"I think…… I'm still not ready to go out together."
"Me, or you, Lee Yeon-ssi?"
At his question that dug deep, Lee Yeon was momentarily at a loss for words.
"I'll do exactly as I'm told."
"……!"
"I'll only do what Lee Yeon-ssi tells me to, only what you permit."
What was that supposed to mean, that was strange. The leash that had suddenly landed in her hand felt vividly real. Lee Yeon, who couldn't be generous, trembled her eyelids.
Between a liar's deception and a killer's obedience, the one with more power was, frustratingly, the latter. No one was better at making people dumbfounded than Kwon Chae-woo.
"If you tell me to lick, I'll lick every nook and cranny."
His face smiling like warm sunshine left a strangely long aftertaste.
* * *
Huai Dao Grand Hotel banquet hall lobby.
"Look over there, the Spruce is here too."
Someone whispered that.
The moment they saw Lee Yeon's straw hat, the voices of people busy exchanging greetings momentarily ceased. The glances pretending not to look while sneaking peeks this way were quite overt.
To industry people,
In particular, the fact that a young woman and an old woman walked around as a set was perfect fodder for gossip. At sites where you had to break a sweat, sometimes even a young child was attached to them.
The pale young tree doctor sometimes exuded a smell worse than a widower's and allowed no private gaps, while the tree therapist Gye Chu-ja was everyone's first love from long ago.
In this industry where people in their fifties and sixties ruled the roost, not knowing Gye Chu-ja, the Brooke Shields of yesteryear, meant you were a spy.
One was an ancient tree, and one was a flower that never withered.
When the complicated gazes containing such evaluations poured in simultaneously, Lee Yeon felt nauseous.
'This is exactly why I hated places with lots of people.'
Eyes contained more information than one might think. Whenever facing raw emotions that passed through without filter, Lee Yeon always suffered from chills.
Just as her hands were turning cold as usual, something hot suddenly took hold of them.
"……!"
Startled, she reflexively pulled away, but the other party didn't budge. Kwon Chae-woo had interlaced his fingers with Lee Yeon's hand.
"You said you'd do as I told you."
When Lee Yeon glared with gentle eyes, the man slowly curved a smile at his lips as if savoring something.
"I will. Pick one."
An impression that was too cold to approach easily looked incredibly simple and honest when it crumbled with a smile.
"Is it the eyes, or the mouth?"
"……Excuse me?"
"The people who keep staring at Lee Yeon-ssi. Whether what you wish didn't exist about them is their eyes or their mouths. If it's hard to say, you can point with your finger."
Her head went dizzy. Perhaps because of that, the unpleasantness that had stung her nose the moment she entered the lobby vanished cleanly.
"Do those people know Lee Yeon-ssi is a married woman?"
"Excuse me? Ah, no—"
"You don't know?"
Frost settled on his face as he asked sharply in return.
As expected, bringing him was a mistake.
Kwon Chae-woo naturally committed extreme thoughts, as if he would recover his memories at any given opportunity. That fact made Lee Yeon feel a certain powerlessness.
"That…… since Kwon Chae-ssi was lying as a vegetative patient, many people probably don't know I'm married."
His eyes sweeping the surroundings were fierce. Lee Yeon was afraid that all external stimuli might become bad triggers for him—that is, triggers that would open the door to his memories—so she tugged at his clothes.
"Don't do anything."
"Is that what you want?"
"I definitely promised. That you'd only do what I permit."
He opened his mouth while looking at her frozen cheek for some reason.
"Was I not good just now?"
"……What?"
"Usually, when a dog bites someone, the owner pets it."
What kind of household raises a dog so rudely……?
Kwon Chae-woo fiddled with Lee Yeon's long hair that came down. He scrunched his nose bridge and slowly blinked his eyes.
"Was I not supposed to do this?"
It felt like being hit on the head. Lee Yeon couldn't think of an appropriate response and gazed at the man's transparent eyes for a long time.
The light brown pupils contained absolutely no impurities. Blindness resembled ignorance, and being pure made it dangerous.
The man whose ego had been bleached sometimes didn't know the baseline, and that felt extremely precarious and naive.
Rather than blaming him, Lee Yeon resolved to accurately distinguish what to permit and what not to permit.
"No, you can't."
When she spoke quite firmly, Kwon Chae-woo stared unblinkingly at Lee Yeon.
Even with his gaze fixed like a thumbtack, strangely, she wasn't scared. It was because his eye corners were pulled taut, but his pupils shook like waves. He was fiercely inputting something.
When he finally nodded obediently as if he understood, tension released in her lower abdomen and room for ease was created.
At that slow and sincere attitude, Lee Yeon almost stroked the man's head.
'What……!'
Lee Yeon blankly blinked her eyes at her own impulse. She was flustered like a novice driver who had rear-ended the car in front.
"……Kwon Chae-woo-ssi's hand is too warm."
"Do you dislike it?"
"N-no, it's not that, but isn't your body generating heat?"
She desperately deflected her thoughts.
"It's fine."
"It could be that somewhere hurts."
Not knowing that someone's worry could be this sweet, Kwon Chae-woo started smacking his lips while looking at her. She was completely unaware that his eyes slowly sweeping Lee Yeon's features were like a long tongue.
"Still, I like it."
"What?"
"Every time I see Lee Yeon-ssi, the feeling of blood rushing is crazily good."
"……Is that really fine?"
Lee Yeon asked doubtfully, but the answer was heavy.
"Absolutely."
The moment he slightly raised then lowered the corner of his mouth, silence fell over the lobby that had been packed with people. Lee Yeon also realized that everyone's gaze had now turned toward Kwon Chae-woo.
A height easily exceeding 185cm. A physique without flesh but solid. Hair trimmed refreshingly so the high nose bridge caught the eye at once. Drawn-looking eyebrows and cold, beautiful eyes—people's gazes lingered on them once each.
Just then, the meeting room doors opened.
"I'll be back. Wait here."
After exchanging eye greetings with her party, Lee Yeon turned her body following the people. In that moment, her fingers were gripped tightly enough to hurt, then released.
Only then did she realize she had been holding Kwon Chae-woo's hand the whole time.
* * *
Huai Dome Project.
The largest-scale botanical garden to be built in Huai Dao.
Various attractions such as artificial waterfalls, tropical dome-shaped greenhouses, outdoor ecological parks, aerial gardens, and tropical rainforest recreation were a public project that Hwasyang City was betting its life on to leap forward one more step as a tourist city.
The directors of each hospital gathered for the competitive bidding couldn't hide their greedy expressions while looking at the 3D simulation bird's-eye view of the Huai Dome.
However, when the presenter's long presentation finally ended, people were murmuring in a different sense.
"What did you just say?"
Someone pressed the microphone button attached to the long desk of the letter 'E'. To that, the person in charge replied mechanically without changing his expression one bit.
"I said we will conduct the competitive bidding as a public screening."
A strange silence circulated inside the meeting room. Even though it was their native language, their expressions showed they didn't understand well.
"Are you telling us…… to audition right now?"
In the voice barely suppressing anger, everyone's expressions turned displeased together. Despite such hostile antipathy, the person in charge continued his explanation.
"Is there a problem? We're trying to entrust the work to the most excellent tree doctor. The plants to be brought into the Huai Dome are scheduled to consist of the rarest and most expensive trees in the world. But how can we trust swindlers trying to snatch that position with alcohol and money?"
Lee Yeon flinched at the word swindler.
That even the director of the large D Hospital who would have been most confident in this bidding had his face distorted showed that, as expected, it was information they hadn't heard at all. The person in charge who had quietly dropped a bomb continued speaking with an unwavering expression.
"The public screening will proceed in a tournament format."
Making such a large-scale production was quite a laborious and troublesome task even for a single public official. However, due to government guidelines advocating the Green New Deal policy, they had to promote interest in nature as a marketing point.
"Since it will open on Arbor Day next year, your tournament will go out as promotional footage. Please note that documentary filming teams will occasionally accompany the screening."
The person in charge, chasing away the fatigue flooding in, added the most important words.
"The hospital finally selected will be guaranteed a 10-year contract with the Huai Dome."
Not one year, but 10 years?
The murmuring grew explosively.
After that, words like application forms and emails were heard, but they didn't enter the ears of the attendees at all.
The nation's largest botanical garden. The rarest and most expensive trees. This was a tremendous client and a contract that would become practically a pension. It was the moment when the eyes of people who had been about to protest turned completely around.