MOON Ch 21

“…”

Taeha slowly opened his eyes and whispered softly.

“Jang Yeonjun went to Yoon Chaeon’s school?”

“Yes.”

“What did he do there?”

“He seemed to meet a male student from that school. Exactly what they talked about, I cannot be certain.”

“The exact timing?”

“Well, that’s…”

Listening to the quietly continuing report, Taeha burst into a hollow laugh. A picture was vaguely forming in his mind. He had assigned Lim Seonho to Jang Yeonjun and his mother early on to keep them under his control, but thanks to that, he had ended up discovering an unexpected fact.

Whatever direction Jang Yeonjun’s growing interest in Yoon Chaeon was taking, digging into this deeply might reveal something quite unprecedented.

“Ms. Kim.”

“Yes.”

“Investigate the boy Jang Yeonjun met separately.”

“Yes, understood.”

“All his surrounding relationships too.”

“If you say all…”

“How his friendships are, how his relationships with girls are. Things like that as well.”

“Yes, understood.”

“About Yoon Chaeon too.”

Ms. Kim, who was silent for a moment, quietly answered once more, “Understood.”

“Good work. You may leave.”

Taeha dismissed her with a fatigue-laden gesture.

The study door closed quietly, and the meaningful smile lingering on his lips deepened—thinking that he seemed to have stepped on a rather interesting tail.

∞ ∞ ∞

“Reframe… jaegoeseonghada (to reconstruct). Entrepreneur, gieopga. Elaborate, jeonggyohan.”

Thump. A single leaf fell down onto the vocabulary notebook spread open on her knees. Chaeon, who was immersed in memorizing words, started in surprise and raised her head.

The air brushing the tip of her nose was becoming dry before she knew it. Autumn was also finding its way into Songbaekwon. It was the season when the trees, which had grown thick with dense green foliage, grew gaunt. The branches were gradually drying out, but the warmth of summer had not yet faded, so fortunately, the afternoon sunlight was still warm.

“…”

Chaeon picked up the leaf that had fallen onto her vocabulary book and softly smiled to herself without realizing it. It was such an intricate heart shape that one might wonder if someone had cut it to make it that way. The veins etched into the leaf were distinct.

How fascinating. I should definitely show this to the young master later. Looking down at the special leaf with a proud face, as if she had made a great discovery, Chaeon tucked it between the pages of her notebook and stood up.

It was a rare, relaxing weekend. At a point when the CSAT was not far off, she wondered if it was really okay to be this peaceful, but the moments when autumn overlaid the summer landscape of Songbaekwon—which used to be filled with the scent of grass and the sweet odor of morning dew—naturally made her heart gentle. Far away, the ridge of Mount Moga surrounding Munjeong City was already turning golden and reddish.

Chaeon had been coming out to study frequently in the garden in front of the staff quarters lately to take in such scenery. Because she kept filling her head with words and solving workbooks, her temples were throbbing. Standing up with the thought that she should take a short break, she immediately pulled her cell phone out of her pocket.

Are you perhaps in your room? If you’re busy, you don’t have to reply.

When returning from school, Chaeon had become accustomed to helping Heejung finish simple chores and then heading to Yeonjun’s room with her notebook. Even those who knew bit by bit that Chaeon occasionally visited his room merely thought that the young master, who graduated from a prestigious university, was thoughtful enough to teach the servant’s daughter how to study—it was regarded only to that extent.

Perhaps because he explained things so easily to understand and instructed her so kindly, Chaeon’s math scores had already risen to a level incomparable to before. Whenever Chaeon rejoiced, saying she would ask for nothing more if she just did well on the CSAT like this, Yeonjun would also smile together with her, wearing that signature gentle face of his.

Before long, the phone in Chaeon’s hand vibrated briefly.

(Photo)

“Huh?”

Unexpectedly, what flew in from Yeonjun was a photo of beautifully sliced figs served on a plate.

Do you want to come eat some figs?

And, below that, a kind question was appended. Now, it felt like she could read his tone of voice even in his written text. Chaeon smiled so deeply that her dimples showed and sent a reply right away.

I’ll be there right away.

Just like any other time, it felt as though something soft and fluffy was spreading in a corner of her chest. Chaeon, who was about to move her feet toward Yeonjun’s room, stopped dead in her tracks at the sight of people gathered over there.

‘The eldest young master’s friends are coming today, so try not to go over that way as much as possible. They dislike it, saying it’s bothersome while they’re hanging out for no reason.’

She thought she had overheard Mrs. Kwon requesting this of a few staff members early in the morning, and indeed, the swimming pool leading to the main house’s garden was noisy.

On two sunbeds placed across a single table, a unfamiliar woman and Taeha were stretched out respectively. The woman, wearing a swimsuit that showed almost no skin yet revealed the voluptuous lines of her body intact, had a fair and beautiful appearance as if she had never seen sunlight in her life.

“Who’s that?”

When the woman gestured with her chin toward Chaeon while taking a small bite of a Florentine cookie served alongside a cocktail, Taeha’s head slowly turned toward her. Draped in a dark-colored robe, his hair and parts of his face were slightly wet with moisture.

At the sculpture-like muscles glimpseable through the open robe, Chaeon winced and cast her eyes downward. The rest of the party was also half-naked, so she did not know where to place her gaze. Feeling embarrassed, she was about to bow her head and pass by, when a man who had just swum to the end of the pool suddenly poked his head above the water’s surface.

“Puh-ha!”

“Agh!”

Chaeon, who was so startled by the man rising abruptly out of the water that she practically jumped, dropped her vocabulary notebook from her hand and collapsed right beside Taeha’s sunbed. The man, who sat up on the deck while wiping the moisture off his face with his hand, glanced at Chaeon and smirked.

“What’s this? A face I haven’t seen before?”

For a while, Chaeon remained frozen in place just as she had fallen, unable to budge. Right beside her, she could feel the sweltering heat characteristic of someone who had just finished intense exercise. And, the deep fragrance unique to Jang Taeha.

“Hello, baby.”

The man scanning Chaeon up and down playfully extended his hand. Ha. Letting out a short sigh, Chaeon ignored that hand and raised her head, only to find Taeha looking down at her with a peculiar expression.

“…”

From his hair, which harbored moisture and was slicked back slightly, drops of water were still trickling down bit by bit—drip, drip. At his dark, sunken, and indifferently staring gaze, her heart thudded rapidly. Chaeon, swallowing dry spit, picked up the vocabulary notebook that had fallen at her feet and sprang up.

“She’s pretty.”

When the woman sipping a cocktail beside Taeha uttered in a casual tone, another man in the pool resting his arms on the deck showed curiosity.

“I know, right. Who is she, this baby?”

At the question in a languid tone, Taeha’s mouth, which had been staring intently at Chaeon, opened.

“A servant.”

“…”

Stab. What was it about those words? In an instant, it felt as if her pit of stomach had been pierced by something stinging and throbbed with pain.

“Huh? Isn’t she too young to be a servant? Do you hire kids that young too?”

“If she’s living here freeloading as a servant’s daughter, she’s a servant.”

“Ah, in that sense?”

The unfamiliar man burst into laughter, as if finding something so amusing. It couldn’t be said to be wrong words, but why was her chest throbbing like this? It was the moment Chaeon was about to turn her body around as it was, not wanting to stand facing him any longer.

“Yoon Chaeon.”

What was it about that low voice uttering the three letters of her name? It felt as if her heart sank with a thud. As Chaeon looked back, Taeha, who flicked an empty glass lightly with his fingertip—ting—met her with a languid gaze.

“Could you bring me some water?”

It was not the dry imperative tone that had been uttered from his mouth all along, but a unfamiliar, strange tone of request. Yet somehow, that made Chaeon feel even more choked up with emotion. She wanted to say that she wasn’t a maid to be ordered around at his convenience, but his words instantly became a yoke. If she was the daughter of a servant working as ordered by the people of the master’s household, her plight wasn’t much different.

“Yes.”

Lest even her fingertips brush against his, she carefully received the glass held by his long, slender fingers, when the woman sitting beside him shook her empty glass.

“Ah, then perhaps mine too…”

“No.”

“Huh?”

“One glass is enough.”

“…”

“Fill it up with plenty of ice, too.”

The woman beside him withdrew her hand with an embarrassed look. Taeha’s dense gaze was directed entirely at Chaeon. Biting her lips tightly, Chaeon left them a bow just as she was and headed toward the dining room with her back turned to them.

Clack. After filling the glass with ice spewed from the water purifier’s slot, she also filled it to the brim with water so that the ice floated around. The sound of ice clinking inside the transparent glass was refreshing, but her chest felt strangely stuffy.

Returning to the pool, she saw the woman sitting beside Taeha bringing a cookie up to his mouth. She also saw him opening his mouth slightly without a second thought and taking a bite. Because her chest felt squeezed with an uncaused unpleasantness, Chaeon turned her gaze away from them as she approached.

“Here is the water you asked for.”

“…”

Taeha, taking the glass from Chaeon, looked down at it for a moment and then turned to the woman beside him.

“The cup.”

“Huh?”

The woman looked at him as if bewildered and handed over her empty cup, which he then passed back to Chaeon.

“Could you fill this up too?”

“…”

It was weather where heat still lingered. With sweat slightly beading on her forehead, Chaeon looked at him resentfully. If you were going to do this, you should have just taken it when that woman offered it earlier. Then I would have only had to go back and forth once. Trying hard not to frown, Chaeon received the cup.

Bowing her head with a nod, she went back to the dining room to fill it with ice and fetch water, but strangely, her insides felt as though they were continuously hollowing out. Why do I have to attend to a woman I’m seeing for the first time in my life with water?

Deliberately looking up at the high ceiling and taking a deep breath to suppress her irritation, Chaeon returned to them once more.

“I brought the water.”

“If you were going to do this, you should have just ordered it all at once earlier, Oppa. That girl went back and forth twice for nothing.”

At least the woman, who was slightly less annoying than Jang Taeha, said the right thing. However, he merely stared intently at Chaeon with an unreadable expression, then spat out softly:

“Indeed.”

“…”

I hope you spill it all over yourself while drinking. Thinking such thoughts internally, Chaeon quickly added a farewell, lest she be caught again.

“Then I will be going… Ah!”

It happened truly in an instant. The glass, which seemed to be handed over into Taeha’s hand, tilted in midair, water poured halfway over Chaeon’s T-shirt and shorts, and ice tumbled down with a crash.