“Miss, did you fasten your seatbelt? Then we’ll be departing now.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

A soft engine sound enveloped the car. Despite it being a model boasting excellent ride quality, Joo Yun-woo’s head shook violently from side to side.

So this is how scary alcohol is. Come to think of it, Choi Yeon-jun also answered everything I asked him in detail when he had a bit to drink…

“Hey, driver. Could you take a little detour? I want my sister to sober up a bit before she goes home.”

“Ah, shall we take a spin along the Skyway?”

“Well… I’m fine with anything.”

“Yes. I’ll raise the partition for you. Please rest comfortably.”

Anywhere was fine, as long as Joo Yun-woo could buy some time to catch his breath. Only belatedly did it occur to him that sitting in a car for a long time might not be good for a drunk person. He’d never drunk alcohol himself, so how would he know…?

“Hey, Noona. You know…”

“Ugh. Noona’s not drunk.”

She answers well. Joo Tae-hyun inwardly mimicked the sarcastic remarks his Hyungs often threw at his Noona.

“Yeah, I know. I know you’re not drunk. I was just wondering if you felt okay.”

“Of course. Baby, a Joo never throws up. Who’s daughter do you think I am?”

True… Not only Noona, but he had never seen his parents or Hyungs drunk and out of their minds either. Noona’s current state was the maximum.

“Then why did you drink so much?”

“So-jin gave me her wedding invitation.”

“Huh, So-jin Noona’s getting married? After coming back to Korea?”

“No, in Paris. She wants me to go all the way there and do something for her. Something about being a bridesmaid.”

Since he was young, his Noonas had already been college students. So Joo Yun-woo’s best friend, Cha So-jin, who went to university in Paris, didn’t have many opportunities to meet him. This was separate from the fact that he often heard her giggling over the phone, which made him feel close to her.

Even so, the news of the wedding of someone he was close to evoked unique emotions in Joo Tae-hyun as well.

Marriage…

If I feel this strange, how much more would Noona? That must be why she drank so much. Joo Yun-woo tilted her head back and snored softly, then suddenly shouted, “Baby, Noona’s not drunk?”

Joo Tae-hyun watched his Noona, who was exhibiting the typical behavior of a drunkard, curl up, and belatedly adjusted the car’s air conditioning. He took off his suit jacket and draped it over Joo Yun-woo, carefully tucking it in so it wouldn’t slip off.

“Hehe. Our baby is even escorting Noona.”

“What kind of escort is this.”

“Yeah… Our baby should get married much later, later. Got it? Don’t leave Noona behind.”

“Okay.”

“Get… Get married around your sixtieth birthday. Then Noona will watch over you.”

“Uh-huh.” Joo Tae-hyun answered absentmindedly, then removed a strand of hair that was caught on Joo Yun-woo’s earring.

He felt like he understood a little bit what Noona meant when she said earlier that she didn’t even want to set foot in the place where her friends were resting, that she felt like she was getting drunk just breathing there.

Joo Tae-hyun didn’t know what it felt like to be drunk at all, but after dealing with drunk people like Choi Yeon-jun and Joo Yun-woo up close, he also felt strangely hazy.

So he acted a little impulsively. It made him wonder if he really needed to say this, but his lips moved on their own.

“…Noona, you know.”

“Uh-huh?”

“Since we’re talking about marriage.”

“I told you, baby shouldn’t get married or anything like that?”

“Not me. There’s this person who doesn’t even plan on getting married, but brings his girlfriend to such… a grand event, I heard.”

Joo Tae-hyun tried to bring up the story as indirectly as possible, in case Noona recognized the subject. But Joo Yun-woo suddenly lifted her swaying head and sharpened her eyes fiercely. As if she was glaring at someone who wasn’t even there.

“Really? Is there another bastard like Seo Baek-han?”

“Ah… Uh-huh.”

“Anyway, that Seo Baek-han is a complete fox. Because he acted like that, the adults stopped talking about me going on blind dates.”

“…Huh?”

Joo Yun-woo’s eyes were slightly unfocused, but her pronunciation was relatively accurate. It was the moment when her mother’s constant reminder not to show that she was drunk came to light.

Anyway, the adults were talking about marriage… So Seo Baek-han was already preparing for marriage.

“…Hyung Baek-han was going to get married?”

“Before going to study abroad, wouldn’t he try to decide on an engagement partner at least? Have an engagement ceremony around twenty-three, and if the other person is thinking of studying abroad, go together… Then if Seo Baek-han gets his doctorate and returns home, the timing would be perfect for a wedding.”

It was a typical method for political and business figures to build connections through marriage. Come to think of it, he was just the right age for that. He was almost puzzled that he hadn’t thought about Seo Baek-han’s engagement or marriage until now.

When you want to know someone, you casually ask about their relationship status, past romances, and wedding news. He didn’t know about other countries, but in Korea, the topic is used like a greeting, enough to be asked even on a first meeting.

But Joo Tae-hyun realized that even though he had searched so diligently for information about Seo Baek-han, he had not paid attention to his love life. …To be honest, it seemed like he had subconsciously pressed the back button whenever a post mentioned Seo Baek-han’s girlfriend.

“Originally, until he went to America, he lived like a strict Confucian scholar who didn’t even know the ‘w’ of women? But as soon as he went to America, he changed 360 degrees.”

…What does “strict Confucian scholar” even mean? And if he turned 360 degrees, wouldn’t he end up back where he started?

Joo Tae-hyun already had things he wanted to ask, but he held back. What good would it do to point out errors to a drunk person, other than to make the story go off on a tangent?

Above all, seeing how extreme Noona’s words had become, it seemed like there were a lot of stories about Seo Baek-han piled up, and he was curious about Seo Baek-han’s actions from Noona’s point of view.

“So why?”

The saying that Joo Yun-woo had been saying lately, “Raising children is useless,” was spot on. Now that he was older, the bad younger brother was so curious about the hidden stories of Seo Baek-han that he couldn’t see from his perspective that he couldn’t stand it.

“As soon as Seo Baek-han’s admission to Stanford was confirmed, the Crown Prince’s side proposed a marriage. I think it was a very close relative of the Crown Princess. I think they said she was a close cousin? Why, that… I can’t suddenly remember her name, the one who’s almost like a sister. The one who majored in gayageum.”

“Ah… Yoon Jung-won?”

“Yeah, her!”

“That story was even subtly mentioned in the late-night news… But was it true? The Crown Prince hates Trait/Phenotype people. I naturally thought it was nonsense.”

Of course, the news he saw didn’t directly mention Seo Baek-han and only used initials. However, someone who knew the background would have immediately realized that it was referring to the eldest son of the Seo family.

However, it was such an absurd story, and it was being said on late-night news with low credibility, so he didn’t try to check it carefully. He had stayed up to watch it and ended up grumbling that he had wasted his time. If you were to criticize that news, the DH direct family was also a mess.

It was probably true that the Crown Princess’s cousin was knocking on the doors of prominent families. However, the Hyungs were too old, and Joo Tae-hyun was too young, so the DH Group was excluded from the marriage talks, and he didn’t know the details beyond that. Why hadn’t he thought of it at the time? Seo Baek-han would have naturally been included in that “prominent family.”

“Baby, what’s the fundamental reason why the Crown Prince hates Trait/Phenotype people?”

“Because he’s jealous of His Highness Second Prince?”

“Correct. And Seo Baek-han is clearly whose person?”

“…Second Prince, His Highness.”

“Yeah. That bastard has been a jerk since he was young and has a rigid personality, so he only hangs out with people he likes.”

Joo Yun-woo shook her head briefly as if she was disgusted, saying, “Ugh.”

Noona had been very reluctant to Seo Baek-han for a long time. This was the same for the other family members, but even if it wasn’t as much as Joo Yun-woo, they would be startled if Joo Tae-hyun expressed his liking for Seo Baek-han. They would make troubled faces, wondering how to protect our baby’s fantasies.

But he wasn’t stupid either. He knew that Seo Baek-han wasn’t just a nice person. But he didn’t admire Seo Baek-han because he was an angel-like person, so he didn’t care even if his family showed a lackluster reaction.

“Anyway, the Crown Prince must have thought that it wouldn’t be bad if he could bring Seo Baek-han, or rather the Seo family, to his side. The symbolism that the Seo family has is also significant.”

“…”

“There’s no alliance as futile as marriage, but there’s also no bond more certain than that.”

Joo Yun-woo rummaged through the console box in the back seat and said, “Even you, our youngest, think that Seo Baek-han would manage his image as a devoted husband if he just had the ceremony, whether it’s a political marriage or whatever, right?” Then she pretended to gag slightly. It seemed like she was exaggerating and joking because she didn’t like what Seo Baek-han was doing, rather than because she was drunk.

“Baby, do you want some chocolate?”

He was about to refuse because he didn’t feel like eating anything, but he quietly accepted it because he thought he could hear more stories if he played along with Joo Yun-woo. It was dark chocolate, which Joo Tae-hyun didn’t really like, as if bitter water would rise from deep inside.

“Anyway, since then, Seo Baek-han has been openly dating women. Mostly Omega, sometimes Beta, and sometimes Alpha, but only women anyway.”

“…Noona doesn’t know why he only dated women, do you?”

By Zephyria

Hello, I'm Zephyria, an avid BL reader^^ I post AI/Machine assisted translation. Mostly BL. Check my Ko-fi for more HSA chapters~

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