Leashes of the Predators
After the hellish weekend passed, the air in the office felt even more repulsive and oppressively humid than before. In the wake of Friday night's catastrophe—where her direct superior, Manager Kim, had been publicly sentenced to execution by the supreme powerholder, Executive Director Park Minhyuk, and even summoned for a private meeting—the venom in his eyes burned fierce.
But Manager Kim no longer dared call Harin openly to his desk or leer at her with sleazy stares. The Executive Director's brutal warning held his leash tight. Instead, he began strangling her in the most卑劣 and insidious way.
"Assistant Seo Harin. Recalculate all this planning data based on last year's figures and have it on my desk by three p.m."
"Manager, but this is already coordinated with the other department using this year's data."
"You questioning my orders? Do it. A newbie mouthing off?"
It was blatant retaliation. Manager Kim piled on Harin the most massive, pointless clerical drudgery that everyone else avoided—mountains of it—with impossible deadlines no human could meet.
Harin bit her lip hard and returned to her seat. All day, she stared holes through her monitor, the furious clatter of her typing echoing loudly. Not even time for the bathroom—a suffocating isolation. Her senior colleagues pitied her plight but none stepped up to help. Get on the wrong side, and you're dead—that was the brutal reality of office politics.
Late afternoon. As Harin glared at her screen with bloodshot eyes, a colleague from the next desk crept over and secretly placed a sweet chocolate drink on her desk.
"Harin, hang in there just a bit longer. That jerk Manager's just taking out his grudge on you after the Executive Director chewed him out. Everyone in the department knows you're good at your job. Don't take it too hard."
The whisper was warm, but those flimsy words of comfort couldn't save her crumbling reality. Harin's fingertips trembled around the drink can.
Quitting time long past, empty office. Faced with the unfinished pile of documents, Harin couldn't hold back the tears welling up anymore. Crying out loud would mean total defeat to Manager Kim— that flimsy pride dragged her feet toward the emergency stairs.
Cold, dark concrete emergency stairs. The heavy iron door clanged shut, and Harin crumpled into a corner, burying her face in her knees.
"Hic... sob..."
The dam of suppressed grief burst. The misery of being a rookie. Unjust torment for no reason. And resentment toward her distant lover, too far away to protect her in this toxic loneliness. Harin's slender shoulders shook like a fledgling in the rain.
Just as her sobs sliced through the frigid air of the stairwell—
Kiiik.
The heavy iron door from the floor above creaked open softly, heavily. Harin jolted up, wiping her wet face. Under the dim light, a massive, perfectly tailored silhouette descended the stairs. Her eyes widened hugely.
It was Executive Director Park Minhyuk.
In a premium navy suit, one hand in his pocket, he approached with leisurely, tender steps, like finding a lost child. A thick, sensual woody cologne swallowed the stairwell's stale dust completely, choking her breath.
"Ex-Executive Director."
Harin hastily wiped her tears and tried to stand, but her legs buckled. Minhyuk's large, firm hand gently gripped her shoulder, easing her back down.
"Don't get up. You're exhausted."
His voice was silk-soft, his gaze warm as if he owned the world. From his inner pocket, he drew a premium silk handkerchief embossed with his initials in gold leaf and brought it to her tear-streaked cheek.
"Your pretty face will get ruined by tears. Let's wipe them first."
His long fingers tenderly dabbed her eyes. The man's hot body heat seeped through the thin silk straight to her skin. Dizzying tension, like her heart might burst. Harin gasped, looking up at Minhyuk's face.
The perfect tall uncle who comforts me the warmest.
A strange, lethal wave of emotion surged wildly in her chest.
But Harin had no idea. The mind of the man so gently wiping her tears was rotting with the ugliest, sadistic instincts of a predator.
'Yes, cry more pathetically, Seo Harin. You have to hit rock bottom, get crushed thoroughly, before you'll realize bone-deep that the only place you can lean is my arms. That voluptuous body looking up at me with wet eyes—I'm dying to lay it on this cold cement right now and rip it apart.'
Perfect tenderness masking the cruelest, most lascivious domination.
"I'm watching everything. I know exactly how childishly that trash Manager Kim is acting, so don't get hurt. Hang on a little; I'll fix it all."
Minhyuk placed the silk handkerchief softly in her hand and gently brushed back her hair.
"Go home for today. Tomorrow morning, I'll stomp Manager Kim if I have to and void all the rest."
Not an order—a perfect salvation. As Minhyuk left the stairwell, Harin alone stared blankly at the man's handkerchief in her hand. Unknowingly, she deeply inhaled the thick scent of him soaked into it.
Only this man can protect me.
That dangerous, immoral conviction whitened her brain.
That night. Harin's studio apartment. Fresh from the shower, leaning on her bed, her smartphone buzzed. A video call from her lover, Kim Junho. Harin hesitated, then answered.
Junho's face on screen looked far more gaunt and fatigued than days ago. Spotting her red, swollen eyes, his expression twisted instantly.
"Harin, you cried? What happened? Someone at work bullying you again?"
His urgent voice unleashed her pent-up emotions again.
"Oppa, I'm really suffering. Manager's dumping impossible workloads all day, like he wants to drain my blood dry. I wanna quit for real."
Harin burst into tears toward her lover on screen. That desperate sobbing tore Junho's heart to shreds. The woman he loved most suffering hellish pain, and he could only watch from afar—this toxic helplessness. Thick tears began falling from Junho's reddened eyes too.
"Harin, I'm sorry. Really, all my fault. If I'd been better, settled faster, you wouldn't suffer like this. If I hadn't gotten sent to this damn outstation, I'd run to you right now. I'm so sorry."
His sobbing self-blame on screen. Junho was sincere. He'd give his life to protect Harin, but a fresh newbie in the corporate machine could do nothing. His raw sincerity stabbed her heart painfully.
But human emotions are cruelly complex and selfish. Even seeing her lover cry for her—
In one rational corner of Harin's mind, Minhyuk's cool, tender touch wiping her tears in the stairwell overlapped madly.
'A man crying "sorry." And a man silently controlling all reality perfectly.'
Out of sight of the screen, her left hand clenched Minhyuk's silk handkerchief desperately. The rising thick predator's body scent fiercely fueled her depravity.
Still, Harin reached tentatively toward Junho's face on screen.
"Oppa, don't cry. I'm okay. Not your fault."
She blew a kiss through the screen, forcing a smile.
"I miss you so much, oppa. Love you for real."
The purest confession laced with the deepest duplicity.
"Love you too, Harin. I'll make time this weekend and come up no matter what. Let's endure a bit and video call every day."
The call ended on his tender promise. The moment the screen went dark—
Harin curled on the bed, buried her nose in Minhyuk's handkerchief, and inhaled deeply like a beast. She was already perfectly trapped in an irreversible maze of corruption.
Meanwhile, Junho's reality was just as horrific and dismal as Harin's hell. Forcibly assigned to technical sales and management—a department unrelated to his humanities major—he floundered lost in endless jargon and complex data daily. On top, subtle Seoul HQ elitism isolated him completely.
"Assistant Kim Junho. Can't even run a simple formula right and bring me this garbage data? Whatever you learned in college, this is the real world. Think growing up pampered in Seoul makes you special? Redo it."
All day enduring the team leader's abusive yells. Past quitting time, 7 p.m. In the empty office, only the photocopier's hum droned steadily. Junho sorted the mountain of revised documents at the machine, swallowing his resentment. His incompetence at protecting Harin. Utter loneliness in this foreign place. As his eyes reddened again and he wiped tears with his hand—
Click. Click. Click.
Sharp high-heel clicks echoed rhythmically down the quiet corridor. Junho whipped around in surprise. Into view stepped the most lethally alluring woman, perfectly styled.
The youngest Senior Manager, Yoon Jiyeon—recently transferred to the Busan branch with unprecedented favors from Seoul HQ, dubbed the "golden miss."
Towering model height over 170cm. But no skinny model—her thin, tight beige silk blouse strained over explosively voluptuous, glamorous breasts. Below her breathtakingly narrow waist, a black pencil skirt clung like it would split her hips, violently flaunting her perfect S-curve.
Most shocking: her face. Despite such lush, sensual body, it was baby-faced innocent, pure enough to pass for fresh out of college. An overwhelming fusion of angelic purity and demonic temptation.
Junho stood frozen at the copier, documents in hand, awestruck by her unreal beauty. Rumors of every man in the office drooling as she walked weren't exaggeration.
Jiyeon leisurely eyed Junho's broad, slumped back—young, firm body, but despairing newbie crushed by reality. Donning her gentlest, most elegant smile, she approached slowly. With each step, sweet, heavy powdery floral scent assaulted his nose, dizzily shaking his senses.
"Working late? You must be tired."
Her soft, pleasing voice. Junho bowed 90 degrees in panic.
"Ah, hello, Senior Manager. I'm rookie Assistant Kim Junho."
"I know. Heard you're from Seoul and struggling."
Jiyeon glanced at his name tag with a kind smile.
"Um, I'm not familiar with the branch layout yet. Do you know where the company cafe is?"
A lie. Jiyeon had mapped the place perfectly on day one—the shrewdest predator. Her question was the first calculated bait of the hunt.
Heaven-sent kindness from the youngest Senior Manager. A plea from an overwhelmingly beautiful woman. Junho blushed, stammering unwittingly.
"Ah, the cafe's down the connecting passage to Building B. Shall I show you the way?"
Innocent, eager rabbit stepping into the trap. A lethal crescent smile bloomed on Jiyeon's baby face.
"Oh, that'd be wonderful. Thank you, Junho."
Jiyeon turned on her heel, following him. From behind, her gaze raked his firm waist and ass. The tender senior's facade vanished, replaced by the starving, depraved lioness.
Hundreds of kilometers apart. Seoul and Busan. Two predators in perfect masks simultaneously leashed their adorable prey.
The inescapable gates of ruin and depravity swung wide open.
