Between Coffee and Forever

Taesung University was where the country’s brightest came to build their futures. Located in the heart of Seoul, it was one of South Korea’s most elite and selective private universities.

Renowned for its prestigious business, law, architecture and medical programmes, it was widely considered one of the top tertiary institutions.

At Taesung, everyone seemed to be chasing something.

A career.

A family legacy.

Or simply the chance to survive another semester.

Kang Jae-won, on the other hand, never needed to chase any of those things.

Perhaps that was why he never felt particularly bound to take his studies seriously.

The new semester had only begun a week ago, and he had yet to attend a single class. Not because he struggled academically.

Quite the opposite.

He was naturally bright, quick enough to catch up whenever he bothered to try. The problem was, most of the time, he simply didn’t want to.

And tonight was no exception.

Music thundered through the club, bass vibrating beneath the floor as lights swept across the crowded dance floor.

Jae-won chilled against the leather couch with Ji-hye tucked close beside him, one arm draped lazily around her waist as they shared a deep kiss.

“Yo! Jae-won,” somebody called him.

He looked up.

He saw his friends - Jessica, Min-ho, Soo-jin and Tae-jun, approaching the VIP lounge before settling onto the empty couches around him.

Jessica had barely settled into her seat when she said, “You missed classes again today.”

Jae-won wiped his lower lip with his thumb and took a sip of his drink.

“Couldn’t get up.”

He glanced at the woman beside him, a lazy smile pulling at his mouth. “She kept me up all night.”

Ji-hye immediately smacked his chest. “Jae-won!”

“You’re so bad,” she purred, lightly swatting his chest as she smiled up at him.

Jae-won laughed.

Across the lounge, a friend called out to her. “Ji-hye! Come and dance with us!”

Ji-hye gave him a brief kiss before rising and smoothing down her dress. “I’ll be back.”

Jae-won barely reacted as Ji-hye walked toward the dance floor.

After she left, Jessica turned to him with a smirk. “So, classes are optional now, huh? But football practice isn’t?”

Jae-won said, “You know I wouldn’t give up football for anything.”

Min-ho grinned. “Football and Taesung girls apparently.”

Before Jae-won could respond to Min-ho, Soo-jin interrupted. “That’s Ji-hye, right? From Fashion and Design?”

“Is she your new girlfriend?” She continued.

“She’s not my girlfriend,” Jae-won casually said.

“But you’re sleeping with her,” Tae-jun said, a hint of mockery in his voice.

“So? She knows I don’t do relationships.”

“And you don’t think she wants more?” Soo-jin asked, her tone more serious.

Jae-won glanced towards the dance floor. “That’s her problem, then.”

Min-ho laughed briefly and shook his head. “One day, Kang Jae-won, a girl is going to make you suffer.”

Jae-won laughed as he pushed himself to his feet. “Not happening.”

He then headed towards the dance floor.

The night stretched well into the early hours of the morning.

By the following afternoon, Jae-won was still asleep.

Which was exactly how Chairman Kang Tae-hyun found him when he arrived at his son’s penthouse.

Chief Secretary Choi unlocked the door with the spare access card and stepped aside.

Chairman Kang entered first.

His expression turned darker with every step.

His wife – Kang Hye-jin followed behind him, looking worried as she took in the mess.

The living room was a disaster.

Pizza boxes piled the marble counter and the coffee table, with crushed cans scattered all over the living room. Clothes, shoes… everything was everywhere.

Maids were sent to Jae-won’s penthouse every week, but looking at the place, no one would have guessed.

Chairman Kang stared at a pair of black heels laid near the entrance and sighed.

The bedroom door was half-open.

Chairman Kang walked toward the bedroom and pushed the door wide.

Jae-won lay face down beneath the duvet, one arm hanging loosely over the side of the bed. Beside him, a young woman slept naked against the pillows, the duvet barely covering her.

Chairman Kang’s voice cut through the room. “KANG JAE-WON!”

Jae-won groaned, squinting against the sudden noise. His brows furrowing in irritation as he struggled to pull himself out of sleep.

For a moment, he simply lay there, blinking away the haze of sleep, trying to make sense of the disturbance.

Then, slowly, he turned his head towards the source of the noise, and…

His eyes widened.

His father stood at the foot of his bed.

His mother was behind him, horrified.

Chief Secretary Choi stood loyally next to Chairman Kang but he was more interested on the floor than the drama unfolding before him.

“Appa?”

“What… are you doing still asleep at this hour?” Chairman Kang asked, his voice unnervingly calm, each word clipped with restrained anger.

Before he could come up with an excuse, Chairman Kang’s gaze shifted to the girl lying beside his son, who had also been awakened by the commotion.

“Who is…”

He stopped himself, closing his eyes briefly as though trying to summon the last of his patience.

“You know what? Don’t tell me.”

Jae-won turned his head slowly.

Ji-hye, too, had woken up. Her eyes widened in shock when she noticed the people standing in the room. Instinctively, she pulled the duvet up to her chest, clutching it tightly as she lowered her gaze, not daring to look at anyone in the eye.

Jae-won stared at her for a moment, trying to remember through the fog in his head. He felt like someone had driven a nail straight through it.

“This is Ju-hee. No… wait. Ju-yeon.”

Her mouth fell open, humiliated. “Ji-hye! I’m Ji-hye!”

“Right, right. Ji-hye,” he looked at her again.

“You didn’t even remember my name?”

Jae-won shrugged.

He then swung his legs off the bed, then reached for his T-shirt laying carelessly on the floor.

A pale lacy lingerie was caught beneath it.

At the same time, Chairman Kang told the girl, “Get dressed and leave now.”

Jae-won picked the lingerie up, then held it out to Ji-hye. “Yours?”

Ji-hye looked at it and glared. “That’s not mine.”

“Oh.”

He paused, thinking it over for a moment.

Then recognition slowly dawned on him. “Oh...”

It belonged to another girl he had brought home a few nights before.

Ji-hye scoffed and scrambled from the bed, gathered her dress from the floor, and disappeared into the bathroom.

“What are you doing here?” Jae-won asked so casually that Chaiman’s Kang’s patience was reaching its limit.

Chairman Kang threw an iPad onto the bed. It landed next to Jae-won.

“You’re asking me?” Chairman Kang said.

Jae-won glanced down.

A photograph from few nights ago filled the screen.

He was leaving a nightclub sometime past three in the morning, visibly drunk, his shirt half-unbuttoned and his arm around one woman while another clung to his other side.

The headline above it was even worse.

KANG GROUP HEIR’S WILD NIGHT: DRUNK AND SURROUNDED BY WOMEN

Jae-won stared at it for all of two seconds. “So?”

Chairman Kang’s expression darkened. “So?”

“I was at a club.”

“With two women hanging off you.”

Jae-won glanced at the photograph again. “Three, actually.”

He pointed at the edge of the picture. “You can see her hand there.”

Then he picked up the piece of lingerie again and examined it. “I think this belongs to one of them.”

“YA! KANG JAE-WON!”

The tension in the room thickened instantly. Mrs. Kang, sensing the shift in the atmosphere, walked to her son and sat on the bed with him.

“Oh, honestly, Yeobo. He’s young. What’s wrong with having a little fun?”

“Fun? You call this fun?” Chairman Kang stared at his wife in disbelief. “This is exactly why he’s like this. You’ve spoiled him his entire life.”

Mrs. Kang ignored her husband as though the matter was hardly worth arguing about.

“Oh, my dear Jae-won, you look awful,” she said, fussing over his hair despite the situation. “You have not been taking care of yourself.”

“Of course he has not. He has not attended classes for an entire week either.”

Jae-won’s hand froze halfway through pulling his T-shirt over his head.

“What? You think I wouldn’t know?” Chaiman Kang continued. “The dean of your faculty contacted me this morning. You have not attended any single class at all this week.”

“It’s only one week,” Jae-won answered non-clamantly.

“Only one week?” Chairman Kang snapped.

“You’re already twenty-one years old, Jae-won. When will you ever grow up?”

“You think you can treat university like another party you can leave whenever you are bored?”

“I’ll catch up.”

“You said that in the previous semesters. Your GPA hasn’t improved.”

Jae-won got to his feet. “I’ll sort it out. Now can you please leave? I have football training at five.”

“And can you send the maids over? I need them to clean this place up.”

His father’s eyes hardened. “Football again.”

“Yes. Football.” Jae-won met his father’s stare.

“I told you I wanted to play.”

“And I told you football is not your future.”

“It can be.”

“Not for you. You’re Kang Jae-won.”

His father took a step closer. “You are my only son. Kang Group will be yours one day.”

“I never asked for it.”

“But it is yours, whether you want it or not,” Chairman Kang said coldly.

The bathroom door opened behind them.

Ji-hye stepped out in her dress. Keeping her eyes down, she slipped past them and quietly let herself out.

Jae-won barely looked at her.

The moment the front door closed behind her, Chairman Kang turned back to his son.

“You will go to class from now on. You will attend every lecture. You will bring your grades up. And you will stop wasting your life.”

Jae-won said nothing.

“This is your last warning.”

Chairman Kang did not look away from Jae-won.

“Skip another week of classes, and I will take back everything you’re so comfortably using while pretending you want nothing from Kang Group.”

“The black card. Your Porsche. This penthouse.”

His father’s gaze swept across the messy apartment.

“All of it.”

Jae-won swallowed.

Chairman Kang saw it.

He turned towards the door.

“Clean this place yourself. I’m not sending the maids over anymore.”

A dangerous pause before he continued, “Remember Jae-won… If you cross even one toe over the line again, you will lose everything.”

Jae-won watched his father disappear through the doorway. He let out a long breath, running a hand through his already messy hair.

There was no point arguing. Not when his father had already made up his mind.

He glanced at the clock.

He had somewhere to be.

Two hours later, Jae-won was exactly where he said he would be.

On the football field.

By the time he arrived, training had already begun.

Beyond the track, students drifted out of nearby lecture halls in small groups, backpacks slung over their shoulders as they made their way to evening classes, campus cafés, or back to student housing.

“Nice of you to join us, Captain,” Min-ho called from the centre of the field.

Jae-won lifted a hand in response and jogged onto the pitch.

The moment the ball reached his feet, everything else faded.

His father’s anger.

His warnings, none of it mattered when he was running.

He cut past one defender, then another, his body moving on instinct. When Tae-jun sent a clean pass across the field, Jae-won took it in stride and drove the ball into the corner of the net.

A group of girls cheered from the sidelines. “Jae-won!”

Beside Jae-won, Min-ho smirked, “Your fan club is here.”

“Shut up,” Jae-won muttered.

Among the girls was Jessica.

She stood near the benches with Soo-jin, dressed far too neatly for a football field. Her long hair fell over one shoulder as she waved at him, a bright smile already in place.

Yoon Ji-seo, or Jessica - as she preferred to be called - was beautiful in the polished way that came from never having to worry about money. Her hair fell in soft waves over her shoulders, and the coat draped over the back of her chair was from a collection most students would only see online.

Their families had known each other for years. They had attended the same private schools, spent holidays at the same resorts and appeared together at enough charity dinners that people had long assumed they were dating.

Jessica had never corrected anyone.

Jae-won had.

To him, she was his oldest friend.

His best friend.

Jae-won had barely finished wiping the sweat from his face when Jessica handed him a bottle of water.

“You sober now?” She asked.

He took it from her. “More or less. You?”

“I didn’t drink as much as you did last night.”

Jessica watched him take a long drink, then tilted her head. “So… Ji-hye kept you from class again huh? Is she that good?”

“Who?”

“Ji-hye… The girl from the club last night! The one you’ve been sleeping with for the past few days?”

Jessica had always known about Jae-won’s habit with women.

As much as she loved him, she had learned to look the other way. None of them ever lasted anyway. They came and went, brief and meaningless, never important enough for Jae-won to take seriously.

What’s to worry anyway? He’d end up marrying her one day.

“Oh” He screwed the cap back onto the bottle.

Jae-won gave a lazy shrug. “I’ve had better.”

The others burst into laughter.

Tae-jun shook his head. “That’s wicked, man… even for you.”

He was not listening anymore. His mind had already returned to the disaster waiting in his penthouse.

Jessica nudged his shoulder. “We’re going out tonight. Are you coming?”

“No. I have stuff to do.”

Her brows lifted. “What stuff?”

Jae-won slung his bag over his shoulder. “You go. Call me if anything.”

Jessica looked at him for a moment, as if she wanted to say more, but then she smiled.

“Fine. But you owe me a proper night out.”

He only lifted a hand as he walked away.

Back at the penthouse, Jae-won took a long, refreshing shower before standing in his bedroom and staring at the mess around him.

The living room was even worse. He began clearing cans and bottles, gathering abandoned clothes, and wiping down every surface in the house.

By the time he finished, the penthouse finally looked decent. It was nowhere near professionally cleaned, but at least it no longer looked like a disaster zone.

His headache had finally eased, but exhaustion sat heavily in his bones.

He grabbed his keys and headed downstairs.

He needed coffee.