Hah, seriously. Clicking his tongue as if he couldn’t believe it, Park Minwoo mulled it over before pushing back his chair with a screech and standing up.

“Come on, get up. Let’s smoke a cigarette.”

I grabbed my cigarettes and followed Park Minwoo out to the smoking area outside the bar.

The chilly night wind cooled the flushed skin on my cheeks from the alcohol. Park Minwoo, who had taken out his own cigarette and lit mine too, let out a long sigh while looking at the dark sky.

I sighed too. For him it was someone else’s business, but for me this was my story. It was really shitty.

Park Minwoo tapped the ashes of his half-burned cigarette onto the ground and turned to me, asking casually.

“......Your ex-husband doesn’t have a bad hand habit or anything, does he?”

“......No.”

“Then what...... did he cheat on you or something?”

“No.”

“Does he have a lot of debt?”

“No, none of that.”

Park Minwoo just looked at me quietly. He looked like he wanted to ask why we had broken up. Still, the fact that he didn’t ask in the end was one of Park Minwoo’s few extra merits.

I was awkward about facing him, so I just kicked at the dirt floor with the toe of my shoe.

“It won’t take long. One or two times and he’ll probably peel off.”

“Our Jaeyi really has no shame. Not once, but twice you’re asking me to do this.”

“I’ll buy you the game console you said you wanted.”

“I could do it three times. Honey, should I propose too?”

When I rolled my eyes and glared at him, Park Minwoo laughed through the cigarette in his mouth.

“So, when is your ex-husband coming? Did you agree on anything?”

“Not yet. But he’ll show up soon.”

Between Madam Yi’s words and the way Beomyeong had appeared so dramatically in many ways, he wasn’t going to back off like this.

I went back to the bar and drank the remaining alcohol with Park Minwoo while making up my mind.

That day, Park Minwoo and I were both so drunk that we crawled home on all fours.

* * *

The chance came sooner than I thought.

Beomyeong came on the first day I took down the temporary closure sign and resumed business.

Beomyeong occupied a table in broad daylight and sat there protesting with his eyes. Whenever I looked like I was about to throw him out, he kept ordering takeout, and there were over a dozen takeout bags piled up in front of him alone.

I couldn’t take it anymore, so when there was a lull with no customers, I slammed a dishcloth down on the table where Beomyeong was sitting.

“Get out.”

“One serving of tteokbokki, please.”

“I’m not selling. Get out.”

“Oh, that would be a pain to wash dishes for. Then give me one hotdog. I’ll eat here.”

He was still ignoring me completely. I lowered my voice and pointed to the front door.

“Get out, I said.”

Beomyeong, who had crossed his legs the other way, folded his arms and tilted his head as he looked up at me.

“No matter how I think about it, I still don’t get it. You lied about having a man you were going to marry, didn’t you?”

I sighed and looked at the clock on the wall.

Current time, 4:30 p.m. I had sent a text to Park Minwoo, but the guy still had an hour and a half left before getting off work.

“Why? Do I look like someone nobody would pick up?”

“It’s the opposite. We lived together for years, how would just anyone catch your eye?”

That shameless bastard...... I should have shot back right away, but for a moment I had agreed, and that had shown him an opening.

Beomyeong noticed the opening and smiled sardonically, narrowing his eyes.

“Looks like my face still works, huh.”

“So what? I’m not going to live by eating your face.”

“There’s plenty more to eat besides that.”

Beomyeong lifted the corners of his mouth proudly.

Why wouldn’t there be. Looks, family, wealth, there wasn’t a single thing missing. His personality was the only flaw, but depending on how you looked at it, even that could be seen as cute.

I snorted and turned away, grabbing the mop.

I gave up on chasing him out with words. While mopping the floor, I used the end of the rag to hit Beomyeong’s shoe hard, and Beomyeong dodged the attack by elegantly hooking his foot onto the table leg. I got annoyed and stood there, thumping the mop hard against the floor.

“You’re disrupting business like this.”

“Right. I’m disrupting your business right now, hyung.”

“Hah, how are you so brazen?”

When I looked at him with white eyes, Beomyeong stood up from his seat and matched my gaze. His eyes were steady.

I found my eyes drawn to the approaching gaze without realizing it, then bit my lip to collect myself.

The warmth lodged in those eyes that held the light tickled the back of my neck. Looking at those transparently shining eyes made me lose focus helplessly.

As expected, Beomyeong had no room to be wrong. The mood was very different from then, but they were still beautiful eyes. I had lived looking at eyes that beautiful for years, so there was no way some other guy would catch my eye.

I looked away and scratched the back of my neck hard. Beomyeong gently pulled my hand away. His breath brushed the back of my hand.

“I decided to change methods.”

“What method?”

“Since words like danger don’t work at all, what else is there? I have to seduce you with my face.”

I had no idea how that had anything to do with disrupting business. Well, if something this big and pretty kept hanging around the shop, then it would be annoying enough to draw my eyes once or twice......

But that wasn’t the important thing. Whenever I talked with Beomyeong, the conversation kept circling back on itself. It felt like being forcibly fed something I didn’t want to know. He kept dragging out questions I had been trying to bury.

“What exactly do you want to do with me?”

“Marriage.”

“So why? You said you don’t even like me.”

Beomyeong’s expression twisted strangely again.

Sometimes he acted like I had just said something I absolutely shouldn’t have said. Beomyeong tilted his head sideways in a way that made me unable to tell whether he was puzzled or annoyed.

“I said I wouldn’t confess, not that I don’t like you.”

“......What?”

What did that mean?

Beomyeong swept back his hair once with an unsatisfied expression.

“Joo Jaeyi, don’t even dream of a confession. Thinking about it makes me angry again.”

What did that mean! Was the marriage I had had some kind of split personality? I was so stunned that I lost my words.

I fumbled around in my mouth with sounds that failed to become words, and just then, the front door flew open with a strong gust of wind.

“darling!”

The wind chime attached to the door behind the running Park Minwoo jingled noisily.

I was so grateful to Park Minwoo for breaking this incomprehensible atmosphere that the word that made me feel sick also shot out of my mouth.

“darling......!”

Park Minwoo, who looked back and forth between me and Beomyeong, strode in and wrapped one arm tightly around my shoulder.

He seemed to have come straight from work, because unlike his usual hoodie-and-cap look that made him seem like a neighborhood bum, he was dressed perfectly in a suit from head to toe. He threw himself into the acting with everything he had.

“How come you came so early today?”

“Mm-hm, I left work a little early because I wanted to see you, honey.”

Park Minwoo clenched his teeth and pulled off the boyfriend act in a creepy way. When I glanced sideways, Beomyeong was looking back and forth between Park Minwoo and me with quite an interested gaze.

I had worried that if we stood side by side, Park Minwoo would look too outclassed and it wouldn’t be convincing, but thankfully Park Minwoo was also absurdly tall, so he didn’t look pathetic.

Beomyeong’s gaze briefly fell on my hand around Park Minwoo’s waist. Park Minwoo then glanced at Beomyeong as if he had only just noticed him.

“Honey, who is this?”

“Just a customer. Don’t mind him.”

I waved my hand as if telling him to get lost, and Beomyeong burst out laughing in disbelief. After a short, mocking laugh, Beomyeong rose with empty hands, having gained nothing.

“I’ll come again next time.”

Beomyeong looked back at me and Park Minwoo once more and left the shop.

We stayed glued together until Beomyeong disappeared far away, and the instant he vanished from sight, we both sprang apart as if on cue.

Only then did Park Minwoo finally catch his breath, leaning on the table and pulling down his tightly fastened tie. He must have rushed over in a hurry, because warm sweat had soaked the back of his neck.

“I thought I was going to die running here.”

Leaving Park Minwoo to catch his breath, I ran to the water dispenser and drank cold water. Only after emptying two cups in a row did a sigh of relief come out.

“Hoo......”

Park Minwoo took the cup from my hand and drank the rest of the water. Then he collapsed weakly into a chair, and I pulled out the chair beside him and sat down.

“That brutally handsome kid just now, was he your ex-husband?”

“......Yeah.”

Brutally handsome. I didn’t know whether I should feel good or bad that it confirmed that Beomyeong looking handsome wasn’t just my own bias.

Park Minwoo shook his head back and forth.

“I thought some pot-bellied guy might show up somewhere, but to think a man too good-looking to even look at would appear.”

Come to think of it, I had only told Park Minwoo that my ex-husband had shown up, and I had never explained what kind of person he was. It was impressive that he had managed to act like my boyfriend properly while knowing nothing.