Seung Won sat in front of the monitor with bloodshot eyes.
His hair was messy, and his cheeks were gaunt. Next to the keyboard, there were stacked delivery food containers, and there were also three empty cups of melted Americano.
After leaving work on Friday, he took a break for a solid two to three days. He deliberately chose a motel nearby because he felt like people would keep coming if he stayed at home. It was a place he occasionally stayed at, thanks to his good computer specs.
“Ah, I lost again.”
He lost four consecutive games in his specialty, roleplaying games. It was unacceptable for someone with exceptional skills, to the point where he once dreamed of becoming a professional gamer.
“Ugh… so frustrating, seriously.”
Seung Won glared at the monitor once and irritably turned off the computer. He usually concentrated so much during games that he wouldn’t notice even if someone passed by, but today his mind was unusually distracted.
Outside the window, it had already turned dark. Seeing the streetlight reflected on the windowpane made him feel restless, and he let out a deep sigh.
“Tomorrow is already Monday.”
Just the thought of going to work in the morning made his breath catch. It was on Friday morning, after leaving work and turning off his phone, that he had immersed himself in the game. Now, looking back, it wasn’t something to overreact about.
“I should have acted cool and dealt with it as if it didn’t bother me.”
Having jumped out as if caught redhanded with a secret that shouldn’t be discovered, there would surely be a lot of gossip. It made him dizzy to think about how much backbiting would happen in a company that wasn’t even that big.
“This is driving me crazy, seriously…”
Once he stepped away from the game, reality loomed right in front of him. Seung Won leaned back in his chair and let out a deep sigh before finally turning on the phone that he had turned off.
Ring, ring, ring.
As soon as the phone turned on, text messages and catch calls came flying in. There were messages from concerned colleagues and ones sent by Ju Won, but most of them were from Da Hee.
Seung Won, where are you?
I didn’t do it on purpose, it was an accident… Why are you so angry about it?
Wasn’t breaking up what you really meant? I’m in front of your house now. Contact me when you see this message.
Please answer the phone, please…
A strange selfreproach washed over him.
He wasn’t a fiveyearold child, and this wasn’t child’s play, it wasn’t.
He hadn’t intended for things to turn out this way from the beginning. He had planned to contact Da Hee first once his thoughts were sorted out, but whenever he tried to gather his thoughts, his head throbbed and his chest felt suffocated, so he kept putting it off, and that’s how it ended up like this.
He felt pathetic, like a grown man making such childish mistakes.
“This is a big problem… What should I say to Da Hee?”
He would have to go to work tomorrow and whether he wanted to or not, he would have to meet Da Hee. It meant that he couldn’t avoid the reality he had desperately tried to avoid any longer.
Seung Won grabbed his head and groaned. The first thing he needed to sort out was his relationship with Da Hee. As he pondered over what had happened last week, many things came to mind.
The incident where he bought latenight snacks for Da Hee who was working late, the time he got angry at her for wearing a fake couple ring, the argument that ended with a breakup, and the next day, the photo that was lying on the office corridor.
Da Hee claimed that she accidentally dropped the photo. But logically, how could a photo that was securely placed in the diary end up in the office, right in a spot where it would be seen immediately upon arriving at work?
What made Seung Won really angry wasn’t the fact that his secret relationship with Da Hee had been exposed to the world, but the possibility that Da Hee might have deliberately dropped it.
The intention behind Da Hee deliberately showing the fake couple ring to Hye Ju, and Da Hee’s purpose in publicly revealing the photo in front of people…
Seung Won couldn’t shake off the feeling that he was being manipulated by her.
Whether he liked her or not was the second issue.
He couldn’t trust Da Hee. Although he had once thought that she would be a great partner who could find comfort and familiarity within his style of dating, Seung Won could no longer find comfort or familiarity from her.
“I should break up with Da Hee.”
Although the rumors had already spread throughout the company, there wouldn’t be a big problem with a young unmarried couple breaking up.
The real problem was with Seung Won himself.
He looked at the messages that kept coming one after another. However, there was a name missing that should have been there.
“Why isn’t there any contact?”
Oh Hye Ju, who always brought latenight snacks when he forgot to eat due to playing games.
Male lead is a Divorced Husband
She said to him: “Tell me, what makes you like me? I’ll change it!”
Liu Changning transmigrated into a female cannon fodder character in a female-dominant novel.
After reading the first half of the novel’s plot, the first thing she did upon transmigration was to divorce the Pan Jinlian-style male protagonist she had just married.
She indulged herself, pretending to be ugly and poor.
But as time passed, the way that man looked at her became more and more unusual…
Liu Changning was dumbfounded: Tell me, what makes you like me? I’ll change!
――
This lifetime, Pei Yuanshao was rejected by the same woman twice!
The first time, she drove him away. Forced by the situation, he endured the waves of anger in his heart, yielding and humbling himself.
That person lay slanted on a rocking chair, her sallow face emotionless: “If you don’t want a divorce, go cook!”
Pei Yuanshao’s face was dark and gloomy: “You!”
The second time, after the crisis in Jinling City was resolved, the new emperor sent someone to pick him up. He turned around, stammering: “I… I have to go. If you keep me…”
That person lay on the kang bed, her back to him, as if she had long anticipated this day, crisp and clear: “Goodbye!”
Pei Yuanshao was so angry his fingers trembled: “You… you!”
The mission of family and country made him restrain himself, averting his eyes and turning to leave this broken household.
Two years later, they met again. Seeing her ethereal face, his body shook like a sieve.
“She was originally a ‘she’!”
At the Qionglin Banquet, the top scholar of the imperial examination, a talented person with exceptional speech and conduct, all the unmarried young gentlemen from aristocratic families looked at her with shy and timid eyes.
The peerless imperial official Pei Yuanshao felt the anger in his heart erupt. He pointed at the woman surrounded by the crowd at the Qionglin Banquet, his thin lips slightly curled: “Little sister, I wants that person to be the wife-master of my Mingde Prince Manor.”
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