Chapter 8: REFINED LEGS

REFINED LEGS

While the already roasted pork was warming up in the microwave, Min-hee boiled the rice and chopped up some lettuce. With a mixing bowl, she threw in all the ingredients for the sauce and mixed delicately. Tasted, calculated with her tongue and poured in half teaspoon of soybean paste.

The microwave bell rang and she scuffled herself, shoveling out the steaming caramelized delicious-looking roasted pork. In the same heat, she sliced the pork into nice thin slices, jerking her hands off the meat at intervals to take a break from its hotness.

As the meat was cooling and the rice boiled, she turned away to set the table. Concluding that they wouldn't be using the dining table, she brought out the sitting mats and arranged them on the living room floor.

Putting the soban (table) in the middle of the mats, she placed three empty bowls and chopsticks in an arrangement for three people. She went back to the stove, poured out rice in the serving bowl, scooped up the tray of roasted pork and placed them on the soban. And finally, she retrieved the sauce and lettuce and delicately added them to the rest of the dishes on the table.

"We've got to have the rice cakes Mrs Yeom sent last night," she told herself.

And with that, she popped the rice cakes from the fridge into a plastic bag and dipped them in the hot water drained from the rice she had boiled. Setting a plate, she carefully put the now warm rice cakes on it and drizzled a little bit of honey on the top forming a zig-zag drooling design.

Multi-tasking has always been Min-hee's turf. Completely doing a lot of things at the same time even under intense pressure.

On a normal day, she would have gone to her room to change out of her "school uniform" which was basically flare skirts and shirts because Madam Ji-yeon frowned at well-fitted skirts on her female workers. Something she called an "indirect element of seduction". And then, she would shower, wear shorts with a tank top and let her long shuffled hair loose.

But on this unusual day, she just couldn't do all of that or even enjoy her afternoon leisure of reading in the garden. Maybe, she felt safer to stay put in her "uniform" or she wanted to show her 'encroacher' that she was a no-nonsense lady and in fact the lady he met at the lake was nothing more than an illusion.

So she had to present to him the real Jeon Min-hee — hardworking, resilient, mature and responsible. The Vicar's daughter who had no time for frivolities and therefore would be the last person on earth to go sauntering naked on someone else's property!

The problem was, she had in fact done so. And even got into the lake unclothed.

There wasn't any need to reorient her outer image because as long as Ki Woong was concerned, he still saw her as the "unexpected delight" that was waiting for him.

What could he be up to? Showing up at the Vicarage, introducing himself to her father and riling her up like that with his eyes and words?

Min-hee sighed.

She wished her father was warrier with strangers. At least held-out on them a little, especially the ones with no better foundation.

She picked up the table napkins and folded them properly into triangles before placing them under each person's chopsticks.

Her duty was to protect her and her father — to be cautious for him where people like Ki Woong were concerned because they had always let her father down more than once in the past. In fact, she would be constantly on her guard to avoid another similar trauma.

Min-hee didn't know much about Ki Woong's former life of glam in the entertainment industry but she could recollect the disgust in Madam Ji-yeon's tone when talking about him. Which means it was a blaring red danger sign.

She grabbed the table cloth and cleaned up the sink and the cooking table.

Realizing that her utmost agenda was to find out more about the dark lord, her frown turned into a look of determination.

"He must be playing some dirty game with us," she told herself. "He has to be, only if papa can't see it."

Her biggest problem with her father was the way he always wanted to see the good in people. Perhaps, that was what made him popular in the parish. But, how can she explain to Reverend Dae-hyun that most people are irredeemable?

That they are just like a snake whom one feeds just to be bitten by it later.

The next trauma that could hit papa might be Ki Woong and from the look of things, she might be unable to save him.

With this thought, her determined expression changed to disappointment and then, she sighed but very deeply this time.

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The uncanny resemblance!

He never knew that the Vicar would be the father of his goddess until she walked into the kitchen wearing the same look she wore the day he found her in his lake.

And now he was sure that that she was a resident of the village, he would be staying. Just to make sure he sees her every day or teases her in a way that provokes her.

He guessed right that no one had told her how beautiful she was, especially when she got angry. He loved how her eyes lit up to attack and how her red plum lips semi-pouted in anger like she was reaching out to devour his lips.

It amused him that she tucked her hands into her pockets, was she scared of her legs turning jelly and falling into his arms or was it just her being surprised that he was in her home.

He wasn't ashamed to admit to himself that he fantasized about her. Not just any kind of romantic fantasy. But something more stronger, more sensual, more gruesome that he worried about was his capability to hold back the surge whenever he was a bit too close to her.

Ki-Woong wondered to himself, what was it about this woman that attracted him so mercilessly? Surely it couldn't just be her beauty. He'd had his fair share of beautiful women and none possessed this electrifying energy that Min-hee commanded. Effortlessly too.

Perhaps it was her body. The elegance of her perky breasts. The aesthetics of her small waists and slim protruded hips. The gracefulness of the tiny bellybutton on her flat tummy. Her tall refined legs that carried this majestic body about. Maybe it was the naiveness that she possessed, owning such a body and not at all aware of it.

He wasn't quite sure.

Or was it because she was so valiant? So stoic in the most feminine manner? He couldn't remember the last time a woman had ordered him to do something and even worse, a time when he had obeyed. But there he was, walking away from the kitchen, tracing Reverend Dae-hyun's steps to the garden where his goddess had ordered him to go.

He was already doing what she wanted, what she asked. It made him wonder, what else would he do for this woman?