After the broadcast, I headed straight to Pyeongchangdong.

‘I’m coming here again.’

Walking along the garden path, I saw the familiar walls that I had passed countless times.

Pyeongchangdong was filled with large houses. At its very heart was the mansion of Chairman Seo Moo Jin and the ancestral home of Ji Han.

Looking at the wellmaintained garden landscape, I thought of Chairman Seo, whom I was about to face.

Aside from the divorce with Ji Han, there was more to reveal, so I clenched my sweaty fist tightly.

“Sigh.”

I let out a sigh without realizing it.

The Chairman Seo I was about to meet today seemed kind, but he was extremely coolheaded when it came to crossing lines.

“Did you just arrive?”

I was startled by a familiar voice while walking and looking at the road.

Jae Ha was sitting on the low stone wall in front of the entrance, watching me coming up.

Meeting Jae Ha after the weekend felt as familiar as if we had met yesterday.

Yet, recalling the incident from before, I tried to hide my reddening face and asked,

“The shooting ran a bit late. Why are you here like this?”

“I thought you’d be coming soon, so I waited. But Yeo Jin, you arrived later than I thought.”

The night air was quite chilly, but he seemed to have been waiting in just a thin shirt.

“You should have contacted me.”

I was surprised that he would have waited like this.

Facing me, Jae Ha smiled with his eyes curved in circles.

“I felt stifled inside.”

I understood. With Chairman Seo, the vice chairman, and Ji Han all there, it must have been suffocating.

“Are you hot? Your face is red.”

“Yes, it is… Why is it so hot?”

Facing him, even in the dark, I kept seeing Jae Ha’s lips standing out.

‘Why am I like this?’

A deep thirst came over me. Why was my throat so dry?

Jae Ha kept looking at me, who was continuously fanning myself, then his expression changed strangely.

“In this chilly night air?”

“Do I have a bit of a fever?”

Jae Ha, who had been looking down at me, came straight to me.

He held my hand, which was flailing in the air due to fanning, and narrowed his brows at the coldness.

“Your hands are cold too, that’s strange.”

Looking at his hand approaching my face, I stepped back.

“I’m, I’m late.”

I passed him, who was looking at me with an inexplicable, odd gaze, and went up the stone path.

And, ignoring him who was still looking at me, I hurried my steps.

.

.

.

As I stepped into the house, the lady of the Pyeongchang house warmly welcomed me and guided me to the dining room.

As soon as I set foot in the dining room, the piercing stares of three people looking at me and Jae Ha clung to us.

“Oh, you two came together.”

The one who broke the silence and spoke was Chairman Seo.

“We met out front. Grandfather, did you have a good trip to America? You should consider your age. I told you not to go yourself.”

“I had a good trip. I’m still sturdy.”

Jae Ha went towards the chairman sitting in the center of the table, held his hand, and spoke softly.

Upon seeing such a warm side of Jae Ha, Ji Han’s expression hardened in an instant.

“You said the shoot was running late, why did you come together?”

Ji Han alternated between looking at me and Jae Ha, and then threw a sharp comment.

“We met in the garden.”

Not wanting to explain further, I spoke briefly and looked around for a place to sit.

There was an empty seat that looked like mine next to Ji Han, but I didn’t particularly want to go there.

Because there was no reason to sit next to him now.

Ji Han was glaring at me, who sat across from him rather than next to him.

“Grandfather, did you have a good trip?”

“Yes, it was good. Yeo Jin, you look better than the last time I saw you. I heard about your return to the industry, and it seems you’re doing quite well.”

When I asked the Chairman how he was, he reciprocated with his own inquiry about my wellbeing.

Soon after, when Jae Ha sat in the empty seat next to me, Ji Han’s face twisted unpleasantly.

“Yes, I recently returned to my anchor position.”

I nodded slightly at him.

“Now, I plan to live my life doing what I want.”

While I was speaking to the Chairman, in reality, I was addressing Ji Han.

“I should have come to see you earlier and talked to you. I apologize.”

Before the real conversation had even started, in the tense atmosphere,

Ji Han was looking at me with a wary gaze, as if he had anticipated what I was going to say.

It was as if he sensed something strange in my words, which were markedly different from when I had called him from the shooting set.

“You probably have already heard, but Ji Han and I are getting a divorce.”

The Chairman’s face darkened at the words I had spit out. He would have received a report while he was on a business trip to America.

Soon after, he chugged down the water in front of him as if he was burning up inside.

“My child, no, Yeo Jin. Can’t you endure and forgive him just once? You know that your engagement was a longstanding promise within our families.”

“……”