Then grinned.
Then drew another sketch in the storage room anyway.
??????
The ballroom at Nine Dragon Tower shimmered with quiet menace.
Gold-tipped flutes. Crisp linen. Laughter like clinking glass. Seoul’s corporate elite moved through the marble and chandeliers like sharks in silk—gleaming, silent, hungry.
Seungho stood near the center table, whiskey in hand, dressed in sharp black with an open collar. No tie. No smile.
He hadn’t spoken in twenty minutes.
Across the room, Chairman Kwon—Hye-jin’s father—watched him with a gaze polished by decades of diplomacy and disappointment. To his left, a cousin from the Kwon transport arm made a quiet comment behind a lifted glass.
Seungho didn’t need to hear it. He’d spent a lifetime reading silence.
“I told you to stay composed tonight,” Jaewan murmured from beside him. “You’re giving the vultures an open vein.”
“I am composed.”
“You’re vibrating like a struck bell.”
Seungho sipped the whiskey. “It’s not personal. It’s pressure.”
“It’s Haneul.”
A pause.
Then, “Yes.”
Jaewan sighed. “You’re usually better at hiding your tells.”
“I don’t want to hide it.”
“God help me,” Jaewan muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Do you even realize the political fallout if this gets out before the board is briefed?”
“I don’t care about optics.”
“You have to care about optics. The Jang family is already sniffing around. After you confronted Minseok, they’ve been poking holes into your international contracts. You think that’s a coincidence?”
“They can poke.”
“They can burn half the deals we’ve spent two years building.”
“And I’ll rebuild them.”
Jaewan turned toward him, voice low and tight. “Hye-jin’s family was always the shield against that fallout. You know that. We don’t need to marry their daughter. But we do need to keep their trust. You’re playing with fire, Seungho.”
Seungho looked past him. Past the room. Past the wine and the weight of a life he never chose.
And still—he was thinking about a boy in an oversized t-shirt. A boy who sketched him into the margins of college notebooks. A boy who woke up sprawled across his chest and demanded answers to questions Seungho didn’t know he’d been asking.
He wasn’t made for softness. But Haneul wasn’t softness—he was the storm that cracked the stone and made things bloom.
“Let it burn,” Seungho said quietly. “If I have to give up the one thing that feels real just to keep a boardroom happy—then I’ve already lost.”
Jaewan stared. For once, no sarcasm.
