Would You Be Okay If I Liked Him Too?
"Dayeon, over here!"
Dayeon had been glancing around the office with wide-eyed curiosity when she heard Jiyoon call. She headed inside.
"Wow, so this is what a big law firm looks like. I've never seen anything like this."
The whole scene felt like something out of a TV drama—people rushing about, the polished atmosphere—and Dayeon found it endlessly fascinating.
"Really? My desk is this way."
Most ordinary lawyers worked at desks lined up in a row, but Jiyoon was a senior associate on the verge of a promotion, so she had a private office of her own.
"Whoa, this is so cool. Are all those books behind you law books?"
Just inside, a large bookshelf stood behind the desk, packed from end to end. It made quite an impression.
"Most of them."
"Are the others art books?"
"Yeah—art, YouTube video editing, that kind of thing. I used to do the editing myself, after all."
These days, of course, people learned YouTube editing by watching YouTube rather than cracking open a book. Even so, Jiyoon was the type who genuinely loved collecting them.
"There's just something about a physical book. I really like reading."
"That's amazing... I can't even remember how many years it's been since I last picked one up."
Dayeon had never had the slightest interest in studying, not even as a kid. Back in elementary school, when everyone else was scoring a hundred on math tests, she was pulling twenties.
"Well, even without reading, you're great with people and ridiculously good at games. Doesn't it make more sense for everyone to go all-in on what they're actually good at?"
She wasn't wrong. Dayeon had realized early on that she had no talent for academics and had agonized over her future. She liked games, and people often told her she was fun to talk to—so she'd chosen to become a streamer. And in the end, she'd achieved the kind of success other people envied.
"Smart people really are built different. Everything you say just makes sense."
"Oh my, if you keep flattering me like that, I'm going to get embarrassed."
After enjoying the light small talk, Jiyoon shifted in her seat and gestured for Dayeon to take the guest sofa in front of the desk.
"Want some tea?"
"Yeah! Iced green tea for me!"
"Okay~"
Jiyoon brewed the green tea, added ice, set it in front of Dayeon, and sat down across from her.
"I asked you to come today so I could fill you in on how the case is progressing."
"Ah, okay..!"
Dayeon looked a little tense, and Jiyoon smiled.
"You don't need to be nervous. The whistleblowers have been incredibly cooperative, so he's going to get properly punished. We're pushing for the maximum sentence."
Jiyoon was the kind of person who believed that if you could keep a piece of trash like that off the streets, you absolutely should.
"Well, hidden-camera crimes are being treated very seriously these days, but we can't exactly get him life in prison on that charge alone."
Still, her biggest goal was to lock in the longest possible sentence—so that even after he got out, it would follow him for the rest of his career.
"He's twenty-eight. Filmed hidden-camera footage of his employer at a workplace he'd been at for years, and then got actual prison time? Honestly, even after he gets out, good luck finding a job anywhere."
This was already an era where landing a job was hard enough without a stain like that on your record. If you were carrying a mark that nobody else had, you'd be even more thoroughly left behind by society.
"I see. That's a relief... Ah, what about the photos he has, though...?"
"We might need to submit them as evidence, so we can't delete them just yet. But from what the whistleblowers told us, it doesn't seem like he posted them anywhere besides the group chat."
That, at least, was a relief.
"Anyway, I think the best approach is to wait until after sentencing and then get them deleted."
"Mm, but there aren't any, like... directly... weird photos or anything. Will that still be okay...?"
"Yeah, I'll take care of that part, so don't worry about it too much. Just focus on what you need to do."
Jiyoon looked so dependable that Dayeon felt a genuine wave of relief. And once that feeling settled in, it inevitably circled back around to gratitude toward Dohyun. She couldn't help it. If she hadn't met him, she never would have been able to handle a situation like this properly—and she never would have crossed paths with someone as high-caliber as Jiyoon.
"Ah, wait—weren't Dohyun and I supposed to come together this time to sign the contract?"
The moment Dohyun crossed her mind, Dayeon finally wondered why she'd been called in alone.
"Ah, I arranged to meet Dohyun separately."
"Huh? You did?"
"Yeah... I, uh... there's something I wanted to ask you, Dayeon..."
So it was something she couldn't ask with Dohyun around, Dayeon figured, and nodded.
"So... um, this is a little..."
"Yeah!"
Dayeon's bright, cheerful reply was every bit as adorable as Jiyoon had thought the first time they met. But Jiyoon wasn't particularly confident about her age, or her looks for that matter—which only made her hesitate more.
"...So, um... are you dating Dohyun?"
She'd gone so far as to postpone her meeting with Dohyun just to ask this. She wasn't about to chicken out now.
"Huh? With Dohyun? Ahh~ We're not dating, exactly."
Not dating, exactly. It was an awfully ambiguous answer.
"You're... not dating? Mm, I... see."
She didn't really understand, and she couldn't quite grasp the context—but asking further felt awkward, so Jiyoon just nodded with a grave expression.
"Wait, so we look like that to you? That's actually kind of exciting."
Oblivious to how serious Jiyoon was being, Dayeon just sparkled at the idea that the two of them looked like a couple.
"Eunchae would be so jealous if she heard that."
"Eunchae? Who's Eunchae...?"
An unfamiliar name popped out, and Jiyoon tilted her head. That's a girl's name. No matter how she thought about it, she'd never heard of anyone using "Eunchae" as a guy's name. It was a girl's name any way you sliced it. And now this girl was getting jealous?
"Ah! She's our illustrator! We've been close since high school."
"Ahh. So that friend likes Dohyun too, then?"
Putting the pieces together, the jealousy alone made that pretty clear.
"Yeah, Eunchae likes him so much it's honestly out of control."
To a degree that felt excessive, even. The girl had outright suggested a threesome, which pretty much said it all—but that wasn't something Dayeon could just come out and say, so she fudged it as best she could.
"I've never met anyone who makes me feel as at ease as Dohyun does when we're together. I can't tell you how lucky I am that he became my editor."
The way Dayeon talked, you could feel it—a deep sense of security, something like love, directed squarely at Dohyun.
"You said you haven't known Dohyun for very long, right?"
"Yeah, we've only been working together for a little over two weeks. Oh, but he said he'd been a fan of mine for about a year."
"Ahh, a fan."
Which meant Dayeon had only known Dohyun for a little over two weeks. For two people who'd spent that little time together, Dayeon trusted him to a degree that seemed almost excessive.
Then again, I... well... I started thinking I liked him after seeing him just once, so...
If she was being honest, she'd already been aware of him back when he was working part-time at the convenience store, so saying she'd fallen for him at first sight wasn't entirely accurate.
"Dohyun has this thing where just being around him makes you feel at ease. It's amazing. Oh, and one time he made me this tea he said he drinks all the time, and it was so good~"
Of course, the tea he'd made for Dayeon had been a shop-bought tea bag with an actual calming effect—but regardless, every moment she spent with Dohyun felt as comfortable as if they'd known each other for years.
"But it's not like there's no butterflies, either. It's honestly so weird."
Dayeon had no idea what Jiyoon had been getting at when she brought this up, but she'd been wanting a place to talk about the feelings she'd been having toward Dohyun. So she launched into it happily. She talked about this kind of thing with Eunchae sometimes, but this was the first time she'd opened up to anyone else—which might have been why she was even more excited.
"Unnie, if you start hanging out with Dohyun a lot, I bet you'll end up liking him too."
The way Dayeon smiled as she said it—she looked every bit like a girl in love.
"Yeah, I... I can see that. But if I ended up liking Dohyun... would you be okay with that?"
That was the question she'd wanted to ask all along. Whether it would be okay if she liked Dohyun too. You didn't need anyone's permission to have feelings for someone—but anyone could see that Dayeon liked Dohyun, so Jiyoon needed to be clear about this.
"Huh? Me? Of course I'd be happy if more people liked Dohyun!"
"...And if it isn't just friendly fondness?"
Jiyoon was well aware that the attraction she felt was, no matter how she looked at it, not the kind of fondness one human being felt for another as a friend.
"If it isn't friendly fondness... um, you mean as a man and a woman?"