“She’s definitely coming?”

“Why? Worried she won’t?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t worry. I checked on the messenger just now. She says she’s coming.”

“Does she? Heh heh heh.”

The royal suite of a four-star resort hotel in Chungju.

A man and a woman lay with their upper bodies bare and traded a few light words.

The bedclothes are crumpled anyhow, as though a hot passion had been burned through the night.

“There’s something I’m curious about……”

“What?”

“Why do you hate Hyeonju so much, oppa?”

“Do I?”

“Yes. You hate her openly.”

“……You’re right. That bitch is fucking insufferable.”

A mean light crossed the eyes of the man throwing the obscenity out.

“Were you…… turned down? The way they say?”

The woman smiling shyly, playing the innocent.

But the look of a cunning vixen in her eyes couldn’t be hidden.

“Turned down. A bitch with fuck all to her name……”

An Hyeonju, who had roundly ignored the approach he’d worked his courage up to make.

The man had grown the humiliation he suffered then into anger.

“Are you still angry?”

“Yes.”

“So what are you going to do when you meet her today?”

“What do you think. Smash whatever composure she’s got left to pieces.”

“Really?”

The woman smiles a small smile with a good deal behind it.

Choi Yurin, a woman professional golfer who came into the professional game in the same year as her and used the same practice range.

She had called An Hyeonju out to help the man take his revenge.

“She doesn’t know I’m coming today?”

“No.”

“Good.”

“But I don’t know anything about the man Hyeonju is bringing either.”

“Nothing at all?”

“No, she wouldn’t say.”

“What bastard has no fear in him at all, getting in with that bitch.”

The man’s eyes changed in a moment at jealousy over An Hyeonju’s companion.

His name is Park Dojun.

He is ranked third among Korea’s current men’s professional golfers.

Golf ability, and his family was quite well regarded too.

His father runs a mid-sized company.

He’s tall and has proved himself at golf, but he’s better known for a decent face.

He has a solid body built by sport and ran a personal video channel.

Subscribers made up of fans alone come close to five hundred thousand.

Even among the men golfers his popularity is in the upper rank.

In the past Park Dojun was turned down by An Hyeonju to his face.

“What is this, are you jealous?”

Choi Yurin ran a hand smoothly over Park Dojun’s chest as she asked it.

Her eyes are smiling, but the look in them was cold.

Womanising bastard.

They go on as sexual partners, but she doesn’t love him.

Choi Yurin, who has needed a sponsor since her form fell off noticeably of late.

She became a regular fixture on Park Dojun’s personal channel, which made the connection, and popularity came with it.

On the strength of that fame she opened a channel of her own recently.

Park Dojun is a man with plenty of use in him yet.

Today she took on the part of the bait in what Park Dojun had planned.

“Aren’t you the one who’s jealous?”

Park Dojun threw it back at her as though sneering.

At the look in his eyes, wicked as a snake’s, Choi Yurin’s skin crawled.

She has a pretty face, right enough, but she isn’t Park Dojun’s taste.

“Me? Hoho. No. I know my place.”

For a moment Choi Yurin set her pride down.

One day I’m going to watch you go over on your face!

And in eyes narrowing to a thin curve she held poison.

Just now she is only bowing her head for a while, because she has a purpose.

Choi Yurin has been holding on in the professional world on pride alone as well.

“That’s why I’m the one pushing you. Heh heh.”

Park Dojun, who attacks the gaps in a person and achieves his own ends through them.

He wore a leering smile and stretched his right hand out roughly and pulled Choi Yurin’s body across.

Early morning, with the sun only beginning to come up.

Park Dojun, who had rolled about all night and was already charged with appetite again.

“Aah……”

Choi Yurin let a moan out as though she were used to it and swayed her hips.

“Not…… very close.”

An Hyeonju admitted it honestly.

“You aren’t close? Then why the round?”

“I need field practice. A round with somebody of similar ability is essential for holding onto the feel of competition. I haven’t been able to play a round for a year.”

For the sake of coming back, field rounds were absolutely necessary.

Lose the feel of competition once and it’s hard to get back.

“Are you still being affected by that business?”

“……Korea is small, isn’t it. And my face has been sold about.”

The face of An Hyeonju, saying it, hardened.

Talking like this in front of Ha Tae-ung was a shame to her.

Her attitude at the time had been conduct she could stand behind.

But as things turned out this way, she regretted not having handled it more wisely.

If only she’d held it in a little longer and got past that moment.

Then her ordinary life wouldn’t have come apart as far as this.

“You did well. And that’s why heaven’s given you a present like me, a walking piece of luck, isn’t it. Hahaha.”

As though he knew how An Hyeonju was feeling, Ha Tae-ung turned the air with a big open laugh.

“You…… a piece of luck?”

“Am I not?”

“Haa……”

At Ha Tae-ung’s playing about, a laugh spread over An Hyeonju’s face where it had gone dark.

Ha Tae-ung, an adult, but with the standing of a second-year high school student still.

His manner in dealing with her was exactly like a considerate oppa.

The warmth she had felt from the moment she got into the car.

Some of it is the seat heaters, obviously, but a great deal of it is the air Ha Tae-ung carries with him.

Coffee, the heater on inside, and this and that to eat as well — Ha Tae-ung’s carefulness about it.

His arms were wide, too……

Ha Tae-ung’s arms, which she had gone into without meaning to.

There are moments when that comes back to her.

An Hyeonju has never once had the experience of going out with a man.

A woman who has never held a man’s hand apart from her father’s.

Ha Tae-ung’s arms had plainly been warm, and easy to be in.

Bring it back again and even so——

“Are you hot?”

“Mm?”

“Your face looks as though the heat’s coming up in it.”

“Yes……. I think it is a bit hot.”

“I’ll bring the temperature down.”

Ha Tae-ung’s driving is nothing like a beginner’s.

It’s a good car, so that could be why it feels that way.

But Ha Tae-ung is plainly driving while reading the lights and the flow of the traffic as well.

He’s like a veteran with a good ten years of driving behind him.

“You’re a beginner and you drive well.”

“I’m a prodigy, remember.”

“What?”

“Hahaha.”

Ha Tae-ung, whose bright laugh is a pleasant thing to hear.

Watching him quietly, a smile spread deep at An Hyeonju’s mouth.

“Do you know who we’re going round with?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Hmm.”

A shadow crossed Ha Tae-ung’s colour.

He let a short sound out, as though he had some idea.

“Suppose, for instance. If the other party comes out with bad manners, what shall I do?”

“Bad manners?”

“No, only supposing.”

“……Do as you judge best. Inside what’s legal.”

“Yes! Then I’ll do the judging and act first and report afterwards.”

An Hyeonju wasn’t so very pleased about today’s invitation either.

Choi Yurin is a colleague and a competitor.

She was jealous of An Hyeonju from the days before their debut, when they used the same practice range.

Choi Yurin, who expressed her dissatisfaction openly once a considerable sponsor attached itself to An Hyeonju after her formal professional debut.

It was nothing out of the ordinary for her to go about badmouthing An Hyeonju to the amateur trainees, with no cause given.

Even then, good-natured An Hyeonju bore it.

She had no particular wish to make a large thing of it.

She understood early that a professional need only prove it with ability.

After that An Hyeonju went from strength to strength while Choi Yurin’s form fell away, and the gap grew.

If only the Sinyang Financial Group business hadn’t gone off around that time……

And in this situation, a round invited by Choi Yurin, who is not well disposed toward her.

So it isn’t a thing to be glad about without looking at it.

An Hyeonju suspects too that there’s a purpose she’s aiming at.

Which is why she made up her mind to bring Ha Tae-ung, whom she trusts without reason.

Screeech.

The place they arrived at was Chungju Shale CC.

The car stopped in the car park.

Click.

“Get out.”

Ha Tae-ung the gentleman, out before she knew it and opening the passenger door for her.

An Hyeonju put a foot outside the car feeling fresh about it.

And in that very moment!

“Hyeonju~!”

A voice she knew came from very close by.

An Hyeonju turned her head toward where the voice had come from.

The door of a Bens S-Class was opening and a woman was getting out.

“Yurin……”

It was Choi Yurin.

“Not one call in all that time? I was hurt~. You don’t do that to a girl from your own year~”

Choi Yurin, who hadn’t sent so much as one ordinary message of comfort to her when she was caught up in the scandal and in an awkward position.

She came toward An Hyeonju putting a sickening voice on where it could be seen.

Unlike the fox’s face with its smiling eyes, the look in them was cold as ice.

“You know my situation.”

An Hyeonju said it with her eyes steady.

Coming along with Ha Tae-ung, she was drawing a strength she couldn’t account for.

“I know it too. Which is why I made this difficult occasion for you like this~”

Choi Yurin, talking large about having arranged the day for An Hyeonju’s sake.

“Pro An! It’s been a while.”

Just then a man got out of the Bens’s driver’s seat and made himself known.

“……!!”

An Hyeonju’s eyes went round in her confusion.

One of the men who had pestered her while she was running as an active professional.

And afterwards, once the Sinyang Financial Group scandal broke, he’d contacted her openly.

He would make her an opportunity to explain the scandal through his personal video channel, was the offer.

In exchange he’d pressed her several times to have a drink with him first.

And in the end Park Dojun had brought up a sponsorship as well.

After that she blocked his number.

That this same Park Dojun would appear here, she had never imagined.

“Hyeonju, you have to greet him. He’s a sunbae-nim~”

Choi Yurin gestured her to greet him, grinning.

By the standard of professional debut, Park Dojun is a senior right enough.

“Ah, hello.”

“Haha. Yes. It’s been a long time.”

He takes the greeting with a manly smiling face, but there’s a chill settled in Park Dojun’s eyes.

Shall I just…… turn round and go?

An Hyeonju, without a shred of wish to play a round with Park Dojun.

And in the moment she was weighing up whether to turn back.

“Noona! You’ll introduce me to these people too, won’t you?”

(End of Chapter 38)