Jeong Taeui couldn't believe his eyes. He blinked skeptically and stared at Ilay as he walked
back to his seat, almost tripping over the chair or bumping into the flowerpot a few times.
After knocking over a flower pot, Jeong Taeui finally came to his senses. He sat down,
feeling like Ilay had glanced at him, but he didn't dare look in that direction and instead
stared at the plate in front of him.
"I heard that you completely rearranged Christoph's study room today. There are so many
books there, it must have been tiring for you."
Johan, who had arrived earlier, sat next to him. He seemed to have finished half his meal and,
instead of saying hello, gave Jeong Taeui a sympathetic look.
"No, it actually helped me get some exercise, so I feel much better...."
Jeong Taeui whispered in response but then suddenly shut his mouth. Once again, he stared at
his plate, speaking while poking at peas with his fork.
"But the person sitting next to Richard..."
"Huh? Oh, that's the lunatic Rick."
Johan frowned, shrugged, and after thinking for a moment, reluctantly uttered that name.
"I heard he'll be having dinner here starting today."
Jeong Taeui stabbed at a split pea with his fork and glared at Johan innocently.
"Important guests should be dining at Donik. Why suddenly come here and disturb our
peaceful dining atmosphere?"
In a sober state, he would never have said something like 'peaceful dining atmosphere.' It
was obviously an absurd lie, but Jeong Taeui's brain didn't have time to think about it.
After climbing over this mountain, there was an even higher one ahead. The path in front was
filled with thorns.
He would have preferred if Rick had stormed into his room and yelled at him, "I told you to
stay at home, and yet you dare to come out like this?!" If that had happened, he would have
reluctantly accepted it.
But what was this man thinking? He just smiled at Jeong Taeui with bright eyes, showing no
intention of speaking to him. No, he was just pretending not to know him. That made it even
scarier.Was he planning to drain Jeong Taeui's spirit before making his move…? Jeong Taeui didn't
know if Rick had that intention.
Jeong Taeui thought about it while seriously crushing the pea.
"See you later."
Was that what Rick meant when he smiled and said those words?
"It would be better to confront him directly tonight..."
If he wanted to kill him, he would rather face it head-on and die, which might feel more
comfortable than constantly worrying and feeling guilty like this. Jeong Taeui thought it
would be much more comfortable to face it with dignity and pay for his sins.
"But what sin have I committed that deserves death?"
Jeong Taeui's heart sank, and he accidentally dropped his fork. Johan, who had been
watching Jeong Taeui attentively, calmly spoke while cutting his meat.
"What sin did that pea commit to deserve death?"
"It was already dead (cooked) to begin with!"
Jeong Taeui shouted while stabbing the thoroughly cooked and chopped pea. Johan clicked
his tongue and resumed enjoying his meat.
"Even if someone committed a serious crime, keeping their body intact is the last respect for
the executed, right?"
"Spit out that piece of meat before saying such things."
Jeong Taeui retorted, looking at the large bone in front of Johan's mouth.
The man sitting right in front of him, Ilay Riegrow, had once told him that if he tried to
escape again, he would kill and eat him. When Jeong Taeui recalled those words, the bone
Johan was continuously chewing on seemed even more unusual.
Until one or two weeks ago, Jeong Taeui still felt pity for him – a wild beast leisurely
roaming around.
"But it seems you know Rick too? As expected, that lunatic is quite famous."
"Not famous, infamous."
When Jeong Taeui bluntly corrected him, Johan started laughing hysterically. What was so
funny? He laughed as if he would break a bone. This guy sometimes laughed hysterically at
meaningless things like this."Hey, I don't know how you see it, but that guy has become much more human now. Because
of the relationship between our families, I often attended parties or visited. If it was when I
was young, I would never say these words…. But now, just by looking, he seems normal."
Johan chuckled, leaning towards Jeong Taeui. While speaking, he pointed at Ilay with a bone
and suddenly recalled his dark past, shaking his head with a terrified sigh.
"When he was young, it was as if his forehead was engraved with 'I am dangerous'.... But
anyway, that's good. It's better to recognize a lunatic just by looking at them. Because we
know how to avoid them."
"If I could recognize just by looking at him, I would never have answered that man's call
when I was in my uncle's room. No, if I had already answered and recognized the unusual
nature of those beautiful, fair hands, I would have hung up immediately and never gone to
my uncle's room again." - Jeong Taeui mumbled darkly to himself.
But now it was too late to talk about it.
(However, when Jeong Taeui recounted his belated regrets to his uncle, his uncle only
sneered and rebutted all his regrets.
'The moment you pointed a gun at Rick's head in the cafeteria on the first day of joint
training, you already knew he was a lunatic, so why did everything happen after that?'
Jeong Taeui still remembered the heartbreak of having nothing to rebut at that time.)
"No, as far as I remember, when he was young and couldn't control himself, he always wore
bloodstained clothes. So, just by looking, you could recognize him as dangerous. Later, as he
grew older, improved his skills, and became more ruthless, he could handle everything well
without getting blood on his clothes."
"..."
Jeong Taeui suddenly lost his appetite. His hand holding the fork with the 'mashed peas' he
made paused in midair.
The solution seemed to be a pair of gloves. Throwing away gloves would certainly be more
economical than discarding clothes daily.
"Anyway, just by looking, he seems like a normal person. I just feel sorry for those who don't
know anything and approach him."
"Hmm..."
Jeong Taeui had nothing more to say, so he silently ate his soup. Beside him, Johan picked up
a new piece of meat and mumbled.
"They say the more poisonous something is, the more beautiful, radiant, and outstanding it is.
I think that's quite true. He dresses so elegantly; women must be flocking to him."In these times, meeting bad people is so common that it's clear you should never decide to
date someone based solely on their appearance. How would you know if such people would
kidnap and imprison you?! Half-listening to Johan's envious voice, Jeong Taeui
straightforwardly dismissed it.
"Really? I don't know. If it were me, I would be a bit uncomfortable seeing a man
meticulously groomed from head to toe like that."
"No, I conducted a local survey with three of my girlfriends, and 100% of the women like
men who pay attention to their appearance. Isn't that an incredibly impressive rate?!"
"Yes, it's truly amazing to have a 100% rate from a survey with three people...."
Jeong Taeui sighed, but Johan didn't mind at all.
Jeong Taeui didn't know if it was his mood, but he felt like he kept receiving warm looks
from the front. He was too scared to turn his head in that direction, but the feeling was very
clear.
Damn, tonight he really had to rush into that bastard's room and tell him to just capture and
eat him already...
Instead of writing a will, he would call Kyle and resent him before he died.
Even if he was lucky enough to survive, he wouldn't be able to walk normally for three or
four days afterward. Just thinking about that made Jeong Taeui's taste buds instantly bitter.
"Moreover, 100% of girls like something reliable."
Johan was still talking about something and suddenly lowered his voice to whisper in Jeong
Taeui's ear, "Let me tell you a very special story."
"66,6% said they like something big and hard, and 33,3% said they don't particularly care
about size but prefer something usable over something shabby. In other words, the actual rate
is 100%."
That's why you shouldn't conclude about 100% of women with just three people... Jeong
Taeui had missed the middle part of Johan's story, so he didn't fully understand what he was
saying.
When Jeong Taeui widened his eyes at him and wondered what he meant, he clicked his
tongue in frustration and said again.
"I mean that, that!"
Only when Jeong Taeui saw Johan's thumb pointing at his own groin did he understand what
he was saying.
"Oh, that... Yes, that seems to be a common perception. But what about it?"Jeong Taeui didn't know why the topic shifted to the condition for a man to be liked by
women, but when Johan squinted his eyes and stared at him suspiciously, Jeong Taeui
suddenly got flustered and immediately defended the dignity of a man.
"I've told you before, I'm not small."
Sometimes, when sharing stories like this abroad, Asians often face the stereotype that
Easterners are smaller than Westerners.
From Jeong Taeui's experience, that might not be entirely wrong, but as a man, he couldn't
suppress his feelings when faced with a look that seemed to say, "Yours is small, right?"
But Johan didn't seem to mean that.
"No, no, not that," he said, waving his hand.
"I mean that guy, Rick. It's not just his appearance that makes women cling to him. There's
also 'that.'"
"..."
As the topic shifted, Jeong Taeui lost his appetite once again. He stopped mid-bite, holding a
pine mushroom and staring at it with frustration.
"His 'that' is huge. They say it's really amazing. This is a highly reliable rumor because one
of my cousins works at the European branch of UNHRDO, where Rick worked a few years
ago. They have a shared bathroom there, and my cousin saw it first-hand. It's almost like an
arm (of a grown man). The rumor has become legendary within the branch.... Hey, but that
mushroom (in Taeui's dish) looks really good."
"…....…. You can have it."
Jeong Taeui used his fork to hand the grilled pine mushroom to Johan. Johan, who was
cutting a piece of meat, looked surprised and said - "Oh, really?" - and accepted it with a
smile.
Watching Johan happily eat the grilled pine mushroom without a second thought, Jeong Taeui
could only drink water.
Finally, he reached a rare reasonable conclusion.
"That's why dating should be based on personality, not appearance. Choosing wrong can end
your life."
This was the same guy who said yesterday - "No matter what, when dating, the most
important thing is the face, the second is the face, and the third is also the face." He nearly
got stabbed by the women at the dining table then.
"Well, grilled pine mushrooms are delicious no matter where you eat them."Watching Johan murmur in satisfaction, Jeong Taeui sighed and stood up.
"... I'll go rest first."
Jeong Taeui left with an uneasy feeling, and the food probably wouldn't taste good anymore.
Along with the fatigue from the past few days suddenly hitting him, he thought it would be
better to return to his room and lie down to rest.
He didn't understand why people couldn't imagine specifically the consequences of
something they were very familiar with. For example, when a deadline approached, he knew
that if he didn't finish the task, he would suffer painful consequences later, but since he
couldn't concretely picture that suffering, he could only grit his teeth and cry miserably in the
end.
Just like tonight.
He knew that if he went to see Ilay tonight and received his final judgment, he would be in
immense pain, and though he foresaw that pain, he couldn't recall 'how exactly painful it
was.'
No, he was used to it. If he did it when his body was in good condition, it wouldn't hurt that
much.
.... But today he wasn't feeling well. Moreover, it had been a while since he last did it.
Jeong Taeui decided to postpone it for a while.
Anyway, Ilay was pretending not to know anything.
"Today's pine mushrooms were large and juicy, so they were really delicious. They just
melted on your tongue."
"..."
"Why aren't you eating? Huh? Already leaving?"
Jeong Taeui turned his back on Johan.
It was a matter of timing. He felt that continuing to talk to him now would only be mental
torture.
Jeong Taeui staggered toward the door, bumping into things like he did when entering the
dining room. Suddenly, he turned his head and made eye contact with Richard, who was
saying something to a waiter.
"It looks like you just got here and you're already done eating?"
It was the same polite smile. Jeong Taeui nodded, thinking that Richard must be a very kind
person to be so considerate of those around him. In fact, he couldn't even eat half because ofthe man next to Richard. Rick looked at him indifferently as if just noticing Jeong Taeui's
presence.
"You really don't look well. Why don't you rest? You seem to get along well with Johan;
maybe you can ask him for help."
That voice felt like a hand reaching out and grabbing his neck.
Jeong Taeui looked back at Ilay with wide eyes.
"You… How do you know Johan?"
This time, Ilay glanced at Jeong Taeui as if he had heard something ridiculous.
"Just like he knows the members of my family well, I also know the members of Tarten well.
Besides, I've met Johan a few times when we were younger and talked with him. It's been
over 20 years anyway."
Thinking back, it made sense.
Most of the young people in this restaurant were friends in some way. Although some would
adamantly say, 'I never want to be called friends with that lunatic!'.
"It seems Christoph also likes you, but he hasn't arrived yet, has he?"
Ilay looked at the empty seat opposite and added. Beside him, Richard looked at Ilay with a
strange expression and smiled subtly.
"Seeing you hold onto someone and talk nonsense like this, you must really like him, huh?"
"Is that so?"
Ilay said and let out a short laugh as if he had heard a funny story. He looked at Jeong Taeui
with eyes he had never seen before.
"Let's see… It's wonderful to see an Asian in this house. You remind me of the guy staying
at my house."
If Jeong Taeui had heard those words from someone else's perspective, he would have
immediately said - "Don't lie! There's no way you could say such humane and touching
things!" - but since he understood the deep meaning behind every word, he could only
remain silent.
Richard slowly widened his eyes as if seeing something strange and looked at Ilay with a
curious smile, but he seemed to understand and said - "You've changed after just a few years,
huh."
While they were talking, Jeong Taeui inadvertently stood in the middle of the conversation.
He could only sigh silently and rub his neck."If you're done talking, I'll be going."
Jeong Taeui said, and Richard responded - "Yes, go rest." - Ilay didn't even bother to look
back at him.
The beginning had already been difficult.