Flower Fiancé Chapter 53

The man, who had been toying with Ji Yeonwoo’s cheek like a piece of white glutinous rice cake, came closer and kissed him quietly. Choi Moohyuk, his eyes slightly narrowed, studied Ji Yeonwoo’s expression. With his eyes closed, Ji Yeonwoo kept his lips stubbornly sealed, showing no sign of parting them.

He felt like being petulant for no reason. He understood, but it stung that Choi Moohyuk had to leave him all alone in a house without its owner.

As if aware of Ji Yeonwoo’s feelings, the man who had been pressing their lips together until they were crushed parted his own lips and took Ji Yeonwoo’s upper lip and then lower lip into his mouth in turn. After sucking deeply, careful not to touch them with his teeth, he slowly pulled his lips away.

“You’ll be safe as long as you stay inside here. This is my personal space, so no one can enter. You can be at ease.”

The gaze watching Choi Moohyuk as his eyes slowly opened quivered faintly.

“How long will it take?”

“Three hours? No, I’ll finish up and be back within two.”

Ji Yeonwoo naturally turned his head toward the silent clock hanging on the wall. If he truly returned within two hours as he said, it would be roughly around 9 o’clock.

“In return, once I’m back, I’ll stay with you continuously from then on.”

When he nodded wordlessly, Choi Moohyuk laughed without a sound and touched his cheek.

“Don’t be upset.”

“Me? I’m not upset?”

At words that might have just been tossed out casually, Ji Yeonwoo felt as though his innermost feelings had been exposed and involuntarily raised his voice.

“Haven’t I said it before? Mr. Ji Yeonwoo can’t lie.”

“Ah….”

“It’s all over your face.”

Only after speaking did Ji Yeonwoo think, ‘Oops,’ and the corners of his eyes drooped downward. The longer the conversation went on, the more he felt he was at a disadvantage.

Having fastened all his shirt buttons, the man stood up with a smiling face. He picked up the jacket draped over the sofa and walked toward the front door, with Ji Yeonwoo trailing right behind him.

“Take care and have a safe trip.”

Ji Yeonwoo offered a greeting to him as he put on his dress shoes. Having straightened his back and stood up, the man stared intently at Ji Yeonwoo standing in front of the entrance.

Come to think of it, that greeting he had just given Choi Moohyuk felt like déjà vu. It felt exactly like sending off a spouse heading to work.

Standing awkwardly, Ji Yeonwoo changed the subject.

“Is it all right if I look around the house?”

“Of course. Think of it as your own home and look around as much as you like. If there’s anything you want to try using, feel free to use it.”

“What if I end up breaking something?”

“Then I’ll just buy it again, what’s there to worry about.”

Standing with one hand in his pants pocket, he chuckled. After quietly meeting Ji Yeonwoo’s eyes, he was about to turn away when he turned back again, as if something had just occurred to him.

“Ah, there should be bath salts in the bathroom. I got them as a gift, but I haven’t used them myself, so I don’t know what scent they are. It’s fine, so Mr. Ji Yeonwoo, give them a try.”

“Yes. Don’t worry about me, just go and come back.”

He too must have been concerned about leaving Ji Yeonwoo alone in this spacious house, as he couldn’t quite step out the door and carefully attended to every detail. At this point, even his earlier petulance felt shameful.

“I’ll be back. Rest well.”

Only after coming closer and pressing a kiss to the forehead of Ji Yeonwoo, who had lifted his head to look at him, did he finally step out the front door.

— Click, beep.

With the sound of the door closing and the automatic lock engaging, the house was enveloped in a silent stillness.

Standing before the front door, Ji Yeonwoo looked around the quiet house. Now that he was alone, the house felt even wider and larger than he’d thought. He imagined how Choi Moohyuk must feel, living alone in a house like this. He didn’t seem like the type to be particularly conscious of such emptiness, but still, coming home to a dark, unlit house would probably feel several times lonelier.

Standing there blankly, Ji Yeonwoo suddenly paused, realizing that his thoughts were already completely filled with him. Whether it was just his imagination or not, his forehead, where his lips had touched before he left, felt inexplicably hot.

Ji Yeonwoo slowly looked around the quiet house. He even went up to the second floor, then came back down and headed to the kitchen. Remembering what Choi Moohyuk had said, he opened the refrigerator door. Truly, an abundance of ingredients was neatly organized inside. He could see meat for steak, and ingredients for pasta like bacon and button mushrooms also caught his eye.

Standing with the refrigerator door open, he rubbed his stomach. He was slightly hungry, but it wasn’t unbearable. Thinking he’d hold out a little longer, and if he got really hungry he’d make a sandwich or something, he closed the refrigerator door and turned around.

A door that looked different from the other rooms on the first floor caught his eye. Feeling curious, Ji Yeonwoo approached that door. He hadn’t even thought of opening the other rooms, but this one somehow piqued his curiosity.

He’d said he could look around as much as he liked, so it would be all right to go in, wouldn’t it?

Though there was no one there, Ji Yeonwoo glanced around needlessly, then took hold of the door handle and carefully pressed it down.

“Excuse me….”

After offering a greeting to he knew not whom and quietly opening the door to enter, Ji Yeonwoo stopped dead, unable to take even a single step forward.

That room was a study. Directly ahead stood a fairly large desk made of solid wood, and on either side of the desk were bookshelves holding quite a substantial number of books. It was on a scale that couldn’t even be compared to the small bookshelf at Ji Yeonwoo’s house.

On the desk, some documents he’d been in the middle of reading lay half-open. They pertained to company business, but even looking at them, he couldn’t tell what they were about.

As his eyes swept across the study, Ji Yeonwoo turned around abruptly as if he’d spotted something. Among the dull, thick books, one book with a distinctively thin, white spine caught his attention. Perhaps because it was wedged between books of somber colors, it stood out all the more.

Having turned, Ji Yeonwoo walked toward it as if mesmerized. The title of that book was [First Snow].

‘I’m not fond of snow.’

The words he had spoken flickered through his mind. For some unknown reason, his heart began to beat loudly—thump, thump.

His white, straight fingers pulled out the book, as white as his own hand. Just as he was about to open it, something slipped out from between the pages and fell—thud—beside his foot.

A Polaroid photo had fallen beside the foot of Ji Yeonwoo, who had frozen in place.

A man wearing a padded jacket and a fur hat was lying in a pure white snowfield, drawing a V sign with his fingers. Though his clothes were thick and his full build couldn’t be made out, even at a glance, he was a pretty, beautiful type, and anyone could see he was a male omega.

‘I also have bad memories on snowy days.’

The light in Ji Yeonwoo’s eyes, staring without even thinking to pick up the photo, wavered.

‘Just a single incident. But it’s not easily forgotten.’

After fully recalling the words Choi Moohyuk had said, Ji Yeonwoo drew in a shallow breath. Somehow, he felt he shouldn’t be here, so he hurriedly picked up the fallen photo. His hands trembled and slipped several times, but he forced himself to grasp it, roughly opened the book and tucked it inside, and placed it back where it had been.

Fleeing the study as if escaping, Ji Yeonwoo stood with his back against the closed study door. Tension clouded his face. His heart, pounding thump, thump, refused to calm down easily.

The bitter expression he’d seen for the first time when Choi Moohyuk had confessed to disliking snow.

The single book that had seemed so out of place on his bookshelf.

And the photo inside it of an unfamiliar omega, taken against a backdrop of snow.

Ji Yeonwoo, who had been seizing and examining each fleeting thought like frames of film one by one, had to cut off the thoughts that kept surging in, as if slicing them with a knife.

Somehow, he felt as though he had seen something he shouldn’t have.

∞ ∞ ∞

The warehouse’s iron door opened with a scraping noise. The figure revealed between the iron doors that opened to both sides was Choi Moohyuk.

Park Jincheol, inside with the men who worked under him, saw Choi Moohyuk approaching and parted to either side, bowing their waists.

Between them, a man tied to a chair was slumped over as if unconscious.

“Is it this bastard? The one who tailed us?”

“Yes. His name is Jung Doowon, said to be Lee Hyunjoon’s long-time secretary at JT Trading.”

Park Jincheol came over and held out a phone. As Choi Moohyuk took it, his eyes sharpened like awls.

“As you instructed, he was hiding nearby, secretly taking pictures of Mr. Ji Yeonwoo.”

On the screen was a photo of Ji Yeonwoo, smiling brightly while talking on the phone with someone inside Flower Fiancé.