Chapter 48 : Confession

Just when she had finally started to feel at ease, thinking everything was okay, Jin Sejeong couldn’t believe her ears when the bombshell Yang Woobin suddenly dropped.

“…What?”

She reflexively asked him back, hoping—even if it was a lie—that he would deny it.

“It’s true I have a fiancée.”

But what came back was a blunt confirmation, spoken in a tone so dry it left no room for hope.

Yang Woobin’s expression as he said he had a fiancée was so devoid of emotion that it was hard to believe he felt anything at all.

While Jin Sejeong felt like the blood in her body had turned ice cold, her heart frozen after hearing the worst of all the rumors confirmed from his own lips, the very person who caused this seemed completely unaffected.

To Jin Sejeong, the whole situation felt like a well-staged play.

It was the only way she could mentally cope with this horrific reality.

“…Why?”

A single syllable, packed with so many layers—“How could you say that to me like it’s nothing?” and “Why do you have a fiancée?” all compressed into one selfish question.

It was too short a word to contain everything she wanted to say, and yet it was all she could manage in that moment of emotional collapse.

And so, her weak and shaken state led her to simply ask, “Why?”—a question Yang Woobin took at face value.

He scratched the back of his head and answered with the same detached tone.

“What do you mean why? It’s a political marriage. When the family says to do something, a man has no choice but to follow.”

“Ah…”

Even though the fact that he had a fiancée didn’t change, his response surprisingly gave Jin Sejeong the comfort she had been hoping for.

That it wasn’t his choice.

That he had no say, and it was something his family forced on him—that was enough to bring her a strange sense of relief.

At the very least, knowing that he wasn’t in love with someone else or had promised a future with another woman helped thaw her frozen heart just a little.

‘If it was a forced engagement, then all I have to do is kidnap—no, rescue Woobin and take him to the Jin family. It sounds extreme, but Jin is a more powerful family than the Yangs. We can protect him. I’ve never liked the way the Yang family treated him anyway. I’m grateful they took me in, but I only survived because of Woobin.’

Now that she knew the engagement was forced, her previously paralyzed mind started working in overdrive.

Ideas flooded in—dozens of ways to get him out safely and keep him by her side… or rather, close to her.

Jin Sejeong began seriously evaluating which idea might be the best.

‘Yeah, the best option is probably to train hard until I graduate from Daecheon, grow strong enough to rival a head of a noble family, and then protect Woobin myself…’

“You don’t need to look so pitiful just because I’m being sold off. I think it’s trash too, so I’ve been living the way I wanted, letting my instincts guide me. You could say I lived a life of letting my dick do whatever it wanted.”

“…What?”

Just as Jin Sejeong was deep in thought, her mind settling on the most straightforward approach, she was hit with what might’ve been the most shocking statement of all.

“…What did you say?”

“They’re selling off my seed without my consent to another family, right? At a high price, under the bullshit excuse of it being for the good of the family. So I started thinking—how can I screw over this goddamn family the most? That’s when I realized what would piss them off the most.”

As Jin Sejeong’s thoughts came to a screeching halt and her mind blanked again, Yang Woobin, as if he had been waiting for this moment, started talking freely.

It was a story that served no benefit to his family or himself, but he shared it anyway, without reservation or interruption.

“Yeah, I screwed around like crazy. Spread my seed everywhere. I’m sure there’s a pregnant girl or two out there. I mean, I know I shouldn’t be saying this myself, but my face and body are like idol or actor level, right? With this kind of look, getting someone into bed was nothing if I wanted to.”

It was far too personal, shocking, and provocative a story to be spoken aloud in front of more than a third of Jincheon Class.

“There wasn’t anyone worth my time in the Beom Class, so I haven’t done it since coming to Daecheon… but now that I’ve moved up to Jincheon, I’m hoping better days are ahead. Hey, if you want to get fucked, just say the word! If the estimate looks good, I’ll give it to you nice and deep!”

Beyond vulgarity, obscenity, and debauchery, Yang Woobin’s voice was flat-out offensive, ringing clearly through the training grounds filled with cadets.

“D-Did he just say what I think he said…?”

“I thought he was just a childhood friend with a pure heart hiding behind that bleach-blond delinquent look… my god.”

“This is insane…”

Yang Woobin’s outrageous confession was so shocking that even the cadets of Jincheon Class who were listening were left speechless.

“…Ha. Haha.”

Of course, the most shocked of them all was, without a doubt, Jin Sejeong.

All she had wanted was to meet her childhood friend again, prove the rumors were nonsense, untangle the twisted mess of their current situation, and go back to the happy days they used to share—but nothing had been resolved.

‘What went wrong? I just wanted to go back to how it used to be, to get along with Woobin and be happy… So why… why do I have to stand here listening to such horrible things coming out of his mouth?’

Every time she felt some sense of relief, something would freeze her heart over again.

And whenever she tried to calm down, she was shoved back into emotional ruin.

The constant whiplash left Jin Sejeong unable to think straight.

She didn’t think she could smile at Yang Woobin’s face—the one that used to make her happy just by being near it—any longer.

‘What happened to you…? What kind of terrible things did you go through in those seven years we were apart to become this… this corrupted version of yourself?’

Knowing that her first love had been tainted to this extent made her feel like her heart was being ripped apart.

Every word that came out of his mouth felt like a razor-sharp blade.

The look in his eyes held filthy experiences she didn’t know about.

Jin Sejeong couldn’t bear to look at him any longer and lowered her head.

“The person in front of me right now… isn’t the Yang Woobin I knew.”

“What?”

“The Woobin I knew isn’t here. The only one standing in front of me is a weak, fallen loser who couldn’t bear reality and chose to rot.”

“…Heh.”

From that moment on, Jin Sejeong decided that the bleach-blond punk standing in front of her was no longer the Yang Woobin she had once known—no longer the reliable, bold, considerate, and warm-hearted boy from her memories.

Now, all she saw was a broken man, crushed by a cruel reality, corrupted beyond recognition.

“Sigh…”

Step. Step. Step.

Having come to terms with her feelings and determined what she needed to do, Jin Sejeong exhaled the breath she had been holding—along with the lingering attachment in her chest—and strode straight toward Yang Woobin.

As the distance between them closed, the atmosphere in the training grounds grew increasingly tense.

But Jin Sejeong didn’t care one bit about the mood.

With her head still lowered, she walked right up to him—close enough to touch.

Grab.

She suddenly reached out and grabbed Woobin’s thick wrist.

“So this time… it’s my turn to save you. I’m the head of the Disciplinary Committee, and it’s my responsibility to set misguided cadets back on the right path.”

Her head was still bowed, but there wasn’t a single tremor in her voice.

She wanted to repay what he had done for her in the past—he had saved her life, and now she would give everything she had to save his.

That was what Jin Sejeong had decided was her duty.

“Let’s go to the Disciplinary Committee room first.”

She no longer wanted Yang Woobin to be exposed to all these cadets.

Their eyes, filled with disdain as they looked at him, irritated her too much to stay there any longer.

“Let’s go dye that thug’s hair back to black, and turn that vulgar tanned skin back to its original milky white. We start from there. People form first impressions based on appearance, after all. If we can just fix how you look, at least people won’t point fingers at you anymore…”

Just as she was about to drag him out of the training ground, gripping his wrist tightly—

Grab.

Someone else suddenly grabbed her wrist, just like she had grabbed Woobin’s.

“Stop.”

It was Fuyuno Tsubaki who had seized her wrist.

“Woobin doesn’t need your help. He doesn’t need to dye his hair black, or turn his skin back to milky white. No matter how he looks, Woobin is still Woobin. Don’t… don’t tell him what to do.”

The glare in her gray eyes was sharper than ever before, and it was directed squarely at Jin Sejeong.

“…Ha.”

Faced with that raw, unfiltered hostility, Jin Sejeong let out a hollow laugh.