Come Back

Choi Hong-seo, as if drawn in, slowly lifted his head and was once again overwhelmed in front of his indifferent expression.

“Ah… I’m sorry…”

Meanwhile, inside the room behind him, criticisms about Yoon Hye-sung’s acting continued. But it didn’t matter. Choi Hong-seo’s attention was entirely focused on the man in front of him.

If he didn’t speak now, it felt like it might be his only chance to approach him today. As that thought crossed his mind, courage surged within him.

“Um… Vice President!”

He called out to stop him as Lee Hye-sung reached for the doorknob. Lee Hye-sung turned and stood there, simply looking at him without even asking what was wrong.

“Could it be… that you were the one who called the ambulance when I collapsed in Hanam?”

“…”

Lee Hye-sung, silently looking down at the nervous Choi Hong-seo, spoke in a flat, emotionless voice.

“I couldn’t just leave when someone collapsed right in front of me. I would have done the same, no matter who it was.”

“…”

“Are you trying to thank me for that?”

“…Yes.”

“Alright. Then, I’ll accept your thanks.”

There was no particular caution or sharpness in his tone. It was simply businesslike, dry, and detached.

He wanted to emphasize that he would have done the same thing for anyone, not just for Yoon Hye-sung. It was a statement that drew a clear line, making it evident that he didn’t want any further connection or expectation of anything more from him.

What drew a stronger reaction from Lee Hye-sung was, in fact, the conversation coming from inside the room.

“But picking another idol for the role of Hwang Ji-woo is a bit much.”

Following the voice of the actor who played the doctor in “Cream Mansion,” Jo Won-tae’s voice followed.

“It doesn’t matter that he’s an idol, but… hmm… just like with Choi Hong-seo last time, and now Yoon Hye-sung… do we really need to use actors with such messy private lives?”

The phrase “another idol” referred to Choi Hong-seo, who had been cast as Hwang Ji-woo before. The expression on Lee Hye-sung’s face, which had started to harden from earlier, twisted into an even more hostile grimace. The “Yoon Hye-sung” standing in front of him seemed to have completely faded from his thoughts as he focused entirely on the voices coming from inside the room.

“Yoon Hye-sung is bad, but Choi Hong-seo was even worse. Imagine if that X-guy scandal had broken while he was filming… I get chills just thinking about it.”

“I heard he came from a host bar, right? So he was already in the second round, anyway. He was being blackmailed or whatever… But if he hadn’t sold his body, he wouldn’t have had to deal with blackmail. He knew that well, so he jumped, didn’t he? If he thought he was 100% the victim, why would he have jumped?”

Lee Hye-sung’s jaw muscles clenched tightly, and his lips stiffened. The tendons in his temples twitched. He struggled to suppress his anger, his shoulders shaking, and his eyes burned with intensity as he stared at the doorknob.

In that moment, all Choi Hong-seo could think of was stopping him.

Without realizing it, he reached out his hand toward Lee Hye-sung’s shoulder. It wasn’t a thought-out action—it was almost reflexive. Lee Hye-sung, almost instinctively, violently swatted his wrist away as if he had touched something filthy and ominous. Then, he didn’t even bother to look back. His entire attention was absorbed by the conversation coming from inside the room.

The pain in his wrist was nothing compared to the mental shock of being rejected so directly by him.