Chapter 6

It was an enormous bull, truly massive. Its entire body was covered in coarse, stiff, yellowish hair. The horn protruding from its forehead, nearly a foot long, looked more threatening than any weapon.

“Watch out!”

Acting on instinct, Eden grabbed Ja-yeong by the arm and yanked her toward him, pulling her out of the bull’s path.

The enormous beast had charged straight toward the kiln, past the entrance where the truck was parked, but suddenly swerved. It had been frightened by the blazing red flames shooting through the kiln’s vent openings and the scorching heat radiating from them. It was a relief that the kiln was safe, but there was one problem: the bull’s new trajectory led straight toward the drying area Ja-yeong cherished like a lover.

“N-No…! My pottery!”

Ja-yeong violently shook off Eden’s grip. Then, screaming like a woman gone mad, she sprinted toward the shelves. She was moving too fast to think rationally.

“Ms. Hwang!”
“No! Not my pottery!”

As with any accident, it all happened in the blink of an eye.

A bull charging like a tank. A reckless woman trying to stand in its way. And a man chasing after her, swearing under his breath. The bull whipped its head violently, as if trying to sweep away an obstacle, sending strings of sticky saliva dangling from its mouth flying through the air like icicles.

“You crazy woman! Are you out of your mind?!”

Eden threw himself forward and wrapped his arms around Ja-yeong’s waist. At the same moment, the enormous horns slammed into the wooden shelves.

CRASH!

The ear-splitting sound of splintering wood made the world seem to tilt on its axis. A tremendous impact struck Eden across the back and shoulders.

Even as he hit the ground with a heavy thud, his instincts made him clutch the woman in his arms tighter. The shrill sounds of hundreds of pottery pieces shattering, clouds of dust, and ragged breathing all tangled together.

“Ugh…”

Eden opened his tightly shut eyes. The world looked strangely vertical. The earthen floor of the kiln yard, the toppled shelves, even the ceramic shards scattered everywhere—all seemed stretched into long, upright shapes.

“Mmph…! Phew!”

A round head suddenly emerged from between Eden’s broad pectoral muscles.

Two pitch-black eyes, wide as a startled rabbit’s, met his directly. In an instant, his temporarily frozen nerves sprang back to life. His neglected senses came rushing back like a tidal wave.

…What the hell?

The soft, yielding sensation pressed firmly against his solid chest. The cool, sweat-dampened strands of hair filling his right hand. And the curve of the slender waist enclosed by his left arm, unexpectedly narrow enough to fit in a single handful. The woman felt much warmer than he’d expected…and unbelievably soft.

“…Hey, you…”

Eden’s Adam’s apple bobbed noticeably. His heart pounded as if he had just finished an intense workout. He couldn’t tell whether it was the shock of the accident or the scent of the woman in his arms that was making it race.

“My pottery!!”

But Ja-yeong’s mind was elsewhere. She scrambled to her feet.

“N-No… No…!”

After taking a few steps, her legs seemed to give out, and she collapsed to the ground. Not a single piece of the pottery that had been drying remained intact. The floor was a graveyard of shattered fragments. Ja-yeong crawled toward the mound of broken pieces on all fours.

“My… my pottery…”

Eden groaned as he pushed himself upright. His side throbbed. Watching Ja-yeong crawl across the floor, he frowned. Broken pottery shards could be sharper than knives. And she was seriously going to touch them with her bare hands?

“Ms. Hwang.”

Eden reached out and grabbed Ja-yeong by the arm.

“Get up. You’re bleeding.”

Red droplets were already falling from her fingertips as she groped among the shards. For anyone who created things, their hands were their livelihood. Whether they were a chef or a potter, their hands were what brought their work into being. And now she was deliberately puncturing her palms with broken pottery? She had to be out of her mind.

“Are you even listening to me? Your hands are bleeding!”

Eden raised his voice and roughly turned her around to face him.

“Let go…!”

Unbelievably, she twisted her wrist free and fought back. Dust and sweat were matted into her hair and the nape of her neck. Tears streaked her flushed cheeks, and droplets of blood stained her unusually damp palms. Seeing her drenched in all these unwelcome things stirred something unpleasant in his gut.

“Why… why did you stop me?”
“What?”
“If you hadn’t stopped me… I could’ve saved them all!”
“Ha.”

Eden let out a disbelieving laugh. Her accusation had neither logic nor context. It was nothing more than a childish tantrum.

“And what, exactly, were you planning to do if I hadn’t stopped you? Have them write some noble article about how a potter died heroically after being gored while protecting her pottery?”
“…No. I could’ve protected them. If I’d stopped it…”
“Listen here, Ms. Cheongso-yo.”

Eden gripped Ja-yeong’s trembling shoulders firmly. He knew he shouldn’t handle a woman so roughly, but some inexplicable anger kept pushing him past the line.

“Do you seriously not understand what happens when a person collides with an animal that size? Are you stupid? Are you incapable of understanding even the simplest laws of physics?”
“……”
“You can fire pottery again. Do you really think groping around like that is going to magically put the broken pieces back together?”

Ja-yeong’s lips trembled. At the corners of her tightly pressed mouth, a miserable sob finally broke free.

“D-Don’t… hic… don’t say it like it’s that easy!”

Thump.

A fist, messily drenched in a mixture of blood and tears, slammed into Eden’s chest. Once. Twice. No, three times.

“What do you know?! Sob… hic… It was my first time… The first time I’d ever done every single step of the process all by myself… And you think… you think firing them again would make them the same? Would it?!”

Eden caught her hand in midair as she raised it for the fourth blow. He was angry. Angry at her recklessness, at the way she was punching the very person who’d saved her life, and even angrier at her foolishness for ruining her hands over a few broken pieces of pottery.

“So what, I should’ve just stood there and let that bull trample you to death? Is that really what you say to someone who came all the way here just to get a single bowl made by these hands?”

“Then what about you?! Hic… Would you be fine watching your precious cooking ge-getting ruined right in front of your eyes?”

“Look! I’d watch it a hundred times, a thousand times over!”

At Eden’s resolute shout, Ja-yeong’s eyes wavered.

“Liar…”

“If you think I’m lying, then find out for yourself. Step on my food, throw it in the trash, do whatever you want.”

Eden glared into her tear-filled eyes and growled.

“I don’t destroy myself in a fit of rage just because my cooking gets ruined. I can always cook it again. It’s not like I’ve lost my skills.”

“……”

“Honestly, I’m disappointed, Ms. Hwang. You’re acting like such an amateur right now.”

“…What?”

Ja-yeong had been staring at the ground, tears falling from her eyes, but she suddenly snapped her head up. Her face was no longer filled with despair. It was burning with anger.

So he’d hit a nerve. Good. That was much better. Those fierce, venomous eyes suited her far more than all that crying.

“Can’t you make them again? Are you really going to bawl like a little kid just because a few pieces broke?”

“…You are seriously the most infuriating man I’ve ever met.”

Her lips were red from biting them so hard. Eden found something strangely stimulating about the venom that came out of those red lips.

He was definitely losing his mind. He must’ve hit his head when he collided with the bull.

“Oh, my baby! What on earth happened here?!”

Just then, Hwang Deok-ho and Gwak Yeol-ho came rushing over. The hostile tension simmering between the two of them shattered in an instant.

“Hey! Why are you over there?!”

Yeol-ho shouted when he spotted the bull stuck in a tangle of kudzu vines on the slope behind the kiln yard, unable to move in either direction. Apparently, it was the day the cattle were being sold, and one of them had managed to escape all the way here.

“H-Hic… Grandpa…”

“Did you get a terrible fright? Are you hurt anywhere?”

Held in her grandfather’s arms, Ja-yeong finally burst into loud, heart-wrenching sobs.

Watching her, Eden let out a hollow sigh. The woman who’d been glaring at him like she wanted to kill him just moments ago looked every bit like a ten-year-old granddaughter in her grandfather’s embrace.

“…Somehow, I’m getting the feeling I’m the villain here.”

Eden clicked his tongue bitterly and got to his feet. His side throbbed.

He glanced down at himself without thinking. His expensive Italian designer suit was covered in dirt. One sleeve was torn, and mud and blood were smeared across the fabric.

Then he checked his wrist, and his eyebrow twitched.

It was the high-end Swiss luxury watch he’d bought for his thirtieth birthday. A limited edition with only a thousand pieces available worldwide. Its crystal face was now shattered into countless fragments.

Ha. This is going to cost a pretty penny.

Eden brushed the broken watch off with a few flicks of his fingers. Then, as he noticed the hands had stopped moving, the corners of his mouth curled upward.

A brilliant idea had just occurred to him.

A crisis was just another opportunity. When your ingredients were ruined, you simply came up with a new recipe.

“Excuse me, everyone in the Cheongso-yo family.”

Brushing the dust off himself, Eden strode over to Ja-yeong and Deok-ho, deliberately letting his torn jacket flap for all to see. He’d put his shameless, coolheaded chef’s expression back on.

“Now that you’re done crying, I believe it’s time we settled the bill.”

“……?”

“As you can see, I ended up in quite a state saving your granddaughter.”

He held the shattered watch right in front of Ja-yeong’s face.

“This watch isn’t something I can just go out and buy again, even if I have the money. So how much should I charge you for it?”

“Uh… What happened to your watch…?”

“When I bought it, it cost… three hundred million won, if I remember correctly.”

“W-What?!”

Ja-yeong shouted, her face still drenched in tears.

Looking at the redness around her eyes, Eden leaned in and whispered with an infuriatingly seductive smile.

“If you can’t pay me back with money, you can repay me another way. Make it up to me with your body. By making pottery.”