Prologue: The Mold That Grows in Absence
Love is an invisible notion. But distance is a brutally physical reality.
Seoul and Busan. Seo Harin and Kim Junho, rookie colleagues who took their first steps into society together. The two clung fiercely to the belief that no mere distance could shatter their rock-solid five-year romance. They wrapped each other in tight embraces, whispering that weekends together would suffice, lost in romantic delusion.
But there's that old saying: when bodies drift apart, mold festers in the heart. It pierces the frailest core of human nature—a perfect, merciless truth.
A rainy night in Seoul. Harin, stranded alone in the empty office after enduring her boss's tyranny, teetered on the brink of collapse from sheer exhaustion and loneliness. The call she made to her lover, desperate for solace, cut off coldly.
At that exact moment, Junho was nothing more than a helpless, harried man, trapped in an oppressive departmental dinner, too powerless to even hear his lover's silent scream.
It was then, as the sharpest isolation clawed at Harin's rain-soaked throat, that a devil stepped forth from behind the dark partition—wearing the mask of a savior.
The company's absolute power: Executive Director Park Minhyuk. With his overwhelming wealth and prowess, he set a steaming cup of coffee on her desk and issued a cool command.
"Shut down your computer and stand up, Employee Seo Harin. It's pouring out there—I'll drive you home."
The most desperate, vulnerable moment. In place of the unreachable, inept boyfriend. The tangible heat of that towering, arrogant power standing right before her eyes.
A faint but fatal crack echoed through the iron lock of Harin's reason.
It was the prelude to irreversible corruption and depravity.