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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 22
Chapter Title: A Kind of Revenge
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“Have a seat, Seonghyeok.”
Seonghyeok obediently followed Arim’s instruction for now. He felt he needed to hear the full story.
As soon as Arim sat down gracefully, a wide smile on her face, his tightly sealed lips opened.
“A blind date?”
“Yeah.”
“You and me?”
He didn’t even want to utter the word “us.”
“That’s right. We’re on a blind date today.”
Seonghyeok let out a hollow laugh. He was so dumbfounded that he couldn’t even feel angry.
Though the circumstances were slightly different, he wondered if Yeongin had felt something similar when she was suddenly thrust into a blind date with him. He was abruptly given a chance to walk a mile in her shoes.
“What exactly happened?”
“I heard a rumor that your mother was looking for a marriage partner for you, so I begged my mom to let me meet you officially.”
“You must have known I’d obviously reject you if you told me directly.”
“……”
The tips of Arim’s ears turned slightly red. She had known, but hearing it from him still felt a bit awkward.
“Your mother contacted my mother directly?”
“No. There’s a matchmaker, Jin Yeosa, and she helped.”
Seonghyeok, not understanding the true meaning of "helped," asked irritably.
“Why on earth did you pull a stunt like this?”
Arim was unfazed by his calling her actions a “stunt.” She hadn’t done this without knowing Cha Seonghyeok’s personality, and she had braced herself for this much.
“I wanted to meet you properly, in a formal setting.”
She had never once met him outside before. She had never shown him herself with makeup perfectly done and beautifully dressed. So she wanted to appear perfectly styled and surprise him.
“That way, I thought you might see me as a woman, not just your friend’s younger sister. We need a shift in our relationship, Seonghyeok.”
“Don’t say ‘us.’ I have no desire to be linked with you as ‘us’.”
The only person, besides his family, he ever referred to as “us” was Yeongin.
“And snap out of it. The place or situation isn’t the problem; I’m simply not interested in you. Where are you getting this delusional confidence from?”
“Someone like me isn’t bad as your partner, is she?”
Seonghyeok’s eyebrows twitched irritably.
“And where does this confidence come from?”
Arim immediately shifted her stance as if she had never been confident.
“Tell me what I lack, what you don’t like. Then I’ll make up for it and fix it. I’ll become the woman who suits you.”
Right now, Arim’s only thought was that she had nothing to lose, so she should try everything she could. If she could only have a man who belonged to the top 0.01% of South Korea, groveling and begging was nothing.
“Can you really fix it?”
“I can do it. I’ll do anything. Just say the word, Seonghyeok.”
Seonghyeok looked directly into her eyes, which sparkled with anticipation, and flatly uttered a dry remark.
“Can you fix being rotten to the core?”
“……”
“Wouldn’t that require being reborn?”
Arim, who had barely managed to collect herself from her daze, bit her lip and mumbled.
“Aren’t you being too harsh?”
Her body trembled with humiliation and shame.
“Then did you expect kind words from me? Did you think I’d praise you for going to all this trouble to secretly arrange such a meeting? If you’re going to act on your own, you should be prepared for unpleasant words. Don’t go playing the victim.”
“No matter how angry you are, you don’t have to deliberately choose words just to hurt me.”
“I mean it.”
“What?”
“I’m not saying this because I’m angry and don’t mean it. I’ve always thought that way.”
“……”
Arim’s eyes became bloodshot. It felt as if her head had been plunged into mud.
“Whatever affection I might have had is gone, so don’t ever do this again.”
Apart from being annoyed and displeased, Seonghyeok was grateful to Arim for one thing.
That she had set the stage for him to unleash such harsh words.
It was a form of revenge.
He couldn't openly tell her to stop bothering his woman, and feeling frustrated, he took the opportunity to punish her.
While there was indeed an intent of revenge and retribution, he hadn't deliberately spoken more harshly. It was nothing but the unvarnished truth.
“I won’t. I’ve lost all affection for you too.”
Arim was furious about the money she had spent on this meeting. It was no different from having paid 30 million won to buy humiliation.
“Then, thank you.”
“I’ll be watching to see what kind of amazing woman you end up marrying.”
“Be my guest.”
Seonghyeok scoffed at Arim, who was glaring at him with venomous eyes, and stood up. But the moment he stepped out of the restaurant, his phone rang.
The caller was his mother.
He answered the call with a stern expression.
“I was just about to call you.”
“Did you meet her?”
“Are you really doing this?”
“Did you meet that girl, Chae Arim, or whatever her name is?”
Seonghyeok immediately sensed something was off, and a question mark appeared in his eyes.
“I met her.”
“That wasn’t her.”
“What wasn’t?”
“The person you were supposed to have a blind date with today wasn’t her. I was trying to set you up with the Hongeun Group daughter I mentioned last time, but that girl, Chae Arim, intercepted it.”
He couldn’t make sense of what she was saying.
“Intercepted?”
“There’s a woman who arranges meetings, Jin Yeosa…”
“I know.”
“You know her. Anyway, that woman and Arim’s mother conspired to pull this off. I just happened to run into the Hongeun Group daughter and her mother at the shop, and they had no idea about today’s appointment. I called Jin Yeosa right away, and she confessed everything while crying. It was just so preposterous…”
This was clearly a situation where the phrase “all sorts of antics” applied.
“What was Jin Yeosa thinking when she pulled this stunt? Did she think she wouldn’t get caught?”
“Jin Yeosa said that Arim’s mother told her that if she just arranged the meeting, she would handle all the repercussions. She desperately needed money, and when she received a large sum, she lost her head for a moment and begged for forgiveness.”
“None of them are in their right mind.”
“She claimed she believed you were very fond of Arim and that things would pass without issue. Is that true?”
“How could that be true?”
“Good heavens. What a truly chilling family.”
“……”
Seonghyeok agreed with his mother’s words, yet he couldn’t fully agree. After all, Chae Yeongin was also part of that family.
“Son, it’s also not true that Arim’s brother is your best friend, is it?”
“No, it’s not. Even if we meet occasionally.”
“I told you I don’t want you getting involved with that family.”
He had heard those words three years ago. But he still didn’t understand why his mother had suddenly told him not to associate with Beomjun after more than ten years of being friends.
“Tell me why.”
“I just don’t like it. Can’t you just listen to your mother without asking for a reason?”
“You don’t listen to me either, Mother.”
“I told you I’d choose my own marriage partner, but you secretly set up a blind date for me and tricked me into coming here. Just because someone else showed up doesn’t erase your fault.”
“Seonghyeok, Mother…”
“I’ll say it again: I choose my own woman.”
“Even if you choose, we have to approve.”
What Seonghyeok needed now wasn't his parents’ approval, but Yeongin’s.
The reason he kept Yeongin’s existence a secret was not because he was afraid his parents wouldn’t approve, but because he hadn’t yet received Yeongin’s permission.
He was waiting because he couldn’t just arbitrarily reveal Yeongin to the world when she wasn’t ready.
“Don’t ever arrange a meeting like this again. And for the time being, even if you ask to meet, I won’t, so please understand that.”
“Seonghyeok.”
“I’m hanging up.”
After saying what he had to say, Seonghyeok hung up and stepped into the elevator that had just arrived.
***
Yeongin, trudging through the yard where darkness had thickly settled, stopped dead in her tracks.
It was the moment she heard the front gate creak open behind her.
“Hey.”
The slurred voice that pierced the back of her head made her imagine the smell of alcohol.
Yeongin suppressed the urge to pretend she hadn’t heard and just go inside, slowly turning around. And she quietly watched her older sister stumble drunkenly towards her.
“Guess who I just met?”
Arim couldn’t stand still, swaying this way and that as she answered her own question.
“Seonghyeok.”
“Oh, really?”
Yeongin felt a slight tremor inside but maintained a poker face on the outside.
“I went on a blind date with Seonghyeok today.”
“Ah, I see.”
This time, she couldn’t stop her pupils from trembling.
Fortunately, Arim had drunk too much to notice anything.
“You’re on a level where you go on blind dates with guys like Oh Changgeun, and I’m on a level where I go on blind dates with men like Cha Seonghyeok. Understand?”
Arim’s needless boasting in front of Yeongin was merely to compensate for her shattered pride and self-esteem. Ever since childhood, whenever something happened, Arim would always console herself by disparaging Yeongin in this manner.
“Don’t walk around with your head held high; know your place.”
Arim poured all the humiliation she had suffered from Seonghyeok today onto the innocent Yeongin.
Yeongin didn’t know that Arim was on her way home after drinking alone, nor that Arim’s eyes were swollen and red because she had cried her heart out in frustration. She was simply bewildered by the fact that Seonghyeok had gone on a blind date with her sister.
“There’s probably no one who knows their place better than me. You don’t have to worry about that.”
A bitter smile appeared on Yeongin’s lips, then vanished.
“Good to hear.”
Arim curled one side of her lip and walked past Yeongin. However, Yeongin couldn’t move an inch, her mind racing to process everything.
He said he was driving, but was he actually on his way to a blind date?
—I’ll tell you when you accept me.
—And for you, I could become as childish as needed.
—Right, don’t bother. I’ll do it.
His voice was still vivid in her ears.
She even felt a sense of betrayal towards him, who had shaken her with such tender words—words that made her heart ache—while on his way to a blind date with her own sister.
She briefly wondered if it was an attempt to provoke jealousy, but quickly dismissed the thought. If his intention had been to make her jealous, he would have proudly declared he was going on a blind date.
She became even more confused, wondering if he truly intended to marry her sister. The thought of them standing side by side made her choke.
She desperately hoped she would never have to call Cha Seonghyeok her brother-in-law.
With a conflicted expression, Yeongin looked up at the sky, which was as dark as his eyes.
