Chapter 81.1

Chapter 81.1

André suddenly stood up from the dining chair with a loud scrape. He grabbed Miran’s wrist and dragged her to the dressing room. Then he took off Miran’s T-shirt and threw it on the floor, as she was standing there dumbfounded, having been dragged out of the middle of dinner.

“Wh-what the heck are you doing?!”

Miran cried out as she covered her chest with both arms. André roughly pulled a shirt from the hanger, draped it over her shoulders, and dressed her himself.

“You can wear my shirt when you’re at home. Got it?”

He said with a cold expression. It sounded like permission but also like a command.

Miran stared at him, dumbfounded.

I never said I wanted to wear it.

After arriving at the apartment and showering, Miran stepped into the dressing room in her underwear. She stifled a giggle behind her hand as she pulled one of the many shirts hanging neatly on the rack.

André wasn’t always honest. But she could tell he liked seeing her in his shirts. His eyes softened whenever he looked at her in them.

Miran didn’t mind. His shirts were long, roomy, and felt soft against her skin. More than anything, wearing them made her feel wrapped in his embrace.

The “AL” embroidered on the sleeves and pockets wasn’t a brand name, but André’s initials. When she asked, he explained that his tailor would embroider the shirts and suits when they were custom-made.

As she fastened the cufflinks André had given her into the sleeve cuffs, she closely examined the cubic zirconia set in the center. Its unusually bright gleam made her uneasy.

‘What if that thing in the center isn’t just cubic zirconia….’

She couldn’t bring herself to ask André. If it turned out to be a diamond, she felt like she’d have to give it back.

Miran stood there blankly, staring down at the cufflinks, and let out a deep sigh.

She wasn’t good at studying, but she knew her place.

“It would have been better if André had been an ordinary soldier…”

After dinner, André would retreat to his study, alternating between his computer and stacks of documents, working late into the night. Watching him sit at his desk for at least fourteen hours a day, Miran realized his claims of being too busy to reply weren’t lies.

Because he was the kind of person who would never speak first, not even if she waited a lifetime, she’d finally worked up the courage to ask him a few days ago.

“Um… what’s the name of the company you work for?”

André looked up from his papers, narrowing his eyes as if sizing her up. Just when she was about to give up on getting an answer, he finally replied curtly.

“Lafayette-Lowell Group.”

Miran swallowed hard. As she’d suspected, he really was the heir to a family business.

“What does the company do?”

“All sorts of things. Hotels, real estate development, department stores, and so on.”

The moment she heard his answer, Miran felt a little faint.

She’d already guessed he was some kind of executive at the company. She’d seen him reading leather-bound documents, signing the first or last page.

She’d never worked in a company, but she knew that was something important people did.

But hotels, real estate, department stores? Even without knowing the full picture, she figured the scale of the business was on par to that of a large corporation.

She answered with a bitter smile.

“…No wonder you’re so busy.”

Not only did the two grow up in different environments, their social statuses were as far apart as New York and Seoul. In Korea, Miran was just an ordinary working-class person. But here in New York, she was a little more than a foreigner who could barely speak the language.

And yet, here was André—an aristocrat with a title and the heir to a massive company.

If they somehow ended up together, people might call her the greatest Cinderella of the 20th century. But Miran was a realistic person. She’d never dreamed of being Cinderella.

‘Even Cinderella was a noble by birth.’

Even in Korea, people like André only formed ties within their own kind. Why would it be any different in America? Even if anyone could date anyone, it was questionable whether they would get married.

Juran always said that people were happiest when they were with someone from a similar background. That it was the only way to live without trouble.

Falling in love, getting married, having kids.

Could she have that kind of ordinary happiness with a man like André?

The thought made her heart shrink and her body feel heavy, as if stones were tied to her limbs.

Miran quickly shook her head, as if trying to brush the thoughts away.