To My Brother’s Friend - Chapter 2

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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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Chapter 2
A deep, heavy fragrance—dark chocolate mingled with almond and sandalwood—wafted toward me in a sudden wave.
At the same moment, a large warmth settled upon my shoulders.
The throbbing headache vanished in an instant.
“I hadn’t heard the class was being held at the Hotel.”
Beom Gwon-yeol.
My older brother’s friend, the one with whom I shared the grief of losing my only blood relative, and the designated successor to the Beom Ho Group—
“…Oppa.”
Still the man who held my first love.
“What brings you here at this hour?”
“I had a meeting in the Hotel Lounge. It ended earlier than expected. I came down and saw you. So I came here.”
Kim Shin-woo swallowed hard as he watched the two of them converse.
‘It’s… it’s really Beom Gwon-yeol.’
He had managed to insert himself into events and gatherings attended by those who wielded influence in politics and business through his network.
Yet even making eye contact with Beom Gwon-yeol proved difficult.
Those men whom he had considered remarkable wagged their tails before Beom Gwon-yeol just as he did before them, scrambling for scraps—a sight that was nothing short of shocking.
Even among the elite, Beom Gwon-yeol existed on an entirely different plane.
Even those who conducted themselves like royalty deferred to him.
The deep-rooted honor they prized so greatly could be shattered by a single line in the ledger of secrets held by the Beom Ho Group.
He wielded a power and authority that was nothing short of divine.
And now that Beom Gwon-yeol stood before me.
“However—”
Kwon Yeol turned his gaze toward Kim Shin-woo without asking who he was.
He simply looked down at him with dry, measured eyes.
Yet that alone was sufficient to overwhelm him.
“….”
I had to respond.
How could I meet Beom Gwon-yeol without making some kind of appeal!
But Kim Shin-woo’s lips refused to part.
Cold sweat trickled down his spine.
Merely holding his gaze, he felt the suffocating pressure of a noose around his neck, unable to breathe properly.
The tremor in his pupils, the volume of air he drew in, the rough movement of his Adam’s apple, the frantic beating of his heart—Beom Gwon-yeol seemed to be gauging all of it, observing each detail.
Whether to crush him or let him live.
“This is Kim Shin-woo.”
It was a composed and elegant voice that introduced him in his stead.
“He is the son of Lee Jung-seon, the director of Goyo Gallery, who is taking the knot-tying class.”
“Goyo Gallery.”
Now even Kim Shin-woo’s vision began to fade white.
The way Kwon Yeol murmured it, as if committing it to memory, made it seem as though he were inscribing his family’s name into the ledger of death in his mind.
His heart, which had nowhere left to fall, now seemed to shatter into pieces.
“The director must be deeply troubled.”
Kwon Yeol’s dark pupils narrowed coldly as he regarded the vacant-eyed Kim Shin-woo.
“Your son seems unable to speak.”
Ah. Kim Shin-woo’s wide-open eyes trembled finely, as though an earthquake had struck.
He felt it instinctively—Beom Gwon-yeol was offering him one last chance.
Cold sweat beaded on Kim Shin-woo’s forehead as he finally managed to part his lips.
“Ah, h-hello. I’m, I’m Kim Shin-woo. It’s, it’s an honor to m-meet you like this, M-Managing Director Beom Gwon-yeol.”
His trembling voice sounded exactly like the bleating of a goat.
Kwon Yeol added quietly, his expression unmoved.
“He can speak, it seems. Yet the trouble still weighs heavily upon him.”
“…Brother.”
Hee-jo called to him gently in restraint, then turned to Kim Shin-woo with an apologetic expression.
“I’m sorry. There was no ill intent behind it, so I’d be grateful if you could understand—”
“‘Shin-woo’—”
Standing behind Hee-jo with his arm around her shoulders, Kwon Yeol addressed Kim Shin-woo as she had addressed him, tilting his head slightly.
“Will you continue sitting there?”
“Pardon?”
“I asked if you’ll keep wasting our time with that vacant expression.”
Hee-jo gripped the clutch resting on her lap tightly.
She loved how Kwon Yeol bound the two of them together with that single word—”our.”
She loved it so much that she feared she might carelessly reveal her feelings, heedless of time and place.
The throbbing pain in her head gradually began to subside.
“Get up now. Don’t waste any more time.”
“….”
“Hee-jo is not for someone like you.”
Ah. Her pale hands clenched even tighter. Nail marks dug deep into the clutch, but Hee-jo could not release her grip.
At that same moment, Kim Shin-woo sprang to his feet as though a spring had propelled him upward.
“I, I’m terribly sorry. I, I’ve been most rude.”
Like a man fleeing from death itself, Kim Shin-woo hastily retreated from his seat.
“His feet are quick. His words are slow.”
Kwon Yeol watched Kim Shin-woo’s retreating figure without turning around, then withdrew his hand from Hee-jo’s shoulders and moved toward the empty seat across from her.
As though it had always been his place from the beginning.
“….”
Hee-jo cleared her throat.
She forcibly suppressed the impulse to reach out and grasp his hand as it withdrew.
It seemed this clutch would not be usable after today.
“Yoon Hee-jo.”
Whether or not he knew what lay in her heart, Kwon Yeol called her name in that deep voice that resonated to the depths of her chest, then unfastened his jacket button and sat down.
A staff member immediately moved to approach, but he raised his hand lightly, blocking their advance.
Watching the man’s simple gesture—from which emanated an innate authority and aristocratic elegance—Hee-jo suddenly came to her senses as though doused with cold water.
Jin Seo-ryeong had no reason to worry at all.
I felt the vast chasm between Kwon Yeol and myself with piercing clarity in every moment we spent together.
“What are you doing in a place like this?”
Hee-jo quickly composed herself with a faint smile.
Concealing her emotions had become second nature to her.
“I was at a meeting too.”
“With that dimwit?”
“How were the people you had a meeting with today, oppa?”
At Hee-jo’s quiet counter-question, Kwon Yeol, who had been staring at her intently, let out a soft laugh.
“You’ve grown up, Yoon Hee-jo.”
He, known for his cold temperament, smiled like this occasionally in front of me.
So beautifully and enchantingly.
It was merely the corners of his eyes softening slightly and the corners of his mouth lifting—so why did it dazzle me so?
Hee-jo drew in a slow breath.
She knew better than anyone that his smile contained none of the emotion she desired.
Because the emotion furthest from love is not hatred, but pity.
“So, whose idea was this?”
She hesitated, then slowly shook her head.
“…I don’t understand what you mean.”
“You understood perfectly, didn’t you?”
Tap. Tap.
Kwon Yeol tapped the table intermittently with his index finger.
In that moment, Hee-jo thought it sounded exactly like her own heartbeat.
“Is this your first time?”
“First time doing…what?”
As Hee-jo, whose gaze had been captured by his gesture, answered a beat too late, Kwon Yeol’s eyes narrowed.
He swallowed down a filthy feeling, as though gritty sand were grinding between his teeth, and spoke quietly.
“A blind date.”
Yoon Hee-jo pressed her lips firmly together and drew in a slow breath.
It was a habit that emerged whenever she tried to gauge how much to reveal.
Then Kwon Yeol felt as though he were biting sharp shards of glass hidden between the gritty sand that had been grinding in his mouth.
When she was young, though she was shy, she had been honest with her emotions and laughed brightly.
After Hee-jae died, Hee-jo changed.
The girl who had become a woman, concealing her feelings behind a subtle smile, was someone even he could not easily read.
For a moment, a sharp ache bloomed in his chest, but Kwon Yeol did not bother to pursue it as it faded.
That wasn’t what mattered right now.
“Have you been to these kinds of meetings before without my knowing?”
These kinds of meetings.
At his words, Hee-jo bit gently at the tender flesh inside her lip.
His words sounded as though he were speaking not of a blind date, but of a display case put up for sale at an exorbitant price.
I knew it stemmed from inferiority complex. But knowing and feeling were entirely different matters.
I felt like I had become an auction item.
A useless trinket cast out by Beom Ho Group.
Something that couldn’t be carelessly discarded, yet couldn’t be held onto indefinitely either.
“It’s my first time.”
And it would be the beginning.
If the blind date with Kim Shin-woo didn’t go well, Madam Jin Seo-ryeong would bring another Kim Shin-woo before me.
Until the dead weight clinging to the eldest son’s side finally fell away.
“First time.”
“Yes, my first time.”
Tap. Tap.
Kwon Yeol drummed his index finger against the armrest.
First time. My first time, he said.
It seemed Yoon Hee-jae’s soul had properly taken root within me.
The fact that my mood had turned this foul hearing that idiot call himself her first—it was proof enough.
“Is this what you wanted?”

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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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