Chapter 49

“…But why is it always me? Why? Now that I think about it, I really can’t understand.”

“I plan to, anyway.”

“Sorry?”

“If there were around 50 things I couldn’t understand before seeing that mess, now it’s about 150.”

“What 150 are you even talking about…?”

Her drunk ears were not properly functioning enough to fully catch on this long sentence, and she could only pick up a few words in between.

Her inebriated face, unusually swollen and hazy-looking, brightly stared at Si-Jin. Although he looked back at her with a blank pitying look, he candidly smacked his lips as if ogling his prey.

But none of it could penetrate Na-Yool’s drunk mind. So there was nothing to do about it. She neither could feel vexed by the contempt in his eyes, nor realize that this look was just a pretense for Si-Jin to hide the dangerous desire to eat her up.

“That bastard’s ugliness. The size of it.”

“……”

“The size of his fucked-up world conception, the size of his patheticness.” Si-Jin conscientiously paused after each word so that Na-Yool would not miss any and elaborated on, articulating distinctly. “Your position, as someone who had to be by the side of this shameless bastard. Your standards, as low as crawling on the ground.”

“…Still, that guy, he was not to that extent…”

“The size of your good-natured stupidity of speaking up for him even now.”

“……”

Speechless, Na-Yool simply blinked and reached for the glass Si-Jin had given her back. Her tentativeness to defend Sang-Hoon’s average looks merely got conveyed through her wide-eyed astonishment, but Si-Jin completely ignored it and stared coldly at her, supporting his tilted head with his hand.

“Before, I just didn’t understand, but after seeing it…”

“……”

“I freaking don’t understand.”

She expected a new revelation, but none had come at all. Si-Jin simply crudely drove the nail deeper in a clear tone.

His amused self, so engrossed by the not-to-be-missed entertaining show Na-Yool and Sang-Hoon had put on that he had even taken a seat to watch it, was gone. His voice was now stained with irritation, like the mere thought of it annoyed him.

“Is that your standard for people worth dating?”

“…At first, he was kind. He was, so…”

“Does he look kind to you?”

“Not now, but at first. The first time we met. The first few months, he really was…”

“Anyone can fake it.”

“I know. I know but…”

Na-Yool slowly hunched, then abruptly raised her head.“But you are not the kind to pretend, are you.”

“Would you like me to?”

His tone was soft but clearly flirtatious, taunting her as if to ask if she wanted to “play house” with him. Na-Yool clenched her lips and rejected the idea with a headshake.

“Why?”

“It’s creepy so let’s not.”

“You sure are good at saying hurtful things.”

“It’s not like being kind suits you much anyways.”

“But it does suit that bastard?”

She felt he was really petty, always splitting hairs, but she did not understand where that pettiness came from. Na-Yool furrowed her eyebrows.

“Why do you keep twisting my words towards this issue…”

“So from now on, date someone acceptable.”

“This is my love life, why would they need to pass your standards, Mr. President?”

“What, are you convinced you picked a good one and had a great relationship?”

“……”

“Yes, you didn’t.”

Na-Yool did not miss his point nor had the slightest excuse left to argue back. Still a bit out of it, her ears fluttered even more than usual.

Grieved by her failure at convincing herself, she became somber again and naturally refilled her glass as a result. A tongue in front of her cliqued with a “tsk!” as she was silently pouring the alcohol.

“Stop drinking, you drunkard.”

“My drink…!”

This time Si-Jin snatched her full glass before she could even lift it.

He spilled the drink without regret in the side-dish plate that neither of them had touched yet, and instead of giving the glass back in Na-Yool’s precipitously outstretched hand like he did before, he clasped said hand.

When Na-Yool looked up at him with round eyes, he had already stood up.

“Let’s go home.”

“I still need to drink more—”

“None of the 5 glasses you previously had have passed your lips.”

Stunned and in disbelief, her eyes opened wide like a rabbit’s.

Any decent person would have felt sorry for her, but Si-Jin was not, and the reason for it was the alcohol that had made her look so pitiful in the first place. He therefore cold heartedly declared: “And you can’t drink a single drop of alcohol from now on.”

“On whose order?!?”

“On your boss’ order.”

Na-Yool’s astonishment exploded in a loud empty laughter. “It’s not even working hours, ‘boss’, what boss! If you are going to be like this, just go…!”

“That’s what I said. Let’s go.”

“No, I’m telling you to leave by yourself…! I will drink a bit more by myself and go back home on my own—” Na-Yool weakly pestered as she tentatively lifted up her hand that was caught by him.

However Si-Jin, amused by her laughable state, stared at her and caught her other wrist. Trapping both of her hands in one of his, he then gently brought her to her feet.

In an instant, Na-Yool was standing up and staggered due to her tipsiness. Si-Jin’s hand right away firmly gripped her waist and supported her back with his arm.

“Going back on your own, my foot.”

His firm and judgmental tone, slightly hinting he knew things would end up this way, tickled Na-Yool’s ears, but she had no time to get angry about it.

A sensation ‒ which she did not feel when she was unceasingly prattling earlier while sitting ‒ of extreme dizziness and the nauseous feeling of her insides restlessly rumbling wave after wave suddenly came over her.

Despite the alcohol intake, it seemed she still had some consciousness after all. She felt it slip away in real time.

She walked in that state with her eyes closed, and only opened it once she was facing the counter. Through her blurry vision she saw Si-Jin discussing with the cashier but did not hear what was said as it got covered by the loud noises of the bar.

After a while, Si-Jin led her outside while steadying her.

“I asked the bar to call a substitute driver, so wait a little here.” [T/N: 대리운전 is a common service in Korea which provides a substitute driver to drive you and your car back when you’re too drunk to drive yourself, for example.]

In fact, his hands were faster at sitting her on a chair than his mouth. Na-Yool raised her head that kept drooping down and said: “I… I think I will be fine if you can just catch me a taxi.”

Instead of replying, Si-Jin’s eyes glared down at the top of her head. Na-Yool could feel it even without looking at it, its message perfectly clear: “You? You will end up crawling home”.

“Since you also had a few drinks too…” she added, as she held back a queasy breath.

“Not as many as you.”

“…This, I simply easily get drunk. It’s not that I drank too much—”

“You drank 4 bottles by yourself.” Si-Jin bluntly pointed out the truth without any derogatory comment, silently inviting her to reconsider her statement.

Na-Yool was so inebriated to the point of being sure she had drunk all 5 glasses he had taken from her that she could not even rightly assess how much alcohol she had tonight. So if he said so, it must be right, however…

“No, I usually cannot drink that much.” This was the truth. Because it was way past her drinking limit. “You probably mistook it for the ones we drank togeth…”

“Out of all 6 bottles.”

“…I mostly drank beer…”

“And a bottle and a half of soju.”

“……”

“My memory is flawless; I remember perfectly. More than your drunk self, too busy rambling about.”

Her shot for a way-out fell flat. Na-Yool cupped her forehead and took a deep breath.

“Can’t you pretend not to remember and let me off? You know today has been tough for me.”

“Who told you to have it tough?”

The answer that came back without a pause in-between was incomparably harsh. It was the same as saying “Who told you to go meet that bastard”.

With a “Who do you think is the most pissed about this matter?” expression on his face, as if just thinking back on it very much angered him, Si-Jin frowned in a look of reproach and looked down at her.