The Secret of the Girl He's Seeing
At that moment, Hye-na's phone rang.
It was Yeonwoo.
She hesitated for a moment before answering.
"Where are you?"
Yeonwoo's voice through the receiver was calm, gentle.
"I'm with Seonyeong."
"Oh, really? Then have fun. Let me know if you're staying out too late."
Hye-na listened in silence.
"If you need me, I'll come pick you up."
His tone was natural.
No checking up on her.
No suspicion.
No demands.
Just the consideration of a caring lover, offered as though it were the most natural thing in the world.
"Yeah… I understand."
After hanging up, Hye-na stood there for a long while, still holding her phone in her hand.
Seonyeong watched her without saying a word, then asked quietly,
"…That was Yeonwoo oppa, right?"
"Yeah."
Hye-na nodded as she spoke.
At that moment,
a strange tightness gripped one side of her chest.
The fact that she was deceiving someone like that…
"He's a good person."
Seonyeong said it briefly.
"Yeah… he really is. I… I think I like Yeonwoo oppa a lot."
Hye-na said it shyly.
"Right… You need someone like that right now. That way… you'll be able to wrap things up with that other person sooner."
After a short while, the two parted ways.
A few steps in the opposite direction from Seonyeong, Hye-na stopped.
Then she turned around.
Toward the hotel where she had arranged to meet Professor Yeon Jeong-ho.
In the heart of the city, inside a luxury hotel room.
Professor Yeon Jeong-ho had already finished showering and stood in his bathrobe, gazing out the floor-to-ceiling window at the cityscape below.
The city, blazing with lights, lay spread out beneath his feet.
Early forties.
A face that looked far younger than his actual age,
a body kept firm through exercise.
Behind the silver-rimmed glasses, his eyes always carried an air of ease.
He was no ordinary professor.
A star professor who represented the domestic modern sculpture scene.
And the son of the chairman of the "Korea Modern Sculpture Promotion Foundation."
National public artworks,
large-scale projects,
grants for emerging artists.
Decisions that shaped an artist's entire life all passed through that foundation, and he wielded considerable influence within it.
Professor Yeon Jeong-ho stood at the very center of power in this industry.
At the sound of the door opening, he slowly turned his head.
It was Hye-na.
She wore a simple knit dress with a long coat draped over it.
Her hair was neatly tied back,
and she had worn almost no makeup.
She had suggested meeting in a public place several times, but Jeong-ho always gave the same excuse.
"My face is too well-known, so that's a bit difficult. If people see us together… you'd have it harder than me."
In the end, the meeting place was always a hotel.
And every time, he had taken her body exactly as he intended.
"Welcome, Hye-na."
Jeong-ho's voice was still soft and familiar.
Once, it had made her heart flutter,
and she had mistaken it for love.
But somewhere along the way, Hye-na had been reduced to nothing more than a woman for his sexual gratification,
someone she wanted to escape.
"Professor…"
Hye-na's throat tightened the moment she spoke.
"I came because there's something I have to say today."
"What's so urgent? Sit down first. Want a drink?"
He leaned back comfortably on the sofa,
as though this situation was already familiar to him.
"No."
Hye-na took a deep breath and sat across from him.
Then she got straight to the point.
"I… I want to end this relationship. Being summoned to hotels, meeting you separately… I want to stop all of it."
The words were clear, but her voice trembled.
Jeong-ho tilted his head.
"So you don't love me anymore?"
"You don't love me either, Professor."
"What are you talking about?"
Jeong-ho looked at her with gentle eyes,
and his gaze swept over her body.
"You only want my body."
For an instant, his brows narrowed ever so slightly.
But that expression vanished quickly,
replaced by a wounded look.
"Hye-na… To think you see me that way, it really hurts me."
"No, I don't?"
"Absolutely not."
He said it firmly, yet tenderly.
"I love you. You know that."
Hye-na shook her head.
"Even if that were true… this relationship can't continue. You have a family, Professor."
Her eyes reddened.
"I want to live my own life now. I want to meet someone else too."
"Someone else?"
"Yes… I will. And you should go back to your family now. Don't you feel sorry for your wife?"
"Why are you bringing up my wife now?"
Jeong-ho's intimidating tone made Hye-na's spirit falter slightly.
"Continuing this relationship… it's truly wrong for everyone involved. You know that, Professor."
Jeong-ho watched her growing agitation without getting excited or angry.
Like someone who had been through moments like this far too many times,
he spoke in a lower tone,
at a slower pace.
"Right. Maybe you're right."
Then he slowly rose from his seat and approached Hye-na.
"But if the time we've spent together… was nothing more than simple desire, as you say, I think I'd be truly sad."
Words that struck precisely at the embers of feelings that hadn't fully gone out.
"I loved you. In my own way."
He naturally took her hand.
Hye-na flinched for a moment,
but she couldn't pull away.
"You're a special person to me. You still are. If you leave… I won't stop you. I really won't."
He paused briefly, then added,
"But at least… let's clear up the misunderstandings. I don't want our relationship to end this distorted."
As he spoke, his hand brushed lightly against the nape of Hye-na's neck.
His eyes turned lecherous.
The sensation of his touch conveyed
the pale, elastic skin of a woman in her early twenties,
and the barely-visible fine down that covered it.
'A taste like this… I can't let you go so easily.'
Unlike what he had said,
Jeong-ho had never intended to let Hye-na go from the start.
"Professor, please…"
He dredged up the tender moments from the past and spoke of his "helpless situation," stirring her pity.
Meanwhile,
his hands moved all too naturally across Hye-na's shoulders, her back, her waist.
Familiar contact.
Her body remembered it.
"Can you really break up with me? Hye-na…"
He whispered in her ear.
His breath brushed against her skin.
"Professor… you always do this. Every time…"
Hye-na was confused.
"You love me too. And if we break up like this… it won't be good for you either. The idea that you'll remember me with bad memories…"
After stirring pity, a subtle threat.
To Hye-na, those words came as tremendous pressure.
Seeing Hye-na hesitate—so different from the firmness she'd shown when she first brought up breaking up—Jeong-ho smiled.
'She thinks she's an adult, but she's just a young girl. Handling you is too easy. Hye-na.'
He muttered to himself and stole a kiss from her lips.
Hye-na couldn't avoid the kiss.
His greedy tongue burrowed into her mouth, trying to dominate her with an intensity that stole her breath.
At the same time, his hand moved up to her breasts and began kneading them roughly.
His fingers weren't simple caresses—they were greedy movements, as though confirming ownership.
'No… I have to refuse today. I must.'
But Hye-na couldn't refuse, and she was accepting his touch.
He smiled with satisfaction inside.
In the end, he would take Hye-na's body once again.
No matter how much she tried to escape,
no matter how many times she said she wanted to end the relationship,
he would take her like this, every single time.
The moment Hye-na could truly escape this embrace—
he thought it would only come when she grew tired of him,
when he was the one to discard her first.
'Bitch… Daring to try to leave me? You're mine. Such a delicious woman… Today too… I'm going to devour you completely.'
And so he led her to the bed,
…and in the end, Hye-na went with him to the bed and lay down.
Before she knew it, her legs were spread apart,
and between those legs, his familiar cock was slowly entering her once again.
"Aaaah~ Professor!!! Please…"
The will to refuse him was gradually being eroded.
Hye-na, having lost the strength to resist, couldn't stop the flow.
His lips touched the nape of her neck,
and her body began to melt under his familiar touch.
It wasn't love.
It wasn't a choice.
It was the moment of surrendering to power and familiarity.
Hye-na closed her eyes.
Somewhere deep in her heart, Yeonwoo's face flickered past.
Target: Kang Hye-na. Connection complete.
You can now monitor the target's Emotion Value in real time.
The status window shifted slightly, shrinking down and settling in the upper-right corner of Yeonwoo's vision like a small fixed widget.
A single, simple display.
Yeonwoo called Hye-na right away.
"Where are you?"
The answer that came through the receiver was that she was with Seonyeong.
The atmosphere on the other end of the call, the rhythm of her speech, and above all—
the Emotion Value displayed on the widget.
There wasn't even the slightest fluctuation.
'She's not lying, it seems.'
Yeonwoo stared at the widget for a moment.
'This… feels a bit strange. Like I'm becoming a stalker.'
Even as he told himself that, he didn't disconnect.
Curiosity always won out over rationalization.
Not long after he hung up…
Hye-na's Emotion Value suddenly began to fluctuate.
21…
27…
31…
32…
Yeonwoo's brows furrowed.
"…What the hell."
A strange heaviness settled in his mood.
'Could it be… She really did meet that professor.'
Yeonwoo said nothing,
unable to tear his eyes away from that small number pinned in the upper-right corner.
As though he had instinctively sensed that something was already going wrong.
After that, for roughly thirty to forty minutes,
Hye-na's Emotion Value continued to fluctuate.
Dipping briefly, then spiking back up—the highest number it reached was 43.
Yeonwoo watched the changes in silence.
'…That much is enough.'
He reached his conclusion naturally.
The thought that Hye-na and that professor were together.