If You Want Me - Episode 81
<Episode 81>
“Thank you for bringing me home. Dinner was delicious.”
Do-gyeom drove Seo-won all the way to the front of his house.
As Seo-won was about to undo his seat belt and get out of the car, Do-gyeom suddenly placed his hand on top of Seo-won’s hand that was on his lap.
Warm body heat settled on the back of Seo-won’s hand. When Seo-won stopped getting out and looked back at Do-gyeom, he spoke in a yearning voice.
“I hate to say goodbye.”
“……”
Since the choice was up to Seo-won, it was an indirect way of expressing that he wanted to be together.
It wasn’t very late, so there was plenty of time to do something if they wanted to. For example, going to a cafe, watching a movie. It wouldn’t be bad to park the car somewhere with a nice view like the Han River and chat about trivial things.
Seo-won had dreamed of having such everyday moments with Do-gyeom, so it easily came to mind, but unfortunately, he wasn’t in the mood for that right now. Seo-won slyly pulled his hand out of Do-gyeom’s grasp and said,
“It’s already quite late, so you should go in now. You have to go to work early tomorrow morning.”
“……”
At the meaning of refusal packaged as consideration, Do-gyeom closed his mouth tightly and lowered his eyes. His hand that had been holding Seo-won’s remained motionless on his lap.
Wondering if it was okay to get out now…… As he waited quietly, worried about his trapped hand, Do-gyeom broke the silence after a long while and opened his mouth.
“Seo-won, did I… did I do something wrong today?”
He spoke in an extremely cautious tone, as if trying not to get on his nerves. Before, even if he did something wrong, he wouldn’t admit it, but today, he was reading Seo-won’s mood and asking first what he did wrong.
Seo-won stared at him blankly. Isn’t now the right time to ask? What’s his relationship with the actress he talked to earlier, why did she leave clothes at your house?
Even as the urge arose, recognizing that would be admitting that he had secretly overheard the call. So Seo-won mumbled his lips and belatedly opened his mouth.
“No. It’s not that…… I’m curious about something, can I ask you one thing?”
“What is it?”
“When I looked at your phone earlier, it said Seo Chae-yeon…… She’s the model for your department store, right?”
Even if he couldn’t say he had eavesdropped on the call, he could see the caller when he brought the phone earlier. He could ask this much.
As he asked while looking at Do-gyeom with that thought, Do-gyeom subtly twitched his facial muscles in response. He looked a little flustered.
“That person is right, but…… why do you ask?”
“I was just curious because she’s a celebrity. I wondered if you were personally close.”
Fortunately, what could be seen as jealousy if it were someone else could be packaged as curiosity about a celebrity.
Before, he couldn’t lie or act. Every time he tried, he would get caught by Do-gyeom without fail. But maybe this was also something you got better at the more you did it, or maybe now he was a little less conscious of Do-gyeom, but pretending it was nothing became easier.
Anyway, if he was misunderstanding, wouldn’t it be resolved if Do-gyeom explained what kind of relationship they had? He seemed to have had that kind of expectation.
“Not really…… We’re not that kind of relationship.”
However, contrary to his thoughts, Do-gyeom did not give a clear answer. Maybe because Seo-won was looking at him that way, he seemed to be avoiding it like someone who had something to hide.
As Seo-won only stared with a strange look without saying anything, Do-gyeom in turn asked Seo-won.
“Why are you curious about that?”
“……”
At Do-gyeom’s question, Seo-won bit his lower lip tightly.
Saying they have such conversations when they’re not even close? It was hard to believe with his common sense. Rather…… it seemed like Do-gyeom was trying to evade it by glossing over it. By any chance, his suspicion that they were pheromone partners like he thought leaned towards conviction.
‘I knew it was something like that.’
An immense sense of disappointment hit him. The words he wanted to argue rose to the tip of his tongue, but Seo-won forcibly swallowed them and answered indifferently as if it were nothing.
“I asked because I was curious. It’s not common to be in contact with celebrities.”
“That’s true……”
“Then I’ll get going now.”
As if that was the end of his business, Seo-won naturally pulled his hand out of Do-gyeom’s grasp without listening further. When he unfastened the seat belt around his body, Do-gyeom smiled weakly as if it was regrettable but couldn’t be helped.
“Okay. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“……Do that.”
“Sleep well.”
Hearing the kind good night, Seo-won held back a hollow laugh and got out of the car.
Do-gyeom didn’t leave first, as if he was going to wait until Seo-won went inside the house. Seo-won stared at the stopped car with dull eyes, then turned around first and went inside the gate.
As he slammed the heavy gate behind him, a sigh naturally came out at his pathetic situation.
“Ha…… What am I doing really?”
Being deceived by him so easily, relying on him, having expectations…… He felt so stupid, self-loathing washed over him.
How easy did Seo-won look in Do-gyeom’s eyes? Could he have been inwardly sneering at him? The side of him that Seo-won had seen was nothing but kind, but since he was good at everything, his acting skills could also be outstanding.
As he entered the house with heavy steps, his mother, who had gone out early today, seemed to have returned first and was in the living room.
She was sipping tea alone while watching television, and when she spotted Seo-won coming home, she welcomed him brightly.
“Oh, you’re home? Did you eat something delicious?”
“Yes. I had samgyetang. With only neungi mushrooms, no medicinal herbs.”
“Whew, you ate something really tasty. I went to a pasta place to meet my old classmates for the first time in a while, but it was so greasy I got sick.”
Ji-hee openly showed her envy, saying Seo-won had eaten much better than she had thought.
As he listened to his mother’s words, he somehow felt like he had eaten all the good stuff alone. He should have taken her with him. With the current Do-gyeom, it seemed like he wouldn’t be able to say anything even if Seo-won did that……
Seo-won, who was thinking for a moment, remembered the black card in his pocket. And even Do-gyeom’s words telling him to use him.
It was a thought that came to him in an instant, but Seo-won felt like he had realized something, his chaotic mind clearing a little.
“I…… Mom. If you’re not busy, do you want to go to the department store with me tomorrow?”
“Huh? Department store? Why there all of a sudden?”
When Seo-won impulsively suggested the idea to his mother, she was a little surprised. It’s not that Seo-won wasn’t usually nice to his parents, but it was very rare for him to take the initiative to make plans like this.
At her reaction, Seo-won touched the back of his neck as if embarrassed and answered.
“Just because…… These days I’ve made you worry a lot, and I’m grateful for many things…… If tomorrow doesn’t work, we can do it next time.”
“No, no. Mom has a lot of time. Let’s have a date tomorrow.”
Since when did going to the department store become a date, she smiled widely with the corners of her mouth reaching her ears and nodded. She already seemed to be in a good mood about going out with her only son.
It wasn’t that he suggested it for such a welcome reason…… He didn’t know she would be this happy, so Seo-won somehow felt like he was using his mother. He tasted bitterness in his mouth.
Until now, Seo-won was honestly too afraid of Do-gyeom rejecting him to think about turning him down. He couldn’t even imagine being able to coldly reject him.
But now he had been rejected by him once, and now he no longer wanted to be caught up in his lies. Since he couldn’t leave even if he wanted to because of the marriage penalty in the contract……
Now it seemed like it was really time for him to make Do-gyeom’s affection for him fall.
* * *
The next day, as soon as the morning dawned, Seo-won took a taxi with his mother to the department store.
Seo-won told her not to worry about the price and buy whatever she wanted. As they looked around, he picked out things that seemed to suit his mother and paid for them.
Then lunchtime came, and Seo-won and Ji-hee entered a high-end restaurant inside the department store. Seo-won took a seat by the window and looked over the menu, asking his mother,
“Mom, is there anything you want to eat?”
“Well…… I don’t really know about these things. They all look delicious though.”
“This course menu says you can try a variety of things, so should I order this?”
Seo-won thought it wouldn’t be easy to choose just one dish, so he just ordered food that they could try one by one.
After ordering the food, Seo-won looked out the floor-to-ceiling glass wall and gazed at the scenery outside. Maybe because he had been going back and forth between the countryside and islands lately, the midday Seoul skyline felt a little unfamiliarly dense.
Feeling a bit tired, he was blankly staring out the window when Ji-hee, who had been hesitating, leaned towards the table and whispered,
“By the way, Seo-won.”
“Yes?”
“About the money…… Is it okay to spend this much? It seems like we’re spending too much.”
Ji-hee asked with a serious look on her anxious face.
Up to a couple times, Ji-hee could accept it with a willing heart, knowing her son worked under Do-gyeom with a fairly high salary. When her beloved son personally picked out clothes saying they would suit her, she didn’t want to refuse.
But as the number of shopping bags in her hands kept increasing, she gradually became uneasy. Just the money spent at the department store today was enough to hit VIP status and go even higher. Even if she won the lottery, spending this much in one day was an enormous extravagance by her standards.
At first, she accepted it thinking if it would ease Seo-won’s mind to apologize this way, considering he recently shared pregnancy news and she was worried sick thinking he had gone missing. But as it went overboard, she now had scary thoughts.
Could he be trying to spend all the money he saved up with bad intentions? They say people do things they normally wouldn’t right before making an extreme choice……
When she cautiously asked, worried it might be something like that, Seo-won, who was sipping water, answered lightly.
“It’s fine.”
“Even so, there’s a limit. Where do you get money like this?”
“This isn’t my money.”
Seo-won smiled and looked back at her in response to his mother’s worried question.
As if asking what that meant, Seo-won took out a card from his pocket and placed it on the table.
Seeing the unfamiliar black and shiny card that looked newly issued, she picked it up with a puzzled face.
“What? Whose card is this?”
“It’s Young Master’s.”
The card he had been swiping every time he bought something was the black card Do-gyeom gave him yesterday.
Seo-won knew money was a very easy thing for Do-gyeom. Because he had more money than Seo-won could imagine. So even if he did this, he didn’t know if it would actually put a dent in Do-gyeom’s finances, but he planned to swipe it big enough to make people gasp.
It was Do-gyeom who had a one-sided imprint on him even though he never really liked him. His feelings for Seo-won were probably just old affection or physical attachment, and now that they wouldn’t be physically intimate anymore, couldn’t the one-sided imprint be broken if even the old affection fell away?
The method he came up with was doing things Do-gyeom would dislike to make his affection for him fall.