CHAPTER 7
An incomprehensible rage wrapped around his entire body.
“That man… he’s the one who had a blind date with Hong Yumin here, right?”
“……”
“……Young Master?”
Yongil called out to Jaejun again when he didn’t respond.
“Are you… alright?”
Jaejun closed his eyes, trying to calm the boiling anger inside him.
But the anger showed no sign of subsiding.
Of course it wouldn’t.
Hong Yumin was his first love and the woman who had given him the feeling of loss for the very first time.
How could he feel at ease when that woman not only went on a blind date with a man old enough to be her uncle, but even went for a second round with him?
“Young Master.”
“……”
“It didn’t seem like Hong Yumin went for the second round because she wanted to.”
Jaejun slowly opened his eyes.
“You told me to make sure Hong Yumin got home safely, didn’t you? It seemed like you were concerned about her safety, so I stayed in front of her house for about thirty minutes even after she went inside.”
“Yeah. Go on.”
“After some time, Hong Yumin came out again, and coincidentally, a car that approached her house kept following her like it was tailing her.”
“……”
“After that, they seemed to argue for quite a while in the middle of the street, but Hong Yumin absolutely refused to get into the car and just went her own way. The car followed her all the way.”
Jaejun tapped Yongil’s phone with his index finger and asked,
“All the way to this snack shop?”
“Yes. Hong Yumin went into the snack shop first, and that man followed her inside afterward. I don’t know what they talked about, but the atmosphere didn’t look good.”
Jaejun’s anger flared even more.
So that man had been following Yumin around like a lunatic.
“What kind of bastard is he… ha.”
Jaejun started to ask what kind of person the man was, then let out a sigh.
He felt pathetic for openly being curious about another man.
The first time he met Hong Yumin was right after he returned to university following his military discharge, during his first general education class.
Because of Yongil’s prank, he wandered around looking for the lecture room and arrived a few minutes late, quickly sitting in one of the remaining seats.
Right next to him, a female student had already fallen asleep with her head down even though the lecture had barely begun.
While the professor conducted the orientation, the student kept shifting the direction of her head as she slept, and when her face turned toward Jaejun, time stopped for him.
How could someone look that pretty with her eyes closed, her cheek squished like that?
Even without any makeup and with features that weren’t particularly striking, she engraved her existence deep into his heart.
Was it because of the unexpected sight of her sleeping boldly from the very first class with such an innocent face that looked incapable of wrongdoing?
He kept glancing at her while pretending to listen to the lecture, resting his chin on his hand.
At some point, their eyes met when she opened hers.
“Hi.”
They say falling in love without reason is dangerous.
That was the first time in his life he had spoken to a woman first.
After that, as if throwing away his parents’ constant reminders to maintain dignity, he forgot he was the only son of the chairman of Taehyun Group and pursued her relentlessly.
How hard must it have been to forget her when the woman he had given his heart to like a madman disappeared without a word?
For five years, he had barely managed to erase the traces carved into his heart, and now she dared to be on a blind date with some man old enough to be her uncle right in front of him?
The self he had struggled to regain vanished like a mirage the moment he saw Hong Yumin again.
And that made him furious beyond reason.
As if unaware of his turmoil, Yongil handed back the phone he had briefly taken.
“By the way, I was already checking his identity. To summarize briefly, he’s the CEO of a private equity firm. It’s quite a large company.”
Jaejun pressed his lips together tightly and looked at the name entered in the search bar.
Kim Byungtae.
What a damn… terrible name.
“I didn’t have enough time to dig deeply, but when I asked in the secretary group chat, some strange things came up.”
Jaejun’s gaze sharpened slightly.
“Strange things?”
Yongil took back the phone, tapped it a few times, and showed him the group chat.
“My younger sibling’s friend is that CEO’s cousin, and even his relatives avoid him lol, apparently his habits are bad and his personality is eccentric.”
“Whoa~ then the rumor that he calls his wife a sandbag might be true?”
“Not sure lol, but his reputation isn’t good. I mean, he has that much money but no woman will go on a blind date with him. He’s basically blacklisted in the matchmaking scene. There’s even talk that dating app admins filter him out….”
Jaejun’s eyes turned chillingly cold.
Yongil retrieved the phone and continued carefully,
“……His character doesn’t seem very good. I’ll investigate further and report back with certainty.”
Jaejun frowned deeply and ran a hand roughly through his hair.
There’s no smoke without fire.
If he was avoided in the matchmaking market, the rumors were likely true.
Then why on earth was Hong Yumin meeting a man like that?
Did she break up badly with her previous fiancé?
Or was she in desperate need of money?
Bzz—.
As he was lost in heavy thoughts, his phone inside his jacket vibrated.
After instructing Yongil to investigate everything about Kim Byungtae, Jaejun took out his phone.
It was his mother, Seo Jeonghwa.
He hesitated over whether to answer.
It was surely a call urging him to come home quickly.
Even right before boarding the plane in the United States, she had called him, asking him to come straight home and what he wanted to eat, and other trivial things.
He understood that she wanted to see her only son as soon as possible after five years.
But that son had just heard that the man his first love met on a blind date treated his wife like a sandbag, so he didn’t feel like going home to receive a grand welcome.
The call ended.
But soon after, the phone rang again.
This time, it was his father.
Jaejun narrowed his eyes and stared quietly at the phone.
Since his father rarely called him, he wondered if something urgent had happened and finally pressed the call button.
“Yes.”
—Where are you.
“I came to the hotel for a moment. There was something I wanted to check before the inauguration ceremony.”
—So it’s not urgent.
“Did something happen?”
—Your mother has been hospitalized. Go to Korea University Hospital.
Jaejun slowly asked back as if he had misheard.
“My mother is in the hospital right now?”
—Yes.
Jaejun abruptly ended the call and hurriedly left his seat.
—
After getting out of the taxi, Hong Yumin stood still, staring at the hospital entrance.
She had come to the hospital after barely escaping Kim Byungtae because she wanted to see her father, but her feet wouldn’t move easily.
If she saw her father on a day when her heart was heavy, she might end up crying.
Her father, who had difficulty moving, would feel distressed that he couldn’t do anything for his daughter.
That was why she tried not to come to the hospital whenever something was troubling her.
But today, she truly had nowhere else to go.
At least today, she didn’t want to go back to the place where her aunt and uncle were practically wishing for her death behind her back instead of their own daughter.
But she also didn’t think she could stand in front of her father and pretend she was doing well with a smile.
What should she do?
As she nervously shifted her feet, pressing and parting her dry lips from the cold,
a familiar silhouette flickered at the main entrance.
