TNS 05

Chapter 5

Throwing the wedding invitation at Ha Yun-seo had essentially been bait—a move to test Cha Seon-jae’s true intentions. From the beginning, Cha Jun-hyeong had not the slightest intention of marrying Ha Yun-seo. Even a few minutes of conversation with that sickeningly logical woman gave him a pounding headache.

However, there was no better bait than Ha Yun-seo to provoke Cha Seon-jae. Realizing that the card was an exceptionally useful tactical masterstroke, a victorious smile spread across Cha Jun-hyeong’s lips.

“……Ha, he actually bit on this so easily?”

It made no sense for Cha Seon-jae—a man more rational and quick-calculating than anyone else—to reveal his true motives so carelessly. Even after turning it over in his mind multiple times without reaching a clean answer, Jun-hyeong headed straight toward the Vice President’s office without a second thought.

Returning to his office, Seon-jae had called for Yun-seo. Before even a minute had passed, he opened the door to the secretary’s office himself and walked in.

“Executive Director, I was just about to come in—”

Before Yun-seo could finish her sentence, Seon-jae snatched her hand and pulled her through the open doorway of his executive suite. Turning around to face her, he slammed the door shut behind him. The heavy thud echoed through the room, making Yun-seo’s shoulders flinch in surprise.

“I won’t ask twice. Answer me truthfully.”

Yun-seo stared down at the veins bulging on the back of Seon-jae’s hand, which was still gripping her wrist tightly. Belatedly raising her eyes to meet his gaze directly, she gave a slow nod.

“How much did you agree to take from the Division Head? No… from Cha Ik-hyeon?”

On the surface, he appeared immensely calm and rational, but Yun-seo knew precisely how many emotions Cha Seon-jae was suppressing right now. Seeing how he brought up the Division Head directly without beating around the bush, he had likely just come back from meeting Cha Jun-hyeong.

“…Executive Director.”

The end of Yun-seo’s voice cracked thinly.

Arriving at work late after spending hours past office start time entangled intimately in a hotel was already making her die of embarrassment. To make matters worse, Cha Seon-jae—a man who rarely made scene-causing moves—had barged into the quiet secretary’s office and dragged her out like this.

She had expected to face a moment like this eventually after bringing up topics she didn’t mean, like marriage or taking a leave of absence, but actually being in this situation made her feel all the more miserable.

“Things like that were matters you should have discussed with me.”

Seon-jae’s voice was low, but beneath it lay a calm typical of someone who had already reached a private conclusion inside.

Yun-seo knew very well that Cha Seon-jae was using her as a tool. Even so, the reason she had never been able to leave his side all this time was purely because her feelings for him were so deep.

“Executive Director… do you believe money solves everything?”

Yun-seo’s question felt less like a counterargument and more like an appeal she had swallowed down for a long time, scattering into the air. His rigid gaze pressed down on her, as if heavy enough to crush her heart.

“I told you before: if something can’t be solved with money, consider whether you simply haven’t used enough money. I failed to consider that. That’s why I’m asking.”

Seon-jae continued, completely stripping his words of emotion. His logic was precise as always—and for that reason, even more cruel. Yun-seo felt as though she was being reduced to nothing more than a case study he needed to rescue.

“I wanted you to stop solving things with money… that’s why I wanted to quit.”

The edge of Yun-seo’s breath trembled faintly. Her statement about wanting to quit was true, but the weight of the emotions loaded into those resolute words was so heavy that they shook her chest without being cleanly resolved.

“What does that mean?”

Implicit in his brief question was less an inclination to understand her and more a deep pressure demanding an explanation.

“I heard you met my father once a month to give him money. You looked after my grandmother’s living expenses, and for Yujeong’s kindergarten—”

Yun-seo opened her mouth with difficulty, pausing to select her words step-by-step, but Seon-jae promptly cut her off.

“We were settling a different matter right now. I don’t particularly care to hear about that.”

“How can I not talk about it? Are you an ATM machine, Executive Director? Why do you just throw money at my family like that…? What if they get a bad habit and start blackmailing you? You know what kind of person my father is, so why did you do that?”

Her final words were a question, yet sounded close to a confession laying blame. Each item listed one by one was a reality and a flaw she had desperately tried to cover up.

When Yun-seo’s voice faded away, not a single sound remained inside the executive office. A heavy silence settled between the two of them, like a weightless space where even breathing felt forbidden.

Calling it receiving help made it impossible to define simply as kindness. The weight of the grace extended to her was far too immense to be settled by a mere expression of gratitude.

There was a time when she believed her very birth was a misfortune. Under a father steeped in alcohol and consumed by gambling, she lived without receiving the barest protection—let alone love—enduring beatings, hunger, and walking on eggshells. Yet even through those suffocating days, she never doubted that a better day was waiting for her.

Looking back now, that desperate belief had been no different from leaning on a nonexistent hope, simply because she had nothing else to hold onto. However, the hope she had dreamed of shattered far too easily.

After loan sharks—rushing in frantically to collect her father’s gambling debts—held her safety hostage, she fled without looking back.

Living as a parasite on relatives while studying ruthlessly through their cold glares, she managed to enter the most prestigious university in South Korea. Her sole desire was to escape abject poverty and her father, succeeding in life. She wanted to break free from the shadow of a father who ruined her life simply because they shared blood—by any means necessary.

If she lost her scholarship, she couldn’t attend school, so she studied till she coughed up blood purely for money, barely holding her days together by earning living expenses through part-time jobs and private tutoring.

Just one year away from university graduation, her relentless father eventually tracked her down, sweeping away not only the money she had saved up but even the hard-earned housing deposit. Only then did she feel with every fiber of her being how horribly unfair and unreasonable life was.

To be honest, she had intended to die. No, she was practically on the brink of death.

On a winter day when snow lay softly piled on the ground, she witnessed her father barging into her home and turning her living space upside down. Not stopping there, when she tried to stop him from wringing the housing deposit out of the landlord, she was severely beaten—to the point where no part of her face was left unharmed—and thrown out onto the street.

Cast out virtually naked in freezing weather despite wearing multiple layers, it wouldn’t have been strange at all if she had frozen to death on the roadside. Sitting crouched on the pavement with her entire body frozen solid, she truly thought it wouldn’t matter if she died right then and there.

“Excuse me.”

Hearing a faint voice through her fading consciousness, her reflex was to think she had survived. She had clearly wanted to die, but as every sensation left her body and her breath slowly flickered out, it was only upon facing death that she desperately wanted to live.

In truth, she hadn’t wished to die; she simply hadn’t wanted to live like that—a truth that penetrated deep into her bones. She wanted to live, succeed in life right in front of her father who had made her existence so worthless, and be happier than anyone else.

At the exact moment that desperate wish became most clear, like destiny, she met Cha Seon-jae.

More accurately, he came to her.