IFBS 00

Prologue

The car driving through downtown came to a stop at a red light.

“You said you had something to tell me? Say it now.”

Hearing the voice beside her, Se-A turned her head.

Je-Eon had just returned from abroad after a week-long business trip. His schedule had been so hectic that he had barely gotten any sleep.

He was more sensitive and exhausted than usual.

Yet despite his condition, he had come to meet Se-A.

“I won’t have time to listen once we’re inside.”

His immaculate appearance, which naturally drew her gaze, was tinged with a hint of impatience.

It had been fifteen days since he had last held her. Her menstrual period had coincided with his business trip, leaving him frustrated and starved for her.

His patience was inevitably reaching its limit.

“Director, last Friday before last… where were you, and what were you doing?”

A hollow laugh escaped through Je-Eon’s teeth.

“At the company. Where else would I have been?”

“After you left work.”

Even though he could guess why she was asking such specific questions, Je-Eon had no intention of giving her a clear answer.

Instead, he rolled his neck from side to side, as if loosening his muscles, showing his discomfort.

“Could you ask me in a way I can actually understand?”

“I heard a rumor that you had dinner with a woman that evening. ……At a hotel.”

Several words spoken by the employees came back to Se-A and stopped her in her tracks.

“You know about the director, right? Have you heard the rumor that he met a woman at a hotel?”

“I heard it! Apparently, she’s the youngest daughter of the UH Group.”

“No way! As soon as it was revealed that he was the chairman’s adopted son, are they already preparing a marriage of convenience?”

“Doesn’t it kind of seem like that?”

Se-A had stood there blankly for quite some time.

She had hoped it was nothing more than a baseless rumor, but realistically speaking, it was not something she could simply dismiss.

“Do you really need an explanation?”

“Yes. I do.”

Je-Eon sighed while looking out the window, then turned his cold gaze toward Se-A.

“Fine. What if I did meet her?”

“……!”

Se-A drew in a sharp breath.

Anxiety washed over her at the thought that he might have done with another woman the things he had done with her.

“What did you do after meeting her……?”

“We just had dinner and parted ways. That’s all.”

Was that really all?

Rather than feeling relieved, her doubts only grew.

“Why didn’t you tell me beforehand?”

“Haa.”

Je-Eon rested his head against the headrest. His sigh seemed to weigh down on her shoulders, and Se-A nervously bit her lip.

“Were we ever in the kind of relationship where we had to report things like that to each other?”

The light changed to green, and he pressed the accelerator.

Even then, Se-A couldn’t take her eyes off his profile.

They had done countless things together that could only be done by people in an intimate relationship—touching each other’s bare bodies, holding each other tightly, kissing without hesitation.

And yet, she had always been confused about what exactly they were.

“So you’re saying we’re not?”

“We never reported things to each other.”

“Then… what are we?”

Se-A asked bluntly.

She felt that she wouldn’t be able to put her mind at ease unless she heard the answer directly from him.

“Our relationship? If you suddenly ask me that, what exactly am I supposed to say?”

He was at an age when an ordinary man would generally be capable of taking care of himself.

The difference was that Je-Eon’s social position was far more firmly established than theirs. He possessed and had learned vastly more than they did.

And for someone like him, Se-A—who had only recently entered the working world—was an open book.

She wanted to hear an answer beyond the kind of relationship where they frequently slept together with their bare skin pressed against each other.

Je-Eon knew this perfectly well, yet pretended not to.

Se-A remained silent for a long time.

Je-Eon turned the steering wheel and pulled the car over to the roadside.

“If you’re asking about the depth of our relationship, then the answer isn’t difficult.”

He unfastened his seat belt and leaned toward the passenger seat.

He closed the distance between them in an instant and gripped her delicate chin with his large hand.

As though making the nature of their relationship perfectly clear, he abruptly swallowed her small lips with his own.

“Mm….”

His tongue moved freely inside Se-A’s mouth.

The more persistent and prolonged the kiss became, the more her expectations grew along with it.

But the words that came from his lips when they finally parted were brutally cruel.

“Would you understand if I called it ‘this kind of relationship’?”

“……?”

“Symbiosis.”

Se-A’s pupils trembled helplessly, unable to focus.

Symbiosis?

“You said you loved me, didn’t you?”

“…….”

“Han Se-A is happy because she gets to be held by the man she loves, and I’m happy because I can satisfy my desires whenever I want. What else would you call a relationship based on mutual needs if not symbiosis?”

Until now, she had believed that what she shared with him was love.

She had believed that the affection in his gentle touches was genuine.

She had wanted to believe it.

The reason she couldn’t refute his cruel words was because she had finally realized the source of the anxiety that had followed her every moment.

“Then how about this? Why don’t you find out for yourself whether I’m a good person or not?”

She had never imagined that was what he meant.

It was all my misunderstanding. All of it…….

“Now that you understand, I hope you won’t take an interest in anything about me. It’s a little uncomfortable for me.”

“…….”

“Just like I don’t ask about your daily life, you can do the same.”

Se-A’s chin trembled.

She felt so utterly devastated that tears threatened to spill from her eyes.

Click.

He fastened his seat belt again.

“If someone else comes along for you, Director… what happens to me?”

Tears quickly welled up in Se-A’s eyes as she looked at Je-Eon.

Simply asking the question made her feel as though she could already see the end of their relationship.

“If you’re okay with being the second woman, then stay.”

“Hah.”

A hollow breath escaped Se-A as though her chest had been punched clean through.

Despite the misery of the situation, she kept letting out bitter little laughs.

The tears that had been precariously clinging to her eyes, ready to fall at the slightest touch, finally slipped down her cheeks.

For just an instant, a faint crack appeared around Je-Eon’s eyes, which had remained unmoved until then.

“Second woman…….”

A self-deprecating smile spread across Se-A’s lips.

She realized far too late that regardless of his background, even imagining a future with him had been nothing more than her own greed.

“If I don’t want that, then what happens to us?”

“What?”

“I don’t intend to become something like that…….”

Once she wiped away the tears obscuring her vision, she could finally see what she hadn’t been able to before.

The eyes that had once shone so brightly in bed were now filled with boredom.

“Then what do you want to be to me?”

Je-Eon’s straight lips twisted.

Seeing Se-A behaving differently from her usual obedient self, he let out a mocking laugh.

If she was thinking of becoming his legitimate wife, then he ought to crush that expectation early.

But her answer was completely different from what he had expected.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Yes. I won’t be anything of yours.”

The reason she had become especially weak around Je-Eon was because of the kindness he had shown her.

He had been Se-A’s first adult, her first man, and her first love.

Regardless of his intentions, those moments had seeped into Se-A’s heart as love.

In the end, however, they had become her weakness.

“Is this the love Han Se-A was talking about?”

Je-Eon raised his sharp chin, looking down at her arrogantly.

“You kept saying you loved me and all that…… In the end, you had an ulterior motive. Didn’t you?”

There had never been any ulterior motive to begin with.

She had only learned later that he was the adopted son of the chairman of TS Group. There was no way she could have had some hidden purpose.

“We should stop now.”

Since she knew that her answer would not change the situation, she didn’t respond to his question.

There was no point in continuing to prove a love that had already been laid bare.

“Stop what?”

“Seeing you, Director. I don’t think there’s any… meaning to it anymore.”

Having resigned herself to the situation, Se-A took one last look at his face and turned away.

“I’ll get out here.”

“Han Se-A.”

“Goodbye.”

After getting out of the car, Se-A began walking in the opposite direction from her home.

Her footsteps felt heavy, as though sandbags had been tied around both ankles.

Suddenly, she remembered her mother’s face—the mother who had been blinded by love and put her child second.

If it had been Mom, she would have said she didn’t mind being the second woman.

But Se-A wasn’t like that.

She had always sworn that she would never be someone’s second choice in her life.

And yet……

“Let’s get this first. I think you should wear it around your waist.”

The voice from that day came back to her with startling clarity—the day he had begun to become special to her, as though she had already started regretting the fact that their relationship would someday end.