Strategic Mating Partner Chapter 101

‘He’s definitely too pretty, so he has no desperation in his selfies….’

If he were to teach Sejin the knack for taking good selfies, it was obvious that Sejin, with his usual indifferent expression, would question why he had to do such a bothersome thing. Well, it is not like he has to take good ones. Taehyun, swipe, naturally saved the picture Sejin sent and sent a reply.

11:20 PM

Cute. Train hard.

After all the commotion with his junior, it was suddenly time to actually go to sleep. In just about two more days, he would be able to meet Sejin in person. Just with that one fact, Taehyun’s mood unknowingly lifted as he pulled the blanket up over himself. And just as he was about to drift off to sleep. A random, absurd thought popped into his head.

‘But I think he also confessed with marriage in mind to some extent….’

The moment he became aware of that embarrassing sentence, Taehyun, ughhh, kicked the blanket off with his feet and shot up.

“Gasp, shit. Hyung, what is it? What happened!?”

The junior, who had been trying to sleep on the single bed arranged next to Taehyun’s, asked in alarm. Before he could even point out the audacity of swearing in front of his esteemed sunbae, Taehyun, worried that his junior would start prying again, said something ridiculous to block the question at its source.

“I just had sleep paralysis. I guess the energy of this place is not good.”

Sleep paralysis my ass. In Sung Taehyun’s twenty-eight years of life, there had not been a single moment where his yang energy was lacking. There was no way he would have ever encountered even the ‘g’ of a ghost. Does your intelligence drop when you start to like someone? Taehyun began to worry seriously. It is easy to think that sports is a field where you solve things with your body without using your brain, but that was a misconception. In sports, just as in any other field, there are countless areas where you use your brain. In the first place, the act of instantaneously judging the current situation and adopting the most efficient and rational strategy could not be something done without using intelligence. Could this possibly affect my performance in the competition? As his worries reached that point, Taehyun acknowledged it once again.

‘It really feels like… my brain has become feeble.’

Meanwhile, the junior, surprised by Taehyun’s words, was making a fuss again.

“Really? Crazy, that is so scary. They said someone committed suicide here. Apparently, the employees who were transferred overseas ostracized and bullied each other….”

No, why are you only telling me this now? At the sudden appearance of TMI he did not want to know, Taehyun was flustered as well.

“What? Where did you hear that?”

When Taehyun asked back, the junior shot back again.

“Yeonju told us everything when we got here yesterday. Hyung, isn’t your mind really somewhere else?”

Ah. Only then did Taehyun recall that his female junior might have said something similar. I do not know. It went in one ear and out the other, so I did not hear it properly. Regardless, the junior was already fixated on sleep paralysis and was making a scene, saying he would just move into the athlete’s village starting tomorrow.

‘I’m sorry…. It was actually a lie.’

Taehyun, feeling a slight sense of guilt, fumbled to pull the blanket back up over himself. And as they say, words have power, Taehyun ended up actually having sleep paralysis that night. He did not see the terrifying ghost his junior described, but throughout his sleep, he felt as if someone was constantly whispering in his ear.

‘Hyung, you like me. You will keep wanting to see me, and you will not want to do this kind of thing with anyone but me. You will even start to hate holding hands with other people, and you will feel good just by looking at me.’

What is this? Why does the voice sound so familiar? When he woke up on time in the morning, a strange sense of déjà vu remained, as if it was not a nightmare he had dreamed, but that he had really heard those sentences in someone’s voice at some point.

‘No way….’

Taehyun thought of a possibility for a moment, then immediately shook his head. No. He might have a slightly gloomy side, but he would not have gone that far. Taehyun, trying his best to believe what he wanted to believe, went to the cafeteria and fumbled to pile the buffet-style meal onto his tray.

“Oh, stir-fried spicy pork.”

Seeing his junior excitedly place stir-fried spicy pork on top of his white rice, Taehyun too was about to unconsciously scoop up a handful when, smack, the coach hit the back of his hand with a sharp slap.

“Hey, you have to think about your weight.”

“Ah.”

At that sharp reprimand, Taehyun obediently removed about half of the contents in the ladle. Damn it. This too will be over this month. Taehyun glared at the coach who was nonchalantly passing him with fiery eyes and smacked his lips.

🤺

Two days after that, Sejin landed at the LA airport. It seemed Sejin was also quite tired after the long-haul flight of nearly ten hours. This time, for some reason, he sent a picture that looked like it had been taken by someone else. And his hands were full of things.

(Photo)

2:21 PM

I just came out of the airport

2:21 PM

Having landed at a time not much different from Taehyun’s due to going through clearance, Sejin sent a picture right away, and the corners of Taehyun’s mouth naturally curved up. Worried about being interrogated again, Taehyun secretly checked the message, avoiding others’ eyes, and sent a reply.

2:39 PM

What’s that in your hands?

In his hands were a bunch of sealed bags, presumably purchased from a duty-free shop. Why on earth is he holding those? Did a female athlete ask him to hold them for a moment while the picture was being taken? It was not really jealousy, but a question of pure curiosity, and Sejin answered right away.

An errand for my mother.

2:39 PM

She said it was a season-limited item at the Incheon Airport duty-free shop and insisted I buy it.

2:40 PM

Ah, so it was that side. There had been a memory of being surprised to learn that the quite a lot of sensible clothes were his mother’s work, after thinking that Sejin had such a talent. Come to think of it, did he say she worked in fashion? On top of that, she had even cut ties with her family, which was once a conglomerate, went abroad alone, and raised a child by herself while working as a single mom. In many ways, he thought she was an extraordinary person.

Taehyun had always been confident that giving a good impression to adults and gaining their favor was not a very difficult task, but this time, he felt he could not be so sure and was scared in advance. What if she reprimands me, asking how I could have the nerve to seduce a kid who is only twenty-two with my pheromones. A morning drama-like scenario, which he had thought would never have any connection to him, unfolded in his mind.

‘I’m a problem because I think too much.’

Only after reaching that point did Taehyun realize it. There was an experience where people around him pushed some test on him, saying ‘Hyung, you’re definitely going to get 99% N, right?’ and after being pushed into completing the questionnaire, his score came out uniquely high compared to everyone else around him, making everyone burst into laughter.

‘What’s this, I got ENFP? Is this bad?’

When Taehyun asked further, everyone said, ‘We totally thought you’d be that,’ and when he searched for it, it was not just criticisms, and it seemed other types also had plenty of shortcomings, so he concluded that it was probably okay. I should make Joo Sejin take this sometime, Taehyun was having such thoughts and started his training, and when he stopped for dinner, a new message from Sejin had arrived.

I want to see you soon.

4:11 PM

He was confused as to why his heart suddenly started beating so fast it felt like it would explode at that short sentence. Taehyun secretly touched his forehead and, whoo, let out a sigh with a serious expression before typing a reply.

4:13 PM

Me too.

Then, feeling needlessly embarrassed, he immediately shoved his phone into his bag and headed back to the athletes’ waiting room. Even though he knew perfectly well that there was nothing good about being this excited before entering the stadium for the preliminaries, his heart would not calm down.

‘……’

Normally, he would have had to forcefully suppress the trembling of his fingertips from anxiety, pretending to be composed, but for some reason, he did not feel worried about the match. It was as if he had received the blessing of the goddess of fortune; he had a vague premonition that everything would go well.

“Do it calmly. Do not be nervous. Think of getting through without getting hurt as the top priority.”

Even the coach’s final words, whispered into his ear, did not register properly. All he could think of was the face he wanted to see after quickly finishing this entire schedule. He wanted to go with a result he would not be ashamed of when he met Sejin again.

“Attention—!”

With the foreign referee’s loud ready signal, strength entered his entire body. The opponent Taehyun faced in the first match of the taekwondo schedule today was a young athlete from Europe. As if by a cruel twist of fate, the draw for the tournament had pitted him against Taehyun, the most likely gold medal candidate, for the third time in a row, and he too looked quite nervous. Today’s experience would probably become an opportunity for him to develop himself once again. After all, Taehyun also had to repeat countless defeats when he was that age to get to this position.

“Begin!”

The result, after the declaration signaling the start of the match finally rang out, was a clean victory, just as his unusual premonition had foretold.