note: Did I really leave you guys hanging that much lol? Hopefully Gary didn't come across too angry in the last chapter haha, because he's a pretty chill person to me in this fic, considering. Was he really angry, or was he just je*l*us? Who knows! (hehe)

Thank you so much once again for the new subscribers/comments/votes!

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Young In hadn't been gassing him up: Si Hyuk was beautiful—cheekbones cut sharper with age, shoulders filled out by whatever lifting routine he'd picked up in between court cases, face wisened by the slick coif of his hair and the corporate looking suit he wears even better than the fitted mannequin it came from. Or was it personally tailored? Si Hyuk definitely looked like the type to have his suits personally tailored; an independent law firm and a six figure salary? He probably even had his own exclusive tailor on hire, just to sew in suits to his body as fine as the one he has on now.

Which is really what alludes her to the certainty that she's as good as lobotomized, because the very next thing she thinks about is: but Kang Gary looks good in a suit, too.

"Seong Im?" Si Hyuk's face splits into a smile, objectively and undeniably gorgeous, but as if whatever higher power's in charge of romance and attraction wants to push her even more off edge from her crumbling platform of sanity, it does absolutely nothing for her. "Wow—you still look as young as you did back then."

"I've already agreed to meet you, so you can dial back on the flattery," she says, smiling beatifically, trying to go by her own words: she's already here, with a ridiculously handsome man who may or may not be still harboring unrequited feelings for her and is always at the ready to deploy his adulation, so why not try to enjoy it? "But thanks, attorney. You look fantastic, too."

He scratches at the nape of his neck, and it's like nothing's changed from fifteen years ago: he still blushed at the most banal of compliments she'd say, and she still thought it a crying shame that she could never bring herself to like him the way he liked her. "If you're going to continue calling me that, then I should be calling you Jihyo."

"Seong Im's fine, Siwoo-yah," she simpers, and she can actually see his knees almost buckle under his weight. "No one really calls me Seong Im anymore. It's nice to hear."

"Good. I've always liked Seong Im better than Jihyo anyways," he smarts, neatly folding his suit's jacket piece over his forearm. Jihyo smiles, but it's more out of propriety than he is impressionable. There's something missing to the way he says Seong Im that bothers her, like it's lacking a vital syllable in its pronunciation, turning it into a different name altogether.

What it is, probably: the more than a decade's time and distance hanging between them, making the delivery awkward and unfamiliar. What it isn't: her comparing it to Gary's low drawl of Jihyo-yah, steady and warm and growing more fond with each time he says it over the phone or teases her or just calls her name to attention. It's very obviously not that.

"I reserved us a private room at my friend's restaurant a few streets away. It's not in the hub of anything, so I don't think there'd be much problems of running into the press," he tells her, boldly taking her hand in his, even weaving their fingers together so that every bit of their skin touches. He wouldn't have ever done this before, but she also wouldn't have ever let him. Maybe some things have changed, then. "Jjamppong's his specialty, and since you always used to like eating that during Friday nights—unless there's something else you want to eat, of course, I can always just—"

"Jjamppong's fine," she says with what she hopes is a reassuring smile. Jjamppong had been one of her worst triggers when she was still in the throes of her morning sickness—she'd almost thought she'd vomited blood, from how red the water in her toilet bowl had been that one fateful, bad decision rich night—so she'd decidedly, if not a little begrudgingly, sworn off ever eating it again for as long as she still had a working olfactory and gag nerve in her body. Ever since the morning sickness had passed, though, she feels like she could eat anything, food aversion or not, so she thinks that for the sake of childhood friendship and courtesy, she could probably break her own vow without much consequence to it. "Let's go."

It's not like it'd be the first time; she thinks of eight years and a loveline formed, raging against the machine of gullible fans, and how, with one night and a child on the way, Kang Gary's heralded all of that.

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Nevertheless, there were still some broken promises punishable by the law—Si Hyuk would probably know all about that—which is a repercussion she'd honestly rather take, because she gets one glance of the jjamppong they serve and the Pavlovian kick of her mental associations makes her feel sick to her stomach.

"Are you okay?" Si Hyuk asks worriedly, dropping his spoon back into his bowl to rush around the table and sit beside her, cradling her elbow in his hand as she tries hard not to blow out chunks onto his bleach white button-down. "If you were sick, you could've always just told me, I would've been okay with reschedu—"

"No, no," she says, shaking her head—bad idea, because not only is she nauseous, but now she's lightheaded too—and levels a hand against his knee to springboard herself back up to proper posture, "I'm not sick, I'm just—the heat, you know. I don't think I can eat the jjamppong, it's already been too hot this summer," she excuses, fanning herself with her other hand to add to the effect, "I'm sure Jiwon-ssi's preparation of it is really good, but do you think I could get something else? Something cooler?" The placard on the restaurant's front door suddenly resurrects in her brain. "Don't they have a special? 2-for-1 patbingsu deal on Fridays?"

Si Hyuk's face goes from concerned to amused with one tick of the wall clock behind him. "Dessert already?" he chuckles, but he doesn't look suspicious anymore, so she heaves out a mental breath. "If I didn't know better, I'd say you're just trying to get rid of me."

"Or maybe I'm just in a hurry for you to take me home," she piques back, through the grit of her teeth, the most forward and out of her usual dating character she's always been, but it's better than him realizing that her baby's the one rejecting poor Jiwon-ssi's slice of supreme cuisine, and wasn't that her whole end goal anyways?

She can see his face flush red, even under the washout of the unflattering orange light overhead, but his stare's a little too intense for her to think that she's rendered him shy. Good: the quicker she gets laid, the quicker Kang Gary and whatever the hell that was back at her apartment earlier this evening gets wiped off of the slate of her mind.

"I'll go order it now," Si Hyuk says, stands up like there's been a flame lit up his , following him behind in a halo as he speedwalks out of their room to fetch her request. Men: the moment you offer up and they're suddenly willing to do as they're told.

The price I have to pay for a good night's sleep, she thinks rancidly. She covers the bowl of jjamppong with the lid it came with, and then sits back on her chair, waiting patiently for the slumber.

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Patbingsu, in comparison, forms a peaceful coalition with the acids in her stomach, and the cold remnants of it makes her giddy enough as they drive back to his firm to launch into the do you remembers that always happens whenever you're finally meeting someone you haven't seen since the formative years of your life.

"Remember when Young In tried to ask her manager to add you onto Red Sox?"

"Remember when you kissed that girl's twin sister, thinking it was her all along?"

"Remember when you tried hiding shoe lifts in your heels and you ended up falling down the stairs and breaking your elbow?"

"Remember when you tried to serenade that gym guy with a g.o.d song and you got punched in the face?"

"That still hurts up until now," he says, rubbing a palm over his nose, fifteen years overdue, and she laughs as hard as she'd had during the exact moment it happened. "Hey, don't laugh—you know I was supposed to sing that to you."

"Thank god you didn't," she says, stepping out of the passenger seat once he'd set his clutch on park. "Or I wouldn't even be talking to you right now. Serenading me is an unforgivable offence."

"Listen to the new attorney speak," he counters, leading the way back inside his office building, switching on the lights as he lets her enter his room first. "Thinking of pursuing law now? We have a job vacancy."

"And have to write that haunted bar exam? No thanks," she says, bumping shoulders with him in good humor as she moves to sit on his desk. Seduction Manual 101, first step, check. "College was fifteen years back, and I'm glad to leave it like that."

He steps towards her, hands in his pants pockets, lips curved up to the sky. "Maybe the school work, but what about other things? Don't you want to redo anything else?"

"Like what?" she asks, feigning ignorance, eyes him skittishly as he moves even further forward, her knees now pressed to the middle of his thighs. Expected seduction response: hook, line, and sinker, check. "My hair, probably. Yoo Jaesuk won't ever let that go."

"That's it? Nothing else?" He plants his hands on either sides of her body on the surface of his table, entrapping her between his arms, his back bending to reach her height, face inching closer until she can feel the wisp of his breath. "No one you'd want to date, if you were given the chance?"

The top three buttons on his shirt have long been undone back in the car—it wasn't just her who couldn't take the heat, apparently—so it doesn't require much prep for her to lift a hand and trail a finger down the dip of his clavicles. "No. Maybe this one guy I'd turned down before. Some bigshot attorney who's probably too good for me now."

"Going by tonight, sounds like you're still the one who's too good for him," he hushes out, fervent, and then he tilts the rest of the way to take her lips in his, snaking his hands up to latch onto her hips.

He's as good a kisser as his looks would make you think he is; slow when needed, hard when she demands it, tongue insistent but not