Chapter 189 – Episode 189 – Is It Or Isn’T It (3)
Friday lunch.
“Harin-aang~!”
“Ah.”
Standing in front of the subway station exit, Joo Harin turned her head at the familiar voice ringing in her ear.
A woman was waving her hand with a bright smile.
Min Jia, dressed in a beige dress and a black jacket, was running towards her.
Harin looked Jia up and down and noticed that not only her clothes but also her hairstyle was a little different from usual.
“Did you get your hair done?”
“Hehe. I just did it~. How is it? Does it look good?”
“Yeah. I think it looks nice.”
“Ehehe.”
Harin’s tone was calm when she said it was nice, but Min Jia, knowing it was a compliment, smiled bashfully.
Harin felt a slight, inexplicable lift in her spirits at Jia’s easy and beautiful smile.
That’s why she enjoyed hanging out with her.
She was also a little envious of her ever-bright demeanor.
As she quietly looked at her, Jia also chimed in with a compliment.
“You look really pretty today too, Harin-ah~.”
“Me? I just came out wearing my usual clothes…”
That wasn’t a lie.
She had just thrown on whatever clothes were in her room.
However, Jia waved her finger.
“Tsk tsk. The completion of fashion is the face!”
“…Why do you always say that?”
“It’s true! Look! If I were ugly, would I look good even if I dressed like this? It’s all thanks to my pretty face! Ah…! I should take a selfie.”
Jia said that and started taking pictures of herself with her phone.
Ugh.
Harin looked at her with a bored expression.
“…Take it easy.”
“Huh? Do you want to take one with me?”
“No, not that.”
Harin shook her head.
Min Jia.
She was great in every way, but she had one serious problem.
That was that she was a serious princess disease patient!
She was actually pretty, so it was hard to call it a princess disease…
Since middle school, she had lived a life of praising her own beauty, taking selfies whenever she had the chance, and posting them on social media.
Jia herself said that she was just average, but Harin didn’t think so. She was with her camera almost every moment.
Well… still, she became a successful streamer with that personality and cheerful talk.
She made money from broadcasting and YouTube and even opened her own PC cafe. She was the complete opposite of Harin, who hadn’t even started her dream yet.
Or rather, she had started… but the results were very insignificant.
I’ll definitely… next year!
Harin clenched her fist and started walking.
“Ah, wait a minute! Let’s go together!”
“Hurry up. The subway will be here soon.”
“Oh, it’s true.”
Jia, who had been taking selfies from various angles, stuck close to Harin at her words.
“We just need to take the one going towards the Express Bus Terminal, right?”
“Yeah. But wait. Why am I answering? You were the one who wanted to go.”
“Hehe. What does it matter~.”
The restaurant and cafe that Jia had shown in her YouTube video yesterday were both relatively close, only about 20 minutes away by subway.
“We’re going to the pork belly place first, right?”
“Yeah! It’s been a while since I’ve had a good, hearty meal.”
“You’ll get fat.”
“Oh, you’re not supposed to say that before eating out…?”
Harin smiled faintly at Min Jia’s horrified expression.
“It’s okay. I can just work out hard tomorrow.”
“Ugh, I can’t be happy…”
Jia wailed.
******
[Delia: We’re ordering chicken and pizza for dinner today. Would Dajeong and Yujeong unnie like to come over and eat with us?]
[Dajeong: Wow! Really? I’d love to!! What time should I come?]
[Kang Sujeong: Come by a little before 7! Yujeong unnie is coming too, right?]
[Me: Yeah. I’ll go too. Thank you^^]
“Huu…”
Yoon Yujeong, who had just sent a message in the group chat after taking a break in the cafe’s break room, let out a faint sigh.
A group chat that included her and the other women who had deep relationships with Jinhyun.
The so-called Hyun-talk room was buzzing every day.
There were a total of two Hyun-talk rooms.
There was the first chat room that Jinhyun had created and was a part of, and the second chat room that Sujeong had proactively created without Jinhyun, where only the women gathered.
The chat room she had just sent a message to was the former.
The latter was generally used to share racy information about Jinhyun without him knowing, or to talk about other women he had his eye on while dating him.
Yoon Yujeong had become quite close with the other women Jinhyun was dating, but recently, she had been feeling a slight unease.
She had been making love with him whenever the cafe work was over, or sometimes when she brought him coffee in the middle of the day, but the frequency had decreased a lot recently.
He was also often not at the cafe.
Still, she was having truly dreamlike, happy days, and she could feel that Jinhyun loved her, but…
‘The problem is…’
Jinhyun’s other women were too outstanding.
Delia was outstanding in terms of looks and body. Moreover, her attitude towards Jinhyun was extremely devoted. It felt like her eyes were overflowing with love every moment.
Sujeong was the first woman Jinhyun had loved, and Dajeong was recently making great strides with her comics, so Jinhyun was very fond of her.
Moreover, it had been reported in the second chat room, where Jinhyun was not a member, that he had recently added another woman named Jang Ye-hwa.
She also had very beautiful looks and a great body. She was a frequent visitor to the cafe, so Yoon Yujeong knew that fact even better.
However, compared to those women, she herself was too lacking.
She didn’t have particularly outstanding looks or body (compared to Delia or Sujeong), and she was only working as a cafe manager because she was indebted to Jinhyun…
She didn’t have any particular way to appeal to Jinhyun, so she had been feeling a little anxious recently.
‘Come to think of it, he asked me what I wanted to do.’
Delia was a bit ambiguous, but other than her, Jinhyun’s other women had clear dreams.
Sujeong was in broadcasting, Dajeong was in comics, and Jang Ye-hwa was in composing.
At first, she thought it would be okay to just keep working at his cafe, but recently, she had started to think that achieving what she wanted to do with his support might be the way to receive his love.
That was what Dajeong had done.
Looking at Jinhyun, it seemed like he was planning to expand not only the cafe but also other businesses.
If so, then the time he spent at this cafe would naturally decrease, and she worried that the love she received would also decrease.
‘He even said we should live together…’
Yoon Yujeong felt a little impatient at Jinhyun’s lack of further words.
‘I heard that Sujeong and Delia do various kinds of play…’
Even Dajeong, she heard.
But she and Jinhyun just enjoyed sex in a very ordinary way. Of course, they tried various positions every time…
Sh, should she also try to seduce Jinhyun with a new look so that he can feel a different charm?
As she was spacing out with these thoughts, someone grabbed her shoulder from behind.
“Eung-at?”
“Pfft. What is that unique sound?”
“Ah-. Ah, Jinhyun-ah…”
Yujeong, who was about to turn around to see who it was, lowered her voice at Jinhyun’s face. He smiled and said to Yujeong.
“You’ve worked hard. Let’s go have lunch.”
“Oh, lunch? Without ordering in?”
“I’ve been thinking that I haven’t had enough time alone with you lately. Let’s go out to eat together. We can say we’ll be back about 30 minutes late. The other part-timers will be happy if we give them extra meal money.”
“Ah…”
Yoon Yujeong felt as if the anxiety she had been feeling until now was melting away at Jinhyun’s gesture of taking her hand and helping her up.
Come to think of it, today was the first time in a long time that he had helped with the cafe work.
Jinhyun told the other part-timers that he was going out to eat with Yujeong and would be a little late, and gave them an extra 5,000 won each for meal expenses.
The part-timers’ faces brightened, and they greeted the two as they left.
“Have a good meal!!”
“Have a good sa- . Ugh…! Why?”
“Shh. Hey. How can you say it so openly?”
“Huh? Is that so? Isn’t it something everyone knows?”
The part-timers had come to know about her relationship with Jinhyun. Well, it was impossible not to know after they had been so obvious and so much time had passed.
‘It’s a problem that there are other women besides me…’
Still, it was a good thing that she could eat with Jinhyun alone. She also liked that other people thought of her relationship with Jinhyun that way.
Yujeong asked Jinhyun.
“But where are we going to eat?”
“Hmm… I don’t know. How about we go to a barbecue place for a change?”
“Huh. A barbecue place? Won’t it smell…”
“We have a lot of clothes to change into anyway, so it’s okay.”
Yujeong nodded at Jinhyun’s words.
Now that he said it, she also felt like having meat for a change.
“There are a lot of barbecue places here, where are we going?”
“Let’s go to the place we went to on our first day. Remember?”
“Ah.”
When he said the first day, she remembered getting drunk and asking Jinhyun if he liked Dajeong so much.
The next time she was with Jinhyun, she was sober, but her face flushed slightly when she remembered that time.
Still, it was nice to walk with Jinhyun like this, arm in arm.
‘Right. As long as we keep going like this, Jinhyun will…’
He said he would love her until the end, so it would be okay.
Just as she was about to feel relieved.
“Wow~ this place is pretty good? It’s delicious. Try it, try it. This is all cooked.”
“Really?”
Yujeong once again realized that she couldn’t be relieved when she saw Jinhyun’s gaze briefly turn to the two pretty women at the next table as he was grilling meat.
Yoon Yujeong narrowed her eyes and looked at Jinhyun.
“Jinhyun-aaa?”
“Huh, why, noona?”
“Chi… It’s nothing-aa.”
“Ah, did you get sulky about something again? Eat this and feel better. Here, ahh.”
“Ah…”
Munch munch.
Yoon Yujeong chewed the lettuce wrap that Jinhyun had made for her. She would get a little sulky again, but then she would feel good when he made her a wrap like this.
She felt like her heart had become a fool.
“Jinhyun-ah.”
“Yes?”
“Make me another one.”
“Pfft, okay.”
Yoon Yujeong smiled.
Anyway, the meat was delicious.
******
“Why? Is there something at that table?”
“No, it’s nothing.”
Min Jia tilted her head at Joo Harin’s gaze towards the next table.
She had rarely seen Harin like this, so it was quite a strange sight.
‘Is there something there?’
She also looked at the next table, but it was just a handsome man and a pretty woman couple eating meat while looking at each other. The woman was pretty, but the man was also quite handsome.
Min Jia chuckled.
“What is it~. Even the great Harin’s eyes are drawn to handsome men?”
“It’s not like that.”
Harin shook her head.
“Then are you uncomfortable seeing a couple being lovey-dovey next to you?”
“There’s no way.”
“Or are you jealous?”
“That’s not it either.”
“Ugh… Hey. At least react a little…”
Just as Min Jia was about to pout her lips at the feeling of talking to a stone, Joo Harin glanced at the next table once more.
She thought.
‘They look a bit alike.’
The boy who was her childhood friend and played with Eunju.
Although they had lost contact now, she, who was quite passive at the time, was able to smile a lot because of him.
Her first love.
The three of them often played together with Eunju, and she remembered that there was a subtle rivalry between her and Eunju at that time.
Compared to him at that time, he seemed a little different, but she felt a strange nostalgia in his face.
Was it because she often looked at the pictures of the three of them playing together as children?
‘Hmm.’
Harin frowned.
He did seem a little different after all.
Or was he?
They did look alike.
Just as she was confused by the ambiguous feeling, a cold noodle dish with a refreshing broth was delivered to her.
“Ah.”
Cold noodles were one of her favorite dishes. Jia was a fan of spicy cold noodles, and she was a fan of water cold noodles.
Joo Harin’s eyes began to shine. Let’s eat first and think later.
She had saved the image of the man at the next table in her head for now.
