Chapter 63

Na-Yool burst into an empty laugh of bafflement. Si-Jin simply shrugged his shoulders – his characteristic gesture when declining responsibility.

“See? How you’re already imagining that more will happen? A normal person like me can’t even catch up to that level of shameful thinking.”

“All normal people must be full of crap…” muttered Na-Yool with a half-pricked, half-agitated face. Now it even felt like Si-Jin was ogling her crotch area under the table, and the gap between her legs reflexively shrunk.

Never once had Na-Yool’s legs been wide-open for him to see. But somehow, the shame that she might have inattentively granted him an eyeful of it all overwhelmed her, and she felt helpless.

She lost her appetite and put down the chopsticks she was still holding. Si-Jin burst out laughing.

“You, you closed your legs just now.”

“……Would I spread them open for anyone to see? When I’m sitting across from a pervert, who gets hard just imagining it?”

Her legs were anxiously twisted. It was the first time in her life she was anxious about not being able to quickly wear some panties. It even made her feel less human.

“Don’t get it wrong, it doesn’t really change anything whether your legs are wide open or tightly closed.”

Na-Yool had thought nothing was as unpleasant as him taking notice of her action, but being told it was pointless was quite irritating too. She frowned, and the sight of her wrinkled eyebrows drew out another smile from Si-Jin’s lips.

“Of course, the fact that you were sitting in front of me with your legs spread out was quite…”

“……”

“Well, I can’t deny it was freaking stimulating.”

He slid a foot between the legs she had desperately clapped together without a gap from thighs to knees and from knees to ankles, and slightly parted them open.

“Even if they are closed, I want to open them anyway.”

“……”

“Even if you open them widely, I want to spread them even wider.”

“……”

“I want to spread them all the way and ram in deep.”

The message was clear. In the end, what he wanted to do, he would do it, and whatever angle were her legs in did not matter at all. The straightforward expression of his unabashed and crude desire stunned Na-Yool, to the point she forgot she was in the middle of eating.

His foot soon left her legs, but his words had reached deep inside her. Heat rushed down to her sensitive spot. Astonished and confused by the change in her body, Na-Yool immediately turned her head away.

Si-Jin was still staring at her with an entirely serene composure. Their eyes inadvertently met, and as if he had seen through them the predicament Na-Yool was in, Si-Jin’s meaningful gaze focused towards under the table, but she pretended nothing was wrong.

He laughed again.

“What happened, happened. It can’t be changed.”

“……”

“Me having thoughts about your crotch, and the boner it gave me, you can’t stop it.”

“All of these are done on your own, so please do not drag me into this as a fellow pervert.”

“Are you going to pretend that you, the fearless Kim Na-Yool who from the start thought of threatening me, were miserably dragged into this relationship?”

Na-Yool repeatedly moistened her dry lips with her tongue, pondering what word to say next. But as she could not come up with any, Si-Jin took once again the lead of the conversation.

“What are you suspicious of?”

He abruptly changed composure, a face full of seriousness, and it burdened Na-Yool even more than his sudden horniness. She slowly shook her head sideways.

Suspicion towards his intentions only came over her occasionally like a habit, but it certainly weighed differently than that insinuation he had suddenly spurted out. At least, she believed so.

Because that kind of suspicion would, as a matter of course, appear when you want to believe someone, a man, had feelings for you. When you want to believe but cannot bring yourself to. And ultimately, was not believing it the same as expecting it?

Suspicion is the manifestation of expectation. Was she expecting something from him? No. Did she believe in him? As if.

Then, there was no way she had any suspicion. At least, not in that way.

[T/N: Yes reader, our FL is once again lying to herself she’s got no feelings for Si-Jin and doesn’t want him to reciprocate =_=;;…]

She would not fall into the trap laid by his leading question and made a miserable fool of herself just for the sake of his entertainment. She would not make it easier for him to toy with her either. Na-Yool strengthened her will ‒ tainted by a bit of paranoia ‒ for it to not be turned into a joke, and with a greatly bolstered determination she answered while she deliberately evaded the point.

“It’s just, it is strange for you to act like you are doing now.”

“Which part?”

“Making food for me, and then even lying that it is your first time cooking for a woman…”

Si-Jin’s gaze subtly sunk, like objecting that this was not really what she wanted to ask about. But he answered back neatly, seemingly fine with it.

“Unlike you, I’m a person who knows that I’m totally useless if I skip breakfast once.”

As he spoke, his eyes in which a faint tenderness had been glinting all along grew a little cold. His perfunctory tone carried on.

“This meal would have happened even if you weren’t there, and those dishes would have been there too.”

“……”

“You’re here, so I prepared more since I obviously couldn’t only cook just for myself. That’s all.”

Although his reply sounded extremely indifferent, his sincerity from earlier still lingered. Na-Yool ignored its inconsistency. It was as if she was the only one who knew a sense of disparity creeping in each abrupt change in their relationship and how unnatural it felt.

Perhaps, to him, there was nothing out of the ordinary. Because he was a man who thought of this feeling of inconsistency as a product of ignorance. Only, Na-Yool was not thick-skinned enough to just brush it aside.

The gaps between them all came from that. Without imagining that he could feel a similar sense of gap and distance towards her.

And that he, too, could not have guessed that she would be the same as him.

People are easily mistaken, but such gaps have always been the result of ignorance.

“…Even so, our relationship is not one where we can casually meet in such a private space and have a meal together, is it?”

“Then what are we? Fucking buddies?”

The crude words blankly came out of Si-Jin’s mouth, and with them all the air froze in an instant.

Na-Yool did not have a clue whether Si-Jin was hoping for a refute from her, or a clear confirmation. His tone had no hint of expectation or hidden intention, as though his sole aim was to assess exactly what her stand on the question was.

The ball unexpectedly tossed back to her surprised Na-Yool, and an awkward moment passed. She put down the spoon she held gawky, and carefully asked:

“…Are we not?”

No matter how you look at it, that was all their relationship was. More precisely, she might have also brainwashed herself to think that way, but even if she looked at the facts calmly, was it not so?

So to say, objectively speaking.

“Ah, so it’s true that we are only fucking together?”

To think Si-Jin was implying there was ‘something more’ here would be nothing more than a willful expectation. Such as her impression that a faint sarcasm seemed to inadvertently leak out of his perfectly collected tone.

“Even so, how can you use such words to—”

“Right, sex.” Si-Jin corrected, and the word rudely fell out like throwing at her a useless piece of junk. Na-Yool pressed her temples rigidly and continued.

“… I feel like this conversation is suddenly treading too close to my discomfort zone, but I…”

“You have no trouble having sex, but it is uncomfortable to talk about sex?”

“…… Most people who are not you, Mr. President, do.”

“Like your high-minded ex-boyfriends.”

There it was, his sarcasm. Si-Jin sometimes tended to callously lump her exes together and treat them like nothing more than dirt. Although he probably had no personal grudge against them, considering his conceited demeanor was usual.