Chapter : 2. Living as a Dependent
His fierce gaze and tone were domineering.
“You’ve got your life mortgaged to me right now.”
It was clear from his clipped voice that he was suppressing his emotions.
“If you’re going to act up, then do it properly.”
In an instant, the position where Haeyoung had been sitting on top of Taejun was reversed.
“If not, lie quietly under me.”
As if to prove that the only reason she had been comfortably on top of him until now was because he had allowed it, her entire field of vision flipped at the same time.
Before she realized it, Haeyoung was pinned beneath him, forced to look up at him.
“Don’t drive people crazy with pointless nonsense.”
Taejun’s low voice brushed past her ear, sending a cold shiver down her spine.
His eyes were as cold as ice, but deep beneath them Haeyoung could faintly glimpse a trace of uncontrolled desire writhing.
Smack.
Their lips met briefly before pressing together again, deeper this time.
Not wanting to lose, she moved her tongue as if she were experienced—but Taejun’s firm tongue overpowered hers, painfully and hotly wrapping around it.
The fierce sensation tangling inside her mouth made Haeyoung’s body tense automatically, and the burning emotion spread across her skin and through her entire body.
Her breath rose to her throat.
She could feel the overwhelming weight of Taejun reigning over her.
Struggling to breathe, she tried pushing against his chest, but the more she tried to push him away, the closer he pressed his body to hers.
“If I were going to stop, I wouldn’t have started in the first place.”
Leaving only the tiniest distance between them, Taejun muttered as he firmly wrapped an arm around her waist.
His breath brushed against her cheek, sending a chilling shiver down her spine.
The fate that awaited her was merciless, and the feelings she had never fully abandoned had ultimately caught hold of Haeyoung’s ankle.
There were only two things she had learned while growing up.
Good people always ended up losing.
And life was something you had to face completely alone.
The man who carved those unchanging rules into her heart was Ki Taejun.
He was unbearably rude, indecent enough to be called vulgar, and obsessively persistent.
Only after she had given both her body and her heart completely did she finally realize the filthy intentions behind Ki Taejun and his family taking her in.
It came at a moment she had never expected—
in the worst possible way.
In the spring of her final year of high school, her father died.
Haeyoung had never known what kind of work her father did while he was alive, nor how he made his money. His work hours were irregular, and he often returned home badly injured.
Even so, she had admired him deeply for working hard and enduring dangerous tasks for the sake of his family.
At least, that was before she accidentally discovered that her father belonged to a secretive organization.
At first she thought he worked for a secret government agency like the National Intelligence Service. But as she grew older, she realized that the work her father did was illegal.
After that realization, she could no longer accept the allowance he gave her.
She couldn’t comfortably spend money that might have been earned through unknown and questionable means.
Her mother changed almost every year, but starting from the fifth one, Haeyoung stopped speaking to her, using adolescence as an excuse.
Naturally, she had assumed her relationship with her father would also grow distant.
But he remained devoted and affectionate toward his daughter just the same.
Because of that, Haeyoung could never bring herself to truly hate him.
Only after her father died did everything become clear.
What kind of work he had done.
And what kind of person he had really been.
The father who had always been gentle and warm to her had lived as the vice president of a shell company run by an organized crime group.
Her comfortable life had been touched by her father’s influence in every corner.
And then, suddenly, she was left alone in the world.
‘I’m Ki Taejun from Jaewon Group.’
After crying so much that her eyes had become swollen and sore, she lifted her head and saw the man speaking to her.
‘The Vice President asked me to take care of his daughter.’
The man approached her saying that her father had asked him to protect her while he was alive.
Haeyoung instinctively avoided him.
He was a dangerous person who did the same kind of work as her father. He looked to be in his mid-twenties at most. His face seemed young.
‘It’ll be difficult since you don’t even have a guardian right now. Accept the help, even if you don’t want to.’
The stepmother who had been living off her father didn’t even bother to show up at the funeral.
And since her father had been an orphan, he had no close relatives or siblings.
Only then did she learn that her father and her stepmother had never even registered their marriage—they had merely been living together.
With no adult she could ask for help and still being a minor, the place she would end up was already decided.
Even if she was living as a dependent in someone else’s house, she hadn’t expected such overwhelming kindness.
Yet every member of the family, including Chairman Ki, treated Haeyoung excessively well.
It was almost as if they were hosting an important guest.
But there was exactly one person who showed no interest in her and gave no reaction at all.
She had taken the hand of the man who told her to accept help even if she didn’t want to.
But the person who didn’t want it in the first place was him—and he didn’t bother hiding that fact.
Hadn’t he said he was in his final year of university?
To Haeyoung, who had just entered high school, Taejun felt like someone impossibly far above her.
Everyone else treated her kindly, but for the same reason she had never been able to spend her father’s money freely, she couldn’t fully blend into this family and live comfortably.
There was her father’s last wish, and they had taken her in because they couldn’t ignore it.
Perhaps it was simply childish stubbornness, but sometimes she suddenly felt the urge to speak to Taejun for no clear reason.
Yes, she admitted it.
It was a trivial provocation.
It was a mixture of dissatisfaction toward someone who refused to acknowledge her existence, anxiety about being thrown out, and a faint curiosity.
“Um…”
Ki Taejun was always like that.
He never showed interest in her, but he didn’t avoid her either.
Even as he raised one eyebrow as if annoyed, he still listened to what she was about to say.
That in itself felt strange.
“My school life has become stable now, so I was thinking of living alone near campus. It feels a little awkward continuing to stay here like this, and I also want to save time commuting so I can focus more on studying… But I don’t know what I should say to the Chairman…”
Even though Taejun was cold, he didn’t feel like someone who hid his true feelings. If he disliked something, he showed it openly.
However, the most unreadable person in this house was Chairman Ki.
He never gave her any reason to feel uncomfortable and even treated her kindly after taking her in.
Yet somehow, his kindness felt hollow.
Maybe that was why Haeyoung could never fully let her guard down around him.
Large bodyguards were always around him, and he smoked cigarettes so strong that they made her feel nauseous.
Sometimes he even looked at her with a slightly unsettling gaze.
Because of those things, something always felt uncomfortable in the back of her mind.
Originally, she had planned to move out as soon as she entered university, but Chairman Ki had firmly opposed it, causing her plan to fail once already.
After much thought, she ended up asking Taejun for help.
If you thought about it, he was the one who had brought her into this house in the first place.
So there was a bit of spiteful thinking in her decision—she wanted to hold him partially responsible.
Taejun’s gaze slowly swept over Haeyoung.
It was indifferent and cold, like someone looking at weeds growing randomly in a field.
“…Would that not be possible?”
It would have been nice if he at least said something, but he kept his mouth shut as if he had forgotten how to speak.
“Is there any reason I should help you?”
His voice was as calm and neat as always, but somehow the air in the room sank instantly.
“You were the one who brought me into this house, so I think you should take responsibility for that.”
Taejun, who had taken out a cigarette to light, pushed it back into the case and slowly approached Haeyoung.
“Who said I’d take responsibility for you?”
“You’re the one who brought me here.”
He twisted his lips slightly into a faint smile.
“I think you’re misunderstanding something pretty badly, so let me correct you. It’s true that I stepped in because I owed your father a debt—but that doesn’t mean I have any obligation to take responsibility for you.”
