"Excuse me, but what is your relationship?"
At that moment, Joo Dong-mi asked, looking back and forth between the two.
It was a timely and necessary question. Lee Yeon looked into the man's stubborn eyes with an expressionless face.
"He's... my employee."
If all his actions were due to the syndrome's symptoms, she needed to see with her own eyes the difference between genuine passion and pathological symptoms.
"Why leave out the part about sleeping together every night?"
Kwon Chae-woo burst into a short laugh. That brief mockery was so biting that Joo Dong-mi's eyes went round as she gauged the situation.
A sudden silence fell.
"......Ah, I see. You're young, so that's understandable. These days, that's practically essential."
However, Joo Dong-mi, who had stiffened momentarily, quickly regained her composure. She was a woman who appeared solid not just on the outside but from within as well.
"Then may I have your business card?"
"My employee doesn't have a business card yet, but would this do?"
It was the beginning of the test she had launched.
Lee Yeon hastily offered her own business card. Joo Dong-mi bowed once more and received it respectfully.
"Ah...! You're a tree doctor?"
She looked at Lee Yeon with wide, delighted eyes. Then she swept her gaze over Kwon Chae-woo once, meaningfully—precisely, with eyes that seemed to be savoring something.
"How does a tree hospital employee beat a wild boar to death with an axe? Aren't you wasting your talent recklessly? Excuse me, but what exactly do you do at the tree hospital?"
"I trim flowers."
The man answered indifferently, his thorn-like gaze still deeply embedded in only one person.
"Fl... flowers, you say."
Something could be seen deflating from Joo Dong-mi's face. She had been frowning, but suddenly turned her body toward Lee Yeon.
"Um, when we do rescues in the mountains, sometimes we damage trees. May I contact you in those situations?"
Lee Yeon had never gathered customers this way before and was flustered, but she tried to act composed.
"Yes, of course."
Mr. Chuja, I got one...!
Meanwhile, Joo Dong-mi's ardent gaze remained fixed on Kwon Chae-woo.
Even knowing that he was obsessively pulling at another woman's wrist, her eyes, she seemed unbothered.
Lee Yeon wasn't well-versed in romantic relationships, but Joo Dong-mi's attitude was quite clear. It was confidence.
The one who should have been tested was clearly Kwon Chae-woo, yet she couldn't shake the thought that she too had been swept up in it.
"Then I hope you recover quickly. And next time we meet, please tell me your name first thing."
And so Joo Dong-mi came and went like a storm. Her colleagues gathered to one side pounded her back and ruffled her hair wildly.
"I don't understand what this is about, Lee Yeon-ssi."
"......"
"Employee?"
The voice asking low, as if chewing over the word, was bleak.
"Is that all you have to say when introducing me? You know perfectly well when my eyes roll back, so why do you keep showing me your back?"
The gaze glaring at her in warning was extraordinary. Lee Yeon barely managed to swallow.
"You know what I'd do if I chased after you."
"Joo Dong-mi-ssi is—"
—the moment Lee Yeon tried to add.
"Since when did you call her Dong-mi?"
Kwon Chae-woo rose from the bed. He cast a large shadow over the crown of Lee Yeon's head and laughed low.
"Lee Yeon-ssi has only touched trees, so you wouldn't know, right?"
In his eyes, which looked down at her with only his pupils sliding, a strange gleam circulated.
"You really treat a dog like a fucking bitch."
* * *
The two didn't speak the entire way home. Kwon Chae-woo turned his head to look only out the window, and Lee Yeon idly fiddled with the steering wheel.
Thus the car interior flowed with cold air.
Lee Yeon, who had been stealing glances at him, ended up meeting eyes with the man reflected in the glass window.
"......!"
If anyone was caught peeking, it should have been Kwon Chae-woo.
He merely raised and lowered the ends of his eyebrows, his cold expression unchanged. But even from a brief glance, she could clearly see a dark rapture seeping into his face.
It was Lee Yeon who was startled and averted her eyes instead. Her heart pounded unnecessarily and her mouth went dry.
One cheek exposed defenselessly to him tickled. His gaze, harmful as flower pollen, kept sticking to her so that her skin felt as if it were swelling. That unfathomable sensation continued until they arrived home.
It was a suffocating drive home.
Kwon Chae-woo yanked the patient gown the doctor had hastily given him from the back of his neck. The moment they passed the front door, the motion of stripping off clothes—back, head, arms in sequence—was as natural as shedding skin.
The simple bandage wrapped around his wrist, the thick bandage across his torso. His hair and face crusted with dried blood.
Suddenly he tilted his head askance.
"Wash me."
"......M-me?"
"If a dog goes out to play and gets dirty, the owner has to wash it clean. Dry its fur too."
She was utterly speechless.
"This is basic, but I guess since you've only touched trees, your skills are lacking."
"You told me not to volunteer before...!"
"Volunteering is an act without compensation—"
He smiled faintly as he slowly approached.
"But I'm planning to return double whatever Lee Yeon-ssi does for me. How shameless a bastard do you think I am?"
"......"
"Wash me."
Despite his composed tone, his pupils silently aimed downward, making her body stiffen.
The bathtub was narrow.
Kwon Chae-woo sat with his legs spread loosely, propped against the end of the tub. Every time he moved, tepid water spilled in handfuls onto the tile floor. The faint blood washing from his face and hair spread like ink deep into the tub.
The man, head tilted back, turned his pupils at the sound of Lee Yeon entering. His prominent Adam's apple bobbed slowly.
"......"
"......"
Moisture pressed against skin.
Lee Yeon frowned as she looked at the man submerged in water without observing basic rules.
"The bandages are all soaked!"
"You said they'd be redone anyway, the doctor."
A pattering sound of water fell over his languid voice.
"Then why on earth did you go in wearing pants?"
"My hand hurt so I couldn't undo the buckle."
"......Who would believe that!"
It was an absurd excuse by any standard. A man who had slaughtered a wild boar with crude tools claimed he couldn't undo a pants buckle because his wrist hurt.
"You have a perfectly good hand right there."
"I tried, but I kept missing and it was pathetic."
He rubbed his cheek against his forearm propped on the tub's edge. Yet his eyes, precisely trained on Lee Yeon, were sharp despite his sullen voice. That clear gaze even held pooled laughter.
"Maybe because I spent time as a vegetative state, but suddenly when my body doesn't listen, it's scary and anxious."
Just like that, he openly feigned weakness.
"Lee Yeon-ssi, hurry up. I want to wash quickly and rest."
Lee Yeon couldn't bring herself to storm out the door.
When even an earthen embankment collapses from an ant hole, there was nothing to gain from provoking a man who had already found the thread of his memory. A wall once cracked would crumble in an instant.
"......I'm a towel person. I'll wash you with a towel."
"Undo the buckle first."
Lee Yeon didn't hesitate to reach her hand into the tub. The warm temperature instantly melted her frozen body. As she carefully touched his waistband, he let out a short "Ah."
"......!"
Only then did Lee Yeon realize she had been squeezing her eyes shut.
The moment she raised her eyelids, she met eyes with him, who had been propping up his temple.
"That's not it, Lee Yeon-ssi."
"Excuse me?"
"That's my balls. You need to go a bit higher."
As she snatched her hand back in alarm, Kwon Chae-woo frowned deeply, as if offended by something. Then he hooked her under the arms and dropped her into the tub.
"......Ah!"
Precisely, he placed her onto his body.
In the blink of an eye, her clothes were soaked. Lee Yeon braced against the man's chest and lifted her head sharply.
"Are you joking right now?!"
When she shouted, Kwon Chae-woo laughed languidly.
"Lee Yeon-ssi started the joking first."
"When did I...!"
"My wife puts me on display and arranges a match for me—shouldn't my blood boil in reverse?"
Wasn't that all finished?
But the moment she saw Kwon Chae-woo's twisted lips, she realized he had been holding back his petulance for this very moment.
The argument was only beginning now.
"Sometimes I want to correct Lee Yeon-ssi's manners."
"What do you mean..."
"What good is holding a dog's leash when you show your ass every chance you get."
At this plausible accusation, Lee Yeon was rendered speechless.
"Trembling over something as simple as undoing a buckle, so clumsy at putting me beneath you—how could you think of giving your arm to another woman?"
"......!"
"Wasn't it a waste?"
Lee Yeon blinked rapidly as she looked at him.
In that moment, the man took Lee Yeon's wet breast into his mouth.
As he sucked in the soft flesh risen above the bra, his high nose bridge flattened the breast.