To My Brother’s Friend - Chapter 24

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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 24
I bit the tender flesh inside my lip as his cool gaze pierced down at me.
“Just leave the way Manager Seok brought you in. It’s a door no one knows about, so you can come and go without anyone noticing. This is a secret between you and this old man. Understood?”
With Chairman Beom speaking so definitively, no one would ever know that I had visited Jeoksanwon today.
Not even Kwon Yeol.
“…It didn’t happen.”
I drew a shallow breath and lifted my head, meeting his gaze.
“We didn’t meet.”
Unwavering black eyes and anxious hazel eyes locked together in a tense moment.
Tap.
Kwon Yeol touched the space between my brows with his index finger, gently.
“Since you understand, relax. You’re furrowing your brow.”
“…Brother?”
“Beom Jae-yeol. He hasn’t contacted you?”
I blinked at the unexpected name.
Ever since he’d driven me from the Foundation Building Basement Parking Lot to the Hospital.
“I’m calling in the favor of driving you to the Hospital. Don’t forget my kindness later.”
After that parting remark, there had been no contact from Jae-yeol whatsoever.
“No, there hasn’t been. I don’t even have his contact information.”
At my answer, the sharp edge that had been present in Kwon Yeol’s eyes softened slightly.
“Don’t answer calls from unknown numbers from now on. If anything seems off, contact me immediately.”
“That seems like a lot to contact you about…”
Hmm. Kwon Yeol narrowed his eyes and cupped my cheek in his large hand, rubbing my lower lip with his thumb in a kneading motion.
“Ugh, Kwon Yeol, Brother?”
“Aren’t we at a point where we need to contact each other over every little thing like this?”
His fingers traced across my even teeth as they passed.
“And that’s what everyone else needs to see too.”
Kwon Yeol lowered his head.
In the moment when our breaths mingled, drawing impossibly close.
His brow furrowed slightly.
Though I appeared freshly showered, the heat radiating from my body was higher than usual.
My breath too was hot enough to warm his lips.
Kwon Yeol tilted my chin up and studied my face once more.
My eyes were still flushed red.
At first, he’d attributed it to the aftereffects of the shower.
But my pupils were strangely unfocused and drowsy.
-I was just about to go to sleep.
“This early?”
-I’m a bit tired.
Recalling our recent phone conversation, Kwon Yeol gently wrapped his large hand around my neck, his touch careful as he gauged the warmth transmitting through his palm.
A sharp breath escaped him.
Startled, I shrank back, hunching my shoulders.
“It feels hot, maybe.”
Or perhaps not.
He pressed his palm against my forehead.
His breath was scorching, yet the rest of me seemed fine enough.
“I’m… I’m fine, Hee-jo’s Brother.”
“You don’t even know how to contact me first. All you can say is that you’re fine. There’s so much I’ll have to teach you, Yoon Hee-jo.”
My complexion seemed paler than usual.
Kwon Yeol wrapped an arm around my shoulders and guided me toward the Bedroom.
“Lie down. I’ll bring medicine.”
“No, I’m really fine.”
“I’m sure you are.”
“I mean it… I think I just need sleep.”
At my words, Kwon Yeol paused in thought, then shrugged off his jacket and began unfastening his cufflinks.
“Then let’s sleep.”
My eyes widened dramatically.
Sleep? Surely… did he mean ‘that’ kind of sleep?
He removed his vest and loosened his tie, and just as his hand moved toward the buttons of his dress shirt—
“I… I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Hmm?”
“I have… a cold coming on. If I pass it to you, it might affect your condition.”
Kwon Yeol has no idea what he consumed earlier, or how much he expelled. He couldn’t possibly know.
Logically, I understood that was only natural, yet my chest swelled with sorrow and disappointment.
My nose stung sharply with the ache of it.
“I think it’s best you go home tonight.”
“You said you’d sleep.”
Ah. I closed my mouth, then bit my lower lip.
‘He must mean… that kind of sleep.’
As he’d said just moments before, our relationship had to change.
Which meant…
I could no longer expect the same tenderness from Kwon Yeol that he’d shown me as a brother.
I shouldn’t even hope for it.
He, who had willingly sacrificed a year of his life to honor his promise to Hee-jae, had walked into a prison without bars of his own volition in exchange for being freed from Beom House. For someone so meticulous in all things, the practice of appearing as the perfect couple would be equally thorough.
My throat ached and my head throbbed, but I forced myself to stop these meaningless thoughts and moved toward the Bedroom.
“I’ll shower first.”
“…Yes.”
Watching his broad back turn without hesitation toward the Bathroom, I felt something catch in my chest—a strange, lodged sensation.
Before he arrived, this place had been my only sanctuary, the one space where I could rest at ease.
Until he arrived, this place was the only space where Hee-jo could truly rest at ease.
Home.
A sanctuary where I could reminisce about my brother, eat without formality, pour out my emotions or contain them.
But now….
It had become the home of a man who had decided to take a woman he didn’t love as his wife—
For a span of one year, it was nothing more than a vast theatrical stage where I had to deceive myself at every moment to keep my feelings hidden.
‘I should take some medicine.’
Once intimacy began, it rarely ended, and I would collapse into sleep only after being driven to exhaustion until dawn.
Today would likely be no different.
Though my body was weary, I didn’t want to let that moment slip away.
More frightening than my aching body was the thought of letting time spent with Kwon Yeol simply pass by.
A relationship with a fixed time limit of one year. I had no luxury of rejecting his warmth.
It was just as I was about to leave the bedroom.
The bathroom door opened, and Kwon Yeol emerged, shaking the water from his wet hair with a towel.
His upper body was completely exposed, with only pants covering his lower half.
Water droplets falling from his wet hair traced down his firm chest and seeped deeply into the grooves of his precisely defined abdominal muscles.
“You said you brought the group uniforms that were distributed during the volunteer work last time.”
At the sound of his low, thick voice, I suddenly came to my senses and turned my body, nodding.
“Yes, that’s right.”
Last month, there had been a large-scale volunteer activity by Beom Ho Group commemorating Kwon Yeol’s promotion to executive director.
I had been called to attend in my capacity as both an instructor affiliated with the Cultural Foundation and a sponsored individual.
Jin Seo-ryeong always invited me, saying “you’re practically family to us,” but at the actual event, she had me handle all the miscellaneous tasks like distributing the group uniforms.
It was an elegant warning—though we were in the same place, my position was clearly different from theirs, and though they cared for me, I shouldn’t harbor foolish dreams.
I accepted my role with a familiar smile.
After the event ended, when the person in charge of the site left to prepare for urgent protocol matters, disposing of the remaining clothes naturally fell to me.
Pressured by the need not to be late for the Chairman’s family dinner, I hastily left the uniforms at my home and hurried to Kwon Yeol, who was waiting in the parking lot.
“I’m sorry, I was putting away the remaining uniforms.”
“You did it alone?”
“It wasn’t much. Though I doubt you’d need them, just let me know if you do. I have the men’s sizes sorted by fit.”
It was something I said casually in the car heading to the restaurant, trying to shake off the tension.
‘I can’t believe he remembered that.’
As if he remembers everything I say.
‘Useless thoughts.’
I shook my head slightly and turned toward the wardrobe, brushing away the idle musings.
But perhaps I had moved too abruptly.
Suddenly, my vision spun—the world tilted dizzily before me.
“Careful.”
Kwon Yeol, who had drawn close without my noticing, firmly caught my wavering body.

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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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