of her ear. He’d bitten it so fast that before Ji-an could even flinch, she was tipped straight over backward. Her back met the floor, and the two of them lay pressed together.

“Think it over properly.”

The body against hers was so hot, and so hard. When Ji-an squirmed, he whispered low by her ear.

“I want to, you know.”

“…”

“It’s not like we’ve got anything else to do out here until my memory comes back. I’ll make sure you don’t get bored.”

Sa-heon let himself be pushed back exactly as far as Ji-an pushed him, then caged her between his arms and smiled down at her like a predator eyeing its catch.

Hee-jin, who had been frying dumplings, opened the door at the sound of the bell.

“You made it, Father.”

“Faaather!”

“Dong-yun, how’ve you been? I hear your Auntie Ji-an’s here?”

Dong-yun, who had been playing with his toys, ran over and threw himself into the man’s arms. Father Jeong Beom-gyu Peter, grizzled and bespectacled, stroked his head. Then he held up the bag of strawberries in one hand for Hee-jin to see and gave her an easy smile.

“I brought strawberries for all of us to share.”

“Big Noona! We’re here.”

Behind Father Jeong came a boy in glasses and a prim-looking girl, both high school students. They were Paul and Anna, who’d lived at Father Jeong’s orphanage since they were newborns.

“Oh, you’re here? Sit down, quick. You sit too, Father.”

Hee-jin set a plate heaped with pollock-roe dumplings and shrimp dumplings on a table that already held sweet-and-sour pork, jajangmyeon and jjamppong.

“What’s all this?”

Father Jeong pulled out a chair, his eyes gone round, and Hee-jin laughed as she pushed the dishes toward him.

“Moving day means jajangmyeon, doesn’t it.² A guest moved into the rooftop today.”

“A guest?”

“A colleague from Ji-an’s company. He quit his job and needed somewhere to stay for a while, apparently.”

“Really? What brings him all the way out to the country? And that rooftop room can’t be very comfortable.”

“That’s what I said. He says it’s fine, though.”

“What about Little Noona? Little Noona came too, right?”

Paul, the boy in glasses, asked again with his face flushed. Hee-jin gave a small laugh and nodded.

“Yeah. She came with him. Come to think of it, what’s taking her so long?”

Hee-jin took her phone out of her pocket and made a call.

“Hello? Come down, quick. Time for supper. Mm. Start without you? All right. Hurry up.”

The second she hung up, Paul pounced.

“What did Little Noona say?”

“She said to start. She’ll be down soon. Help yourself, Father.”

“Still, we ought to eat together.”

“Oh, come on, just eat.”

“Then let’s all pray together. In the name of the Father…”

Hee-jin finished the grace with the sign of the cross and served sweet-and-sour pork onto everyone’s side plates. The girl didn’t seem to have any appetite. She just kept her chopsticks in her mouth and tapped away at her phone.

“Anna. What did I say about using your phone while you’re eating?”

Hee-jin was in the middle of scolding her when the door lock went beep-beep and the front door opened. Every head turned that way.

“Sorry I’m late, Father.”

“Noona!”

Paul shot to his feet,

“Why’s her face so red?”

Hee-jin, halfway through serving the sweet-and-sour pork, took one look at Ji-an’s unusually scarlet face and tilted her head,

“Holy shit. He’s insanely good-looking.”

and Anna, who hadn’t looked up from her phone once, spotted Sa-heon coming in behind Ji-an and let the chopsticks fall out of her mouth.

“Noona! So does that mean you’re going back to Seoul?”

The excitement was plain on Paul’s face as he asked around a mouthful of jajangmyeon. He was exactly like the village mutts out in the countryside, who couldn’t hide how glad they were to see a stranger and flopped straight over to show their bellies.

“Mm. Though I might take some time off for a bit…”

Ji-an let the words trail off and poked at her noodles.

Probably because Sa-heon had demanded they stay out here together. Honestly, commuting to Seoul from this far out made no sense anyway. At that, Hee-jin’s hand stopped halfway through wiping the sauce from around Dong-yun’s mouth.

“Really? For how long?”

“I’m not sure…”

“Tell me honestly. Did you get fired?”

“N-no! It’s, um, at our company, once you’ve worked there three years, you get a sabbatical month.”

For something she’d made up on the spot it was a decent cover, but the lie was awfully obvious. Cute. Sa-heon swallowed a pfft of laughter and kept on eating.

Hee-jin had been eyeing Ji-an through narrowed eyes, and now she turned to Sa-heon.

“Sounds fishy. Is that true, Sa-heon?”

“Something like that, I think.”

Sa-heon shrugged. “Oh, right,” Hee-jin said, accepting it far more readily than he’d expected.

“Oh, good. Then pick Dong-yun up from school for me while you’re here.”

The sisters were both naive. Easy to fool. Sa-heon’s gaze was drifting back to his side plate when a thin voice spoke up from across the table.

“Excuse me. Oppa.”

“Anna!”

Hee-jin cried out in alarm, and Ji-an’s chopsticks froze. Sa-heon answered calmly.

“I don’t think I’m your oppa.”

“Why not? Big Unnie and Little Unnie are both unnies. So an oppa’s an oppa.”

“That’s because your unnies have known you since you were little!”

Hee-jin waved her hands in horror, and Sa-heon settled the question of what to call him neatly.

“I think Uncle would be better. Or you could call me Ahjussi.”

“Tch.”

Anna pouted and dropped her eyes back to her phone.

“Er, may I ask your name? I’m Father Jeong Beom-gyu Peter.”

Father Jeong’s mouth had been twitching for a while as if he had a great many questions, and now he greeted Sa-heon.

“My name is Lee Sa-heon.”

“You worked at Hyeongang, I hear.”

“Yes.”

“Funny, isn’t it? This village happens to have deep ties to Hyeongang.”

“Does it?”

“Yes. Half the people here farm, and half commute to the industrial complex over the mountain. The companies there all supply Hyeongang.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“So when Ji-an told us she’d got into Hyeongang, I hung a banner up at the church, so the whole village could see, and I could brag about how impressive our Ji-an is.”

The Father smiled, full of pride. Ji-an laughed along awkwardly, then let out a small sigh and kept stealing glances at Sa-heon.