She realized it after the wedding invitations were ready to be sent out. Yu Daon had many to give out, but Na WooHyun had very little.
Whenever Daon had time, she’d write out the addresses on the envelopes and group them into different classifications before bundling them up with a rubber band.
“These are for college friends. These are for high school friends. Middle school. These are for elementary school…”
On the other hand, WooHyun had already mailed out his invites. The only ones he invited were colleagues he often saw for work.
The only long-term relationships in WooHyun’s life were those he had with the Yu siblings. But Yu Daon had so many around her. When he realized this, WooHyun grew irritated.
“Why are you inviting friends from elementary school?”
“Ah, that’s right. I should send TaeHee and Yurim’s invitations out separately.”
“Since when have you been friends with them?”
“You just said it yourself. I’ve been friends with them since elementary school.”
Even if she had lived in the same neighborhood all these years, he never expected her to still be on friendly terms with her elementary school friends. He didn’t understand it, but all he could do was silently stew in his own jealousy.
But the real problem wasn't the wedding invitations. The problem was that Yu Daon was always going out to deliver these invitations. They didn’t spend enough time together, but she was choosing to go out and meet friends instead? WooHyun couldn’t help but feel upset.
This all came to a head on the day Daon was to meet her college classmates. WooHyun grabbed his car keys and accompanied her.
* * *
In the middle of the restaurant, the crowd seated at the longest table looked like a class reunion. As soon as they entered the restaurant, there was a burst of greetings and shouts. WooHyun felt like he'd made a mistake by coming here, but it was too late to turn back.
“Did you know that Daon was the class rep?”
He had no idea. WooHyun merely asked ‘Really?’ in a calm voice, but tens of voices spoke up to answer him.
“This tiny kid used to run around as if flames were licking at her heels. She looked quite pitiful.”
“The reason why her grades weren’t that great was because she had sold her soul to set up the class activities.”
“And the professors drowned us in work but claimed they were doing it because they were doting on us. Those wicked oldies!”
“That’s why Daon ended up graduating without going on those group dates.”
That was good news to WooHyun, but he still felt like he was being suffocated by their youthful vigor. WooHyun unconsciously sought Daon’s hand underneath the table and held it tight. He rubbed the soft skin between her thumb and forefinger to find some relief.
Daon turned her head and gazed at WooHyun’s complexion. She had been concerned about him from the very start. She knew he hated being in unfamiliar places surrounded by unfamiliar people.
“You’re okay, right?”
When he heard her worried voice, WooHyun gave her a faint smile and whispered into her ear.
“Why wouldn’t I be okay? I’m here to meet your friends.”
“That’s a relief, but why are your hands so damp…”
Daon’s friends miraculously overheard this, and their eyes widened.
“Omo, you’re sweating? It is a bit hot in here, isn’t it?”
“Sir! Can you blast the AC? Our bridegroom over here is sweating.”
Blast the AC in the middle of winter? WooHyun quickly dissuaded them as he massaged Daon’s hand. He hated being in these kinds of situations, but he could endure it because Daon was by his side. Of course, if it weren’t for Daon, he wouldn’t have even come to something like this in the first place.
Time passed by, and they consumed a good amount of liquor. Things that WooHyun had missed before became prominent in his eyes. Like the man sitting at the end of the table bitterly drinking liquor…
WooHyun leaned towards Daon and gestured to the man.
“Daon, who is he?”
He held back the urge to say, ‘What’s that bastard doing acting all pitiful like that?’ Unable to congratulate them and be happy for them, he was moping at the end of the table by himself. WooHyun couldn’t help but be bothered by it.
When Daon entered the restaurant, he merely gave her a curt greeting and didn’t even bother to mingle with other people. Instead, he ordered some liquor and some snacks and sat by himself. Judging from his condition, he was already very drunk.
“Who? Kim TaeHoon?”
Kim TaeHoon. WooHyun raised a brow. When Daon’s friends heard her voice, they clicked their tongues and glared at the man.
“Why did he come all the way over here to act pitiful like that?”
Because someone else said the words that WooHyun had wanted to say, he felt refreshed.
“He’s our class… what should we call him… The pathetic guy of our class.”
“He’s not pathetic. He’s shady. Before he went to serve out his military service, he started rumors here and there that he liked Yu Daon, but he’s never actually confessed to you, has he?”
“Not only that, but he’s never even talked to her. He only chased after her from the shadows.”
Daon glanced at WooHyun and cautiously opened her mouth.
“It was a bit annoying that he spread those rumors, but he never bothered me directly, so I don’t really care. But I never expected him to come all the way here…”
Daon announced her upcoming nuptials in her class group chat and set the date and time after talking to a few friends. She knew there would be more people than she expected, but she never dreamed that Kim TaeHoon would join them. No, actually, she never expected the self-proclaimed outsider to still be in the group chat at all.
“My Daon was quite popular.”
His low, gruff voice stuck to their ears. WooHyun was laughing, but why did it feel so off-putting? Daon saw the smile on his lips and felt a chill roll through her heart.
“Please tell me more about Daon’s years in college. Was that bas… I mean, that guy the only one who liked Daon or were there more?”
WooHyun draped his arm around the back of Daon’s chair and leaned closer to her. He playfully wound his fingers through Daon’s hair as his eyes crinkled in laughter.
As if they melted under his gaze, her friends began to talk and flopped around like fish that had found water.
How Daon had become the class rep, what kinds of conversations they had when they first met her, how she slipped out of class to go day drinking, and other small stories like that.
While he enjoyed listening to their retelling of their memories, WooHyun’s eyes remained on Daon.
The way her cheeks became round when she laughed, her eyes that arched into crescent moons, the way her lips widened to reveal white teeth…
Now, he could clearly see her face whenever he closed his eyes, but he continued to look at her as if he wanted to engrave every detail into his memory. He didn’t want to miss a single moment. There mustn’t be a single aspect of Yu Daon that he didn’t know about.
* * *
The energy in the room had hit its peak. WooHyun slowly looked around and counted heads. Six chattering people, two who were already slumped over the table, and one man who had staggered to his feet and was pushing the glass door open.
WooHyun placed his hand on Daon’s shoulder as she continued to chat with her friends.
“I’m going to step out for a bit of fresh air.”
Daon pulled his hand to her face and rubbed her cheek against it.
“When you come back, let’s go home. I’ll take care of wrapping things up here.”
Possibly because she had drunk some liquor, Daon’s voice sounded babyish. It melted WooHyun’s heart. He felt a sudden urge to press his lips against her flushed cheeks, but there were too many eyes around, so he held back. He placed his large hand on top of her head.
“Okay, I’ll be right back.”
Daon gave him a big nod. WooHyun turned around and exited the restaurant.
As soon as he went outside, he turned to the right. He saw a man standing in an alleyway trying to smoke a cigarette. His lighter must not have been working because he wasn’t able to light the tip of his cigarette.
“You are Kim TaeHoon-ssi, correct?”
WooHyun asked as he pulled out his lighter from his coat pocket. He promptly lit the man’s cigarette. Kim TaeHoon, who was in a drunken state, jolted in surprise and gasped.
“Ah… y-yes.”
He looked WooHyun up and down with eyes that seemed to wonder why he was here. Then he seemed to have lost interest and turned his head around and drew in a deep breath.
WooHyun quietly looked down at the man crouching against the wall. Unable to endure the piercing stare, Kim TaeHoon glared up at him.
“Didn’t you come out here to smoke?”
“I’ve quit smoking. I heard it wasn’t good for one’s sperm.”
Kim TaeHoon narrowed his eyes and mumbled to himself.
“What the hell. Ruining a good smoke… Even though you quit smoking, you’re still carrying a lighter?”
WooHyun didn’t seem fazed by his mumbling and didn’t respond. He merely came out here to send away this man who had been a thorn in his eye since the beginning of the evening. Guys like this always made a drunken scene.
However, seeing this man openly show his hostility towards him put WooHyun in a bad mood.
“I heard you used to like Daon.”
WooHyun spoke in a friendly tone as if he were reminiscing about the past. Kim TaeHoon scoffed in disbelief.
“Is that what Yu Daon said?”
“More than one person told me. Well, she’s definitely likeable. Daon is definitely the type that catches your eye. It’s all in the past, so there’s no need to get upset over it.”
WooHyun shrugged his shoulders as he spoke in an indifferent tone.
“Who’s getting upset?!”
“Right now. You’re upset.”
A strange, tense silence settled over the alleyway. Kim TaeHoon spit out his finished cigarette and pulled out another one.
“Lend me your lighter one more time.”
“You can just have it. I don’t need it anymore.”
WooHyun hadn’t thrown the lighter away because it seemed like a waste to trash it. Therefore, he had kept it in his pocket for no particular reason. He tossed the lighter into Kim TaeHoon’s hand as if he were donating it to the less fortunate.
Kim TaeHoon’s eyes were half-lidded as he drunkenly lit his cigarette.
He had come to a place where everyone was congratulating the bride-to-be and was now chain-smoking outside as he reminisced about the past. What was he doing? There was no way this was a favorable sight to the future bridegroom.
“It looks like you’re very drunk, so why don’t you head home?”
“...You’re wrong.”
Ah, he was starting to get on WooHyun’s nerves.
“I’m saying you’re the one who’s wrong.”
“About what?”
“Yu Daon is on the pretty side, but she’s not an eye-catching beauty.”
“In my eyes, Yu Daon is all I can see.”
“That’s because you’re blinded by love. Yu Daon was way prettier when she was twenty years old.”
“Ah, really? Not only are you drunk but you’re also crazy, aren’t you?”
Rage began to boil up to the top of WooHyun’s head. But what angered him even more was the fact that he had not been by Daon’s side when she was twenty years old. He had never experienced a college life with Daon, and he had only found out today that she had been the class rep.
He wanted to see Daon running around the campus as if flames were licking at her heels. He wanted to see her order her classmates around, try to win the favor of her professors, and use the excuse of staying at the library overnight to study for an exam but in reality go out to eat late at night. He wanted to see it all.
He was even jealous of this drunkard because he had been able to follow Daon as a college student. He couldn’t help but feel this way.
Kim TaeHoon must have lost his mind because he ignored WooHyun’s sarcastic remarks and continued speaking.
“She had such pale, milky skin. She’d always be surrounded by people and smile so brightly… Aah, just thinking about those times makes my heart flutter.”
Although he wasn’t wrong, this guy must be an absolute lunatic to say it to the subject’s future husband.
“Do you know what you did?”
Kim TaeHoon roared. When he tried to stand up, WooHyun put his hand on his shoulder and pushed him back down.
“What did I do?”
“You turned my twenty-eighth love into…”
WooHyun’s eyes twisted into a terrifying frown.
“Daon used to be so pure, like a bundle of flowers… So lovable…”
WooHyun raised his brow and looked down at TaeHoon. What kind of ridiculous nonsense was this guy spewing?
“I could only watch her from afar…”
Kim TaeHoon’s shoulders shook violently. He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand and began to sniff.
WooHyun hissed out a frustrated breath through his clenched teeth. This was ridiculous.
Now that he thought about it, there were quite a lot of strange bastards around Daon. The stupid, big-boned Kim KyungChan. The mischievous twenty-year-old student. And now this drunk peeping tom from her class.
“I’m the only normal one.”
Although, one couldn’t say that Yu Daon was completely normal either…
WooHyun grabbed Kim TaeHoon by the back of his collar and pulled him up. When his shirt tightened around his neck due to the upward force, he let out a choking sound.
“Ugh, my flower…”
He was dragged around like a half-insane paper doll. It was understandable. He was so drunk that he could barely walk on his own, and he had also been chain-smoking.
WooHyun looked around for a pile of trash he could toss him into.
Kim TaeHoon’s wallet fell out of his inner pocket. He flipped it open, and the ID card caught his eye. More specifically, it was his address that started with ‘City of Daegu’.
He was suddenly curious. How much would the cab fare come out to be if one went from Seoul to Daegu? Because it was after midnight, there would also be an extra fee…
He might have been planning on staying the night in Seoul and taking the first train back, but that was none of his business. It wasn’t his fault that the first address he saw was located in Daegu. This guy should have had the tact to act properly in the first place.
WooHyun calmly looked down at Kim TaeHoon who was now asleep.
‘This feels like shit.’
A sneer flashed across WooHyun’s face as his expression grew sharp. It felt like the temperature had grown a bit chilly.
“Thank you for coming. But I hope I don’t see you at the wedding.”
Yeah, throwing him into a trash heap would be inhumane.
WooHyun tightened his grip on TaeHoon’s collar and made his way to a major street to find a taxi.
* * *
“Your groom is so handsome, Daon. Why doesn’t my older brother have friends like that?”
“Hey, I don’t even have an older brother.”
“It seems like you’re a bit confused. Do you think all older brothers are the same? Sometimes it’s better not to have one at all.”
As soon as WooHyun left the table, her friends looked at Daon with envy in their eyes. Daon merely smiled bitterly.
After receiving the proposal in London last December, almost a year had passed. WooHyun wanted to hold the wedding as soon as the following month, but Daon wanted to take her time with the preparations, so he silently waited.
Compared to his firm foundation and footing in life, she felt like she was so shabby in comparison.
Actually, it hadn’t been that long since she’d graduated college, and people usually got married a bit later in life these days, so she was actually on the young side. However, it was none other than Na WooHyun, so she couldn’t help but shrink away.
In the past year, with both of their parents’ permission, they had begun to live together. Not as her oppa’s friend and his friend’s little sister but as a soon-to-be-married couple.
As they weathered the four seasons together, Daon came to realize one thing. They were each other’s only person. She could no longer live without Na WooHyun.
Whenever she saw how he never changed and only looked at her, all the fear and sense of inferiority melted away.
There was no longer any reason to postpone the wedding. And she didn’t want to make WooHyun wait anymore.
The glass door of the restaurant opened, and the cheerful chime of the bell rang in the room. Na WooHyun, who had gone out for a breather, walked back inside.
His well-tailored coat was draped over his firm body. She gazed at his perfectly proportioned face. When their eyes met, his lips stretched into a relaxed smile. In that moment, she came to realize again just how handsome he really was.
When he sat down next to her, she could feel the cold emanating from him.
“Aren’t you cold? I think you were out there for a long time.”
“Your friend was really drunk, so I helped him into a taxi and sent him off.”
Daon looked around the table. Who was missing?
“Ah, Kim TaeHoon?”
WooHyun laughed silently.
Just what did this man lack? Daon was moved by the fact that he took care of a classmate that she was not even that close to.
‘He’s such a kind person. So why is Yu JaeOn his only friend…’
He was too handsome, so the people around him grew to be envious of him. He also had a cold personality and often spoke bluntly. However, he wasn’t a bad person.
Daon stretched out her arms and pulled him in for a warm hug. She could feel the muscles of his back harden for a moment. He remained in her arms for a little while longer and then burst into laughter.
“Yu Daon, are you drunk?”
“Not at all. You kept snatching my liquor away, Oppa.”
“...You caught me.”
When did it start? At some point, whenever the two of them drank with Yu JaeOn, WooHyun would drink most of Daon’s liquor. Even though there was plenty of liquor for all of them, why did he keep taking hers? He would refill her glass halfway and put it back down in front of her. She couldn’t figure out why he did this, but she soon came to understand. He didn’t want her to get drunk.
A place deep within her heart grew warm at the thought.
* * *
They called a driver and were on their way home. Daon rested her head on WooHyun’s lap in the backseat. She enjoyed his touch as he stroked her hair. She took his hand and brought it to her cheek. She began to pour kisses down on his warm, familiar palm.
“Why are you acting so childish today?”
“I wonder how this lovable lump of luck fell down at my feet.”
WooHyun snorted as he tilted his head.
“You should say it correctly. I’m not the one who fell. You’re the one who fell right in front of me.”
With half-lidded eyes, Daon stretched out her hand. She stroked his sharp nose and jaw before moving on to his plump lips.
WooHyun playfully bit Daon’s fingers. With her fingers still in his mouth, he mumbled.
“Thank you for falling down in front of me.”
“You even speak so prettily, my lucky lump.”
“Then dote on me even more from now on.”
Was it because of the liquor? She suddenly felt a lot more emotional. Because he was always so close, she had taken his presence for granted. But now, just his mere existence made her feel like she owned the world.
Her eyes grew damp, so Daon closed her eyes. She crouched into a fetal position and turned around on WooHyun’s lap. Then she held onto his arm like a lifeline and brought his hand inside her thick coat and put it against her chest.
She wanted him to feel her racing heart. WooHyun let out a troubled hum and looked out the window.
Unlike his dignified face, WooHyun’s hand slowly massaged her breast. Because her back was to the driver, he had no idea what was going on in the back seat.
“No, this wasn’t what I meant…”
When she felt his lewd movements, she grabbed his wrist.
WooHyun looked down at Daon in confusion before turning his eyes back out the window. Then he covered his lips with his hand. However, he couldn’t hide the laughter from his eyes.
“Stop acting sly.”
With her cheek on his thigh, she felt something harden higher up his leg. As his hand squeezed her even harder, his cock grew even more prominent against his pants. Daon narrowed her eyes and glared at him.
“Na WooHyun, you’re going to be in big trouble.”
WooHyun sighed and whispered in a voice only Daon could hear.