CHAPTER 150: CHAPTER 149. DOUBLE FISHING

"I still don’t think it’ll work, Princess..."

Hajin knew Sarah wouldn’t listen to him, but he still tried until the last day. He still tried even while he was being dolled up by his princess--a process he would immensely enjoy if it wasn’t for his disdain toward the plan itself.

"It will, it will~" Sarah hummed while touching Hajin’s face with just a tad bit of makeup.

Of course, Hajin didn’t really need it; his visual was already head-turning from the start. But Sarah didn’t want to enhance his look or anything, only make his features softer. More delicate, more cosmopolitan, more conglomerate heir rather than a mercenary brushing death several times.

"Are you sure people won’t recognize me with just this?" Hajin turned his face to the vanity mirror in their bedroom, but Sarah grabbed her face and turned it back to her, glaring. "It’s not a movie where people could look so different just with glasses, you know?"

"On the contrary," Sarah scoffed, carefully moving to fix Hajin’s hair. "You know why it looks silly in the movies?"

Hajin arched his brow, still skeptical. "Why?"

"Because the audience had been focusing on that character all the time--of course, the character wouldn’t look that different with just several tweaks," Sarah rolled her eyes. "But generally, people don’t really remember others’ faces unless they see each other often."

Even celebrities--actors, idols, or just famous people in general--if they came out with normal streetwear, without makeup, and without fixing their hair, general people wouldn’t recognize them as they walked down the street. Their fans, perhaps, but not people who only ever saw them as their characters in a TV show. Even fans sometimes questioned whether that normal-looking person was truly their favorite.

After all, visual memories were filled with biases.

And in their case...

"We’re not exactly celebrities, and photos always look a bit different than real life," Sarah shrugged. She held the man’s chin and lifted his head. "Now; how many people, other than those from HS, do you think know your face well?"

Hajin, who started to enjoy the process of being manhandled by his princess, replied in a daze. "...none?"

Sarah smiled and kissed the slightly parting lips briefly as a reward. "People from high society see anyone below them as an afterthought," she smirked. "No matter how alluring a bodyguard is, they won’t be interested. What for? This is the kind of people who could call an entertainment agency and ’reserve’ some celebrities to have dinner with them--hell, even spend a night together for fun."

"Ah..."

Once again, Hajin was reminded that Sarah, indeed, was a princess of a conglomerate family.

"Your impression, so far, is a bodyguard with a bodyguard’s appearance and sharp, scary gaze," Sarah said, leaning back to admire her temporary result of making sure Hajin looked softer. "All we have to do is change that impression and they won’t even know you’re the same person--well, at least not right away."

She made some finishing touches to Hajin’s hair and gave him glasses--just for fun--before delivering her finishing speech.

"That’s how much they don’t care about people who aren’t...their class, so to speak."

"I see..." Hajin nodded. Well, whatever the truth was, he would still nod, even if he didn’t agree.

He did agree that the high society probably had no real interest in him anyway. A secret child coming out of nowhere wasn’t exactly a new thing in their world. According to the twins, a rumor about Chairman Yoo having an illegitimate son was circulating, but people didn’t actually know what he looked like, or that he was Sarah’s bodyguard.

The people who knew the latter thing were limited to those in HS Group, but the outsiders received the whispers from someone who saw the rendezvous in the garden during Mirae’s party, without knowing Hajin worked as Sarah’s bodyguard.

"Now, let’s see..."

Sarah clapped her hands and stepped back, signaling Hajin to stand up so she could see the final look.

In his bodyguard mode, Hajin always looked like a proper bodyguard. Sarah decked him in designer clothes, but they always wore a suit or a vest that a high-ranking secretary usually wore. With his hair slicked back, his fierce eyes were very visible, always observing the surrounding place with caution for his princess’s safety.

That was why Sarah pulled his hair down, styling it a bit so he wouldn’t look like he just rolled out of bed--not that he didn’t look good in his ’just-waking-up’ state, but that was a view reserved for the princess alone. With his hair down, slightly covering his bold eyebrows, he already looked softer. Coupled with a subtle eye makeup that lessened the sharp shape of his eyes and a pair of glasses that covered his cold grey irises, Hajin no longer looked like he would kill people if they looked at Sarah suspiciously.

Not like Sarah would be there anyway.

With Sol’s help, Sarah swept the usual suit and vest with casual outfits that celebrities usually wore; stuff that could only be bought through a catalogue. Bought him a new watch too, something more expensive. Since he looked younger than usual with this style, it was easy to achieve the look of a handsome conglomerate heir who studied abroad.

Sometimes, it was all in the genes.

And while Sarah was weak for Hajin’s rugged look, this neat casual style kind of made her cheeks flush. "Ahem--okay, it’s good enough...I think," Sarah coughed to hide her fluster.

Thankfully, Hajin was too preoccupied with his own worry to tease her about it. "I still don’t like the fact that you’ll be in a different building," he grumbled while rolling his sleeve, showing off sturdy arms that would definitely make girls swoon.

And he did need to make someone swoon today.

"That’s why we asked your old colleagues to be stand-ins, right?" Sarah shrugged, grabbing a brand-new perfume from the shopping bag. It wasn’t the usual fragrance she bought for Hajin--which was catered to her taste--but one that women apparently liked, according to Sol. "Besides, the twins will be there."

"Haa..."

Hajin sighed, thinking back on the day Sarah told her about the plan while the girl sprayed his neck and wrist with the perfume. Sarah had planned to ’accidentally’ meet the chairman’s brother in a hotel’s steakhouse he usually frequented. Just two buildings away, there was a high-end restaurant where Hajin had agreed to meet his father. It was a way for them to tackle two events as one--and gain another.

The restaurant itself was a place with a very difficult reservation even for the wealthy, but the twins had secured two tables. One of them was for Hajin to talk to Chairman Yoo, and another one...was for Mason’s fiancée.

Yes. This time, Sarah decided to finally play the fiancée in the equation.

Using Hajin’s full power.

Patting the sulky puppy on the shoulder, Sarah grabbed her purse and strolled to the door. "Let’s go."

* * *

Lee Hyun was a man of habit; he did things in the same way and went to the same place on the same days.

Not because he was disciplined, but because he rarely had things to do out of his usual daily routine.

As soon as he realized that he wouldn’t be able to become the chairman, he retreated from the family business. With the money he received from his mother’s trust fund and his father’s inheritance, he bought some obligations and foreign stocks, and lived from the dividends that came from those and the HS shares he owned simply because he was of the direct bloodline.

If people ignored his background, Lee Hyun was not a conglomerate. He was a conglomerate’s brother, but his personal wealth was not very impressive. Still richer than most people his age, but even his two nieces had more assets than him--supposedly.

Perhaps that was why his heart had been burning with rekindled ambitions and never-ending bitterness. He knew he couldn’t eat the cake he had let go, but having less money than his nieces and nephews was annoying. At least the older niece was working properly, but the younger one...

All she did was play around--like him--but she had the biggest shares other than the chairman in the family, a company, and a chunk of a big project that one of his acquaintances said was very profitable.

All luck, he reckoned in bitterness as he ate his steak in the hotel he usually visited on Wednesday afternoon.

Thinking about his younger niece made his head throb these days. She used to be such a no problem, and he thought she would be even more insignificant when she started acting classless and lost the support of the executives. Who would have thought that she was going to be so unhinged and cause trouble all the time?

Even in places Lee Hyun thought no one from the family would ever touch.

Lee Hyun had been living in worry that Sarah would tell someone about meeting him in that bar, attending that kind of ’party’ with those questionable people. He had no idea how, and he had no proof, but he was sure she was also the one behind the mistress’s appearance in the house, which put his and Mina’s plan in jeopardy.

Agh--what a total headache.

Was it his luck or hers, he wondered, when he passed by the hotel’s bar to greet the general manager and he heard the voice of that nightmare of a niece.

"Uncle Hyun?"