Dong-gu woke up startled and was about to explain that the person on the bed was Ha-neul, but she stopped him. Her mother was so embarrassed that she quickly walked away.
Scared her mother would get the wrong idea and nag her about it, Ha-neul changed her mind and forced Dong-gu to cover the whole thing up. Ignoring his screaming, she even managed to grab a bottle of water from the fridge to act as fake evidence, as if she had just come back from a jog.
Her mother went home with an angry face and told her son what she had just seen. She totally assumed Dong-gu was a player who had brought a girl back to his room. The younger brother suspected that person was his sister, but the moment Ha-neul walked through the door, she acted her heart out and cleared all suspicion.
Her mother ground her teeth in anger to the point where, when she next saw Dong-gu, she pretended to gently tie his tie and brush the dust off his shirt, when she was actually teaching him a lesson.
Feeling guilty toward her boyfriend, Ha-neul planned to text her mother and confess, but she kept typing and deleting, typing and deleting. While she was hesitating, she saw Dong-gu surrounded by a bunch of female co-workers asking about his relationship status. Because he had listened to her about keeping it a secret, he had to bitterly deny having a girlfriend.
Witnessing that scene, Ha-neul got terribly jealous, deleted the explanation text right away, and dragged him off to a private corner. She scolded him for being a player, for daring to create chances for other women.
Dong-gu cried out that he was totally innocent, while Ha-neul grumbled, "I told you to keep our relationship a secret. I didn't tell you to deny having a girlfriend."
Dong-gu still felt wronged, because of getting elbowed by Ha-neul's mother that morning. On top of that, Ha-neul's indifferent attitude made him feel even more hurt. Hearing this, even though Ha-neul felt a bit guilty, she still tried to argue back so she could win.
Right when the argument was getting intense, a co-worker called, and so the two of them fell into their first cold war since they started dating. Both of them wanted to be the first to speak up, but each stopped, because they were thinking of the other person.
Accidentally going up to the rooftop, Ha-neul's mother found some water bottles and a pile of broken dishes. She realized immediately that the girl who had been with Dong-gu yesterday was her own daughter. So her attitude did a 180-degree turn, giving Dong-gu a heart attack with her sudden warmth.
Ha-neul's mother expressed that she really loved this future son-in-law, especially the way he had helped hide the truth for her, because he was afraid Ha-neul would feel awkward. Dong-gu totally thought she was testing him, so he frantically denied it. And who knew that right at that moment Ha-neul would call, the last digits of her phone number popping his lie immediately.
But Ha-neul's mother didn't care. She even used her birthday as a chance to ask Dong-gu for a favor.
When Ha-neul was celebrating her mother's birthday, Dong-gu showed up. This was exactly the mission her mother had asked him to carry out. Seeing her younger brother trying to give Dong-gu a hard time, Ha-neul stepped up and went public right away.
"Dong-gu is my boyfriend."
She even warned her mother that if she ever elbowed him again in the future, she wouldn't sit still. Hearing that, her mother smiled brightly and said they were all family now, so from now on the rent and the management fees could be completely waived. The younger brother, who was a total go-with-the-flow kind of guy, also immediately changed his attitude.
And just like that, the young couple went back to their super sweet state.
By chance, Ha-neul brought up Dong-gu's parents. He honestly shared that his parents were both internal medicine research professors at medical schools abroad. They had always expected him to reach their level, and Dong-gu choosing plastic surgery had clearly disappointed them.
Dong-gu had always felt guilty about it, but after his scandal, his parents' actions and words hurt him deeply. The last bit of guilt in his heart faded away too.
But luckily, now he had Ha-neul. Dong-gu wasn't lonely anymore. Ha-neul also felt fulfilled. This happiness helped her depression progress far better than before. Dong-gu also tried hard to overcome the PTSD from the accident.
Just like that, they soaked in the sweetness for two months, believing that if life stayed like this, good things would come.
But then, one day, they discovered a shocking truth.
Speaking of Kyung-min, Dong-gu had actually felt that something was off about him a long time ago. He remembered that back at the college acceptance party, it had seemed like he saw Kyung-min secretly put drugs into his drink. At that time, the test results at his mother's hospital had also shown sleeping pill components. But because he trusted Kyung-min too much and didn't want to believe that he had been betrayed, he let it go.
Now, finding out that Ha-neul had also been harmed by him, Dong-gu couldn't help suspecting that everything from back then was true.
At this point, Kyung-min had left the hospital and become the head of a pharmaceutical company. He used his professor title to bribe his way around the major hospitals to secure contracts. Right at this time, Jin-seok, the anesthesiologist from the accident back then, suddenly barged into Kyung-min's office, demanding that he fulfill his promise.
One day, Dong-gu and Ha-neul got their first month's paychecks since they had started working again. Dong-gu pulled out a thick stack of cash, put it in an envelope, and gave it to Ha-neul's mother, thanking her for taking care of him all this time.
Even though it wasn't the first time either of them had been paid, both of them felt strangely excited. Ha-neul couldn't hold back and asked subtly, "Don't you have a gift for me?"
Unexpectedly, Dong-gu also laid his cards on the table, saying that was exactly what he had meant too, and then even acted cute asking for a gift back from her.
Right at that moment, he noticed two figures sneaking around behind him. He hurriedly hung up, turned around, and almost had a heart attack when he saw Ha-neul's uncle and younger brother.
Before he could even recover, he got dragged away by the two of them for an interrogation. Ha-neul's uncle asked about everything under the sun, from height and weight to family background, but absolutely did not ask the main point. The younger brother standing next to him got too impatient, didn't care about saving face, and just asked straight up, "Have you paid off all your debts yet?"
Dong-gu honestly answered that he still had a little left, but that it would all be done by the end of the year. Hearing that, the uncle looked enormously pleased, told him to treat Ha-neul well, and then kept pouring drinks for him non-stop.
The three completely drunk men dragged each other home. From the uncle's stories, Dong-gu found out that Ha-neul liked chestnut-colored teddy bears, so he bought one right away and hugged it tight. Hearing the younger brother say that his sister liked street-side hotteok, he also generously bought some for the whole crew.
But because he was so drunk, the way he held the pancake looked totally ridiculous, and the hot filling burned the uncle to tears, while the younger brother literally chewed up the whole paper cup.
Dong-gu worried he'd get scolded by Ha-neul when he got home for drinking too much, but the uncle and the younger brother patted their chests and told him to relax.