SEVEN

Kyungsoo left the crowd for a moment to breath. Keeping up with all these important people was suffocating, and he hated having to be constantly on his toes about everything. He had made his presence known, and now all he wanted to do was leave.

He looked around. Where the hell is she? He wondered, searching for Seorin. He had wanted her to blend in – but not this much… Now he couldn’t even find her. He hoped she hadn’t gotten herself into an embarrassing or awkward situation – because that would just mean trouble for him. And the last thing he wanted was to look bad at an event Seungsoo was also at.

Speaking of Seungsoo… He caught sight of his older brother standing near the doorway, looking for something, or perhaps someone? He wondered if Seungsoo was maybe seeing a girl, although unlikely. Seungsoo’s life was the company – that was why he was such a difficult rival to beat for control of Kangdo.

“Aish,” he mumbled, pulling out his phone. He looked at his recent calls list for ‘Song Seorin.’ To his surprise, her name was listed at least seven times. He paused for a second to think. Since when had he called her so often? … He remembered calling her maybe three times this morning to pick her up to go to Jackal’s headquarters, but she had woken up late. But that was about it.

He headed to different doorway, avoiding Seungsoo. He was bombarded with polite greetings and had to put on fake smiles for them all.
He then heard his name, “Kyungsoo!” in a refreshingly casual voice. He turned around and a genuine smile couldn’t help but immediately break out on his face.

“Sunyoung…” He said softly.

She greeted him with a bright smile. “How’s my soon-to-be brother-in-law?” She beamed.

Kyungsoo just shrugged and tried not to wince at the sound of ‘brother-in-law.’ He absolutely hated it – he hated that she was engaged to Seungsoo.

Because at a point in time, he had wanted to be engaged to her. He was over it now though, even though it was still embarrassing, and slightly painful, to think about the past. But the way he saw it, even if he had to choice to date Sunyoung, he wouldn’t – he didn’t want any of Seungsoo’s hand-me-downs.
And he knew just how infatuated Sunyoung was with his older brother, and that was a turn off. He believed that he would never truly be able to get along with someone who thought Seungsoo was actually an admirable person.
 

She asked, “Have you seen Seungsoo?”

He rolled his eyes. That was the last thing he wanted to talk about. But with a sigh, he replied, “He’s right by that entran–” But when he turned to the doorway to point, Seungsoo wasn’t there anymore. “Nevermind – I don’t know.”

“Help me look for him,” she pleaded. “My mother’s here and she wants to see him.”

“Sorry, I have someone to find too,” he said, not really feeling apologetic at all. For the first time, he was more than pleased to go look for Seorin. He turned away and quickly exited the room.

# # #

He wasn’t able to find her until much later – furthermore, he found her on the rooftop with Qian. “Jesus, I looked for you everywhere. What’s the point in having a damn phone if you aren’t going to answer?”

Seorin smiled sheepishly. “It’s dead. Sorry.” But her smile grew coy as she asked, “Did you want to see me that badly?” She joked.

He rolled his eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous. I just wanted to get the hell out of here. Why the hell did you come all the way to the roof for?”

“I wanted to smoke,” Qian answered instead. “And I didn’t know you two knew each other… Are you guys dating or something now?” Children of the rich got engaged to each other left and right