‘You have to graduate.’
Someone had said that. She wasn’t sure whether it had been herself or Seo Eun-seong. Whoever had spoken, Jang Si-eun thought that while sitting in front of both families, who clearly disapproved.
‘Right, I should graduate.’
She hadn’t risked her life for it, but she had worked as hard as anyone else to get into that university. She had no intention of repeating a year, nor the talent to manage it even if she wanted to. If she graduated on time, she would be twenty-four in Korean age, twenty-three by international age.
She figured she deserved at least that much freedom. It wasn’t as if she wanted some wild rebellion, nor did she dream of diving into academia and earning a doctorate.
She simply wanted to finish the university she had entered and graduate. That was all.
“We’re breaking off the engagement. I’m in love with someone else.”
With that one sentence from Seo Eun-seong, the marriage she had worked toward for six years crumbled.
“It’s for the best. I always thought it was a waste to give you to some nouveau riche family like Jin-gwang anyway.”
Nouveau riche, he said. After taking so much money from Jin-gwang, Jang Myeong-hwan now had the nerve to sneer at them, his eyes dark and calculating.
“My supervising prosecutor is young, and his family is excellent.”
If he meant the prosecutor handling the investigation into Jang Myeong-hwan’s election law violations, then…
“Prosecutor Gye? Isn’t he married?”
“Not him. That bastard has a younger brother. In the police.”
“His brother? Don’t tell me… Gye Mu-gyeol?”
Even Si-eun knew that name.
“That man… isn’t he the police officer who beat his ex-lover to death?”
Yes, that was how Gye Mu-gyeol was usually known.
A police official who beat a woman to death.
Technically she hadn’t been his wife, since they never registered the marriage, but whether you called her a wife or a girlfriend, the story was the same.
“And now… you’re telling me to marry that man?”
