Deal Breaker - Chapter 111
“Which one should I use?”
“Hm, not that one. Next, next. Ah, that one.”
“This one?”
It was a photo of Kanghyeon kissing Hyeji on the cheek.
“I haven’t set up multi profiles, so people at the company and Researcher Jung will see it too.”
Wouldn’t that damage the image of Han Kanghyeon, Director of Acton Security, Korea’s top private military company of ability users?
“Let them see it a lot.”
Well, if you wanna.
Hyeji had no way of knowing. She had already quit her job at Acton Security, and she didn’t socialize with her former Center colleagues, so she had no idea that absurd rumors were going around about them.
Things like, they caused an incident and got married without love, only for the sake of it because of the baby. Or, the Esper attacked that innocent Guide with pregnancy and trapped her. Stuff like that. Which was why Kanghyeon wanted to openly show off their relationship.
‘Even to my eyes, this really does look the best…’
After registering the photo, Hyeji pressed it to check how it appeared, then absentmindedly flicked her finger sideways. Her previous profile photos came up one after another, but no matter how much she scrolled, they were all honeymoon photos of the two of them together.
She used to change it maybe three or four times a year at most, but lately she’d been changing it every day.
‘Using photos we took together as our profile picture and phone wallpaper’ was also being smoothly achieved day after day.
When the parade of the two of their faces ended, Han Saebyeok’s growth album began, arranged in reverse chronological order. After the impossibly small baby hands gripping Mom and Dad’s fingers, what followed were all views of the Han River seen from Hyeji’s apartment. Well, not all, but almost.
A profile photo is a display window for showing off. Noh Hyeji had never considered her own face something to show off, so she rarely uploaded photos of herself.
And yet, scattered among them were face photos.
The backgrounds were Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, Notre Dame, the Louvre.
All of them were taken at tourist spots she had visited during spare moments on business trips. In other words, photos he had taken for her.
A profile photo is, ultimately, showing off.
That said, neither then nor now did she have any desire to show off that she had been to famous places. Maybe she had been pretending to do that while wanting to show off something else.
Something outside the frame, invisible to others.
A secret only Hyeji knew.
The man who took these photos.
Funny, right, Noh Hyeji. Back then, you weren’t lovers or anything like that.
It was just a fever you suffered through alone, in secret.
She flipped the photo once more, then couldn’t flip any further. Seeing herself standing in front of the Eiffel Tower, holding a red umbrella tilted to one side, brought back a memory.
That day had been clear all along, but on the way to the Eiffel Tower, the sky suddenly clouded over without warning and a light drizzle began to fall. It didn’t look like it would stop easily. So they bought an umbrella at a small shop they happened to pass, but since there was only one, they had to share it.
Their shoulders brushing at an ambiguous distance, neither close nor far. His body heat felt even stronger, along with the aftershave scent. And as the distance closed, his voice dropped lower, becoming languid, his tone soft and measured. It bothered her so much.
Strangely enough, even after they had stripped naked on the same bed and had s*x…
Why was it that walking normally and exchanging words at such a precarious distance made her flutter so much she didn’t know what to do, more than when they became one body while sharing their weakest, most intimate moments?
She still didn’t know the answer, but there was one thing she did know. This affection wasn’t just physical attachment.
The image frozen forever in the photo was Noh Hyeji as seen through Kanghyeon’s eyes. But etched vividly into Hyeji’s mind was the image of the man taking that photo that day.
Giving her the umbrella, getting soaked in the rain himself, holding her phone in his hand as he turned away and walked a few steps back.
“Look at me. You’re pretty. Just like that, one, two, three.”
When he finished taking the photo and stepped back under her umbrella, the scent of rain mixed into his body scent still lingers vividly at the tip of her nose, as if she’s returned to that moment. Looking back now, it’s a purely sweet memory, but back then it had been bittersweet too.
‘Mr. Director’ never once suggested taking a photo together. He had already been there before, so he probably didn’t feel the need to leave a record. He was a man who didn’t bother taking photos of himself wherever he went.
Hyeji knew him well, and because they weren’t in a relationship where taking photos together was natural, she was afraid of revealing her feelings, so she never once suggested it.
And yet, at some point, the man who had existed outside Hyeji’s frame walked into it on his own. Now, it was so natural that they didn’t even need to say, Let’s record this moment together.
Walking side by side under one umbrella on a rainy day.
She did achieve it. Even if it was a love she carried alone.
And the love she had secretly given up on, the love that had been hers alone, was also achieved before she knew it.
At the time, she never imagined a day like today would come.
