Actually, Chloe liked Min-joon. Maybe she liked him as a friend rather than a lover. Looking back, she had never been in a romantic relationship with him.
Generally speaking, if one is repeatedly rejected by the party, one becomes accustomed to a feeling of inertia.
Chloe became sort of accustomed to being rejected in her relationship with him for a long time. She thought it fortunate that she was not in a romantic relationship with him. If she had been, she would have cried and made a big fuss over his marriage to Kaya. To be honest, their marriage didn’t make her happy, but she rather welcomed it in some respects.
‘Well, my longing for him is finally over.’
She wished the day would not come when he would get married to Kaya, but her wishes were futile. So she could smile now. Actually, she was always used to not winning not only in her relationship with a man or in cooking. She always lost.
In some respects, this was the most common type of people’s lives in the real world, for there were more people who lost than those who won every day. And they were becoming adults while getting used to not winning rather than winning, and realizing that the impact of their hard work and passion on others was not as great as they thought.
Chloe didn’t want to be an adult. She wanted to live a life that didn’t require her to be an adult.
But in the end, she grew up as an adult like others.
“Chloe?” Kaya called her with a puzzled voice, for Chloe was hugging her tightly.
Neither Kaya nor Chloe knew what her hug meant.
Chloe muttered to herself, “I have lost, as always.”
When Chloe released her arms from her, there was a smile on her face, as always.
“How many children do you want to have?”
“I don’t know. I’m afraid I won’t be able to get pregnant right now. No baby news yet…”
“Thank you for telling me that first.”
“Why should I hide it between us?”
Kaya seemed composed when she said that. Chloe knew that Kaya knew her feelings. So she was aware that Kaya must have been pretty much considerate of her. It was always bitter to know that she lost to Kaya, but she appreciated Kaya’s warm considerations so much that she didn’t care about her defeat.
Chloe looked out. The most splendid images of New York were shining like the stars outside the glass wall of the best hotel in New York.
“You guys will be leaving here soon, I guess.”
After talking with Kaya about their plan briefly, Chloe called Min-joon that night. What should a man do if a lady asked him out for a drink late at night? If he had a girlfriend, he might have to hesitate to accept the lady’s request. But Min-joon didn’t do so. He went to the bar where Chloe was waiting. He might have trusted her or himself. She was grateful that he didn’t avoid her.
Chloe said with a smile, “Congrats, my friend!”
“Thanks,” he replied with a smile.
But there was some concern in his smile. At some point, he tended to look at her with compassion. He hated looking at her like that. He even wondered if he did wrong to her. She was just trying to be honest about her feelings toward him, going after her heart. But it made their relationship rather ambiguous and murky, which was neither friendship nor romantic relationship.
Now was the time for her to mend her relationship with him.
She sipped brandy. She really enjoyed it today.
“I was too immature.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Well, you looked so cool because I was too immature. When I saw you at the Grand Chef House first, you were really cool. As far as cooking was concerned, you really stood out among others.”
“Yeah, I can cook.”
She chuckled at his nonchalant response. She was not drunk, but her face already turned a bit red. In fact, her face used to turn red even when she drank a glass of beer.
“I’m sorry, Min-joon,” she said in a low voice.
She was about to hold the bottle of brandy to sip again, but she put it down. She didn’t want to talk to him while she was drunk. She had to speak out on her own, not disguised in a drink.
“I think I told you that I could not give up my dream even if I gave up everything. I’m sorry for freely dreaming of you as my boyfriend. I was so immature back then. At that time, I thought it’s best to be faithful to my feelings toward you even if it made you uncomfortable.”
“Don’t apologize to me. I don’t think you have to feel sorry for that at all.”
“I’m sorry for making our relationship look serious in the past. But don’t worry. That will end as of today. Seriously. It’s all over.”
She smiled at him, which made him feel as if she was his sister. Given her real age, it was ridiculous for him to think so, but he thought she was mature enough now, given the way she spoke to him.
“Even though I knew I was acting like a child, I think I liked my childish behavior a lot when I was with you or you and Kaya. So I acted like that, even though I knew I was selfish. But I don’t want to do that anymore. I’ve got to stop acting like a child. I think I’m going to act like an adult from now on.”
Chloe laughed after saying that. It wasn’t a bitter laugh anymore. She laughed heartily without any lingering affection for him.
“So let me give you up, Min-joon.”
As soon as she decided to act like an adult, the first thing she decided to do was to give up on him.
She held out her hand. He then slowly reached out and grabbed her hand. He held her hand for a long time, which was soft, warm, and small.
He felt sorry for her again, but there was nothing he could do for her. He had to admit that just like she could not do anything for him, he also could not do anything for her.
She remembered giving him a hug for the last time at the Grand Chef House, where she hugged him after being declined at first. Back then, she thought of making him her man.
Two years have passed since then. Did she think of making him her lover during that time genuinely or out of stubbornness? Did she want to have him, or did she want to accomplish her desire to have him?
After she finally gave him up, she also stopped asking all such questions. She let go of his hand. Since she first held out to shake his hands first, she also released her hand from his first.
“Congratulations on your getting married!”
It was the second time she said so. With a bright smile, he ordered the same brandy as Chloe’s. They clang their cups.
She finally became an adult. In order to accept her as an adult, he had no choice but to become an adult, too. Too many years had passed for them to treat each other with childish mindsets. But they restored their long-forgotten friendship on that day.
Her abandonment of him was beneficial to Min-joon and Kaya in many ways, for the two could move on without thinking back on her again.
Kaya and Min-joon were now faced with three big questions—when they would leave New York, who they would leave with, and where they would go?
Out of the three questions, it was the easiest to decide when to leave New York. In other words, they would leave as soon as they were ready. Of course, it would be easier for them to leave when the competition was over, for it would take them a lot of time to open a new restaurant. But they thought it would just waste their time to wait for the opening of their restaurant until after the competition was over.
“It’s strange. Actually, I had no complaints about the way I was living these days before I thought about all this stuff,” Kaya said.
“Well, when you come across new clothes you want to buy, the clothes you’ve worn so far look shabby. As you know, it’s when you buy new clothes when you feel the most confident,” Min-joon replied casually.
Chloe stepped in subtly, “I don’t know what you guys think, but I think you had better not hurry up.”
“Are you serious?”
“That’s the way I feel, based on my experiences. Even if you hurry up, things won’t work out as you wish. Of course, it’s better than being lazy, but overspeeding always brings worse results than good ones, right?”
Kaya nodded instead of refuting her words, for she was right.
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