Chapter 119: The Pitiful Woman [R-18]

After they ordered their meal and dismissed the staff, the door to the private dining room closed, and it felt as if the three of them were breathing different air.

The conversation remained formally professional, but the atmosphere was as awkward and tangled as the relationship between them.

Before the food arrived, Woo-chan opened his leather briefcase. He took out a file, placed it neatly on the corner of the table, and then set up a tablet in front of him.

Whatever else this was, it was a meeting.

“I’ve already organized the ledger review from our end. It’s only half the data, but it includes a comparative analysis of the last quarter and this one. Indirect expenses are in a separate tab—”

Woo-chan’s words were concise and smooth.

But as he spoke, Rio hardly even looked at him.

“The blouse you wore yesterday was better…”

Rio chuckled, his gaze fixed on Seojin beside him. His fingertips didn’t just change the subject; they toyed with her as if collecting a fee for her time, unfastening a few more buttons on the blouse that was already straining against her flesh.

“…Why are you talking about that now?”

Her ears flushing red, she held her breath and glanced around. It was Seojin, not Rio, whose eyes met Woo-chan’s. He stopped his fingers and briefly lifted his gaze.

“Am I interrupting?”

His voice was polite, but even as he smiled, his eyes held a clear edge of criticism.

Rio laughed as if he’d mistaken it for a compliment.

“No, I’m listening.”

He finally turned his gaze to Woo-chan and swiped a finger across the tablet screen.

“The numbers look good, don’t they? Has the Audit Team always been this kind?”

Woo-chan’s expression didn’t change as he pulled the tablet back toward himself.

“The books don’t lie. If the results are unremarkable, there’s no need for us to act like psychos.”

“Wow, that’s a great line.”

“For now, it’s just investment, so it’s not time for revenue to show. But there are no double-ledgers or embezzlement yet… Are you surprised?”

“All I care about is living a fun life—why would I bother with something so tedious over such a paltry sum of money in just six months?”

At Rio’s words, Woo-chan shrugged.

“I know you don’t have the capacity for it.”

It wasn’t meant to be dismissive. Rather, it was a cold assessment, a deep-seated conviction one could only have about someone they’d known for a long time.

“But for a guy who’s one investigation away from a prison sentence, why are you even doing this?”

“Ask my mother. You two are close.”

Rio’s lips curved into a smirk. It was more of a joke than a sneer, a question that hit a certain mark.

“So, did you set up this meeting just to show me some clean numbers?”

Woo-chan didn’t answer, instead pushing the tablet forward again.

“The books themselves are fine. No double-entry, and the revenue structure is simple.”

“…”

“But there are some expenses mixed in that blur the line between official business and private amusement. Clean it up before it gets out of hand.”

Without even pulling the tablet back to look, Rio simply poured water into Seojin’s glass. Beside him, she was quietly holding her breath.

“Sure, I’ll do that. I have no intention of making things uncomfortable.”

His answer was bland, as if to say, ‘If it’s possible, I’ll get it done.’

Woo-chan tilted his chin slightly toward the restaurant’s entrance. The door was opening, and a server was approaching.

The awkward conversation paused as the server placed dishes on the table. The three of them simultaneously shifted their gazes from each other to the tableware.

With the conversational lead momentarily dropped, Rio naturally leaned toward Seojin.

“Should I have ordered wine?”

Seojin shook her head.

“I’m on duty…”

“Right. But…”

He brought his hand under her chin, lightly tracing her jawline. Slowly, ostentatiously, as if to say that a pretty woman could lighten the mood anywhere.

“Are you really on duty right now? I’m not here as your boss.”

It was Woo-chan who stopped his fork at that gesture. Slowly raising his head to look at Rio, he asked a silent question.

A look that said, Do you really have to do this here?

“I’ll ask one more time. Should I leave?”

Woo-chan’s tone was neither heavy nor stiff. It was like a quiet piece of advice, a simple reminder of protocol.

But Rio didn’t stop smiling. In fact, Woo-chan’s pointed remark only seemed to make him more relaxed as he brought his lips close to Seojin’s cheek.

“Playing around with a beautiful secretary is a basic perk of being an owner. You’re too old-fashioned, hyeongnim.”

“My apologies for being so stuffy. My parents don’t own a company of that scale, so I wouldn’t know the mind of an owner.”

Rio turned his gaze to his plate and nonchalantly picked up his food. Beside him, Seojin quietly lowered her head, her hands clasped tightly on her lap.

“My mother thinks I’m being too wholesome these days, she’s even trying to bring in an outsider. Why don’t you try acting like her real son?”

The words were clearly aimed at Woo-chan.

“I’m sure she could use one, what with raising her precious only daughter to be too refined to even step in the mud.”

Woo-chan, who had resumed eating, put down his fork and took a sip of water.

“……”

Wiping his lips, he spoke quietly without lifting his gaze.

“If you can’t handle her, let her go early.”

At that single sentence, Rio swallowed a laugh. He propped his chin on one hand, a fork held in his mouth.

“I was planning to, but she keeps making things difficult.”

His words didn’t trail off. Instead, the hand moving below his knee slightly changed its course.

It slid past the inside of Seojin’s thigh, invading the space beyond her demurely folded hands.

“…Hh.”

A small tremor ran through her shoulder. Her hand, paused mid-meal, twitched, and she nearly dropped her chopsticks.

“Secretary Kang, what’s got you so flustered?”

Rio asked nonchalantly, deliberately using her title as if to grant his own wish.

Woo-chan’s gaze shifted. Their eyes didn’t meet, but he seemed to grasp the entire situation as he briefly lifted his head to look at Rio.

There were no more words in his gaze. As the rubbing continued, he put down his spoon and stared straight at him, his expression one of undisguised contempt.

Rio laughed.

“Haha, so surprised. Isn’t she pretty?”

“If you want to ruin your life, do it alone. Stop tormenting others.”

Woo-chan picked up a piece of silverware, pushed his chair back slightly, and continued.

“If you keep acting like an animal, you’ll eventually forget who’s feeding you.”

A brief silence fell.

Rio’s eyes narrowed. He was still smiling, but beneath it lay the instinctive wariness of a man who had forgotten how to shed his emotions.

“It’s nice to hear what my subordinate has to say.”

He replied coolly.

Without losing his smile, Rio kept his hand under the table. In fact, he pressed harder, his fingers moving slowly, deeper.

“Can you cut that for me?”

Forced to act as if nothing was wrong, Seojin held her breath. The hand holding her chopsticks trembled minutely, and as she tried to move food from Rio’s plate, she lightly clinked the dish.

A small sound. But in the well-soundproofed private room, it was unusually distinct.

“Our Secretary Kang’s hands tremble a bit when she’s nervous. Maybe it’s because there are two handsome men here.”

Rio said, feigning playfulness. Woo-chan didn’t shift his gaze.

“Even outside the office, you shouldn’t treat an employee that way, Director Ryu. It would be an even bigger problem if she’s on duty.”

“Going to report me for sexual harassment?”

Rio said, leaning his head toward Seojin.

“I’m just someone who knows how to make a relationship a little more… flexible.”

He blew a kiss near her, and Seojin pressed her legs tighter together, her back ramrod straight.

“Ah—”

Woo-chan once again witnessed the woman before him. She didn’t act like a seductive mistress basking in the affection of a powerful man, nor was she completely stone-like. She was simply Kang Seojin, devoid of any will to resist.

An awkward, docile demeanor. But her eyes held a sense of belonging far too deep for a mere company employee to bear.

…A person so unlucky it’s pitiful.

Lee Woo-chan had known everything about Kang Seojin—her name, why she was attached to Rio—even before he was formally introduced to her.

He had already seen her face in a file before being assigned here. That woman—no, that girl.

On paper, she was barely twenty years old.

She held the title of secretary, but her actual duties were practically nonexistent. Her record showed nothing other than the fact that she stuck to a man named Rio like a shadow.

It wasn’t a relationship based on professional merit in the first place.

Woo-chan recalled the discontented words of Rio’s legal mother, who was a close acquaintance of his own mother.

“That bastard is just a social misfit. Useless dregs, trash. You can tell just by how he treats the person he keeps by his side. Anyone looking at that unlucky girl would think she’s just his pet.”

The woman whose worth had been so dismissed was right in front of him.

When he first looked through her file, he’d felt disgust.

That was his first emotion toward her.

Disgust—at the unnaturalness of a man becoming a woman, at her having achieved nothing on her own, at the thought of her smiling happily beside a rich, empty-headed man.

The fact that they were building their own little world even within the confines of the company, that trash was pairing with trash… the fact that they were mimicking human beings was galling.

If they were going to be together, fine. But why use the company as their stage?

And that he, who had worked his way up to earning an American CPA license, had been summoned to a place like this for this.

“You’re saying I just need to report him to the prosecutors at the right time, linking his usual conduct to problems with the company’s management.”

Rio was the same problem child he’d always been, but the woman he’d only seen on paper was strangely different in person.

Dazed… slow. He had received an apology from her at their first meeting, and it hadn’t left a bad impression.

She probably had no idea. Who was watching her now, or how. Or why she was even present at this meeting today.

Even now, her posture was stiff, as if she was just here because someone told her it was an off-site work assignment. A face that was either the epitome of innocence or very good at pretending to be.

And so, as if to ignore them both, Woo-chan quietly bowed his head and opened his mouth to eat.

Just do the job you came here to do.

Translated By: Meher (RaidenTL)

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