🔊 TTS Settings
CHAPTER 12
Heejae begged him with a trembling voice.
It didn’t matter if they didn’t become lovers.
She only wished to be remembered as someone special in his life.
She was barely twenty. With luck, maybe this man hadn’t experienced it yet either.
“Please…”
Heejae planned to give him her first time and monopolize his.
“I like you. So please… just once, be with me.”
Even if she couldn’t be his woman forever, she wanted to burn herself into his memory.
She never realized how those words would one day bind her, or how reckless they were.
Their first time was a disaster.
Whether because of alcohol, because of pleasure, or simply the overwhelming shock of a first experience—she could hardly remember what had happened.
Worse still, it happened inside the house where the chairman and his wife also lived.
She thought she had run into Mr. Han, the servant, at the entrance, but afterward saw no one from the Shin family.
Led into the deepest room on the second floor, Heejae lost all control once the door shut.
She was pushed against the wall.
Before she could even register the pain of her head hitting it, something soft and warm pressed against her lips and wiped the pain away.
Instinctively, she grabbed at his clothes.
Kyobin caught her wrists and pulled them behind his neck.
Her arms wrapped around him, clinging as if she wanted him too.
It was the first kiss of two unripe twenty-year-olds.
Not knowing what to do with a man’s body, Heejae simply let him take the lead.
Something she never could have done sober, she recklessly committed with the help of alcohol.
His hand slid down her neck.
When his palm gripped flesh, Heejae tilted her head back without thinking.
Strange sounds slipped out of her lips.
The playful gleam in Kyobin’s eyes disappeared, replaced with something darker, focused solely on her expression.
When she realized it, her stomach clenched and her body twitched with sharp stimulus.
“Aah…”
His fingers brushed her most sensitive point, his lips biting her tender neck.
Heejae moaned, unable to stop it.
Startled by her own voice, she slapped both hands over her mouth.
Kyobin ignored it, intent on his task, but his eyes flickered constantly toward her face.
Whenever she shuddered or squeezed her eyes shut, he smirked with satisfaction.
Looking back, she was the only one drunk.
He was perfectly sober, enjoying it all.
“Ah, please, Kyobin…”
As her clothes came off one by one, Heejae shivered in embarrassment.
She tried to resist, but it was useless.
And she couldn’t fully push him away either.
Her heart pounded with anticipation, unwilling to betray its own desire.
“Heejae.”
His voice cracked with arousal as he called her name.
“Do you even know how sexy you look right now?”
The deep whisper melted her entire body.
She knew her face was collapsing, but she couldn’t stop it.
“Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for this moment?”
“…Hhh.”
When he suddenly pressed into her, Heejae clenched her eyes shut.
She bit her lip until it went white, but moans escaped anyway.
Kyobin silenced her with his lips.
Something hot and hard pressed inside, and only then did her body yield, barely managing to take him.
When his lips finally pulled away, Heejae let out the truth like she could no longer hold it back:
“I… I like you, Kyobin…”
The power of alcohol was frightening.
Sober, she never could have admitted her feelings aloud.
But Kyobin gave her no answer.
No “I like you too.”
No “Let’s be together.”
Nothing.
Instead, he filled her with relentless waves of pleasure.
After that, Heejae didn’t contact him.
Nor did he contact her.
Maybe it was the wound of her first time.
Maybe the pain of her confession met with silence.
Or the shame of loving the man who had tormented her.
Those feelings kept her hesitant.
But she was the only one tormented.
It was as if she had been brainwashed over the years—unable to bear being apart from him.
The thought of him with another woman drove her mad.
As Kyobin once said, in Heejae’s world, there was only one man: Shin Kyobin.
So, each time she got drunk, she sought him out.
Each time, he embraced her.
And afterward, they went their separate ways, without progress.
Neither of them was free.
Heejae had to keep perfect grades under Chairman Shin’s sponsorship.
Kyobin had to avoid tarnishing the reputation of Shin Group.
“Why do you work so hard?”
One day, after they finished, Heejae finally asked.
“You used to just live however you wanted.”
As an adult, he had matured, his body and presence sharper.
Still playful at times, but undeniably different.
In school, the illegitimate son had rejected the chairman’s plans, convinced he could never be heir.
But now, he diligently pursued management training, as if to leave possibilities open.
He had changed.
Heejae wanted to know why.
“Because I’ve found something I want to protect.”
His quiet reply stunned her.
Buttoning his shirt, his back turned, Heejae stared blankly.
“I’m already a bastard. I can’t afford to give them more to use against me.”
He turned to face her, lips curling faintly.
“I don’t care if I get torn apart. But if something I treasure gets hurt, I couldn’t stand it.”
He had something precious. Something he wanted to protect.
The very thing Heejae had feared became real—there was someone else in his heart.
“What is it? What do you want to protect?”
She tried to sound indifferent.
But Kyobin only stared, silent.
The longer he did, the harder it was to hold his gaze.
“You don’t need to know that.”
Her heart dropped.
“We’re nothing to each other, after all.”
The clear line drawn between them made her head sink.
She laughed hollowly, realizing how pathetic she looked.
She had clung to him with her body, only to be discarded like nothing.
He had no feelings for her. That much was certain.
“Then why do you sleep with me?”
It was her one raw question.
How could he love someone else and still come to her?
“Don’t you feel guilty? Toward the one you love?”
But Kyobin only tilted his head, as if unconcerned.
“I don’t know. We’re not at the stage where I need to feel guilty yet.”
