Bring It On! - Side Story 3

Side Story 3.

“Should I have it scrapped?”

From the rearview mirror, Park Jong-hoo cautiously studied Cha Yoon’s expression as he spoke. Cha Yoon, who had been staring at his tablet, hesitated for a moment, then shook his head.

A sudden headache made him rub his temples before tossing the tablet aside. On the screen was the compact car that Sun Woori had bought. 

That damn piece of junk. The cursed thing that had ruined his romantic car sex with Sun Woori. 

He would make sure it got scrapped one way or another.

But if he smashed it up in his usual temper, he feared the consequences afterward.

“Your head still hurts? I told you, you should see a doctor.”

As soon as they pulled out of the company parking lot, Park Jong-hoo asked with worried eyes.

“Cha Seong-hwan, that bastard. The aftereffects linger too long.”

“Weren’t you thanking him once for introducing you to Ms. Sun?”

“That bastard won’t last more than three years. Get him taken care of before he can get a pardon.”

After the long, drawn-out trial, Cha Sung-hwan had finally been sentenced last month. He got eight years in prison. Even though Cha Yoon had nearly died several times because of him, Chairman Cha still refused to give up on Seong-hwan. 

He couldn’t bear the shame of his own blood rotting away in jail. Most likely, he planned to hand him some cash and ship him abroad again.

Chairman Cha was already pulling strings with lawmakers and the press, doing everything he could to get Seong-hwan released. But Cha Yoon wasn’t about to just sit back and watch.

“Oh, and about what Ms. Sun asked…”

One of Cha Yoon’s eyebrows twitched upward.

“The search unit got back to me. No progress. Honestly, finding a body that fell into the sea two years ago is next to impossible. I don’t even know if it makes sense to keep the search going.”

“Who asked for your opinion, Director Park?”

“……”

The voice that dropped was ice-cold. Instinctively, Park Jong-hoo looked into the rearview mirror, meeting Cha Yoon’s eyes. That chilling gaze slammed into him like an accusation of incompetence. 

Compared to this, even talking about Seong-hwan had felt like strolling through a flower field.

“If I say find it, you find it. If your team can’t make progress, then hire more divers. Simple as that.”

“…Understood.”

“Don’t disappoint me.”

“Yes, sir.”

Cha Yoon pulled out a cherished memory. It wasn’t very old, so there was no need to dig deep.

One year ago.

He had noticed Sun Woori was suffering in silence with some kind of problem. When she thought he wasn’t looking, she would sneak glances at him, and whenever he turned his head, she’d flush visibly and flee the scene.

Her fresh reactions made his eyes gleam with interest. He was curious. 

One side of him wanted to drag her into a room and press her until she confessed. The other side wanted to leave her stewing, keep her skittish and restless under his gaze. The latter won.

Interrogation could wait. For now, he decided to savor it.

After all, if not now, he might never see her like that again. Sun Woori never asked him for anything.

She was tender, yet unyielding. She accepted his rough edges with the attitude that he was clumsy and didn’t know better, but she never leaned on him. It was as if she drew a line. 

What’s yours is yours, what’s mine is mine. To Cha Yoon, who wanted her entangled with him both legally and financially, that aloofness felt unbearably cold.

And yet, she was asking for a favor. What on earth could it be? Smacking his lips, he entertained himself imagining how he might use her request to bend her to his will. 

If he demanded something humiliatingly obscene, she would blush to the point of tears but still have no choice but to obey. He even tried guessing what sort of timid request she’d bring up.

A month passed like that, and his patience was wearing thin.

That day, Sun Woori’s face was especially dark. Just before sleep, he pulled her onto his lap, teased her as much as he pleased, kissed and nibbled at her soft skin. 

His erection ached to thrust into her cramped walls immediately, but for her sake, he forced himself to hold back. In the end, he tickled her with lips and tongue until he finally coaxed a laugh from her, only then letting her go.

In the darkened room, moonlight seeped faintly through the window. He turned his back to her. If he faced her, he couldn’t resist touching, and she’d never get to rest.

Then, something shifted behind him. A slender arm slipped around his waist. Thud. His heart nearly dropped. 

Sun Woori was the one reaching out to him. That almost never happened. The distance she always maintained like a line in the sand suddenly collapsed.

Startled, he sucked in a subtle breath, unable to tell if the touch was real. In the darkness, he blinked, stunned at the miracle.

“I know you’re not asleep.”

His heartbeat thundered so loudly he almost didn’t hear her voice.

“Mm.”

He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing, and answered as if nothing were unusual.

“I know it’s shameless of me, but…”

Thump. Her forehead touched his back.

“Tell me.”

He covered her hand that had slipped down to his stomach, entwining his fingers with hers. She returned the grip, faint but certain.

“It’s something I can’t do on my own…”

“……”

“I need your help.”

A trembling quiver could be heard in the low murmur of her voice.

“I’ll do it.”

The answer slipped out of him as if he were under a spell. The urge to demand something obscenely humiliating evaporated the instant he heard Sun Woori’s voice. 

Watching her, anxious that he might refuse, made his chest tighten with a painful throb. He felt like he could do anything for her. Even if it meant splitting open his chest to hand his heart over to that brat of a kid, he would have run straight to the hospital.

“You haven’t even heard of it yet. How can you say you’ll do it?”

Only then did Sun Woori relax, her lips curling into a faint smile. The frozen stiffness in her body seemed to melt away in an instant. Cha Yoon turned to face her. Even in the darkness, her eyes shone clear.

“Why drag it out like this?”

“……”

“Your husband’s very capable. It had better not be something trivial. If it doesn’t shock me, then it’s not a real request.”

Sun Woori reached out. Her small fingertips brushed softly over Cha Yoon’s eyelashes as they passed. For some reason, she loved to touch his lashes. 

Cha Yoon held still, letting her touch them as much as she liked.

“I want to find Suho’s older brother.”

At last, the burden Sun Woori had carried for so long slipped from her lips.

“Lee Haeseong. Of the people on that yacht, he’s the only one still listed as missing.”

“……”

“Please, Yoon-ah.”

How could he possibly refuse when she said it like that? Right then, Cha Yoon wanted to dive into the sea himself. Of course, words like Why bother looking for a man who’s already fish food? What was he to you? caught in his throat for a moment. 

But he managed to swallow them back down.

It had been nearly a year since the search for Lee Haeseong began.

“I’m going to hide a ring in that bastard’s urn and propose.”

At Cha Yoon’s words, the car jolted. When Cha Yoon narrowed his eyes, Park Jong-hoo quickly apologized.

“You’ll just get dumped again. Tone it down. You get rejected because you propose like that every damn time.”

“Shut it. What do you know about Sun Woori?”

“After being shot down three times, maybe it’s time you realized the problem is your approach.”

Park Jong-hoo spoke with genuine pity. Cha Yoon had brushed past countless women in his life, but this was his first real relationship.

To Park Jong-hoo, it always felt strange, alien, to see Cha Yoon hung up on a woman like this. Still, that didn’t stop him from rooting for Cha Yoon’s love. 

He pitied Sun Woori for being caught in the claws of such a man, but Jong-hoo would always be on Cha Yoon’s side.

Cha Yoon, for his part, felt deeply insecure about his relationship with Sun Woori. He was convinced that registering their marriage, at the very least, would be the only way to ease that unease.

The first proposal had been at a restaurant. For weeks, Cha Yoon had lost sleep over it. Just to pick out one ring, he commissioned countless designers, his dark circles sinking deep as he scouted for the perfect venue.

The nerves got so bad that the night before, he even vomited.

At last, after preparing everything to perfection, Cha Yoon dressed himself from head to toe in his best, then dropped to one knee in the middle of the restaurant and held out the ring.

The answer came in just one second.

“No.”

Shot down in a single second.

“Eat your food.”

The second time was in a helicopter. Still reeling from the failure of the first, Cha Yoon couldn’t get over the hollow moment of having to put the ring away at the restaurant. 

He analyzed the fiasco to death. The conclusion? It was the atmosphere. It was too cliché. 

What he needed was something bolder, unforgettable.

So he took her in a helicopter. At his signal, an enormous bank of lights blazed upward from the ground below. Marry Me.

Sitting beside her, he opened the ring case. Sun Woori silently closed the lid. Rejected again in one second.

The third time, he went for something that would strike at the tender heart of Sun Woori, who was soft and sentimental. He despised the idea, it made his skin crawl, but there was no other way. He bought the very island they had once been stranded on.

Sun Woori stared at the sales contract he presented for a long time. Then, quietly folding it back into the envelope, she walked into her room without a word.

He hadn’t even had time to pull out the ring.

In short, she ghosted him.