Chapter 1: Chapter 1

Beep. Beep. Tinkle-tinkle.

No matter how loudly the alarm clock rang, Arum still kept on dreaming. She briefly opened her eyes at the surrounding noise and then closed her eyes again, with her body and soul still separated from each other.

“Hey, Arum Yang!”

Somebody shook her hard, but her senses remained numb.

“I saw you opening your eyes. Get up!”

‘Who could it be?’

That voice was familiar to Arum.

It was a familiar voice, but she didn’t care.

The more she thought about it, the more her head became a mess.

But it faded like a distant dream due to her dull senses.

She was absorbed in doing some shopping in her dream.

A latest model TV set, refrigerator, coffee machine, water purifier and oven.

Bed and sofa. For the first time in her life, she kept choosing what she really wanted to have.

Was it the day when she was preparing her trousseau three years ago?

She spent 10 million won on buying all the furnishings for her wedding!

She heard things again the moment the man’s face was about to become visible.

“Arum?”

“Ugh?” she replied inadvertently while continuing shopping. Her bridegroom Konsu was smiling at her.

At that moment, she opened her eyes.

Arum frowned at the brightness of the fluorescent light.

It was noisy around her, with someone sticking out his face, and she had a hangover.

‘I wish I didn’t drink too much.’

It was too late, though.

When she opened her eyes a little, she saw Jina.

‘Am I still in the bar?’

Nope. She clearly paid for drinks with her own credit card and left.

‘Where am I now? Who am I?’

She couldn’t figure out anything. She only recognized Jina.

“What the heck? Did I sleep at your house? I think I blacked out then, right?”

But her friend slapped her on the back with her palm. “Are you crazy? You must be crazy.”

Curling up like a cicada larva, Arum replied, “What the hell are you talking about? I’m not crazy.”

“Just look at how out of shape you are now! ‘You’re crazy’ is all over your face. Just look at it!”

When Jina kindly turned her around, she saw that there was a large full-sized mirror at her back.

Swollen eyes? Obviously, she drank too much.

Tangled hair? She could wash it clean.

Foamy saliva mark on her mouth?

Everybody had it when they were seniors in high school.

And police uniforms?

What the heck? Police?

Astonished, Arum looked around. Clearly, she was in the police station. Policemen were busy doing their duties.

‘Damn it! I’m in the police station!’

She looked at them with a bit of admiration and awe. How could they take care of a drunk citizen like her when they were snowed under work?

Jina made her aware of the reality. She suddenly raised her finger and pointed somewhere. Aurm found a policeman walking up to her.

“He’s in charge of your case.”

Hearing that, Arum tried to fix her tangled hair and tie it into order. But she had no band. Jina noticed and quickly picked up a yellow rubber band on the floor.

She tied her hair in a ponytail. She couldn’t see the policeman as her hair blocked her view.

“Hey, do I look good? How about my hair?” asked Aurm.

“Are you having a blind date? You criminal!” replied Jina coldly.

Without paying any attention to their bickering, the policeman approached.

“Have you come to your senses?”

“Yes, I’m sorry.”

“I wish you had been more careful. You should apologize to that person over there, not to me.”

With a cute look on his face, the kind policeman pointed at a man.

“Oh, I see.”

Arum looked at the man with the most polite expression on her face.

Her eyes met his. He was puckering up his face at the moment. He was a handsome guy, whose casual knitwear and loafer shoes made him look good. When he was seated, he looked like he had a standard Korean man’s height, but he was much taller when he stood up.

But he felt familiar to her.

‘Where did I see him? Do I know him?’

Before she could pursue that train of thought, the policeman left the place, saying, “Try to initiate some good conversation.”

Arum was still tilting her head.

Instead of Arum who couldn’t figure out what had happened at all, it was Jina who made a desperate appeal to him.

“Look! She got completely drunk last night. How could she steal anything? Hey, Arum Yang, where did you tell your substitute driver to go last night?”

Where?

Arum narrowed her eyes to focus only for a moment, but she felt a pit in her stomach.

Damned hangover, let alone migraine!

“Did you clearly tell the driver about your destination?”

“Yes, I did. I told him to take me to Green Villa in Yonsinnae.”

What? Green Villa?

Suddenly, Arum shut her mouth. No way!

“Hey, did I really go to Green Villa?” She suddenly became sober and came to her senses.

Her hangover and migraine were only excuses.

“Me?” There was no point of asking that question.

She couldn’t believe it. She felt that she had completely forgotten him and erased him from her mind. But it turned out that it was only her wishful thinking.

It was her body that made her not forget her former fiancé.

A year ago, Green Villa was the house where she made a home with her fiancé, Konsu. That was also the place she boarded at for five years. Anyway, she never revealed it to anybody after she broke off her engagement with him.

What if she won the lottery?

She would use all the money to buy that villa and smash it excitedly.

What if she came into power? She would remove the administrative district that held jurisdiction over that villa. She wouldn’t care even if the people got upset.

For that villa served as hell to her all along.

Anyway, obviously she went to that place under the influence of alcohol.

Arum felt pitiful about herself.

Come to think of it, she felt she was miserable, pathetic and pitiful, as if she were the heroine of a melodrama.

Yes, her behavior last night was not weird at all. Was it a crime? Nope.

Aurm was staring at Jina, with whom she was on close terms for the past ten years.

‘How could you know my sublime love?’

And then she cast a glance at the man.

‘Hey, I think I pressed the doorbell of your house and acted like a drunkard. Granted that, how could you report me to the police? Do you know anything about love?’

She became more and more confident.

She also became convinced that she was innocent. She didn’t want to be treated as a criminal on a false charge.

Staring at Jina with a confident face, Arum said, “Do you think it was wrong that I visited Green Villa? I could go there!”

The man responded suddenly, “Yeah, you could!” He spoke in a calm voice. It looked like he was a man of good understanding and generosity.

‘He’s got a good character as a man!’

She instantly felt her case would be quickly closed. She wanted to get out of the police box as soon as possible. She wanted to take a shower and then go to a coffee shop.

“Did you say it was your former boyfriend’s house?” That man smiled at her and added, “Oh, I see.”

To put it correctly, it was a matrimonial home, and not solely his.

But Arum just smiled without responding.

Knowing the ins and outs of Arum’s situation, Jina’s jaws dropped.

‘What an idiot! She cannot make heads or tails of it.’

Jina strongly signaled her to beg for his forgiveness, but to no avail.

Arum opened her mouth, “Yes, it’s the matrimonial home. Look at its space. It’s too big for one man, but good enough for a couple. Are you living alone there? Heating bill is too high. Have you changed the boiler?”

But he reacted coldly.

He even snorted at her question.

Arum felt bad.

“Well, you may be right,” he said sarcastically.

Losing her temper, she was about to retort when he cut in, “Still, you should not have broken into my house.”

Breaking into his house?

That wording reminded one of a heinous criminal who killed or injured men and robbed them.

Arum could hardly believe her ears when he used that wording. She tried to calm down.

She asked rationally, “Did I trespass? Me?”

At that moment, the policeman brought a laptop.

It contained a clip about Arum’s behavior last night, videotaped by the CCTV installed at Green Villa from various angles. As the device was recently upgraded, the quality of the video was in UHD.

In the video clip, Arum looked completely wasted.

After getting off a taxi driven by a chauffeur, she opened Green Villa’s main gate. She took off her heels at the gate and began to walk up the stairs while stumbling, with her long hair shaken out loose.

Click, click, click.

The lights attached with automatic sensors on the stairs were turned on one after another as she walked up.

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