A/N: Aigoo, I've read this chapter and edited and edited, and now I just want to put it out there for you. Thank you to dear EdnaMode101 for edits and feedback. Love you all! Stay safe!!!
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The morning after Seo Dan's date with Alberto, an undercurrent of gloom runs through the sprawling Seo mansion just outside of Seoul.
With Dan's uncle out of town on a business trip, their usually cozy table of three feels empty without his jovial presence. But even if her uncle had been home, Seo Dan wouldn't have had much of an appetite that morning. Her large eyes are expertly made up with concealer and sharply winged eyeliner. Anyone else would've missed the hint of puffiness there, but her mother's keen eyes missed nothing.
"Dan-ah," Ko Myeong-eun furrows her perfectly-groomed brows at Dan. "Why aren't you eating? Is everything okay?"
After a second of stony silence from her daughter, her mother sighs and shakes her head. She pulls Dan's untouched egg towards her and beheads it with a loud crack.
"I cannot believe Jeong-hyeok or his parents," she starts testily. "First he goes and breaks off the engagement agreed to by both parties, and then he has the guts to show up in the papers with some other woman. And his parents? They skipped off to... I don't even know...Bhutan or something - for their yearly vacation, as if nothing happened! Not a word from them since. Ridiculous!"
Seo Dan silently listens to her mother complain about people who take tech-free vacations in this day and age, while the rest of them sit in Seoul doing actual work, as well as young men who don't take their elders seriously. She hopes for the tirade to end but simultaneously is unwilling to interrupt. Dan doesn't know how to explain to her mother that Jeong-hyeok is the last person on her mind.
Instead, she is grappling with the uncomfortable truth that none of her actions exist in the isolation that she thought they did. She had chosen Alberto because he was safe - funny and oddly charismatic, but too silly for her to take him seriously. And now he was leaving, and she knew that she was going to miss his vibrant presence, the way he seemed so sure of his feelings for her. She had fallen deeper than she expected.
"Miss Dan," their butler appears at the breakfast table, interrupting her thoughts and her mother's tirade. "There is someone here to see you. He's waiting on the doorstep."
"This early?" her mother asks, surprised. Seo Dan's heart starts to beat faster in anticipation of his next words. "Is it anyone we know?"
The butler shakes his head. "A young man named Alberto Gu," he pronounces.
***
Alberto is uncharacteristically quiet when Seo Dan finds herself standing next to him in the garden of her home. He's donned a Paul Smith camel-hair blazer and a button-down pale blue Gieves & Hawkes shirt. But his caramel eyes look a little tired, just like hers.
"Dan-ah," he says. He leans towards her, but she just turns away slightly so he's still as far as before. It would be almost funny, if it weren't so frustrating. He sighs. "Are you going to avoid me forever?"
"I'm not avoiding you," replies Seo Dan frostily. "It's only been a few hours since I saw you."
"Well, were you planning on seeing me again before I left?" he asks softly.
Dan shrugs and crosses her arms. "What would be the point? Our arrangement is over."
At that cool statement, Alberto loses his patience. He takes her by the shoulder and turns her to face him. He's pretty sure her mother is watching from the window behind them, but spectators be damned.
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