SOG Ch 116

Jae-chan checked the number again. No matter how much he had marked it as spam, there was nothing he couldn’t do if Yoon Seo-mi wanted to change her number and contact him. From now on, he should only answer known numbers. He sighed, but Yoon Seo-mi’s voice cut through the lobby noise clearly.

-Could we meet face-to-face for a bit, if you don’t mind?

It was an unusually kind whisper. Jae-chan didn’t know, but unlike when she spoke on the phone with Go Woo-jin, Yoon Seo-mi’s pronunciation was clear and she wasn’t drunk at all.

He wondered what dubious intentions she was hiding this time. Jae-chan swiftly pulled the phone away from his ear, creating distance for the call.

“Uh, Director. I’m taking the elevator now. I’m busy with fieldwork and feeling overwhelmed… Hello? Hello?”

Jae-chan made an urgent voice and hung up the phone.

“Director? Is it Director Yoon Seo-mi?”

Chang-hyun asked, having overheard the conversation. Jae-chan gave him a look.

“Your ears are getting sharper?”

“No, that’s not it…”

Suddenly, Chang-hyun’s finger pointed outside through the front glass windows.

Now that it was darker outside, a woman holding a phone was striding confidently towards them, her silhouette reflected in the mirror-like glass windows of the 1st-floor lobby. An odd authority emanated from her perfectly tailored suit.

Click-clack, her satin pumps briskly crossed the pavement, rapidly approaching.

Chang-hyun lowered the finger he had been pointing until then. At the same time, Yoon Seo-mi tapped on the window.

-You look free, Sweetie.

Through the glass, Yoon Seo-mi met Jae-chan’s gaze deeply and whispered with her deeply colored lips.

*

“I’ll go ahead.” Chang-hyun awkwardly got up to leave. Seon Jae-chan also saw him off with a nod. And in the seat Chang-hyun vacated, Yoon Seo-mi settled in, grinding her teeth as she waited.

“What kind of texts were you sending in front of someone like that? Don’t tell me you were informing Woo-jin?”

Having unexpectedly ended up seated in the unbecoming 1st floor lobby of the Guide Bureau building, Yoon Seo-mi asked Seon Jae-chan, who didn’t take his eyes off his phone.

The reason she had to take a seat in this rowdy space was because Seon Jae-chan had staunchly insisted on it. If they had to move elsewhere, he stubbornly said he wouldn’t engage with her at all, so Yoon Seo-mi was forced to remain here.

Right. He didn’t want to arouse even the slightest suspicion on Go Woo-jin.

Yoon Seo-mi furrowed her eyebrows as she crossed her legs on the extremely uncomfortable stool. She couldn’t understand how Jae-chan, who was so eager to catch Woo-jin, had become so hesitant.

“Of course not. I really am busy. It’s a work email.”

Seon Jae-chan replied calmly as he put down his phone. Taking a tablet out of her handbag to fiddle with, Yoon Seo-mi snorted derisively at his composed tone.

Let’s see if you can maintain your composure for a little while longer. Smacking her lips briefly, she brought up an album on the tablet screen and got straight to the point.

“The picture came out good.”

Sliding across the tablet’s glass surface were dozens of photos capturing Seon Jae-chan and Go Woo-jin. To avoid detection by the S-class Esper, they were taken from a distance using zoom. As soon as Yoon Seo-mi received the contact from Seon Eun-soo, she hounded the reporters she still had connections with to obtain these photos.

The frames preserved intimate moments between the two. The first photo seemed to be taken at a swimwear store in a hotel arcade. Seon Jae-chan was smiling broadly, holding up a Hawaiian shirt against Go Woo-jin, who was also smiling more cheerfully than ever before.

“…”

Contrary to his earlier brashness, Jae-chan fell silent. Yoon Seo-mi leisurely raised the corners of her mouth as she recalled the warning from the restless reporter:

‘Director Yoon, you absolutely cannot leak this material anywhere else. I’m giving it to you based on your word that it’s for personal use only. I don’t want to deal with J Corp’s legal team.’

Of course, she also planned to do as the reporter asked. She had no intention of publicly releasing some paparazzi shots of Go Woo-jin fooling around with a Guide, which would only provoke Chairman Go Young-chang’s already precarious temper.

However, she did plan to exploit them within reasonable limits. She would shake things up again, slowly and carefully, starting from the edges. And Seon Jae-chan would be her foothold.

“I heard you’ve been meeting Woo-jin lately? With these photos too, I thought you two were dating. But…”

Come, be shaken. She provoked Seon Jae-chan with a suggestive tone as if plucking at a delicate thread.

“Woo-jin said you were just a sex partner?”

Suddenly, Yoon Seo-mi couldn’t contain her amusement and burst into laughter. She bit her lip, stifling the urge to laugh out loud. She wondered how pained an expression that arrogant hound would have.

Or perhaps he would try to deny reality. In preparation, Yoon Seo-mi fiddled with her phone, where Go Woo-jin’s distinctly curt voice from the recently recorded clip remained in the app: “He’s just a sex partner.” That callous tone would surely make Seon Jae-chan’s face flush with humiliation.

Just imagining it seemed to melt away her resentment toward the hound who had betrayed her.

‘And in the aftermath, Go Woo-jin could be shaken as well.’

There was even a chance she could bring Seon Jae-chan back under her control. Yoon Seo-mi was savoring that gratification when suddenly, a strange sound reached her ears.

“Yes, that’s right.”

Yoon Seo-mi, who was smiling, tilted her head. Have I been drinking too much lately? Why am I hearing nonsense?

“What did you say?”

“We’re indeed just a sex partner.”

“…”

Seon Jae-chan calmly affirmed it. He even seemed unable to properly fulfill the role of a sex partner lately. Recalling the declining frequency of his intimacy with Woo-jin, Jae-chan mentally corrected himself.

In any case, it didn’t seem to be the answer she had hoped for, and Yoon Seo-mi looked a bit devastated.

‘Could it be she expected me to be this disappointed in Go Woo-jin?’

Come to think of it, if it were him from that time in the past, he probably wouldn’t have accepted the role of a sex partner at all and looked down on it.

But not anymore. Jae-chan was utterly satisfied with this second life he had begun. In fact, he had been the happiest in his entire life recently. Just recalling those fleeting moments of sharing body heat with Woo-jin made his chest tighten with tenderness.

“You really should have taken care of this sooner instead of just blabbering on.”

Yoon Seo-mi still seemed to be in a daze and didn’t react much. Did she really come all this way just to say that? Feeling rather disappointed, Jae-chan pushed the tablet back.

“I’ll get going first. Be careful on your way out.”

As Jae-chan was gathering his bag, he suddenly sensed that Yoon Seo-mi had tensed up for a different reason. Following her gaze, he turned his head around.

When had he arrived? There stood Go Woo-jin, clearly having rushed over in a hurry.

“…”

Their eyes met as Woo-jin approached and helped Jae-chan up. The large palm touching his skin was warm as if he had been running.

“Let’s go.”

Go Woo-jin whispered in a low voice. As they promptly left together, Yoon Seo-mi was dumbfounded watching their indifferent departure. Were they for real? Sticking that close while referring to each other as sex partners?

However, before she could react, someone else approached the now alone Yoon Seo-mi. It was one of Chairman Go Young-chang’s secretaries who had arrived a step later.

“Madam. The Chairman requests your return.”

Yoon Seo-mi’s lips curved upward dejectedly. Raising both hands in surrender, she seemed to be conceding defeat. No wonder Chairman Go had acted swiftly since she had even dragged Se-jin into this in an attempt to get through to Go Woo-jin somehow.

She followed the secretary out of the Guide Bureau building. She stepped outside the entrance and took out a cigarette holder and cigarette from her handbag.

“You can at least give me this much time, can’t you?”

As she mumbled while lighting up, the obvious answer came, “…Just for a moment.” Yoon Seo-mi nodded as she smoked, her cheeks hollowing as wisps of smoke escaped her parched lips.

The secretary walked away to avoid the cigarette smoke, and Yoon Seo-mi was left alone, contemplating the bitter failure that had just come before.

‘It was a trivial attempt, but I really didn’t gain anything from it.’

How could she have known the hound would react as if he didn’t care if he was devoured by Go Woo-jin? It was a flop.

Of course, it was just a petty attempt to shake Go Woo-jin through the hound that fell through. But the accumulation of these little failures without a single success in months was draining her energy.

…Still, she couldn’t give up. Yoon Seo-mi wrung her alcohol and smoke-addled mind for ideas.

[Let me know if you need help. I have information that might interest you.]

At the same time, she recalled a single text message from someone she barely had any contact with a few months ago, which she had ignored.

Like a dimming candlewick, Yoon Seo-mi’s glazed eyes suddenly flashed. Tracing back the message records, she finally found what she had wanted. She immediately made the call.

-Yes, this is Han Ji-hoon.

The gentle voice reached her ears. Yoon Seo-mi’s lips curved meaningfully in the newly discovered opening.

*

At the same time, Jae-chan was getting into Woo-jin’s car, which was parked near the Guide Bureau.

Woo-jin seemed to have rushed over after showering. The dampness of his not-quite-dry hair glistened even in the darkness. He must have hurried right after receiving the report from the follower.

Certainly, his meeting with Director Yoon Seo-mi was cause for caution. As the car started moving, Jae-chan lightly gripped his phone in his thin coat pocket, thinking it was wise that he had recorded his conversation with Yoon Seo-mi.

“Why?”

Woo-jin expressed his confusion, causing Jae-chan to inadvertently raise the corners of his mouth.

“It’s nothing.”

The habit of recording everything after returning was something Jae-chan learned from Director Yoon Seo-mi. Thinking about it, he couldn’t help but laugh at the thought that Director Yoon would be helpful at times. But he couldn’t say such words in front of Woo-jin.

However, Seon Jae-chan’s smile soon faded. This was because Woo-jin turned the steering wheel to the left toward the accommodation instead of away from the Center.