Chapter 186: Malady for a Malady (3)

Kang Ra-Hyuk thought he had heard wrong.

“What did you just say?” he asked.

“I said, take off your pants.”

Unlike his expectations, he had not heard wrong.

“What’s up with you all of a sudden?”

Ra-Hyuk had thought for a while that his little sister was a complete mystery, and such thoughts had become stronger since her second year of high school. It just happened to be when Park Geon-Woo had returned to the past as a high school girl. Ra-Hyuk had heard all sorts of bitter remarks from his little sister, but he had never been this bewildered before.

“Hey, hey! We’re siblings! We can’t do anything like that!”

“Are you crazy? Who’d wanna do anything like that with you?”

There was a reason why Ra-Eun was saying something weird to Ra-Hyuk.

“What’s with your leg?” she asked.

Ra-Hyuk had gotten into a car accident last time, which had fractured his leg bone at the time. He had gotten treatment for it when he had been admitted to the hospital, but he was slightly limping when he walked, indicating that his leg condition had gotten worse. Ra-Eun’s sharp eyes did not let that go unnoticed.

“You were asking me to take my pants off to check my leg?”

“Yeah.”

“For God’s sake. You could’ve just said to roll up my pant leg.”

“...Same thing.”

Ra-Hyuk was right, but it felt like Ra-Eun would lose the argument if she acknowledged it. Ra-Hyuk raised the white flag and acknowledged that she was in the right. It was far easier just to step back as the older brother to resolve the situation.

“As for my leg... It doesn’t hurt. I just sprained it a little.” n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

Ra-Hyuk tried to appeal that it was not an aftereffect of the accident, but Ra-Eun did not believe him. She could immediately tell that he was lying to make her feel at ease.

“Like I said before, the stalker was already arrested. You don’t have to worry about me, so just go back home and rest. You don’t have to force yourself to stay here.”

“Leaving me aside, Dad would never allow that.”

“What?”

This was the first time her father had been mentioned in this incident.

“To tell you the truth, Dad was the one who suggested that I live with you for the time being.”

No wonder. She had felt something was weird when Ra-Hyuk first came to their house unannounced. Although Ra-Hyuk cared for Ra-Eun very much, there was no way that he would be this excessively devoted to her. She had suspected that someone was behind it, and she had been right.

“Dad is super worried about you. There are only two women in this house, and there’s no guarantee that another stalker won’t appear. That’s why he sent me here.”

Their father would definitely do something like that, considering how extremely he cared for Ra-Eun.

“You can just tell him that I’m fine and go back home,” Ra-Eun stated.

“I’m not confident I can persuade him.”

Unfortunately, so was Ra-Eun. She had experienced defeat when she had failed to get her father to move out from their old home. His stubbornness was out of this world.

“How about this, then?” Ra-Eun suggested.

She decided to pull out another bright idea after some thought.

***

Kim Han-Gyo was “recuperating” at his own home. While he was enjoying a warm cup of coffee in peace while looking out at the view of his yard, the chief secretary that worked at his office approached him hesitatingly.

“C-Congressman.”

Han-Gyo was an extremely quick-witted man. He could tell from just the light quiver in his chief secretary’s voice that he had brought bad news.

“Is there another problem?”

Han-Gyo had thought that it wouldn’t be related to him since he was away from the political world at the moment, but there was no way that Kang Ra-Eun’s revenge, which had transcended death itself, would let him go that easily.

“Reporter Ahn Su-Jin has done it again.”

As Han-Gyo was listening to the contents of the article that Su-Jin had published, he smiled bitterly.

“This wasn’t done by Reporter Ahn,” he remarked.

He knew it had been strange. Ahn Su-Jin had been well-known for a long time among the politicians for her extreme persistence to a story that caught her attention. However, persistence alone wasn’t able to dig up all the truths in the world, especially not in the political world.

Su-Jin knew far too much despite all that. As for how she found out, it was obvious; she had an informant, and Han-Gyo had met that informant once before as well.

“It has to be the work of that masked woman.”

The masked woman knew far too much about him and Kim Chi-Yeol. The source of her knowledge did not matter at the moment.

“The other congresspersons are getting worried because of Reporter Ahn’s article.”

The public was also demanding a clear explanation about the scandal. Han-Gyo had been able to come out unscathed last time thanks to the shield that was Kim Chi-Yeol, but that shield was no longer present.

‘Things you take for granted are never there when you need them.’

Han-Gyo chuckled as he thought about his predicament.

‘I guess she’s telling me to come out of hiding.’

Like Ra-Eun had expected, Han-Gyo had perfectly understood her message. He reluctantly got up from the bench and softly sighed.

“She sure is merciless to a recuperating old man. Screw remedy for a malady, this is malady for a malady.”

“What will you do, Congressman?” the chief secretary asked if there was a way to solve this.

Han-Gyo answered, “I have no choice but to come out and shed light on the situation myself.”

He had to go back to work after not even a week of stepping back from the front lines.

***

The bright idea that Ra-Eun had thought of to assure her father and to allow Ra-Hyuk to fully recover from his leg condition was...

“I’m here, noona.”

“Welcome.”

Seo Yi-Jun. There weren’t many men that could enter a place that only women lived in. One of the very few qualifications that could allow their entry was ‘family,’ and as Seo Yi-Seo’s little brother, he was one of the very few men along with Ra-Hyuk that fulfilled that qualification.

Ra-Eun pointed to a vacant room while looking at Yi-Jun, who had brought a large suitcase with him.

“You can live in this room for the time being. There’s a bathroom connected to it as well, so you can use that.”

“Okay. Where’s my sister?”

“Yi-Seo went to get some groceries. Our fridge is a bit empty at the moment, so she wanted to fill it up.”

The ingredients would be consumed at a faster rate since another member had been added to the family. Yi-Seo was the one who took care of buying groceries as the one mainly responsible for house duties.

Yi-Jun went into the room that had been prepared for him and laid down the suitcase on the floor.

“You have no idea how surprised I was when I got the call from you, noona.”

“When I asked you to spend a few days at our house?”

“Yes.”

Yi-Jun had thought that Ra-Eun had indirectly proposed to him at first, but he had learned the truth after hearing the full story.

“Your dad must treasure you very much,” Yi-Jun stated.

“He still treats me like a child thanks to that.”

Ra-Eun was already a fully grown woman. Yi-Jun lightly laughed.

“They say everyone remains a little child in their parents’ eyes, no matter how old they are. It must especially be the case for the youngest daughter like you.”

“...”

Even if the public and her acquaintances had a strong girl crush image of her, she was nothing more than a cute and delicate daughter to her father, which was likely why he had made such a request to Ra-Hyuk. Her former family hadn’t been like this.

‘He’s too overprotective.’

However, it did not feel unpleasant; she simply felt awkward from receiving excessive fatherly love that she had never experienced before. She walked up to Yi-Jun, who was unpacking his things.

“Want me to help?”

“Huh? No, it’s okay, noona.”

“I don’t have anything else to do, and messes are best taken care of quickly.”

Ra-Eun liked cleanliness. She didn’t like to see messes in her own home, so she rolled up her sleeves and stepped up to help Yi-Jun. He would be living in their home for roughly three weeks.

They had set the duration this long because only then would her father’s shock from the recent stalker incident die down. Of course, this duration could also increase, hence why Yi-Jun had brought enough things so that he wouldn’t have any issues spending more than three weeks here.

As expected of someone very interested in fashion, he had packed a lot of clothes.

“What’s this?” Ra-Eun asked as she lifted up a T-shirt folded at the bottom of the suitcase.

A dolphin, starfish, conch, crab, and various other sea animals were outlined by white lines on a light blue T-shirt.

“I made that myself,” Yi-Jun answered.

“It looks fairly big. What size is it?”

“It’s 105. I made it for the male size, but women seemed to like the design as well.”

No wonder Ra-Eun’s eyes were drawn to it.

“Do you only have one of these?” she asked.

“No. I have a few more at home. Why?”

“Because I want one.”

“Do you like it, noona?”

“Well... It's not bad.”

Ra-Eun had developed a desire for clothing after working in the entertainment industry for so long, which had amplified even more since she also owned a clothing business. As she was looking through his things in even more detail to see if there were more things she could get from him, something caught her attention.

“What’s this?”

Ra-Eun reached for a black plastic bag, which shocked Yi-Jun.

“Th-That’s...!”

Her hands had been faster than the speed at which Yi-Jun could stop her. What she had pulled out was...

“This is your underwear, right?”

“...Yes...”

Male boxer briefs of different colors were in the plastic bag. Yi-Jun was bright red in embarrassment, but Ra-Eun had absolutely no problem with seeing male underwear since she had worn them all the time in her past life. Not just that, the brand of Yi-Jun’s underwear had been Ra-Eun’s favorite in her past life.

“These feel amazing to wear. The elasticity isn’t bad either. You barely feel uncomfortable in them even if you sweat a lot down there in the summer,” Ra-Eun expressed.

Yi-Jun nodded repeatedly in agreement, but realized something was strange in the process.

“Wait, noona.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m asking this just to be sure, but... have you worn these before?”

She knew about them far too well, as if she had worn them before.

Ra-Eun stuffed them back into the black plastic bag and said, “No, of course not.”

It had been a while since she had lied in good faith.

1. Korean shirt clothing sizes don’t use S, M, L, etc. but chest circumference (for men: 95, 100, 105, and so on).