Chapter 33

Bringing up Subject 330 was an exceedingly petty pretense, yet even that underhanded excuse held weight today. After all, a morning meeting was scheduled tomorrow regarding the 330 interrogation.

“I apologize, sir,” Se-woong replied politely. “I have a prior commitment.”

Raising a brow, Shin inquired, “No need to apologize… Where are you going?”

“We reserved a room at Hyun-woo… no, at Yukwoo-jeong, sir,” Se-woong replied.

Nodding slowly, Shin noted, “Ah. Yukwoo-jeong.”

Only after confirming their destination did Major Lee Shin finally permit the three men to depart.

Sergeant Kim kept turning his head, lips twitching as though longing to say something, but Se-woong was a step faster, grabbing him by the arm to stifle any speech. Even without hearing it, the intention was glaringly obvious: he had wanted to ask Shin to join them. While Se-woong had no desire to ignore Sergeant Kim’s fondness for Shin, he lacked the emotional bandwidth to entertain it tonight.

Tonight, Room 8 at Yukwoo-jeong was assigned to Se-woong. This implied that neither Shin nor Min-hyung would be visiting. That fact alone allowed Se-woong to finally let go of the anxiety that had gnawed at him all evening.

Sergeant Kim sighed, setting down his water cup. “It would have been wonderful if Major Lee Shin joined us, sir. If he wanted to dine with you, that means he didn’t have any dinner plans either.”

“Sergeant Kim, why do you keep satisfying personal desires on company time?” Hee-chan teased, glancing across the table. “Isn’t Captain Cha enough for you? Besides, I’m paying for the meal, so why are you the one issuing invitations?”

With a playful roll of his eyes, Hee-chan feigned profound offense at his junior’s audacity, though the affectionate smirk tugging at the corners of his mouth gave him away completely.

Sergeant Kim stammered defensively, “No, it’s not like that—I just thought dining alone must be lonely. I’ve eaten alone plenty, so I know the feeling well.”

“Ah, why bring that up again?” Hee-chan scolded playfully. “You don’t eat alone often these days anyway.”

The beef sizzling upon the grill quickly shifted color, and Se-woong diligently flipped the cuts with tongs. In a confined private room, having restaurant staff cook the meat felt overbearing, so he had volunteered to handle the grill himself. Se-woong served the succulent cuts first to Hee-chan as the elder, before heaping generous portions onto Sergeant Kim’s plate.

Sergeant Kim bowed repeatedly in gratitude, making it impossible to dislike him. Hee-chan grinned warmly watching Sergeant Kim dig in with gusto.

Hee-chan turned toward Se-woong. “Captain, you don’t drink alcohol, correct?”

“Shall we have a glass tonight?” Se-woong suggested with an easy smile. “It’s a joyous occasion, after all.”

Hee-chan cheered, raising his glass. “Oh? What a pleasant surprise! I’d love to. What about Sergeant Kim? You don’t drink soju, do you?”

“I can drink it if I mix it with cider, sir!” Sergeant Kim announced proudly.

Hee-chan chuckled, shaking his head. “See? Still a baby.”

Though chiding him with words, Hee-chan promptly ordered cider and filled the glasses before each of them. While he had framed this dinner around his wedding date, Hee-chan simply wished to share a comfortable meal with these two. Though it was a somewhat upscale meat restaurant for casual dining, the quality of the beef tonight was undeniably spectacular.

Se-woong asked, “Officer Lee, you’ve been together for ten years, right?”

“With Yeo-jin? Yes,” Hee-chan answered with a proud smile. “To be exact, dating officially after deciding to be together has been eight years, and the two years prior were a rather prolonged flirtation. I was preparing for the civil service exam back then, completely lacking the means to date properly, feeling stuck in limbo. Yeo-jin waited for me through it all. She even slipped me pocket money.”

Eight years was virtually identical to the duration Se-woong had spent entwined with Lee Shin. Back when the two of them had fought incessantly, painfully conscious of each other and desperate to tear into one another, Hee-chan’s future bride had been faithfully supporting him—even pressing spending money into his hands.

Perhaps he shouldn’t have fought so relentlessly back then, and put Shin’s mind at ease instead. If he had, could they have parted with a light heart, completely free of lingering regret? The memory of failing to treat him better would periodically trip him up like an invisible snare.

“So the second I passed the exam, I confessed to Yeo-jin right away,” Hee-chan boasted with a broad smile.

“Have you two ever broken up?” Se-woong asked, setting down his cup.

Se-woong tossed back the shot of soju in one swift gulp. The liquid, smelling of pure alcohol, scorched down his esophagus and into his stomach. Scrunching up his entire face at the fiery shot, he wiped his lips with the back of his hand. The bitter sting, which he would normally have detested, did not taste particularly bitter tonight.

“Come now, how could anyone date for ten years without breaking up once?” Hee-chan scoffed, waving a dismissive hand. “If such a couple exists, they shouldn’t get married. It means one person endured endlessly without boundary or reason. Especially in the early days of dating—whew!”

Finishing his statement, Hee-chan also tossed back his drink and shook his hands dramatically. His words offered a modest measure of comfort. It meant they were not the only ones who had quarreled, parted, and found their way back to each other. The reassurance that ordinary lovers were no different brought an unconscious smile curling to Se-woong’s lips.

Pointing across the table, Sergeant Kim exclaimed, “Uh-oh, look at that! When you smile like that, you look remarkably pretty, sir!”

Hee-chan chimed in with a grin, “Sergeant Kim, are you planning to propose to Captain Cha tonight? If so, you’ll have to get in line. Rank still matters, and Major Lee Shin is first in line.”

“What on earth are you saying, sir?” Sergeant Kim stammered, his face flushing. “Pro… proposal? What nonsense!”

Hee-chan poked the sergeant’s arm playfully. “Oh? Why is your face turning red? Why are you stammering? Most suspicious!”

Paying little heed to whatever nonsense they spouted across the table, Se-woong merely turned the sizzling cuts on the grill, his thoughts drifting to Lee Shin.

It was difficult to know how to interpret the words Shin had spoken days ago. Shin had told him to return and had kissed him with reckless impulse, yet Shin waiting for him did nothing to alter the reality crushing them.

As for offering to remain friends—fine. Even conceding a hundred times over, Se-woong could understand Shin’s desperation to maintain at least that much connection.

Then what about the matchmaking meetings? Going on formal marriage dates signaled a clear intention to wed. Nor had it been a single token meeting; Shin had attended so many that rumors of him rushing to marry circulated through the Joint Chiefs. The date had even gone out of her way to track down Shin’s personal number, calling him to plead for another meeting.

Just how charmingly did you conduct yourself out there?

Se-woong drained another shot of soju. Recalling the woman’s voice he had overheard in the parking lot that day—a memory he had temporarily buried—a surge of scalding heat welled from deep within his chest.

Shin had claimed he had accommodated everything with his prospective matches. Did waiting for Se-woong mean fidelity, devotion, pure love, and chastity were entirely separate matters? Knowing his former lover was hardly that sort of man, the stark disparity with what he had heard firsthand felt far too jarring.

Having downed potent liquor in rapid succession, Se-woong’s face took on a handsome crimson flush. It was a countenance completely at odds with the tangled mess inside his skull. This was all the fault of distilled rice spirits.

Lost in his private thoughts while the two colleagues bickered before him, Se-woong turned back toward Hee-chan.

“Then, have you two broken up recently as well?” Se-woong asked.

“Recently? Let’s see… the year before last?” Hee-chan mused, tilting his head. “We split up briefly then. I think that was our rough patch—a period of burnout, mostly on Yeo-jin’s side. She broke up with me while we were eating cold noodles. She said she was sick of watching me grab the vinegar and mustard bottles in one hand to squeeze them together. Can you believe that?”

“Vinegar and mustard… in one hand?” Se-woong echoed, blinking in mild astonishment.

“And it didn’t even last long—maybe a week?” Hee-chan continued with a chuckle. “Out of pure habit, I ended up calling her to ask if she wanted dinner, just like I did every single day. And what do you know, she came right out. We met up, ate a regular home-style meal, and had ice cream.”

Looking back on that ridiculous incident seemed absurd even to him from this vantage point, and Hee-chan’s face beamed brightly as he burst into amused, helpless laughter.

Hee-chan added with an easy shrug, “Still, you know how it is. When you fight, you brawl as though possessed by a demon, but once time passes, it turns out to be over something utterly ridiculous that you can barely even remember later. Isn’t everyone pretty much the same?”

Se-woong nodded in quiet empathy. Perhaps because their relationship timelines were so similar, he found himself unconsciously projecting his history with Shin onto Hee-chan’s tale. Had there truly been so much to fight about? They had clashed violently over the most trivial matters imaginable. Perhaps it was sheer youthful stamina. And once they turned around, they forgot all about it.

Yet he could not relate to the concept of emotional burnout. Their romance had never possessed the leisure to foster boredom. Around the time relationships typically succumbed to lethargy, their postings had separated them, making the precious hours they shared once a week feel agonizingly brief. Even while constantly keeping parting in mind, not once had he ever grown weary of Lee Shin.

He had loved Lee Shin to a sickening fault.

To the point where he wondered if succumbing to dull fatigue and drifting apart naturally might have been far kinder.

“What about Sergeant Kim?” Hee-chan asked, turning his glass. “Don’t you have a girlfriend? I don’t recall ever hearing about one.”

“I’ve never had a girlfriend, sir,” Sergeant Kim replied frankly.

“Oh? I suspected as much, but you truly haven’t!” Hee-chan marvelled. “Are your standards impossibly high? What about a blind date? Want me to set you up? Though there might be a bit of an age gap… Are you fine with older women? How about someone five or six years older?”

Rolling his eyes upward as though calculating a five- or six-year gap, Sergeant Kim pouted. Downing his liquor, Hee-chan scrunched his features. Had they been slightly closer, Hee-chan would have jokingly threatened to chop off those protruding lips before tucking them away, but he could hardly speak so roughly to someone else’s precious son.

Sergeant Kim mumbled, looking down, “It sounds nice, but… I’m fine, sir. I’ve never been on a blind date, so even if I went, I wouldn’t know what to do…”

“Good grief, then what have you done, Sergeant Kim?” Hee-chan teased.

Se-woong tilted his head with a gentle gaze. “Yes, Tae-jin-ah, why haven’t you dated anyone?”

Softened by alcohol, Se-woong’s voice sounded lower and more affectionate than usual.

Though they incessantly bantered about Se-woong being handsome or pretty, Sergeant Kim was no slouch in the looks department either. With smooth, radiant skin typical of his generation and neatly groomed brows, he was undeniably attractive. Judging solely by his face, there was no reason he should lack admirers.

“Has Captain Cha dated a great deal then, sir?” Sergeant Kim inquired.

“Not many,” Se-woong answered softly. “Just for a long time.”

At that succinct reply, both Hee-chan and Sergeant Kim rounded their eyes at him. Sergeant Kim’s eyes grew so wide that it looked as though his eyeballs might tumble out at any second. Smiling, Se-woong playfully cupped a hand beneath the sergeant’s eyes to catch them.