After work, I shuffled around the rooftop of the villa, dragging my slippers.
I stuck my head out past the railing and watched to see whether Jeon Yeongsu would come or not.
I had set up snacks and canned beer on the wooden platform too.
If Yeongsu came up to the rooftop, I planned to naturally start a conversation and hear his story.
“Will he come late again today?”
Since he probably would not open his heart from the beginning, I planned to drink with him, talk casually about everyday things, and then approach the subject lightly.
Thinking back through my memories from my previous life, Jeon Yeongsu often came up to the rooftop to collect laundry or smoke.
I needed to naturally strike up a conversation with Yeongsu at a moment like that.
“Huh? Who is that?”
But the person who entered my view was an uninvited guest.
A little while later.
“Wow, I must be blessed with good food luck. I get to eat expensive alcohol and hotel bakery food here! And the atmosphere is so nice too. Drinking on a rooftop, huh?”
Seo Suyeon swallowed a sip of Dom Pérignon, bit into a financier coated in matcha chocolate, and closed her eyes as if moved, savoring the taste.
“What rooftop? It’s just the roof. Myeongjin, why did you bring Senior Suyeon along?”
“No, Senior Suyeon kept sticking to me. She kept asking about your reporting item, hyung.”
“Well, well. You two. Brought me along? Sticking to you?”
Seo Suyeon spoke as if she was offended by the conversation between Ju Myeongjin and me, but then she closed her eyes happily again, savoring the delicious alcohol and financier.
“Haa.”
When I sighed, Ju Myeongjin quietly added,
“But wouldn’t it help your reporting if Senior Suyeon supported you, hyung?”
“So that’s why you brought her?”
Watching Myeongjin nod with a proud expression, I suddenly felt a headache coming on.
No, if she got shot down by Kim Dusik, she should have gone around the police stations or gone home. Why was she here?
And why was K, already drunk beside Seo Suyeon, mixing the Dom Pérignon he brought with the canned beer I had prepared?
“Me tooo, should I shtart speaking casually to the hyungs now? We gotta get closer, hehe. Hyuung, this is sho good. When I ate this, I thought of hyungs soooo much.”
What kind of combination was this?
Was my plan to create a comfortable atmosphere while talking with Yeongsu today already over?
“Reporter Suyeon. Since you’ve had your expensive alcohol, you should leave now. You’re old enough to know that coming to a place you weren’t invited to is rude, aren’t you?”
I deliberately did not bother being polite.
I wanted to send her away quickly before Jeon Yeongsu came.
Seo Suyeon was the same age as me, but she was my senior by two years.
People often assume that if you work at a broadcasting station or are part of the press, you must work with open-minded people who are good at accepting new things.
‘Isn’t it more like a gathering place for old-fashioned jerks?’
Media companies like broadcasting stations and newspapers have more conservative people than one might expect, and atmospheres with vertical organizational cultures and old-fashioned mindsets are common.
In other words, Reporter Seo Suyeon could easily use her seniority to harass me as much as she wanted.
“I’m not leaving. I’m going to get close to you.”
“Excuse me?”
“I guess I was instinctively drawn to a rookie who seemed like such a stubborn nutcase, charging head-on at Kim Dusik.”
Seo Suyeon answered while munching on more of the bread K had brought.
After hearing that answer, Ju Myeongjin spat the alcohol in his mouth straight into a paper cup and asked,
“Senior Suyeon, were you maybe interested in our Hyeonwook-hyung?”
“Interested? Sure. If I didn’t get interested in a bastard who shoots laser eyes at Kim Dusik, that would be strange.”
“Then…”
Myeongjin paused for a beat, swallowed hard, and then continued with something absurd.
“Did you come here to confess to Hyeonwook-hyung?”
This little bastard, seriously!
Just as I was about to smack the back of Myeongjin’s head, Seo Suyeon spat out the alcohol she had just drunk.
“Ugh, what a waste. You said this alcohol was expensive, didn’t you? Why are you spouting nonsense and making me waste precious alcohol?”
Smack!
Seo Suyeon’s hand landed refreshingly on Ju Myeongjin’s back before mine could.
“That hurts, it hurts!”
“Hey! I absolutely hate office romance. And I hate reporters. Lee Hyeonwook is just a guy who hates Kim Dusik, who I also hate, so I felt a sense of kinship. What confession?”
“No, you just said you were interested in our Hyeonwook-hyung…”
“Yes, interested! These days, all reporters are busy protecting themselves or dragging in pathetic advertorials from somewhere. How could I not be interested in a nutcase rookie like this?”
“Ah… So it’s like one nutcase recognizing another nutcase?”
Myeongjin had probably understood that correctly.
Before my regression, Seo Suyeon had continued living as a reporter overflowing with craziness.
I had never had any connection with her, but that was probably because I had attached myself to Kim Dusik’s line and lived as a power-oriented person.
“I don’t need anyone else’s help.”
“Yeah, right.”
A nutcase-like answer flew back at my attempt to draw a line.
“You do need help. Isn’t that why you called Myeongjin? I said I’d help too. Did I ever tell you I quit graduate school before becoming a reporter because I went head-to-head with a garbage professor?”
Ah, in that case, this was a different story.
I had simply planned to persuade Jeon Yeongsu man to man, but if she came from the den of graduate school, I could gladly let her join.
‘But I don’t want to move around as a set with that kind of lunatic…’
As if she had read my thoughts, Seo Suyeon added,
“You’re still a rookie, so maybe you don’t know this, but just because Department Head Lee gave you permission to report today doesn’t mean you can investigate however you want. There will definitely come a moment when my shield helps you, got it?”
“Sennnior~ Please take good care of our hyuung.”
“Okay. K, you rest now!”
Ah, I had not thought that far.
I had to completely forget that I had once been News Director and live as a rookie reporter now…
Yet I was still under the illusion that I could use my time however I wanted.
Even today, had Kim Dusik not stood in my way?
When I needed to step away, or when I wanted to skip a report, it would not be entirely unhelpful if Reporter Seo Suyeon added a word or two for me.
“But in exchange, promise me just one thing. That look you shot at Kim Dusik today, keep it up from now on. That bastard who licks other people’s backsides… Someday, I’m going to step on him myself. So you make sure you keep grinding him down in your everyday life too. Got it?”
What? Seo Suyeon hated Kim Dusik this much?
Then she must have seen the me from my previous life as trash itself.
Once again, my determination to live this life properly welled up inside me.
Step, step.
As we were laughing and talking, I heard footsteps coming up to the rooftop.
“Is he here now?”
It was Jeon Yeongsu.
His haggard face, enough to make it painfully clear that he had not been eating or sleeping properly, was plainly visible even under the dim lighting on the rooftop.
His face was swollen red today too, as if he had gone through some kind of rough ordeal again.
“Ah…”
Embarrassment appeared on Jeon Yeongsu’s face as he held a cigarette in his hand.
He probably had not expected so many people to be here.
“Hello, Yeongsu. You know me, right? I’m Lee Hyeonwook, the one who lives downstairs. My coworkers came over to hang out. Would you like to have a drink with us?”
“Ah, I…”
Of course, I had not expected him to easily fit in from the start.
That was why I had planned to be here quietly with just Myeongjin.
“Yeongsu? Don’t be like that. Have a drink with us.”
Suddenly, Seo Suyeon sprang up from her seat, approached Jeon Yeongsu as he stood awkwardly, grabbed his arm, and led him to the wooden platform.
“Ah, I…”
“You’re in graduate school, right? I greeted your mother earlier, and she bragged a lot about her son. I’m Seo Suyeon, Lee Hyeonwook’s senior here.”
“I’m… Jeon Yeongsu.”
So this could work too?
Seo Suyeon had never even greeted the landlady, yet she approached the source naturally.
After hearing my report and Ju Myeongjin’s brief explanation, she must have guessed when she saw Jeon Yeongsu.
‘As expected, you can’t ignore two years of reporting experience.’
Judging by Jeon Yeongsu’s expression, he was flustered, but it did not seem like he only wanted to run away.
Ju Myeongjin quickly poured alcohol into a new glass and held it out to Jeon Yeongsu.
“Hello. I’m Ju Myeongjin, and I work with Hyeonwook-hyung here.”
“I’m K-K, nice to meeet you~”
I laid the senseless K back down as if putting him to sleep again and said,
“Drink with us. Tomorrow is Saturday.”
“Dom Pérignon on a fiery Friday, on the landlord’s rooftop, with the landlord’s son. Ahh, this is good. Nice, nice.”
Yeongsu looked flustered again at Seo Suyeon’s over-the-top fussing, but thankfully, instead of getting up to leave, he took a sip of alcohol.
For a moment, a choked-up expression crossed Yeongsu’s face.
‘Is it all right for me to mingle with people like this?’
Yeongsu recalled what had happened earlier that day.
Smack, smack, smack, smack.
Daeseon, the head of the lab, said that it was twenty today, and that the professor had just called.
Yeongsu’s colleague Jueun stood up awkwardly with an expression that looked like she was about to cry. She had to prepare to film a video with her phone.
A sound like hands clapping echoed through the lab twenty times.
“I’m sorry…”
“…Oppa.”
Yeongsu’s cheeks turned bright red.
At the sight, Daeseon apologized, and Jueun looked tormented.
He knew he had been singled out by the professor, but he had not known the harassment would come in this form.
And if he was being honest about what he did not know, he had no way of knowing why he had fallen out of Professor Lee Chan’s favor in the first place.
‘If they hit gently, they’ll just get scolded even more by the professor. I’m… fine.’
No, he was not fine.
But he had to be fine.
His mother’s hardship and his own effort had gone into getting this far.
If he stopped here, everything he had put in until now would come to nothing.
He had to endure just a little longer and earn his doctorate.
To do that, he had no choice but to endure this insane professor’s harassment.
Ding.
Even while both of them were suffering, Daeseon took the phone from Jueun and immediately sent the video to the professor.
That was how the peace of the afternoon was preserved.
“Yeongsu?”
Seo Suyeon called Yeongsu’s name as she wiped the tears running down his cheek with her hand.
“Ah!”
Snapping back to himself, Yeongsu had not even realized he had been crying.
He had simply thought the atmosphere felt unfamiliar, because he could not remember the last time he had been welcomed like this by people.
It felt too dreamlike to believe, and so good that he could not express it in words, so he was confused about what expression he was supposed to make.
“How long do I have to keep this trashy bastard around?”
“I’m teaching this idiot bastard who can’t even understand what he’s told. Seriously.”
“Shouldn’t the mother who gave birth to a moron like that have to pay ten times the taxes?”
Professor Lee Chan’s voice, which he had tried so hard to ignore and pretend he had not heard, circled in Jeon Yeongsu’s ears.
And in Jeon Yeongsu’s eyes were the faces of the people looking at him with worried expressions.
“Huk. I’m sorry… I’m sorry….”
Jeon Yeongsu apologized weakly and dropped his head.
Seeing that he had ruined the mood of the drinking gathering because of himself, he thought that, as expected, he was someone who was no help anywhere.
‘Let’s give Professor Lee Chan a taste of this.’
As Jeon Yeongsu cried, helpless and unsure what to do, I patted his back and began explaining our reporting plan to Seo Suyeon and Ju Myeongjin.
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