Divorce in Bed Chapter 9

“If you allow it just this once, I won’t bother you anymore, Mister Dowon.”

Yeohwi pleaded with sincerity, his voice losing its forceful edge.

“I won’t send any more texts, and I won’t act noisy. Exactly as you want… yes. I’ll live like someone who has no feelings and no relationship with you. So just this once. Even if it’s just one time.”

“…”

“I… that is really all I wish for.”

“…”

Silence flowed.

Dowon stared intently at Yeohwi for a long time. His pitch-black pupils, devoid of light, scrutinized every detail, and his reason—optimized for efficiency—analyzed Seong Yeohwi.

At first, he thought it was a shallow ripple. A bothersome existence wetting his ankles.

But what blocked his path now was not a ripple, but a wave of significant height.

Against the breakwater he had spent a lifetime building, this fellow was fearlessly crashing head-on. The sound of the splashing rang out loud enough to be irritating.

It was still the struggle of a child—clumsy, emotional, and ignorant of strategy.

However, that was what made Dowon’s calculations complicated.

‘Against a child who didn’t even know how to kiss.’

But he had to admit it. Seong Yeohwi was a much more uncontrollable variable than he had thought, and his outcry was not mere bravado.

If let loose at the party, he wasn’t the type to piss himself, but rather the type to splash wine in Do Jin-gyu’s face. In that case, it might actually be better to…

‘A leash.’

Dowon let out a hollow laugh at the thought that suddenly occurred to him.

‘Absurd.’

He slowly raised his left hand and checked his wrist. The white gold case of his Patek Philippe Calatrava reflected the light from the sensor lamp.

“…Fine.”

Dowon spoke concisely, taking his eyes off the watch.

“I’m late for work. I’ll talk to you in detail after I get back.”

Dowon reached out to push Yeohwi aside.

The moment his hand touched Yeohwi’s shoulder, Yeohwi flinched and reacted hypersensitively.

“…!”

Because he shrank his shoulders like someone who had been burned and stepped back two paces, Dowon’s hand remained in mid-air.

Dowon wore a briefly puzzled expression, but he had neither the time nor the reason to take interest in that subtle reaction. He immediately walked past Yeohwi and out the front door.

The heavy front door closed forcefully. Yeohwi collapsed onto the spot as if the strength had left his legs.

“Heuu-a.”

Is—is this a dream or reality?

Yeohwi buried his face in his knees.

‘He said fine?’

This is crazy.

He felt like he was losing his mind.

His heart throbbed as if it would burst. At the same time, a sense of depravity and a thrill washed over him, as if he had committed something he shouldn’t have.

‘He said let’s talk… Mister Dowon, Dowon hyung, told me he’d talk to me after he got back…!’

Yeohwi clenched his fists tight and covered his mouth with both hands to swallow the exclamation bursting out.

His entire face—no, his whole body from head to toe—was flushed bright red. In particular, his pointed ears were redder than any fruit he had seen that morning.

The green fruit, which had felt only bitter because it was unripe, was gradually ripening. Soon to become mushy and sweet.

‧₊˚🍊༉‧₊˚.

Walking back and forth. Looking here and there.

Seong Yeohwi was anxious all day long.

The joy he felt when he collapsed at the entrance in the morning. As time passed, it turned into a low-grade anxiety.

‘I’ll talk to you in detail after I get back.’

Thinking about it calmly, those words could mean a positive ‘Sure, let’s go together,’ but conversely, they could be a chilling warning like ‘How dare a brat challenge me? We’ll see when I get back.’ He couldn’t guess Dowon’s inner thoughts at all.

So, Yeohwi paced the first floor all day, waiting only for the front door to open.

Well past dinner time, when it was close to midnight, the awaited Dowon finally returned home.

Yeohwi met him at the first-floor stairs in front of the house, just like last time.

“…You’re back?”

Unlike Yeohwi, who wore a rumpled T-shirt from waiting anxiously all day, Dowon was dressed in a shining suit, exactly as he had looked when he left in the morning. However, a heavy fatigue seemed to be weighing on his shoulders.

Dowon glanced at Yeohwi, then roughly grabbed and loosened his tie as he muttered.

“Follow me.”

His plan to welcome him back by saying he must have worked hard and been tired fell through. Yeohwi blinked and followed silently behind Dowon.

“Yes…”

‘But, where are we going…?’

Dowon strode ahead. Yeohwi watched his back and moved his feet hurriedly so as not to lose him. Dowon did not head to the bedroom, but climbed the central stairs leading to the second floor.

And then, they reached the end of the hallway. He saw a familiar door.

It was the firmly closed mahogany door he had sent a photo of a few days ago.

‘No way.’

Yeohwi’s heart thudded loudly.

While he waited with bated breath, Dowon took a key from his pocket and opened that door, which had been like an impregnable fortress.

‘Wooo-ah…!’

The moment he entered the study, Yeohwi suppressed a bursting exclamation.

Seeing it with his own eyes, this place was not just an ordinary room. It was a massive command center.

The smell of paper, the bitter scent of antique wooden furniture, and a faint smell of coffee beans. And finally, Dowon’s smoky cedarwood fragrance.

The atmosphere it gave off was different, and the things he could see were incredible.

On one wall, rows of wooden bookshelves were packed with books from floor to ceiling without a single gap; on the opposite wall, charts and a board showing the complex status of KD Group’s subsidiaries were posted.

And in the center, a heavy wooden desk that looked like Dowon’s desk sat imposingly like a throne.

Leaving Yeohwi to look around here and there, Dowon took off his suit jacket and hung it carelessly over the back of the chair. Then he unfastened the cufflinks of his shirt and rolled up his sleeves a couple of times.

Yeohwi unintentionally lost his gaze to the forearms with lean muscles revealed outside the shirt and the flow of veins leading down the forearms to the back of his hands.

The study was one thing, but Dowon, standing in this space, was truly incredible.

“Since we’ve decided to go to the party, there are things you need to know.”

Dowon didn’t even invite Yeohwi to sit down.

In the first place, there was only one chair here. As if only Dowon was permitted to enter.

He leaned obliquely against the giant wooden desk and pressed the power button. Then, the screens of the five monitors attached in a curve around the desk turned on simultaneously.

“Ye—yes.”

Yeohwi approached Dowon’s side in a tense manner and looked at the monitors with him.

“This is not a simple party. It is not the kind of heartwarming social gathering you are thinking of.”

Then came the cold, business-like voice.

He had said they would talk when he got back, but this was closer to a briefing than a conversation. Like a delivery of work matters.

To use a metaphor, it was like a director, who had suddenly put an intern who knew nothing into a massive major project, explaining the minimum business overview.

Naturally, there was no expectation or emotion loaded into it.

He tapped the keyboard and brought up screens on the monitors. The floor plan of the party hall, and the photos and histories of various people appeared on multiple monitors at once.

“Do Jin-gyu.”

Dowon pointed to the first photo among them.

“You’ve already met him. He is my eldest uncle. He hates me to death.”

He listed only the facts, without any addition or subtraction. Yeohwi quickly asked a question. He felt like he should raise his hand and ask, but he didn’t.

“Because of the succession? Because he feels you’re a threat?”

“Yes. My eldest uncle is a stupid pig.”

“Ah…”

Wow. The insults he directed at me weren’t even insults.

For some reason, Yeohwi felt good. The cold words he had heard from Dowon all this time suddenly felt like warm consideration.

“When I looked up his history, it seemed quite brilliant. A prestigious university and an MBA.”

“What can’t you do if you throw money at it? Contribution-based admission. He bought his degrees and his thesis was ghostwritten.”

“And he doesn’t get caught?”

“Well, he is good at lobbying.”

Soon, they moved on to the next photo.

“This is Do Jin-gyu’s son, Do Jin-sang.”

The face of a young man smiling arrogantly appeared. He bore an oddly resentful resemblance to Dowon, but it was a completely different, frivolous, and vulgar impression to the point where the expression “resemblance” felt offensive.

To explain it simply, his eyes looked greasy. It felt like they would smell fishy.

“He is my cousin. Not only is he stupid, he has a foul temper and is violent.”

Dowon’s voice dropped even lower.

“He targeted and bullied me since our school days. Because I was better than him in every aspect.”

“…”

“Now his eyes have practically flipped. Since I rose to an executive position before him.”

Yeohwi couldn’t say anything to Dowon’s hellish past history, which he poured out calmly in a dry voice as if it were nothing.