Divorce in Bed Chapter 6

“You, you rascal!”

Do Jingyu twisted his wrist in a panic, but Dowon’s grip strength was beyond imagination.

“Let go! How dare you to your eldest uncle…!”

“He is my spouse.”

As Dowon said those words, he roughly pushed Yeohwi, whose collar had been seized, behind his back.

Yeohwi was pushed by the sudden situation and retreated behind Dowon.

“Ha! Spouse, you say.”

Do Jingyu sneered, twisting his captured wrist free as if Dowon’s fierce momentum was absurd.

“You poor thing.”

His contemptuous gaze swept down his nephew.

“Since the Chairman has doted on you the most since you were young, I suppose you harbored the illusion that you could actually covet my position.”

Do Jingyu took a step toward Dowon.

“Look at the results, Won-ah.”

He tapped Dowon’s shoulder familiarly, yet insultingly.

“It’s time you came to your senses. Chairman Do, that old man you relied on… he arranged a strategic marriage with a mere… kid like that, who has nothing but the pocket change he inherited. What do you think this means?”

“…”

“It means you have been completely excluded from the KD succession line.”

Do Jingyu wore a victor’s smile.

“It’s obvious to anyone… Now that you know, know your place and hand over your shares. Don’t dare interfere or get in my way.”

Yeohwi held his breath behind Dowon’s back.

Dowon was taking those insulting words without a single change in expression, as if he had been hearing them his entire life until they were embedded in his ears.

Only now did it seem Yeohwi understood why he lived so devoid of emotion, and why he said he had no time to play along with a ‘brat’s house-playing.’ He finally saw the culprit behind the environment that had become a lonely and desolate wasteland. In the middle of this hell, he was enduring life while killing his own self.

“If you have business.”

Dowon finally spoke. It was a perfectly controlled voice, devoid of any emotion.

“Speak to me. Do not touch that child.”

“Ha… You still haven’t come to your senses.”

As if Dowon wasn’t even worth dealing with anymore, Do Jingyu straightened his disheveled suit and turned around.

Heading toward the entrance while wiping the hand that had grabbed Yeohwi’s collar with a handkerchief, he stopped as if something had just occurred to him.

“Oh, right. The upcoming KD Group foundation party.”

He glanced back at Yeohwi and sneered mockingly.

“That should be a sight to see. Now that you’re married, you won’t be able to attend alone.”

“…”

“Show the world clearly. Just how pathetic a rock bottom the great Dowon has fallen to. Along with that rabid spouse of yours.”

With those final words, Do Jingyu left the mansion with a satisfied laugh.

Thud. The door closed, and silence enveloped the living room. Popcorn scattered here and there on the floor remained, defiling the house like evidence of the recent disturbance.

Yeohwi gazed blankly with his brown eyes at Dowon’s broad back standing in front of him.

‘Was he trying to protect me…?’

He looked like he had rushed here very urgently from the company.

‘He could have just ignored it like he always has. Why…’

He was surprised. He wondered if Dowon, who had only ever drawn cold lines between them, had come for his sake.

Had Dowon really pushed Seong Yeohwi away simply because he judged him to be nothing more than a strategic marriage partner with monetary utility?

Or, was there another reason he couldn’t speak of?

Could it be that he pushed him away to prevent the 12-years-younger Seong Yeohwi from getting caught up in this hellish situation…?

‘He told me not to do anything useless.’

Yeohwi continued to watch Dowon’s weary-looking back.

The thoughts he was having now might be a wrong assumption or a delusion of his own. However, once the thoughts began to branch out, he couldn’t pull them back.

Perhaps.

Just perhaps.

Dowon’s life was already so difficult that he couldn’t handle anything more.

To the point where he didn’t even have the energy to keep someone by his side.

Because he couldn’t even have a single comfortable meal every day, and it was so desolate and dead that it was hard for him to even look up at the sky. Because right now, he himself was in so much… pain. Because it was too much to bear.

‘Maybe that’s it.’

Yeohwi vaguely thought that Dowon, whom he had considered a man much more of an adult than himself, looked a little smaller now than before.

‧₊˚🍊༉‧₊˚.

The night Do Jingyu had swept through like a storm. That day, too, Dowon ended up not entering the bedroom. Seong Yeohwi lay alone in the massive bedroom, staring endlessly at his laptop screen.

At dawn. With all the lights in the room turned off, only the cold artificial light leaking from the screen illuminated his face like a ghost.

In the search bar, the name ‘KD Group President Do Jingyu’ was displayed.

“Sigh…”

Yeohwi closed the laptop and sprawled out on the bed.

The brilliant career continued endlessly even as he scrolled down. Graduation from a prestigious university, an overseas MBA, the youngest executive, and the title of current President of KD Group…

‘I knew he was a crazy old man.’

The vitriol he had poured out today lingered in his ears. Calling him a maggot, trash, an orphan of the Seong family. It wasn’t that the words he heard bothered him.

‘Chairman Do, that old man arranged a strategic marriage with a mere… kid like that, who has nothing but the money he inherited.’

‘It means you have been completely excluded from the KD succession line.’

Yeohwi frowned and buried his face in the pillow.

He closed his eyes tight and began to thud his forehead against the bed.

He knew he shouldn’t, but he became deathly curious about Dowon’s past and family relationships.

Had he lived his whole life struggling within the family and the company, serving a piece of human trash like President Do Jingyu as his uncle and president…?

‘Should I ask Mister Park?’

She would know something. Since she was Dowon’s nanny.

But Yeohwi shook his head.

No. Something like this… you have to ask directly.

‘Though there’s no way Mister Dowon would readily tell me his personal history.’

Thinking that made his chest feel tight.

Yeohwi began to flounder pointlessly on the giant bed like an anxious puppy. He kicked the blankets away, then pulled them back over his head. Then, he rolled around the king-sized bed like a soft injeolmi rice cake wrapped in a cloth.

‘What is it, really.’

Dowon kept coming to mind.

No, just saying he “came to mind” wasn’t enough.

That emotionless, statue-like face staring down Do Jingyu. And the black flames burning within it. That hand that pushed Seong Yeohwi behind his back as if to protect him, while being so cold and overbearing that no one could approach.

He was suffocating between contradiction and shame, doubt and curiosity.

Yeohwi realized he was constantly trying to find a gap while recalling Dowon’s sharp face.

Why was that?

His memory drifted back five years, to his grandfather’s funeral home.

It was a day when heavy rain poured down in torrents. The young chief mourner, Seong Yeohwi, who had just turned fifteen, found it difficult even to stand before the funeral portrait in mourning clothes that were larger than his body.

Distant relatives he didn’t even recognize, who had rushed in eyeing the inheritance, didn’t even mourn the deceased; instead, they shouted and grabbed each other’s collars in the middle of the funeral hall. Taking advantage of the chaos, reporters ruthlessly burst their flashes at the face of the boy crying in terror.

It was hell. He wanted to run away. But there was no one to help him.

At that moment, an unexpected mourner arrived at the shambolic funeral hall.

Aides in black suits lined up, and an old man in a wheelchair entered.

It was the head of KD Group, Chairman Do Han-il.

Even though he was confined to a wheelchair, the intimidation he exuded instantly froze the air of the rowdy funeral hall.

And a man who entered, pushing that wheelchair.

It was Dowon, who was twenty-seven at the time.

He had a face that was a bit more youthful and much calmer than now.

When the Chairman’s brow furrowed silently as he looked around the messy funeral hall, Dowon spoke in a low voice.

“It is noisy. The Chairman has come to pay his respects.”

His voice wasn’t loud, but it held a weight that overwhelmed the crowd.

At a single glance from Dowon, the aides moved in perfect order. The relatives who were causing a disturbance were dragged out like luggage, and the cameras of the reporters who were behaving rudely were all confiscated.

Silence arrived in an instant.

“So you are the Seong family’s grandson… Don’t worry about your grandfather. I will go to meet that man soon so he won’t be lonely in heaven by himself.”

Chairman Do spoke to Yeohwi. But Yeohwi was trembling in the corner and was in no state to properly fulfill his role as the chief mourner. He couldn’t even offer a greeting.

While Chairman Do paid his respects, Dowon strode forward and stood in front of Yeohwi.

In front of the small child who was too terrified to even lift his head.