Chapter 56.1

Chapter 56.1

“.…”

Ara was struck dumb.

Was this a dream?

The thought flickered through her head for a split second, because what she was seeing didn’t feel real in the slightest.

“Excuse me, but who are you…?”

Still dazed, Ara couldn’t get a word out, so Suho stepped in to smooth things over.

“Could you step back, please?”

As if Seok-kyung were some kind of threat, he even half-rose from his chair, one arm shielding Ara.

Seriously? Who’s protecting who here?

Seok-kyung’s brows tilted, his irritation plain as day.

“This the senior you were talking about?”

He ignored Suho’s question completely, jerking his chin toward him while addressing Ara instead.

“I get that you’re glad to see an old friend, but you can’t stay out too long. Our kids are waiting at home, practically stretching their necks for you to come back.”

He smiled again, bright enough to sting, putting extra weight on the words our kids. It was deliberately misleading, though not untrue.

Seol-do hadn’t even been a goblin for a hundred years yet, and Baek-seol had only been a guardian dog for less than fifty. Compared to him, who had roamed the earth for centuries, they were children, plain and simple.

“Ara.”

Suho called her name carefully.

“Is this… that Mr. Kim you mentioned?”

That finally snapped Ara back to herself.

The scene that had felt like someone else’s problem suddenly came crashing down as her own. Suho’s uneasy stare and Seok-kyung’s sharper-than-usual expression shoved reality in her face.

Something was wrong which made the hair on her arms stood on end. These two should never have been face to face like this.

“Mr. Kim Seok-kyung.”

“What is it, baby?”

‘Has this goblin completely lost his mind?’

Ara couldn’t take it anymore. She shot up from her seat, looking both shocked and furious.

“Step outside with me. Now.”

She grabbed his arm, tugging hard.

“Yeah, I was going to anyway. Just a second before that.”

But Seok-kyung didn’t budge. He calmly pried her hands off his sleeve, then angled himself toward Suho.

“Introduce yourself.”

“Sorry?”

“We’re meeting for the first time, right? Go on, introduce yourself.”

The arrogant demand came down like a whip, his voice leaving no room to refuse.

It wasn’t Suho who turned pale. It was Ara. She couldn’t make sense of Seok-kyung’s outrageous behavior.

Sure, he’d never been the type of goblin to shower humans with endless kindness, but she had never seen him bare his hostility so openly, grinding someone down without hesitation.

“Kim Seok-kyung!”

“Yeah, that’s my name.”

He brushed off her sharp tone, his eyes locked on Suho and refusing to budge.

“I live with her. From the way you called me Mr. Kim, sounds like you’ve heard a fair bit about me already. I’m sure you can guess what we are to each other.”

With that, his long, solid arm swept Ara into his side.

She shoved him off, her face crumpling as she bit down hard on her lip.

A moment ago he’d been rolling his eyes at being mistaken for her husband, yet now he was playing the part of a jealous spouse who’d caught his wife cheating. Nothing about it made sense.

“…Yoon Suho. Ara’s high school upperclassman.”

Though caught off guard, Suho forced himself to bow slightly, keeping his manners intact.

Seok-kyung looked down at him in silence, then stepped in front of Ara, cutting off her view. She tried to slip around him, only to feel his left hand suddenly reach back.

“.…”

It was a touch she should have refused, should have pushed away, shaken off, anything.

But she froze, staring down at their overlapping hands as though in a trance.

The sharp, knuckled fingers weren’t rough like she expected.

Instead, they traced over her palm, slow and winding, like a snake slipping across skin. Finger to finger, sliding, until finally their hands laced together, tight and bound.

So slow. And more than anything, desperate.

Did she sense the plea buried inside that grasp? Or had she just grown too tired of this absurd back-and-forth to protest?

Either way, Ara didn’t pull free.

Seok-kyung took it as a kind of permission.

Glancing back at her lingering behind him, he flicked his other fingers. At once, the ornate ring on his index finger shimmered into sight.