Chapter 350: Like Mother, Like Daughter (2)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 350: Like Mother, Like Daughter (2)
Just as the atmosphere between Jeong-hee and me was growing thicker and more intense…
Click!
Shin Yu-jeong, who had gone into the bathroom and suddenly doused herself with water, threw the door open and made her presence known.
Ah, right.
She was here.
I almost got into big trouble… or not.
“The strawberries are fresh and delicious, aren’t they?”
“Uh… yes, they’re delicious…?”
“Hoho, eat as many as you like.”
In the blink of an eye, Jeong-hee, who just moments ago had been exuding the scent of a female in heat, had transformed back into a mother, casting a gaze full of maternal love my way.
“Yu-jeong, you come have some strawberries too.”
She even went so far as to look after her own rival.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen even the politicians I knew switch gears that quickly.
…It sent a shiver down my spine. She looked like she could enter the National Assembly right now and eat most mid-career politicians for breakfast.
Our Jeong-hee really has changed a lot since meeting me.
As I was taking in how much she had changed, not just on the outside but on the inside as well…
“Oh, strawberries.”
Shin Yu-jeong, dressed in extremely light attire, sat down next to me and picked up a strawberry.
A tank top and dolphin shorts that boldly revealed a figure toned by exercise.
I wondered if the person who first created the tank top and dolphin shorts was a god disguised as a human.
My mind must have wandered for a moment, lost in thought about her firm body, which looked like it would spring back if I pressed it with a finger.
Thump!
…Judging by the kick Jeong-hee gave me under the table to snap me out of it.
Feeling a pang of guilt, I averted my gaze, only to see Jeong-hee, her eyebrows slightly furrowed, reprimanding her daughter.
“Hey, Do-jin is here. You should dress a little more modestly.”
Shin Yu-jeong looked dumbfounded by the sudden scolding.
And for good reason.
“…Don’t you think it’s a little too late to be saying that? I’ve been dressed like this the whole time.”
She had been wearing that outfit all along.
If my gaze was the problem, she should have brought it up a long, long time ago.
Jeong-hee, momentarily at a loss for words, spoke again.
“I’m saying you should be careful from now on. Do-jin is so embarrassed he can’t even look at you properly.”
She then looked at me.
“Isn’t that right, Do-jin?”
Wow.
So this is how I get caught in the crossfire?
I could feel intense stares from my front and my right.
Whose side should I take here to make things right?
The answer wasn’t hard to find.
“Well… um, I think it’s best for Yu-jeong to wear whatever she’s comfortable in. If she feels uncomfortable about her clothes because of me, I think I’d feel burdened coming down here so often…”
My answer brought a mix of joy and sorrow to the mother and daughter.
“Hmph.”
“…I see.”
Shin Yu-jeong smiled, while Jeong-hee shot me a sharp glare.
At a glance, it might seem like I was taking Yu-jeong’s side, but that wasn’t the case.
I was merely defending a desirable outfit.
Even if the subject of the question had been reversed, I would have answered the same way.
Yu-jeong, munching on a strawberry with a pleased expression, wrapped her arm around my shoulder.
I felt a firm, springy sensation against my right arm.
“Heehee… Hey.”
“What.”
“Don’t get all flustered and avert your eyes. Just look. I won’t say anything about it. Okay?”
Her blatant seduction was whispered right into my ear.
“…No, thanks.”
But I didn’t fall for it.
No, I couldn’t fall for it.
With Jeong-hee staring daggers at me from across the table, giving in would be like asking for a death sentence.
As I firmly rejected the temptation, Jeong-hee’s expression softened slightly.
“You’ll be home tonight, right?”
“Yes, I plan on getting a good rest today.”
“Fufu… Then is there anything you’d like for dinner?”
“Anything you make is great for me, Ajumma.”
As I delivered a picture-perfect model answer, Jeong-hee leaned forward and reached out.
She gently pinched my cheek with her fingers and spoke.
“I just love how sweetly our Do-jin talks.”
“Uh, um.”
It was a level of physical affection she had never shown in front of others, and my gaze naturally shifted to Yu-jeong.
Sure enough, the girl was scowling, her eyebrows slanted downwards in displeasure.
Still, she couldn’t bring herself to get angry at her own mother, so her mouth opened with a strained smile.
“…Anyone would think Do-jin was your real son.”
It was something Yu-jeong always said to Jeong-hee whenever she seemed to care for me more than her own daughter.
Taken at face value, the words themselves weren’t particularly strange.
But… the nuance was a little odd.
It felt less like jealousy and more like a jab at the age difference between Jeong-hee and me.
What… could it be that she’s noticed something between me and Jeong-hee?
As I tensed up, Jeong-hee replied with a smile.
“What nonsense is that? Do-jin isn’t my blood, so how could he be my real son?”
“……”
Her response was quite different from usual.
Normally, she would have just brushed it off, saying, ‘I take care of him because he’s like a son to me.’
I had a bad feeling.
A sense of dread, that if I stayed here any longer something big was going to blow up, crept down my spine.
In times like these, there was only one thing to do.
“Ahem… I think I’ll head up now. I’m tired, so I should probably take a nap until dinner.”
Beat a hasty retreat.
* * *
After Kim Do-jin, sensing the crisis, fled the scene.
A strange atmosphere flowed between the two people sitting opposite each other, with only a plate of a few remaining strawberries between them.
To describe it, it was a hair-trigger situation.
A tense moment where it felt like a war could break out at the slightest touch.
Shin Yu-jeong spoke first.
“Mom, wasn’t pinching Do-jin’s cheek a bit much?”
“What’s wrong with pinching his cheek because he’s cute?”
“No, I mean, it might have been fine in the past… but with your younger face, doing that to a man who isn’t family doesn’t look good to others, is what I’m saying.”
It was a clumsy expression of jealousy.
“Don’t you worry. You don’t think I’d go around pinching Do-jin’s cheek outside, do you?”
Seo Jeong-hee laughed it off as if it were ridiculous.
Then, she launched a counterattack.
“You’re the one who needs to watch how you act.”
“What did I do?”
“Telling Do-jin to look all he wants earlier… What will you do if he gets the wrong idea?”
She didn’t know.
That her own jealousy toward her daughter was just as clumsy.
At the sharp-edged criticism, Shin Yu-jeong was feeling it clearly.
Her anxiety, which she had dismissed as mere delusion, was slowly becoming reality.
‘I can’t be sure yet.’
Her mother’s words alone weren’t enough to be certain.
Couldn’t it be that her mom was genuinely worried about her?
So, she uttered another provocation.
“If he gets the wrong idea, we can just start dating. A guy like him is prime husband material, isn’t he?”
“What…?”
For a moment, Seo Jeong-hee’s face went blank.
She never imagined her daughter would retort like that.
A fighting spirit she hadn’t felt in a long time began to boil within her.
However, she didn’t let it show.
‘I can’t get drawn in.’
There was no way she would play into her opponent’s obvious ploy.
She knew her daughter liked Kim Do-jin, but her daughter didn’t know that she liked him too.
‘Though from her behavior, it seems she’s caught on a little…’
There was no reason to clash head-on with the vigor that youth provided.
In times like this, it was better to compete with the composure, experience, and wisdom of an old—no, an adult.
“That’s right. Just like my daughter said… a man like Do-jin would be a groom to be proud of anywhere in the world.”
As she said this, the bright, relaxed smile she wore was telling her daughter:
‘Too bad he’s not yours, though.’
There was no need to get worked up over her daughter’s provocative words.
Hadn’t he said it himself?
That even if his heart might waver because of Yu-jeong, he still liked her more.
Of course, no one knew what the future held.
But she had no intention of letting his heart be stolen in the future, either.
Even if her opponent was her own daughter.
Her fighting power was so high that if you pointed a scouter at her, it would beep erratically before exploding.
Having been dealt a solid blow, Shin Yu-jeong’s face crumpled into a scowl. She shoved the three remaining strawberries on the plate into her mouth all at once and stood up.
“I’m going to take a nap too, so wake me up for dinner.”
“Alright.”
Feeling a sense of defeat at her mother’s composed attitude to the very end, Shin Yu-jeong went straight to her room, threw herself face down on the bed, and kicked her feet wildly to swallow her frustration.
Seo Jeong-hee, on the other hand, was intoxicated with victory.
“Huhu, how dare my own daughter.”
To think the girl she had raised with her own hands from birth would try to beat her.
She was still ten years too early.
But that feeling was fleeting.
“…This isn’t the time for this.”
This was no time to be drunk on a small victory.
Now that she’d been put in her place, it was obvious Shin Yu-jeong would lash out even more desperately.
To stop her daughter, who charged headfirst once she saw red, she needed something more powerful.
After finishing the dishes, she returned to her room and immediately accessed a website on her smartphone.
“The one I saw last time… ah, here it is.”
As she had told him earlier, she was at a disadvantage compared to other women from the start.
Her daughter, especially, was a virgin.
Men were creatures who would risk their lives for a first time.
There was no guarantee he wouldn’t fall for that.
So she, too, had to prepare.
Something that wouldn’t lose to her daughter, or to any other woman.
“…Can I do it?”
A small fear arose.
But it didn’t last long.
“No, I can do it.”
After pressing the purchase button and completing the payment, Seo Jeong-hee lay down gently on her bed.
She grew curious.
“…I wonder what it feels like.”
At that thought, her hand slowly slid down her back.
At the end of the mysterious sensation, a faint pleasure, however brief, flowed up her spine.
Hastily pulling her hand away, she murmured with a gloomy expression.
“Am I… a pervert…?”
Whether she had become this way because of Kim Do-jin’s touch, or if it was her own innate nature.
She was becoming a little afraid of her body, which was growing more and more lewd.