Illusion Blind Date - Chapter 48

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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#Episode 48

Spring fidgeted with her fingers for a moment, hesitating, before she finally spoke.
“Today I met the woman my father is going to remarry.”
Even if Spring had said it carelessly, he would understand every word.
“So your father’s getting married again.”
“Yes. She was someone he’d been seeing even when my mother was alive. It looks like they’re actually going through with the ceremony.”
…….
He drank without another word, tilting the glass back.
Spring watched his throat move, watched the way his Adam’s apple bobbed, and smiled faintly.
All she’d managed to say after dressing up and going out was a demand for her share of her mother’s inheritance.
Han Sanggu, standing beside his mistress, looked nothing like the man Spring had known before.
With the bearing of a devoted, dependable patriarch, Han Sanggu attended to Lee Misoo with meticulous care, and toward No Ubin he acted with such warmth that he might have been his own son.
She’d suspected as much beforehand, but seeing it with her own eyes—the way her insides twisted couldn’t be helped.
All the way home after parting with them, she’d been thinking about it.
About stopping at a convenience store to buy Whiskey, going up to her room alone, and drinking until her nose was crooked.
But then she realized she wasn’t alone. Aunt aside, she had friends nearby—and Taemun too.
Her mood had been awful, but in front of this man, everything felt like nothing at all.
“So that’s why you got yourself all dressed up like that?”
“Yes. I didn’t want to look down on me in her eyes. It’s more modest than when I went to that blind date last time, right?”
Taemun surveyed her from head to toe with eyes half-lidded, his gaze moving methodically, deliberately.
“Doesn’t seem like anything’s meeting your standards.”
Wherever his gaze landed, Spring felt a sting, and her grip tightened on the glass.
Then she took a sip of Whiskey.
“Both are pretty. Don’t you know a beautiful person looks beautiful in anything?”
He crossed his legs and tilted his glass of Whiskey.
“But that woman has a son. You know that junior who was stalking me before?”
“That guy?”
“Yes. Seems he was just curious back then, wanted to know who I was. That’s all it was.”
“What’s his name.”
What does it matter if he knows his name?
“No… Ubin.”
Is he actually going to kill him?
That’s what Spring was thinking as she told him the name.
She didn’t want to hide something Jiemun already knew from Taemun.
Taemun repeated the name, as if inputting it into his mind.
“But he was never a good father to me, not even once. Yet he seemed to be a wonderful father to that boy.”
…….
“I thought he was a heartless person. But that wasn’t it. He was only ever like that to my mother and me.”
Speaking it aloud made the indignation rise again, made her blood boil. The alcohol was entirely to blame for this.
“Feels like I’ve been stabbed in the back.”
“Exactly! That’s exactly how I feel. So petty, so cruel.”
Taemun gazed at her face slowly, then brushed the hair falling across her cheek aside.
He couldn’t say he understood her heart completely, but he could make a guess.
If his own father had set up another household and done what Spring’s father had done, he probably—he’d spare the details, but he would never have let it slide without consequence.
Spring was different from him; she might have forgiven them generously. Without even realizing her own heart was crumbling.
“Spring.”
Taemun wished she wouldn’t do that.
She barely had enough time to look at only those who cared for her and loved her—wasting any of it on people she hated and despised was a genuine loss.
……Yes.
And besides—weren’t they beasts who had abandoned all sense of human decency?
“If a person loses the basic duty of being human and their very humanity, can they still be called a person?”
…….
“I don’t like seeing you hurt and upset because of brutes like that.”
Spring’s eyes wavered. The two pupils shimmered, a faint gloss of tears forming.
“Don’t try to be understanding. Don’t try to be compassionate. They’re just garbage. What value could garbage possibly have.”
The absence of her father in childhood and the death of her mother had left deep scars on Spring, but she had grown up more splendidly than anyone.
There was no reason to cower because of garbage, no reason to envy them.
“You’re perfect just as you are.”
“Professor……”
“You did well putting up with garbage today.”
It wasn’t much of a consolation, and he knew it, but it was the best he could offer.
Taemun refilled his empty glass and raised it.
“You really worked hard.”
And he proposed a toast.
Spring laughed at that, the sound bright and clear, and happily clinked glasses with him.
Ching—their glasses met, and they drank.
Being strong spirits, Taemun placed a grape between Spring’s lips. Soft skin grazed his fingertip before pulling away.
“I—I can eat it myself.”
Whether from the alcohol or from the strange current he was creating, Spring’s face flushed.
Taemun reached for another grape.
“Ah, come on.”
Spring, still working the grape in her mouth, stopped his approaching hand.
“P-professor, you should eat.”
Spring gripped his hand—the one holding the grape—and shook her head firmly.
In doing so, the grape burst in her palm.
“Oh, it ruptured.”
Juice from the crushed grape trickled down his wrist. Taemun tilted his tongue slightly and licked it clean.
Flustered, Spring glanced around for a tissue.
Taemun, gazing at her with something like hunger in his eyes, stood abruptly.
“……One moment.”
He rose, opened the balcony door, and stepped out for the tissue. In truth, the tissue was just a pretext—he needed to cool off for a minute.
His overheated body needed a moment’s reprieve.
Getting aroused right now would be inexcusable, no matter how you looked at it.

Watching Taemun disappear into the living room, Spring pressed both hands to her burning cheeks.

“You’re perfect just as you are.”

Could any consolation be greater than that?
Spring, who had felt like a foreign object within their circle, sensed that feeling washing away entirely.
That’s right—I’m perfect just being myself.
She replayed his words to her, turning them over slowly in her mind.
Gentle waves rippled through her chest, and a smile bloomed unbidden at her lips.
I really hit the jackpot.
Taemun—astute, deep-souled Taemun—was one of the few genuinely mature adults she had ever known.
And beyond that, he was a magnificent man with an incomparable presence and striking good looks.
The more you knew him, the more you couldn’t help but grow fonder.
But where had he gone, taking so long?
Spring craned her neck to peer into the living room.
He reappeared moments later, tissue in hand.
Thud.
Taemun closed the balcony door and settled back into his seat, flushed from either the alcohol or his own thoughts.
“Thank you, Professor.”
“For what.”
His eyes, darkened and more intense, captured her gaze.
“For everything.”
“That’s vague. Are you feeling better?”
“Yes.”
At her cheerful reply, Taemun let out a soft laugh and poured more whiskey into his empty glass.
“I’ll have more too.”
When Spring extended her glass, Taemun poured without a word.
Glug, glug.
Watching the whiskey settle into the crystal, Spring caught what sounded like his murmur.
“I won’t take responsibility if you get drunk.”
“It’s your place anyway—what does it matter.”
The strange current flowing between them, the tension, made her fingertips tingle.
Every cell in her body responded to his breathing, his every expression.
The night had grown too deep, and perhaps it was the fact that they were alone together.
Bom’s thoughts kept drifting toward something indecent.
She must be losing her mind.
How could she be thinking like this, acting shameless over Taemun moments after she’d been upset with Han Sanggu?
Bom reached for the Whiskey in front of her and drank it down urgently.
Taemun merely gazed at her with half-lidded eyes, whether he knew what was going through her mind or not.
“Don’t look at me like that. My base instincts are about to take over.”
“Bom.”
…….
At the sound of his voice calling her name, she met his gaze.
“Shall we kiss?”
His dark eyes ensnared her vision entirely.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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