MERRY 1

It seems my love has become something complicated, suspicious, and faint. It would be much easier to recognize if it were like Jimmy Myers, whose face would flush bright red before he could even offer a greeting the moment he saw me.

This emotion, which is impossible to detect, remains unclear—I don’t even know if it’s hiding inside me or if I need to find it outside to fill the void. Do I even want to know what love is? That’s the first question. Perhaps I already stepped onto a path destined to be walled off from love forever back then—during those days when I was naive and a bit of an idiot.

Maybe I let all my passion drip away along with the beads of sweat falling from my forehead back then. The total sum of warmth I possessed was likely stolen by the sensation of soft skin brushing against my tongue.

Someone once said that love is the privilege of the brave. I more or less agree with that, but I have no intention of classifying myself as a coward. Even if the privilege of love wasn’t granted to me, the responsibility for why I lost that privilege lies with someone else.

I know the world’s greatest coward, and he is the prime suspect—the culprit who caused the presence of love to fade within me.

“…You have to do it. Jillian is going to ask you to open or close the show. Naturally. The brand value is plummeting because she’s been busy cleaning up after rich brats, so she needs a drastic remedy.”

In any case, having shifted the blame, I claim that it’s not a lack of courage that keeps me from loving; I am simply free and unconstrained by it. There is nothing wrong with living life without knowing love.

Though, of course, I don’t intend to be so stiff as to ignore my love if I ever become able to recognize it.

“I’m not trying to badmouth all rich brats. Ha ha, how should I put it… unlike them, you don’t use your background. You know what I mean, right?”

To put it simply, the point my circular thoughts eventually reach is that I have no luck when it comes to romance. A hedonistic life where I keep love at a distance and just enjoy sex welcomes me…

“Dammit. Somerset Quinn! You’re spacing out again, aren’t you? What is wrong with you? Have you grown muscles in your ears instead of your body? I’m asking if you’re listening to me.”

It wasn’t until my ears stung from the booming voice that I became aware of the person in front of me. A face flushed with rage was huffing and puffing before my eyes. To be honest, I hadn’t heard a single damn word she said, but since she was Mag Able, the head of the agency, it was difficult to tell the truth. So, I just pretended to be exhausted by some mysterious ordeal.

“I’m sorry. Since yesterday, I’ve just… ha…”

As I let out a long sigh and ran a hand through my hair, Able’s eyes wavered sharply. She was hot-tempered and quick to flare up, but her heart wasn’t that tough.

As Able leaned forward to check on my condition, the sight of the editorials she had shot back when she was an active model displayed behind her felt quite strange. The Mag Able in her early twenties, staring into the camera with heavy smoky makeup, and the woman looking at me now with lightly made-up eyes felt like a game of “spot the difference” using time as the subject.

The external changes were immediately obvious, but those shifts felt trivial. Compared to a person’s humanity completely changing over a few years, wrinkles around the eyes are nothing.

“If you’re at the point of losing energy, it must be no ordinary matter.”

Sighing repeatedly, I cast my eyes down and shook my head. Falling into a loop of nonsense thoughts is indeed no ordinary matter. It’s sub-ordinary. It was even more of a lost cause if all those thoughts were aimed at a specific person—targeting one man like a bullseye.

While I was distracted, rubbing my jaw which had tightened without me realizing, Able, who had been offering coffee in a gentle tone, suddenly paused. Her slightly downturned eyes twitched.

“You didn’t cause some accident that’s going to affect your career, did you?”

It was a concern truly befitting a businessperson.

“What do you take me for? If someone heard you, they’d think I go around causing trouble all the time.”

“Even if it’s not an accident, people do need to be careful not to get swept up by a man like you.”

After discussing the danger by comparing me to the eye of a storm, she asked pressingly:

“Don’t tell me you’ve already laid a hand on Owen? I’ve told you over and over, he’s off-limits.”

Owen Alexander is a model Able scouted from another agency using some dirty tricks. Slim and charming, he is constantly followed by rumors of an affair with a male designer, but he had clarified during a recent drink—at his suggestion—that the rumors weren’t true.

He said the girlfriend he went to prom with was attending university in their hometown, and he went to see her whenever he had a day off. Whether he just liked the thought of her, he had grinned, revealing a gap between his front teeth.

“Again, what do you take me for?”

I boldly claimed my innocence and slumped into the sofa. Lying back against a purple velvet cushion of the same material as the sofa, I recalled Brian Alexander’s smooth waist. The memory of the steaming night I spent with him—Owen Alexander’s cousin and manager—was still vivid.

Brian, who had joined the drinks with Owen late, looked enough like his cousin to be mistaken for a twin, but unlike him, his teeth were straight and his cheekbones were dusted with freckles.

Exuding a fairly sophisticated aura, he volunteered to be the designated driver for us drunks, and after dropping his cousin off at his house first, he asked for my destination. I liked his boldness in choosing the latter when I gave him the options of my house or a hotel. Though, once we were actually on the bed, he was like an amateur.

After flinching a few times during foreplay, he confessed he wasn’t used to this kind of thing. To him, whose face was flushed pink with embarrassment, I gave a deep, lingering kiss. I advised him that it would be better not to tense up too much if he was worried about looking like a naive country boy, and I licked his freckles.

Because I took my time loosening up a body that was being held by a man for the first time, the foreplay was quite long that day. I pushed inside with such sincerity that he let out repeated bursts of wanting more. If I were a truly “good man,” I might have been nothing but sweet, but I maintained a moderate temperature so there would be no misunderstandings about our relationship.

The scene of holding Brian by the waist and rocking him while he sat on top of me made me salivate.

To be honest, it wasn’t like I was cherishing it because it was an incredibly mind-blowing memory. It was just that, damn it, no other experiences had been updated since. After holding Brian and then being held by a “compatible” friend a few days later, I had been unintentionally spending my days quite wholesomely. Dammit.

Anyway, I hadn’t touched Owen, whom Able doted on. I’d been in touch with his cousin since that day, but we’d only had sex once.

“Sorry if I misunderstood.”

Able apologized quickly and stood up. Hanging her yellow suit jacket over her arm, she kicked off her comfortable slippers and changed into heels.

“I have to go take care of something else for a moment, so stay here, clear your head, and rest. We’ll talk again.”

“Thanks. I’ll try.”

It was a lie, of course. Left alone after Able departed, I mindlessly pulled out my phone.

I logged into my social media, skimmed through my acquaintances’ posts, and checked my backlog of messages. Starting from the oldest, in chronological order.

Sam Youth

Quinn, if you think of me tonight, give me a call.

Thomas Racer

I’ll buy drinks. Want to come out?

Sharp McAvoy

Babe, you didn’t delete my number, did you? That day was my mistake. I’ll never say anything like “let’s date” again.