"Did You Forget Our Marriage Promise? Answer Me, Kang Jinwoo."
Fuck, my life… maybe it's not as messed up as I thought?
No, wait. Calm down. Kang Jinwoo. Think straight.
"S-Seol-ah. Hold on a sec. I can't… I can't breathe."
I awkwardly try to push her slender shoulders away with my hand hovering in midair. Or at least, that's what I attempt. Where the hell does this fragile, breakable-looking body get such monstrous strength from? Seol-ah clutches me even tighter, like she's about to rip the collar of my shirt clean off. Amid the crushing pressure on my ribcage, the scent of her top-shelf perfume mixes with the familiar soap smell from our old playground days, numbing my senses.
"I'm not letting go. If I do, you'll run away again. Just like 15 years ago, you'll leave me all alone without even saying goodbye!"
"No, I'm not running. Where the hell would I even go? My one-room rent is due next month. I don't have the cash to bolt, you idiot."
"Rent? I'll cover it all! No, where's that building? I'll just buy the whole damn thing! So please… please don't disappear from my sight. Okay? Jinwoo, I'd die without you."
Her tear-streaked face rubs against my chest as she whimpers like a wild animal. The heat of her body seeps through her high-end silk blouse, piercing my ten-thousand-won cheap shirt and sending my heart into a frenzy.
Reason and instinct square off in an octagon in my head, throwing down in a bloody brawl.
In the end, I lower my trembling hand cautiously and pat her quivering back. Even with my rough touch, she flinches but burrows deeper into my arms.
"Okay. I won't go. I really won't, so back off a little first. I'm just a lowly intern, and you're the director. What if someone outside hears? I'll get fired tomorrow and starve for real."
"Doesn't matter. No one enters my office without my permission. And who cares if they hear? Fired? By who? You think I don't know how hard I fought to keep you as my intern right by my side?"
Seol-ah finally lifts her head slightly from my chest and looks up at me. Her chillingly pale, smooth cheeks are a mess of tear tracks, and the tip of her perky nose is flushed bright red. The ruthless ice queen who shredded my fellow interns with merciless logic in the meeting room is gone. In her place is a abandoned puppy, panting like it'll keel over if I don't pet it right now.
"Do you… have any idea what I went through for 15 years just to find you again?"
Seol-ah sobs and wipes her tears roughly with the back of her hand. Her expensive makeup should be smearing, but damn if it doesn't make her even more beautiful. The streaks give her a decadent, heartbreaking allure.
"After I entered the Taesung family home, I endured all the relatives' schemes and Grandpa's terrifying tests… I studied and worked myself to death. The only thing in my head was you giving me half your Choco Pie, stuffing Pikachu-shaped donkatsu in my mouth when I skinned my knee and cried… I clung to that one memory, full of spite, and pushed through. You promised you'd marry me when you grew up. I needed power, money overflowing, to pull you out of that slum poverty and protect you forever."
"…Seol-ah."
"No matter how much I mobilized people and investigated, your trail was hidden too well—I couldn't find you. Then last month… I saw your name—three letters—on our new intern applicant list. You know how much I cried? Your proof photo was exactly my Jinwoo. So I scrapped my plans for the Europe branch oversight on the spot, grabbed Grandpa's pant leg, and threw a fit until he gave me the Strategy Planning Director position."
My jaw drops. It feels like it'll unhinge. Hold up. So this crazy chaebol heiress twisted the group's global succession plans on a whim, parachuting into this cramped department, all for me? Just to see my resume?
"Hey… are you insane? Have you lost it? What the hell possessed you to do something that nuts! Europe branch is trillions in scale!"
"How are you 'just something'! You're my whole world! My universe! Who gives a shit about trillions!"
Seol-ah yells and grabs my hand again. Her slender white fingers slip fearlessly between my rough, callused ones, interlocking without a gap.
"Jinwoo. Please quit those convenience store night shifts. Watching you scan barcodes all night and eat discarded bentos breaks my heart. Hell, quit this shitty internship right now. What the hell are they making you do? I'll handle everything. Anything you want. Wanna be a landlord? Or open a cafe in some quiet spot?"
"What? Hey, I still need a job to eat. I've got a mountain of student loans…"
"I paid them all off."
"Huh? What?"
"Yesterday, every debt in your name—from student loans to living expenses—I cleared it all with my personal funds. Not a won left."
Are my eardrums working right? Did this woman just say she erased the biggest villain in my 25 years of life—my student loans?
Knock knock—
As I'm gaping at her bombshell declaration, a heavy knock echoes on the director's office door. I jolt in shock and reflexively try to pull away from Seol-ah's hand. If we're caught, it's over. Imagining the company board blowing up with 'Intern Kang Jinwoo caught flirting with the director' sends chills down my spine. But Seol-ah squeezes harder, like she's crushing my bones, refusing to let go.
"Director, Executive Director Kim from Planning Coordination is here for approval signatures."
The secretary's polite voice from outside. In that instant, a miracle beyond human limits unfolds before my eyes. Seol-ah's desperate, teary gaze—about to spill chicken-shit tears—freezes into ice in less than a second. Controlling even the tiniest muscle twitch perfectly, she hides our joined hands behind her back, pressed against her body, and barely turns her head toward the door.
"Send him in."
No tremor, no moisture in her voice. It's the merciless young ruler of Korea's No. 5 conglomerate who chilled my colleagues' souls and spines in the meeting room. The iron-masked Director Han Seol-ah stands there.
The heavy door creaks open, and a graying middle-aged executive director shuffles in, bowing with a stack of files. Spotting me standing stiff as a board, the badge-wearing exec startles.
"Oh, Director. Were you in a private meeting with a mere intern? I didn't mean to interrupt…"
"No, Executive Director. I was just giving this one some very 'in-depth' training on Team 4's plan."
Seol-ah nods toward me with a voice cold enough for minus 20 degrees.
"I'll be personally 'close-marking' this intern and reteaching him from the basics. So for now, pull Kang Jinwoo under my direct supervision. No department chores or coffee runs—nothing."
"Pardon? Ah, yes! Understood. Lucky guy—er, I mean, what an intense experience under you, Director. Haha!"
The exec glances at me awkwardly with a forced laugh. I'm sweating bullets in this atmosphere where I feel like I should prostrate myself, staring only at my shoe tips. To a third party, it's the perfect picture of a bumbling, incompetent intern getting his soul threshed by a viperous director.
But out of the exec's sight—behind her back, in the desk's blind spot below—her small, soft hand stays interlocked with my rough, callused one. It strokes my palm obsessively, stickily, like it won't let go even if the world ends. Her heat wrapping every knuckle feels scorching enough to burn.
"Then, Executive Director, leave the approval docs. Oh, and you, Intern Kang Jinwoo."
Seol-ah calls me again. As the exec turns to leave in relief, she brings her lips perilously close to my ear.
"Overtime tonight. Just you and me."
A bewitching, dangerously seductive smile spreads between her red lips as they brush me. Fuck. My life didn't get messed up. It just got perfectly ensnared in the sticky grip of this poisonously beautiful, poisonously rich, poisonously crazy chaebol heiress.