LSDK 10

Chapter 10

“Homeless? Did you just call her homeless?”

At Arang’s words, Jii immediately became sharp.

“Yeah, homeless.”

“Are you done talking?”

“I’m not wrong…”

At Jii’s reaction, Arang trailed off.

“Let’s stop. Forget I said anything.”

The veins on Jii’s forehead immediately stood out. She jumped up from her seat, and Arang grabbed her wrist again.

“N-No. No. That’s not what I meant. I misspoke.”

Then she pleaded desperately.

It seemed like the problem was roughly solved by this point, right?

“And if you call me homeless one more time, I’ll kill you with my own hands.”

“I’m sorry, okay?”

“……”

Pretending she had no choice, Jii decided to quietly take one step back.

“I said I misspoke.”

“Fine. Two hundred million after childbirth.”

Still, Jii thought Arang shouldn’t become completely at ease. But she also knew she shouldn’t push her too hard.

“What?”

“Fifteen million a month.”

“Hey! Even so, how am I supposed to come up with that much money?”

“Three hundred million after child—”

“Ah, fine! I get it, I get it. Fifteen million a month, two hundred million after childbirth. I really can’t go any further. Even for me, that’s impossible. Please let me off just this once.”

Arang quickly raised her hand and covered Jii’s mouth.

“…hundred million.”

“Huh?”

“I got it.”

Jii nodded reluctantly.

And so, Jii finally achieved what she wanted, and Arang no longer suspected her.

Heh!

Early the next morning, a taxi carrying Jii headed toward the . Using the phone under Arang’s name, she looked at Heo Dong-in’s picture once again.

He’s quite handsome for someone who’s about to be tricked into a fake marriage with me.

That was right. This was an obvious fraud that Jii would never have even dreamed of committing in the past.

However, nearly eight years of imprisonment and her desire for revenge had half-killed Jii’s moral sense. She stared at the picture on her phone for a while, feeling strangely uncomfortable.

The first thing that caught Jii’s eye was the man’s eyebrows, whose color and shape were perfect.

His overall features—his eyes, nose, and mouth—were not particularly sharp. Heo Dong-in simply had a gentle appearance, and it was not unfamiliar to her.

I heard that I saved this man more than ten years ago.

But in reality, he was a stranger.

Not only had a great deal of time passed between them, but because of the darkness and the urgency of the situation at the time, not even a little of that boy’s face remained in Jii’s memory.

If I had properly seen his face back then, I probably would have remembered him for the rest of my life.

Without realizing it, Jii’s fingertips traced the screen of her phone.

No matter how young he was, how could I forget a face like this? He grew up without losing any of the beauty he had back then.

He was handsome overall, but his eyebrows were especially impressive. They played a role in balancing his entire face.

Those eyebrows must have made Dong-in’s features stand out even more clearly in her mind. If so, there was no way she could have forgotten him.

Uh, what am I doing right now…

First, she felt a strange ache in her chest.

Then she realized that her fingertips had been tracing the features on the phone’s screen throughout the entire taxi ride.

She flinched and hurriedly threw the phone into her clutch bag.

Emotions are unnecessary baggage in my life.

She steeled herself.

I can’t ruin the bigger picture because of unnecessary baggage.

Come to think of it, judging by his intelligent eyes, he doesn’t look like someone who would fall for a scam marriage. Will this be okay? He doesn’t seem like the type to be easily fooled.

Fortunately, however, Jii and Arang were a one-plus-one deal.

No matter how intelligent a person was, once he was given the definite answer that Jii, who had exactly the same appearance as Arang, was Arang, it was human nature to force all the evidence to fit that answer.

That’s why the first meeting is more important than anything.

Whether I can deceive him or not, the outcome will be decided by this meeting.

Not long afterward, Jii, having steeled her heart, saw the person from the picture in real life.

First, after charging everything to Arang’s card and dressing herself from head to toe as a fully grown adult, Jii entered the hotel lobby.

And she realized that what she had worried about the previous day had become reality.

As expected, there’s no way the hotel coffee shop would be open at seven in the morning.

Only guests who had woken up early to have breakfast were coming and going through the lobby.

There seemed to be a faint light leaking from beyond the black partition, but ultimately, the coffee shop was quiet and completely empty.

What should I do? Should I call him? Or should I send a message?

While hesitating, Jii walked in the opposite direction from the guests heading toward the restaurant and moved toward the coffee shop.

No matter how close she got, she still felt uneasy.

Should I just leave? Or should I at least knock?

As Jii hesitated, the automatic door, which should have been firmly locked, slowly opened.

“Ms. Im Arang?”

“Yes.”

“If you would follow me, please, ma’am.”

Before long, Jii followed the hotel employee inside with a bewildered expression.

She was secretly anxious.

She still wasn’t used to being called Im Arang, and although the automatic door of the coffee shop had opened, it was clearly before business hours.

In the large coffee shop, the man from the picture was sitting alone by the window.

Ah!

The picture seemed to have failed to capture even 100 percent of the man’s real appearance.

Thump!

At the same time, it felt as though her heart dropped with a strange sound.

Then, the moment her eyes met Dong-in’s, Jii’s footsteps abruptly stopped.

Their gazes met in midair.

Tick. Tick.

It felt as though time was passing without having anything to do with either of them.

#4.

I can’t take my eyes off him.

Even Jii herself didn’t realize it, but at that moment, she had actually forgotten to breathe.

“Ma’am?”

If it hadn’t been for the hotel coffee shop employee, perhaps she would have remained that way forever.

What is this?

Only then did Jii start walking again, thinking.

What on earth is this?

Jii secretly placed a hand over her chest.

Thump, thump.

She had never felt this before in her life.

No.

She remembered.

There was definitely one time when her heart had pounded heavily like this.

From the moment she accidentally overheard the whispers of a man and woman who were plotting a kidnapping, through every minute and second until she hid Im Sang-ah and Heo Dong-in in a safe place and finally got them rescued, her heart had pounded exactly like this.

The symptom is the same, but today is quite different from back then.

The reason her heart was pounding so vaguely and intensely right now must have been because, when it came to fraud, she was still a first-time offender.

Or perhaps because this was the first time she had ever committed an actual criminal act.

While living at the facility, Jii had directly become involved in several dangerous situations.

Even so, they were not one-sided acts of violence. Almost all of them had been acts of self-defense.

If the facility managers had not covered them up for their own convenience, using her achievements and various other reasons as excuses, she might have accumulated several charges while in prison.

Even while taking such risks, she had always actively defended herself against violence.