Chapter 25

Lee Jun’s smile, as he glanced at the pop-up message on his phone, vanished without a trace. It was a simple message containing only a time and place, but the sender was important. It was Park Dong-hu, who had disappeared with someone at the Club IN last time. After that, he had promised to contact Lee Jun again, but then there was silence for a while. Now, completely unexpected, he had suddenly sent a message.

“Who is it?” Lee Jun’s troubled expression, as he looked at his phone, must have been evident. Just as he was about to put his phone back in his pocket at the sound of the voice beside him, it vibrated briefly again. Lee Jun, after reading the new pop-up message that replaced the previous one, casually slipped his phone into his pocket. Feeling awkward with empty hands, he picked up a pen and gazed towards the podium.

“An advertisement.” He couldn’t look at Chaeheon’s face, unsure how he would react to his lie. Misunderstandings shouldn’t keep piling up like this. However, perhaps because the next message contained a phrase telling him not to tell anyone, he couldn’t be honest.

‘He saw it that day.’ Jun-gyu had also seen Chaeheon pretending to know him. That’s why he must have sent such a message. Seeing the professor enter, Lee Jun opened his book. He felt relieved that he could now escape Chaeheon’s gaze under the pretense of class.

Thoughts about Hae Sol were somehow pushed to the back of his mind.

Lee Jun arrived at the meeting place on time and looked around. Since it was a park at sunset, there were quite a few people. Amidst those enjoying exercise or a stroll with the cool breeze, he spotted someone wearing a hat.

Although his face wasn’t clearly visible, it was a familiar profile. Lee Jun scanned his surroundings, checking if anyone was paying attention to him. After confirming no one was, he cautiously approached Park Dong-hu and lightly tapped his shoulder. Park Dong-hu, startled, crab-walked backward and met Lee Jun’s eyes.

“It’s me.”

“You scared me. Why did you approach so silently?”

“You must not have been looking around.”

Lee Jun shook his head, finding it absurd. This guy usually wasn’t so sensitive, but his current behavior made him seem like someone on the run after committing a crime.

“You came alone, right?”

“Yes, I came alone. What on earth happened? Why did you follow that person that day…?” Having waited eagerly to meet Park Dong-hu, Lee Jun, once his question burst out, blurted out everything he had been thinking, then paused.

“You wouldn’t happen to know who that person is, would you?”

“Do you think I’d chase after someone I don’t even know?” Park Dong-hu scratched his hat-covered head. His grumbling certainly didn’t suggest he was completely clueless.

“I don’t know how things ended up like this.” He sighed in lament and plopped down onto the bench. Then, grabbing his head with both hands and bowing his head, he let out a groan, making it clear how much he had suffered mentally.

“Don’t you know I haven’t slept comfortably a single day since then? I helped that Senior, and we parted ways in the middle, but I couldn’t sleep properly because I was afraid someone would come for me.” As Park Dong-hu sighed heavily, Lee Jun leaned in to look at his face. His eyes were hollow and his cheeks sunken, a testament to his mental anguish. The day after the incident at the Club IN, Lee Jun had sent Park Dong-hu a reply saying he would be fine. Unable to explain the details of the transaction, he had only sent that much, and there had been no reply, but it seemed Park Dong-hu had dismissed his words.

“So, has anyone come looking for you?”

“No.” It was an unusually simple conversation for all the trouble he had been through.

“I told you it would be fine.”

“Why? Did he say not to touch me?” In response to Park Dong-hu’s question, Lee Jun turned his head instead of answering.

“I don’t know either.” Park Dong-hu ruffled his hair, then suddenly looked up at Lee Jun. “Do you know who that person is?”

Who was he talking about? “I mean, do you know well who that person you knew back then is?” Lee Jun was confused whether to say yes or no. If he was talking about the Chaeheon he knew, he could say yes, but the current atmosphere wasn’t like that.

“Never mind.” But as Park Dong-hu acted as if he had expected it, Lee Jun asked back, puzzled. “Why stop talking mid-sentence?”

“Because it’s not something I can say. I only heard it while escaping with that Senior this time, so I can’t say anything more.” Hearing that made him even more curious. Chaeheon had called that person his uncle. If it wasn’t a Title chosen just for convenience, it implied a blood relation…

Lee Jun exhaled frustratedly and shook his head. If he wanted to know, he should ask Chaeheon in the first place, but why was he trying to find out here…?

“Then those people who were chasing…” More precisely, he wanted to ask who Chaeheon was, standing face-to-face with that man at the time.

“Well… Argh, why is everything so tangled?” Park Dong-hu covered his face as if in pain, then looked up. “I’ll cut to the chase and just give you the facts. The one who did wrong isn’t that Senior; it’s the other side.”

The moment Park Dong-hu’s resolute gaze fixed on him, Lee Jun held his breath. Before he could draw another breath, Lee Jun repeated Park Dong-hu’s words to himself, unable to grasp how he should react. His gaze involuntarily dropped from Park Dong-hu. The more he knew, the more entangled everything became.

At first, when Chaeheon stood there as if threatening someone, Lee Jun had taken him for the bad guy. But then he heard him called “uncle” while drinking, so he thought he had been mistaken, but now it was all tangled again. He no longer knew what the truth was and couldn’t trust anything.

“The person who was there at that time.” He felt as if someone was forcing his face up. Lee Jun didn’t want to hear what came next, but he reluctantly lifted his eyes to look at Park Dong-hu.

“That person was trying to take the Contract. It was a double contract, so they were trying to take it away because it couldn’t be revealed to others.”

‘My uncle ran off with the Contract.’ Chaeheon’s words from the drinking party vividly came back to him. He was saying the same thing now.

“A double… Contract?” Who on earth was in the wrong?

“I don’t know how the two of you know each other, but be careful. That’s why I called you.” While Park Dong-hu spoke, looking at his phone, Lee Jun couldn’t say a word. He should have said that no matter what kind of person Chaeheon was, it had nothing to do with him. He should have, but he couldn’t bring himself to speak.

Because no matter how much he pretended otherwise, he always ended up yielding to Chaeheon. He might not know Chaeheon well, but the same was true for Chaeheon. As long as they both had things they’d kept hidden, he believed the only thing they could trust was their feelings.

So he had planned to tell him…

“Were you close with that person?” When Lee Jun looked up, Park Dong-hu was fidgeting. Scratching his head or roughly rubbing his neck, it seemed he was concerned that Lee Jun’s expression had darkened during their conversation.

“How close were you…?”

“It’s nothing much. I just had something to say.” Indeed, there’s nothing as deceitful as a person’s heart. It swayed back and forth like a reed.

“Oh, if you doubt my words, you can go ask him.”

“No. There’s no need to ask.” After all, what he intended to ask wasn’t about a contract or anything like that. He had simply lost the will to tell him about Hae Sol.

Lee Jun fell silent.

“Did you call me because of that?” Chaeheon’s gaze, fixed on the person sitting opposite him, was subdued. An annoying and troublesome opponent. In reality, he didn’t want to face someone who expected so much from him while presumptuously desiring even more.

Chaeheon clicked his tongue, looking at his older sister, who was right above him, and who had recently been urging him to find their uncle.

These days, life wasn’t bad. He had reunited with his ex-lover, and the rift between them was slowly, bit by bit, closing.

The catalyst, amusingly, was when he showed him the side he wanted to keep hidden. His image, which had only been seen as an Alpha Junior having a sweet romance with a Senior, was completely shattered, yet it led to an unexpected situation.

He accepted Chaeheon’s tantrums better than expected. So, Chaeheon gradually began to reveal his other, hidden sides, bit by bit. Perhaps the day he could fully reveal himself would be the moment he held Lee Jun in his arms, overjoyed.

“Are you listening to me?” Before that, he needed to clear away everything that needed to be dealt with.

His infinitely generous heart, thinking of Lee Jun, tightened. Chaeheon openly sighed and leaned back in his chair as if lying down.

“I’ll listen if I want to.”

“What?”

“Don’t expect someone to concentrate; speak in a way that isn’t boring.”

Chaeheon raised a hand he had clasped, pressing it firmly against his nose.

“You’re the only one ignoring my words, you know?”

“You’re repeating yourself.” As she asked why he wasn’t listening properly, Chaeheon replied in an annoyed tone.

“Lower your voice. Change your tone.” At his tone, implying he would only listen then, the woman, overcome with irritation, raised her voice even more than before.

“Have you forgotten that I’m your older sister?”

“Who said I forgot? I’m just telling you how to have a smooth conversation with someone.”

And when he informed her that this was the only way to maintain this meeting, the woman, Jang Chae-hui, pressed her lips together. The one at a disadvantage here was her.