the anatomy of love / jungri

02. 所谓的自私。

One week before the wedding.

"Mr. Jeon is on the news."

The sound of Bae Joohyun's voice was what finally broke Yerim's half-lucid reverie. At 2 P.M. in the afternoon, Yerim was somewhat drifting out of focus—it was a rather mundane day at the office, attending meetings and reading through carefully prepared risk analyses. Her father's prized company, Morpheus, was soon to set to invest in a rising search engine site, which was known for listing travel packages.

"Oh." Yerim emitted a soft murmur as she closed the report in her hands. Almost reluctantly, her eyes glanced over to the flat television screen in the far right corner of the room, slightly narrowed.

The man on the screen was indeed Jeon Jungkook, her husband-to-be. His handsome face wore a thin smile as he faced the cameras, bowing slightly. Standing beside his father, the expression in his eyes was composed and distant, betraying almost nothing.

"A press conference." Joohyun observed.

"...In addition to announcing Jeon Jungkook as its heir, Golden Closet Pharmaceuticals formally reveals its plan to proceed to Phase II of a clinical trial for new drug alternative to oral anticoagulant medication..."

Yerim nodded. "He did tell me he'd be back in time for the wedding." she hummed nonchalantly in reply, picking up a black pen in her fingers. The heavy metal of the pen sat on her palm as she weighed it in her hand.

How long had it been since she had seen that fiancé of hers? With some pondering, Yerim counted two months or so. The pen fell onto the glass of her desk with a tinny patter.

"Is he coming home today?" she sighed, tilting her head towards the window. It wasn't long before she stood from her seat for her 2:15 meeting—glassy black heels clicked on the tile floor as she walked out of her office, eyes trained on the watch on her wrist.

Joohyun was quick to follow, only to hear Yerim say, "Unnie, can you contact his secretary? Tell him I won't be home until late."

It was a request that caused Joohyun to sigh. Even though the two were husband and wife, their communication in the past two months had been entirely through their respective secretaries, as if they lived in completely different spheres of each other. Once in a while, if someone were to remind Yerim that Jeon Jungkook was her fiancé, then he was only that—a word on a line on a future tax document, a simple additive to her life. Even more so, any information regarding him seemed to be of little interest to her, whose unnatural inattentiveness towards her "fiancé" had spurred quiet speculation among her employees and her social circles alike.

It was now a commonly accepted truth that Kim Yerim would be married into a marriage without love. Some pitied her, some found it in them to criticize her, while others found the situation palpable, and reasonable, even. Was this not the fate of the rich? Was this not the price one paid, marrying a man of status?

"To marry a wealthy man is one story," they said, "but to marry a genius..."

One cannot truly have everything.

In the end, Joohyun had only nodded reluctantly. Two hours later, Yerim was informed that she would not see Jeon Jungkook until the day of her wedding.

—

The present.

Indeed, as Jungkook had predicted, his oldest brother, Jeon Junghyun, enters the office at noon to treat them both to lunch.

Jeon Junghyun was a rather easygoing persona, and as far as Yerim knew, he and Jungkook were rather close. Of the two siblings, it was Junghyun who smiled most often, and also Junghyun who was more eager to entertain. If there was an empty space in the room, Jeon Junghyun filled it with his conversational ease and expressiveness. It was blatantly obvious why the eldest Jeon took a natural ease to managing the business transactions of the family company.