Chapter 35
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 35
Chapter Title: Learning (5)
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Late at night.
Hong Yu-ra's house.
Bang bang bang—!
Hearing the pounding at the door, Hong Yu-ra realized Seol Ju-hee had come and hurriedly rushed to the entrance.
“What on earth is it at this hour...!”
“……”
Hong Yu-ra momentarily lost for words at her utter mess of an appearance.
Hair tangled wildly as if torn out, clothes disheveled.
Even a faint whiff of alcohol, as though she had been drinking somewhere.
“You.... are you okay...?”
Hong Yu-ra unwittingly furrowed her brow at Seol Ju-hee nodding in place of an answer, then hurriedly led her inside.
“Honey water. Drink some of this at least.”
Hong Yu-ra quietly watched Seol Ju-hee sitting in the living room, sipping the honey water in silence.
‘What on earth happened...?’
She wore a dazed expression somewhere vacant, like someone who had just been dumped—utterly unlike her usual bold confidence. It felt strangely unfamiliar.
“...What happened?”
As Hong Yu-ra carefully broached the question.
Clack—
Seol Ju-hee indifferently set down the glass, forcibly suppressing her chest still uncomfortably pounding away, and slowly began to speak.
“...Yu-ra. ...Doesn't something feel off?”
“...What?”
“Just.... everything.”
Seol Ju-hee confessed, struck by an intense sense of disconnect so powerful she wondered why she hadn't noticed it all this time.
“I met Do Ji-hyeok.”
“...Really?”
Hong Yu-ra's eyes went wide at the unexpected name bursting from Seol Ju-hee's lips.
Of the three, she had despised Do Ji-hyeok the most—bordering on outright loathing.
Hong Yu-ra had witnessed it all firsthand, even the murderous intent she harbored at one point. The very fact that Seol Ju-hee had met him filled her with deep suspicion.
“Why all of a sudden? Because of A-rin?”
Seol Ju-hee slowly lifted her head to meet Hong Yu-ra's gaze.
Then, she painfully forced out the answer she loathed even putting into words.
“...Because I was worried....”
“What?”
“...Because I was worried about Do Ji-hyeok....”
‘Seol Ju-hee was worried about Do Ji-hyeok.’
Hong Yu-ra blinked her large eyes at the unbelievable reality, then quickly regained her composure and calmly asked again.
Seol Ju-hee laid out the situation in disjointed bits, explaining what had happened with Do Ji-hyeok...
“That's...”
Having grasped the full story, Hong Yu-ra pressed her faintly throbbing forehead and slowly pieced it together.
‘Something is definitely off...’
Hong Yu-ra had felt the same worry about Do Ji-hyeok as Seol Ju-hee.
But she had always been one to hate the sin, not the sinner, so she hadn't sensed anything particularly strange.
Yet.
Hearing Seol Ju-hee's account now, it began to feel oddly wrong.
‘Clearly after seeing that video...’
Hong Yu-ra had trusted Do Ji-hyeok so blindly she would have died at his word.
That was why she had accepted the leader role without hesitation, taken on the tank position instead of main dealer, and stepped into Seol Ju-hee's shadow.
But the instant she saw him spewing trash talk in that incriminating video, all the trust and faith she had built crumbled away.
‘...Huh?’
A massive hole she had never noticed before yawned wide open.
“……”
Seol Ju-hee felt certain Hong Yu-ra had caught on too, from the way her lips suddenly quivered and her flustered expression.
“Something's off, right? Isn't it?”
A strange sense of relief washed over her—not just her imagining things. Seol Ju-hee tugged up the corner of her mouth and urgently clutched Hong Yu-ra, pleading earnestly.
“Something's off.... right? Do I deserve to hear that crap from Do Ji-hyeok? No way.... It's Do Ji-hyeok who's in the wrong!”
“Ju-hee...”
“If that bastard hadn't rolled in the sheets with some other woman.... hadn't betrayed us, none of this would have happened!”
“Ju-hee. Calm down first...”
“No, no, that's not it.... It might not be. I might have been duped by that garbage video. Right...?”
“...Huh?”
“Maybe Ji-hyeok isn't tainted at all.”
Seol Ju-hee's eyes gleamed with a faint madness.
Far from dismissing it, she latched onto the possibility that she had been the fool.
That Do Ji-hyeok was pure after all, and they were the ones mistaken.
“Th-then what do we do? If I got it wrong? If I hurt Ji-hyeok like some idiot...?”
An intense wave of terror crashed over her. Seol Ju-hee clung tightly to Hong Yu-ra's arm.
And in that moment, the disgust for Do Ji-hyeok—scattering like ash in her heart—surged back to engulf her.
“...No.... The issue isn't me getting fooled. It's that Do Ji-hyeok gave any reason to be fooled in the first place, right? That bastard always flirting everywhere...!”
“Ju-hee. You, what the...”
“Don't you remember? The day our Power Ranking dropped— that fucking bitch Kim Eun-young wagging her tail at him! Do Ji-hyeok knew full well and still lapped it up!!!”
Hong Yu-ra's heart sank at how perilously unstable Seol Ju-hee looked, but she couldn't bring herself to refute her.
Queens' Schedule Manager Kim Eun-young approaching Do Ji-hyeok—Hong Yu-ra knew all about it.
And it wasn't just her. Countless other women had thrown themselves at him nonstop, and Do Ji-hyeok never turned away their favors, always citing business.
She couldn't help seeing it as textbook 'fish tank management.'
“All this is Do Ji-hyeok's fault! If he'd just accepted us properly from the start.... given us real certainty, we never would have...! ......Even if we trusted him.... after adoring him like that, just because he dirtied himself once.... ......But one fling? Not enough with some dirty whore—he had to go and screw that bitch Lee Hye-ri too...!”
Seol Ju-hee tore at her hair in self-recrimination one moment, then exploded in rage the next, veering wildly back and forth.
Extreme stress had triggered full-blown delusion.
“Ju-hee. Calm down first...! We'll figure out a solution together. Okay?”
Hong Yu-ra grabbed her urgently, soothing her as she proposed an alternative.
“...A solution...?”
“Yeah...! We can tackle it step by step!”
With that, Hong Yu-ra finally calmed Seol Ju-hee down and began brainstorming ways to break free of this suffocating mess together.
“First.... let's try this.”
“...Unicorn?”
In this world existed an S-rank monster known as the unicorn.
Rare even in gates, it had the trait of trusting and following only the purely chaste—regardless of age or gender.
Hong Yu-ra intended to use a product exploiting that trait: the ‘Purity Check Kit.’
“Hard to acquire, but this should settle it for sure.”
The kit could gauge a person's approximate number of sexual encounters.
If it proved Do Ji-hyeok was pure, then it was all their rash misunderstanding.
But if he turned out a rampant playboy...
Do Ji-hyeok became the trash who had deceived them.
“What do you think?”
Seol Ju-hee couldn't answer Hong Yu-ra's question readily.
Either outcome was a nightmare for her.
But...
She had no choice left.
“...Let's do it.”
They ordered the kit on the spot. Hong Yu-ra then urged a professional check for themselves too.
“We should get tested ourselves first.”
No matter the shock of Do Ji-hyeok's betrayal, her inexplicable acceptance of him—and the bottomless loathing—were blatant anomalies.
“We'll call A-rin soon and do it together. Got it?”
Seol Ju-hee had listened silently to Hong Yu-ra's persuasion. She cautiously lifted her head to meet her eyes.
“If.... just if.... Ji-hyeok turns out innocent, and we're clean too—what then?”
And.
“...That...”
Hong Yu-ra unwittingly pictured the 'what if' Seol Ju-hee voiced—and knew.
Game over. No turning back.
“...We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
Hong Yu-ra brushed it off vaguely and pulled Seol Ju-hee into a tight hug.
Seol Ju-hee, lost in visions of utter ruin just like her, buried her face in Hong Yu-ra's chest—finding scant comfort in the reply.
Right after arriving at work.
Sorry. I'm pretty busy today, so contacting might be tough. I'll hit you up later.
Exchanging texts with Im A-rin as usual, I stared at the message I had pre-typed and hesitated.
‘Should I really send this?’
One tap of send, and it would fly off in a blink.
Im A-rin would definitely sense something off, question my sudden shift in attitude.
Truth be told, this wishy-washy approach was wrong. Better to just lay it all out and end things cleanly.
But unlike my bold front in front of Seol Ju-hee, I lacked the guts to actually cut ties with her.
“...Haa...”
Squeeze—
I let out a heavy sigh, sent the message with lingering reluctance, shook off the pointless thoughts, and headed straight for the training ground.
“Producer! Sejin Guild just contacted—says we should relocate the office soon!”
“They move fast.”
Upon reaching the training ground, Han Gyu-ri hit me with some pretty shocking news.
Whether my chat with the mayor had greased the wheels, the deal with Sejin Guild had progressed at lightning speed.
They had been lying in wait—as soon as approval hit, boom: immediate relocation request.
‘Well, quicker's better.’
“Shall we lock in a date right away?”
“What'd Jun-hyeong say?”
“He was legit dancing—said it's a top-notch facility.”
Imagining Kim Jun-hyeong's over-the-top excitement, I forced a grin and asked about timelines.
“How long for our move?”
“Not much stuff.... Morning should do it.”
“Morning, huh.... You want it as quick as possible too, right Gyu-ri?”
“Not opposed.”
I nodded at Han Gyu-ri's reply and suggested the earliest slot.
“We could skip morning training.... Or train Friday morning, move afternoon?”
“Ah! That work?”
“For me? Anytime's fine. Beats training till evening Friday—move fast, clock out early. Better, yeah?”
“Totally!”
Han Gyu-ri beamed like she scored a vacation day, jotted it on her phone, and vanished to sync with Sejin.
‘Damn, she nails the job.’
Training kicked off as usual, Han Gyu-ri in tow.
“...Producer.”
“Yeah?”
“...Do that thing again today.”
Jin Seo-won, warm-up done, requested private qi circulation coaching.
“Again?”
I had taught her several times already. Recalling her oddly suggestive reactions, I started to refuse...
“...Qi deviation...”
Jin Seo-won brought up qi deviation to justify it.
Straight out of Seol Ju-hee's playbook, ten years back when she first learned qi circulation.
‘All martial artists like this?’
“...Fine. Keep an eye on Han-na and Na-rae—I'll coach later. But once only? No more today?”
Jin Seo-won nodded, looking oddly satisfied, and meekly returned to her booth.
“Producer...!”
Bang Han-na approached like she had been waiting, speaking cautiously.
“That..., the theater we planned.... There's this amazing spot nearby.... If you're free, wanna hit it together...?”
Ah, the weekend date thing.
“Yeah. Wasn't it obvious we'd go together?”
“...Pardon?”
“Movie wraps evening-ish—figured we'd grab dinner after. Me assuming too much?”
Bang Han-na blanked for a sec, not parsing it right away, staring at me...
“Ah, no! Totally! Yes! Of course...!”
Her face flushed pink as she waved her hands, radiating pure joy.
‘Cute as hell.’
As we chatted briefly with Bang Han-na.
“Producer...! Producerrr!”
Han Gyu-ri came sprinting back from Sejin coordination, gasping.
“...?”
“What's the rush...”
“Th-that person showed up!”
I puzzled over who this exalted 'that person' was Han Gyu-ri meant, shooting a glance at equally baffled Bang Han-na before asking.
“Who?”
Then.
Han Gyu-ri revealed it, face lit with thrilled curiosity.
“Im A-rin!”
“...What?”
Im A-rin.