Okay. Let's Do the Blind Date.
And finally, Woojin reached a conclusion he could no longer deny.
Yeah. I admit it. I've fallen for that woman I can never quite figure out.
At first, he'd simply thought she was crazy. They had joined the company at the same time, so he'd only wanted to get along with her the way everyone else did. But after she crushed his friendly greeting beneath icy silence, he decided they were the kind of people who could never mix.
Yet that day, when she sat before him looking frail from a cold and spoke in a trembling voice, those few words shattered every prejudice he held.
“I… hate people’s attention. I just find it more comfortable to live alone.”
It wasn’t arrogance. It was the scream of a child desperately piling up a sandcastle so the waves of other people’s gazes wouldn’t sweep it away. She hadn’t been ignoring him—she had simply been terrified of anyone stepping into her territory.
In that instant, he realized she was someone with wounds just as deep as his own. Maybe even deeper.
Beyond that chilly sandcastle, on the night they first drank beer together, he saw the truth. She could laugh like anyone else. She was an ordinary person who longed for someone’s warmth.
Of course, when she proposed the contract relationship, he once again concluded she wasn’t in her right mind. But his desperate situation left him no room to refuse the insane offer, so he stepped into her world half-resigned.
Yet something was strange. It was only a fake relationship bound by money, but whenever he was at his most miserable and exhausted, she was always the one standing beside him.
When Assistant Manager Choi subjected him to absurd abuse and his pride was being ground down, she silently stayed by his side and waited. When endless overtime wore him out, she would stay behind as if it were the most natural thing and help with his tasks.
More than anything, what shook him was how she got genuinely angry on his behalf, treating his work as if it were her own.
Sometimes her excessive emotion and complete lack of restraint left him flustered, but the moment he understood it was her clumsy sincerity directed at him, the walls inside his heart crumbled.
When he confirmed the real warmth hidden beneath that arrogant, cold shell—perhaps that was when this insane performance stopped being an act and became real to him.
He used to think she was only a genius at provoking people, but she was also an artist at dragging others into her pace.
But she was someone who hated others’ attention more than death. Would he be an exception within that category of “others”?
The fear that confessing his feelings to Ihwa would make him no different from the rest of the hyenas who had tormented her weighed heavier than any excitement. All the long time they had spent together suddenly felt like wasted effort. Because until now, he had only seen the money.
Ironically, it was only after the money she gave him created some breathing room in his life that he finally began to truly see her.
Suddenly, a memory from his college days surfaced—Yumin’s words as he watched Woojin dump his ex-girlfriend without hesitation.
“Hey, you should consider the person getting dumped too. How can you be so heartless?”
Back then he had scoffed, but now those words stabbed into his chest like sharp thorns.
So that’s how they felt…
Thinking about it now, guilt bloomed in one corner of his heart, sharp enough to ache.
Was holding someone in your heart such a difficult thing?
He had no confidence in how to approach her again—or whether he even had the right to approach her at all. Until quitting time, his head was consumed by that brutal dilemma.
“Ha……”
Woojin rubbed his face with dry hands and let out a deep sigh. It was a problem with no visible answer. Dragging his heavy body, he packed his things and headed for the bus stop.
But there, a familiar silhouette was sitting on the bench.
It was Ihwa.
She sat alone with earphones in, eyes closed. The expression on her face was nothing like anything Woojin had seen before. Her features, quietly breathing in time with the melody, were so serene they felt foreign. The unfamiliar calm almost created the illusion that she was the only person existing in the world.
At the company she always wore a cold, sharp mask to fend off everyone’s stares, but right now she simply looked relaxed and at peace, like any ordinary person.
Woojin stared blankly at her profile bathed in the glow of sunset and finally settled on the answer to the question that had tormented him all day at work.
Let it go.
He didn’t want to shatter that peace. He didn’t want to call out to her here and force that sensitive mask back onto her face. The fear that he might become another source of stress for her outweighed any thrill.
Without lingering, Woojin turned and walked back toward the company parking lot. He immediately dialed a number.
“Hey, bring the car.”
“—You bastard. I give you one ride and suddenly I’m your personal taxi driver?”
The grumbling voice belonged to Yumin.
“Last time when you suggested we drink first, I agreed right away, didn’t I?”
At Woojin’s low tone, Yumin seemed to catch the shift and stuttered.
“R-right…? Why, don’t tell me…”
“Let’s drink today. I’m not taking no for an answer.”
...
A short while later, at their usual bar near the company. Amid the noisy chatter, Yumin’s desperate voice burst out.
“Hey, if I drink again today Jimin’s really going to kill me! I might not survive this time!”
“That’s for you to handle. Just drink.”
Woojin pushed the glass toward him indifferently. Yumin agonized for a moment, but the golden temptation of the beer proved too strong. He gulped it down.
“Haa… Jimin quit smoking and I promised to quit drinking. If she finds out, it’s literally my funeral.”
“Then drink in moderation. Moderation.”
“Easy for you to say! So why the sudden drinking session? What happened this time?”
Woojin explained everything that had occurred, calmly and without leaving out a single detail—from Assistant Manager Choi’s final fate to the peaceful expression on Ihwa’s face at the bus stop.
After listening to the whole story, Yumin exploded with laughter, looking utterly dumbfounded.
“Your life really is a spectacle, you bastard… Are you shooting a drama?”
“You can say that again…”
Woojin let out a hollow sigh and stared blankly at his empty glass. Yumin poured more beer into it and asked.
“Your company’s insane, and the people you get tangled up with are something else. So… the conclusion is that you’ve fallen for Seo Ihwa?”
Woojin answered without a second of hesitation.
“Yeah. That’s how it turned out. But I’m letting it go.”
Yumin, in the middle of swallowing his beer, coughed as if it went down the wrong pipe and stared at him in confusion.
“Huh? Letting it go? Hey, isn’t this the first time you’ve actually liked someone—and it’s Seo Ihwa?”
“What do you mean, first, you idiot… You’re embarrassing me.”
Woojin hesitated a moment, then continued with a bitter smile.
“I have to let it go. If I tell her I like her, how do you think Ihwa would feel? She even called me ‘the only person she can trust.’ In the end I’d just look like another guy chasing her face, same as all the rest.”
He believed the only real gift he had given her was trust. Yet he had already broken that trust with one lie. He didn’t want to sever the thin remaining thread with another selfish desire.
Yumin looked at his friend’s calmly sunken eyes and nodded.
“Hearing it like that… yeah, I get it. Seeing you turn into a coward so unlike yourself, you must be seriously hooked.”
When the sight of his own shrunken self in the face of love began to feel unfamiliar, Woojin suddenly grew curious how this hopeless romantic had managed to win Jimin’s heart.
“Hey, how did you win Jimin over?”
“Win her over? Idiot. She’s the one who won me over.”
At Yumin’s absurd answer, Woojin burst out laughing.
“I think we need to hear both sides on this. Jimin’s version is probably different.”
“It’s true! Back then your ex and Jimin were friends, right? While we were all hanging out, she said I caught her eye and asked for my number first. Kim Jimin did, you punk.”
Woojin searched his hazy memories. The blurry drinking-party scene resurfaced and he smiled awkwardly, apologizing.
“Ah… right. My memory’s not great.”
Yumin fell quiet for a moment, set down his glass, and stared straight at Woojin.
“You’re really going to let it go? Then how about a blind date?”
“…Forget it. What blind date?”
When Woojin reflexively refused, Yumin smirked and drove the point home.
“That’s always been your problem. You reject the first offer without thinking, then cry tears of blood in regret later.”
Those words froze Woojin’s thoughts for a second. He had done exactly that. When Ihwa first proposed the contract relationship, he had refused outright only to seek her out and accept it himself. And that wasn’t the only time. In college he had turned down a decent internship at a mid-sized firm, then regretted it so badly he couldn’t sleep.
Faced with his own chronic pattern, Woojin grabbed the offer with the stubborn resolve not to repeat the same mistake.
“……Alright. Let’s do it. The blind date.”
One week later, inside a quiet café.
Woojin fiddled with the neatly pressed collar of his shirt while staring out the window. To someone who had always treated relationships like casual entertainment, the formal procedure of a “blind date” felt suffocatingly heavy. Sitting here with the label of someone’s acquaintance and the weight of implied responsibility already made him regret coming.
“Ha… I really hate this kind of heavy atmosphere.”
His date hadn’t even arrived yet and he already wanted to run. In the corner of his mind, a certain person’s cold gaze and peaceful profile kept overlapping, tormenting him.
Just then, the bell on the café door tinkled.
Woojin turned his head on instinct. The moment he saw who walked in, his brows furrowed sharply.
A face he knew all too well—one he could never forget even if he tried—was walking straight toward him with confident steps.
“What the— You?”
“Is that any way to greet someone? Long time no see, Kim Woojin.”
It was his college classmate, Lee Semin.
“Ah, shit…”
Woojin stood up with a low groan. He wondered if that bastard Yumin had lost his mind.
But Semin, acting as if she expected the reaction, grabbed his arm and pulled him back into his seat.
“Hey! Didn’t you come here for a blind date? Where are your manners?”
“I came for a blind date, not a class reunion. I’m not here to socialize, so move.”
“Who said anything about socializing? I came because I’m interested in you.”
The iced tea in his mouth nearly went down the wrong way. Woojin coughed violently and glared at her.
“Cough! Keck… What the hell? What are you trying to pull?”
“Oh my, why are you so flustered? Is there a law that says I can’t go on blind dates? Let’s do it—the blind date.”
Semin smiled sweetly and settled comfortably into the seat across from him.
Woojin could barely contain his resentment toward Yumin, who had set up this entire trap and shoved him into it. It felt like his friend had taken the decision he reached after agonizing for so long as nothing more than a joke. He wanted to call him right then and unleash a flood of curses.
But Woojin forced himself to calm down. After all, Yumin had gone through the trouble of arranging this, and more than anything, Woojin desperately needed a powerful “stimulus” to push the hopelessly entangled Seo Ihwa out of his head.
From a cool-headed perspective, Semin’s looks were undeniably top-tier. She had been quite popular in their department back in college.
…Yeah. Maybe it’s better when it’s someone I already know.
Rather than wasting emotional energy testing the waters with a stranger, maintaining a light relationship with a familiar face like Semin might be smarter.
Woojin straightened his collar and leaned back deeply in his chair.
“Fine. Let’s give it a shot, then. The blind date.”
Woojin accepted. To bury the massive wave named Seo Ihwa, he was ready to throw himself into the familiar ocean called Lee Semin.