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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 30
Chapter Title: A Lie Within a Lie
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“Honey! Yeon-joo!”
When Yeon-joo heard her name after the unfamiliar word ‘honey,’ she thought, *Surely not.*
*Surely not. Surely, surely this isn’t the scene I’m imagining, right?*
She turned around, her face tense, to see Mr. Joo approaching with three or four bottles of wine in his arms.
*No. I must have misheard. I must have.*
“Honey, what’s wrong?”
But as Mr. Joo drew closer, pronouncing each syllable with deliberate precision, Yeon-joo’s expression turned to one of utter horror.
*Honey. Honey?*
“Honey…?”
As Eun-seong repeated the word as if chewing on it, Mr. Joo looked back and forth between the two of them. Yeon-joo, her face taut with tension, sent him a silent, desperate plea not to say another word.
*Seonsaengnim! Don’t say anything else, please! Please!*
“Yes. Honey.”
Yeon-joo squeezed her eyes shut.
“Mr. Im Eun-seong, is there something you need from my wife?”
*Screech.* She fainted standing up.
Eun-seong looked rather taken aback as Mr. Joo appeared and abruptly declared they were married. His perfectly constructed worldview was collapsing.
*Huh…* As Eun-seong stood there with his mouth agape, seemingly at a loss for words, Mr. Joo set the wine bottles he was holding on the ground. He straightened up and stepped even closer to Yeon-joo.
“We try not to reveal that we’re married when we’re on set, but I seem to have let it slip in front of you, Mr. Im.”
As he finished, Mr. Joo looked at Yeon-joo. Then, with a tender expression, he wiped the corner of her mouth.
“You’ve got some marshmallow on your lip. How cute.”
*Screech.* She fainted for the second time.
As Mr. Joo wiped her lips, Yeon-joo swayed as if she were about to fall over backward. She had no idea how to carry on this monumental lie; it felt utterly beyond her capabilities.
*Lord… could I perhaps send them up to you as a set? If you’re busy, I can just crack my own head open first…*
*Please make a quick decision either way…*
Meanwhile, Eun-seong’s gaze sharpened. Regardless, Mr. Joo’s eyes remained endlessly affectionate, and Yeon-joo finally lost her grip on sanity.
“Hee, hee-hee.”
A deranged laugh escaped her lips.
“Hee. Hee-hee-hee, hee. Hee-hee-hee.”
Her throat trembled like a sick sheep’s as she let out a series of sputtering laughs, then she straightened her back. Well, she didn't know what would happen next, but it was clear she could at least get through the immediate crisis.
*Right! Turn a crisis into an opportunity!*
“My introductions are late, but this is my hus, hus, yes, my husband.”
Was the word ‘husband’ always this sharp and bitter? It caught in her throat, refusing to come out, but she forced it out anyway.
At that, Eun-seong’s eyes took on a meaningful glint. It was a look that hadn’t completely shed its suspicion.
The moonlight filtered through the trees as if to enhance the autumn mood, but romantic, my foot! She was so nervous that she was shivering from the cold.
“Honey, why are you trembling so much? Are you cold?”
Mr. Joo gently took her hand. He interlaced his fingers with hers, holding her hand tightly.
Eun-seong’s gaze fixed on their joined hands. Mr. Joo squeezed her hand even tighter, pressing his fingertips firmly against the back of her hand as if to say he would never let go.
Eun-seong watched them for a moment, as if admiring a painting, before finally standing up.
“You two look good together. I don’t see why you’d need to hide being married.”
“We didn’t see a reason to announce it, either. We’d appreciate it if you kept it a secret, Mr. Im.”
“Well, sure.”
Eun-seong glanced again at her hand, still held tightly in Mr. Joo’s, and then suddenly smiled.
Seeing Eun-seong’s relaxed smile, Yeon-joo bit her lip hard.
*That look, that smile.*
She knew exactly what Eun-seong was thinking.
“The weather is fantastic. You two have a good time.”
“…”
“I’ve been quite rude to your husband. I’ll be going now.”
He wasn’t fooled.
*
Only after Eun-seong had disappeared did Yeon-joo sit back down on the bench. The healing power of the campfire had long since vanished, and her mind was a fog, with nothing in clear focus.
She sighed heavily enough to make the ground sink. Then she gasped for breath like she was flailing in water.
“Why.”
Only after a long while did she part her dry lips.
“Why did you do that?”
Mr. Joo, who had been sitting a little distance away and watching her cautiously, flinched.
“Ah… well…”
“You shouldn’t have done that. You know that.”
“…I’m sorry.”
What else was there to say? Mr. Joo bowed his head and offered her an apology.
“I don’t know why I did it either. When I came to my senses, I was already holding your hand, Yeon-joo-ssi.”
“…”
“To be honest, I overheard a bit of your conversation.”
*Isn’t it less that you don’t want to show me and more that you don’t have a husband?*
“The moment I heard Mr. Im pressuring you to show him a picture of your husband, asking if you couldn’t show him because you didn’t have one, I think I just lost my mind. I just… I just thought I had to help you, Yeon-joo-ssi.”
*Ugh.* Feeling that no excuse would suffice, Mr. Joo ran a hand through his hair in frustration. Yeon-joo simply blinked, her eyes placid.
“I’m sorry. It’s all my fault. I lost my senses for a moment and did something I shouldn’t have…”
“I’m someone with no reputation or anything to lose, so I don’t care what people think, but you’re not like that, Seonsaengnim.”
“…”
“If your lie gets out, what will people say? They’ll obviously point fingers and call you a fool, and there’s no reason for you to be treated like that because of me, not a single one.”
Mr. Joo trailed off, looking at her. When he finally forced himself to meet her gaze, he saw her empty eyes, like someone who had given up on everything.
She even had an air of being detached from life and death, as if she had died and been reborn several times.
“I’m just so upset that I dragged you into this and made you a liar too.”
“Ah… it’s not like that, Yeon-joo-ssi. Yeon-joo-ssi, it’s not that, I just…”
His chest felt tight, unsure of what to say first. The thoughts piled up faster than he could speak, leaving him with a poverty of words from the start.
“I just, simply. I just wanted to help you. You said you had to keep fooling him, and I just really wanted to help you honor that wish.”
“Yes. I’m grateful and sorry, that’s all.”
“Sorry? If you say that, Yeon-joo-ssi, what does that make me…?”
He was the one who had caused the trouble, yet he was the one receiving the apology. A heat rose from the tips of his toes.
He had jumped in without thinking and made things worse, but he swore he had been sincere. It wasn’t just an empty lie to get out of the situation.
*Yeon-joo-ssi. That’s the truth. Can I tell you that?*
…Whether he should say it or not, Mr. Joo tormented his lips. Her mind was surely complicated enough already, and he knew this would only make things more difficult for her—
“I’ll be more careful from now on. I won’t interfere in your business so recklessly. I’m truly sorry.”
“Well, maybe it’s for the best. Whatever happens later, I’ll think about it then. That’s okay, right?”
As she offered a gentle smile, as if having resigned herself to it quickly, Mr. Joo was left speechless.
Just what had been piled up inside that small body for her to be able to laugh it off every time, saying it was no big deal?
What had she been through? How much had she buried?
*No matter how rude I am, can it be worse than you breaking up with me over a single text before ghosting me?*
…The one who said she looked cute eating a marshmallow.
Im Eun-seong’s ex-girlfriend, the one he’d suddenly remembered, was probably her.
“Seonsaengnim, should we head back now? People will be waiting. I think we’ve been gone for too long.”
Yeon-joo stood up, dusting herself off lightly. Let’s go back, she said. Everyone must be dying for the wine.
“By the way, Seonsaengnim. We’re in big trouble now. What are we going to do, telling such a huge lie in front of Baeunim?”
“Well, if my lie keeps making you uncomfortable, Yeon-joo-ssi, then we can just make it not a lie.”
Yeon-joo, who was picking up the wine bottles from the ground, looked up at Mr. Joo with wide eyes.
“What? How?”
“There are many ways, aren’t there? For instance, registering our marriage. If we actually get married, it won’t be a lie anymore.”
*Huh?* Yeon-joo stared at Mr. Joo, her eyes wide.
“How could you and I register our marriage? You’ve got a strange sense of humor.”
“I’m not joking. I’m serious.”
The scent of grass still lingered where Eun-seong had been.
Even as she looked up at Mr. Joo, her nose was filled with the scent of the man who had already left.
“Well, what I mean is. Living up to the words you’ve spoken wouldn’t be so bad. That’s what I meant.”
That night, it felt as if the entire world might have been dyed in his scent.
“Let’s go, Yeon-joo-ssi.”
*
“Ha! Husband, my ass!”
With no energy left to lift his rapidly sinking spirits, Eun-seong immediately left the gathering and returned to his room.
He knew this world was full of deception, but after watching that live broadcast of a fake marriage show right in front of him, his insides were all twisted up and his stomach was in knots.
“This is driving me crazy. Ah, so this is your smokescreen? You’ll even stoop to pretending to be a married couple just to fool me?”
At first, his heart had dropped. When the word ‘honey’ came out of Mr. Joo’s mouth, the world seemed to stop, leaving him with the strange feeling that he was the only one still breathing.
But one look at Go Yeon-joo’s dumbfounded expression and he knew. *Ah, it’s a show. It’s a lie.*
He could tell instantly.
“Agh, can’t even act. You think acting is something anyone can do? Not a chance.”
*Ha! Ha!* Frustrated, hollow laughs kept escaping him. When the two of them interlaced their fingers as the finishing touch to their performance, he’d had a momentary conflict. *Should I kill them or let them live? Should I stand up and expose their lie?*
He paced around the room aimlessly before opening the fridge and grabbing a bottle of water. After chugging more than half of it in one go, he let out a few heavy breaths.
*Hoo. Hoo. Hoo…*
The breaths soon turned into sighs, and Eun-seong leaned against the wall, letting his arm fall limply to his side. The image of the two of them radiating affection seemed stuck to his retinas as he muttered in a weak voice.
“Seeing that unpleasant sight has completely drained my energy. Hah…”
He had a feeling that if he continued to show suspicion, Mr. Joo would use it as an excuse to pull her into a hug for the sake of a perfect demonstration. The thought made him want to escape.
Getting away as quickly as possible was the best way to make them unclasp their hands.
So he fled. Because he wanted them to let go of each other’s hands. For them to separate already.
“Still, he gets to hold Go Yeon-joo’s hand, pretending to be her husband. How enviable.”
Something the real ex-boyfriend couldn’t even dream of.
Something he couldn’t even hope for without picking a fight just to exchange a single word.
The man who was now in the past was endlessly envious of the fake husband. At this moment, that was all he could think about.
