Chapter 1
A sudden gust of wind swept briefly through the skyscraper-filled district, and a midsize sedan came to a silent stop in front of the entrance to a five-star luxury hotel. Dong-in got out of the car and headed toward the hotel entrance, wearing his characteristic haughty and arrogant expression that gave away nothing of what he was thinking.
A little while later, in the coffee shop in the hotel lobby, Dong-in found himself sitting across from his prospective fiancée. She had delicate, well-proportioned features and was beautiful, yet somehow gave off a somewhat cheap impression.
“Im Arang?”
“Yes, please, have a sea—”
“…….”
The moment his prospective fiancée sprang to her feet, Dong-in sat down without showing any particular reaction.
“……t. Oppa.”
His prospective fiancée forced down her displeasure and sat across from him.
“…….”
“How have you been all this time, Oppa?”
“Crossing the line with someone related by blood isn’t my thing.”
“Huh?”
She merely blinked at Dong-in’s offhand remark. Judging by the fact that she couldn’t even understand this sort of wordplay, it seemed that her command of her native language was even worse than that of a man who had spent more than a decade wandering around the world.
“I have absolutely no intention of marrying you.”
I absolutely hate stupid women.
At this point, he couldn’t tell whether his prospective fiancée was genuinely stupid or simply not academically inclined. But whether she was stupid, poor at studying, or simply not very bright, none of those descriptions appealed to Dong-in in the slightest. Needless to say, in his eyes, that also made her unqualified to be the mother of his children.
“Huh?”
She continued blinking at him.
“…….”
Sigh. Forget it.
“…….”
At least his prospective fiancée had large, almond-shaped eyes that were truly beautiful. Under normal circumstances, those eyes would have been exactly Dong-in’s ideal type.
But what a pity.
There was something about the dark circles beneath his prospective fiancée’s eyes that didn’t seem ordinary.
From the looks of it, her private life was probably rather promiscuous.
She was impeccably groomed from head to toe, yet to Dong-in’s eyes, she somehow reminded him of a wilted cabbage.
And she was only twenty-six, an age when she should have been fresh and vibrant.
Anyway, was this marriage really going to be all right?
Especially in Dong-in’s family, marriage wasn’t simply a matter between two individuals. It wasn’t something that could be done for love alone, nor was it something he could decide on his own. Naturally, the elders of the family had been the ones pushing this marriage forward.
Particularly the family of his prospective fiancée.
Dong-in had been assigned a future partner from a young age. As he grew up, he had heard so often that he was supposed to marry that person that the words had practically become engraved in his ears. At that point, one might naturally have assumed that he had been brainwashed, but even if he hadn’t been, Dong-in had intended to obey his grandfather without putting up any resistance.
There was just one condition: this would be the last act of filial obedience he would ever offer his grandfather.
The problem was that the partner who had been chosen for Dong-in was not Im Arang, who was sitting in front of him now, but Im Sang-ah, her older sister. Even though Dong-in had decided to comply with the elders’ wishes when it came to marriage, he had never expected his fiancée to be replaced.
Should he rebel against the decision?
No.
Dong-in had decided to accept this change as well.
At least as long as she was a woman whom, by his standards, he could consider a decent human being. However—
Although his prospective fiancée had been changed from Im Sang-ah to Im Arang, Im Sang-ah’s younger sister, and this was technically their first official meeting, that didn’t mean Im Arang was a complete stranger to him.
In other words, he absolutely detested women who couldn’t keep their private lives in order.
That said, he couldn’t make the mistake of jumping to conclusions and becoming prejudiced against his prospective fiancée.
“How much experience have you had with men?”
So Dong-in asked her directly. The question had several intentions behind it. As expected, it seemed to have offended her quite a bit.
“Why are you asking me that?”
Her tone was sharp when she shot the question back at him.
“I’m not interested in that kind of woman.”
“Wow.”
“So, how much experience have you had with men?”
Regardless of her mood, he asked again.
“What if I have?”
Of course she did.
In truth, it wasn’t a major issue for Dong-in. He wasn’t inexperienced himself, and given the various cultural environments he had encountered throughout his life, he actually believed that healthy relationships between adult men and women were perfectly normal.
But having a messy private life was an entirely different matter.
Who knew how much filth might be lurking beneath the surface?
It wasn’t that he demanded purity from the other person while holding himself to a different standard. Dong-in simply believed that human beings, as a rule, should never lose their self-control or restraint, and that everyone had a duty to cherish and protect themselves in every aspect, both physically and mentally.
In that sense, regardless of age or gender, he had absolutely no tolerance for people who failed to value themselves or control their desires.
In fact, it would be more accurate to say that he simply had little tolerance for human beings as a species.
“I told you I’m not interested. Don’t make me say it twice.”
Anyway, as expected, his rather rude words seemed to have gotten under his prospective fiancée’s skin.
“Let’s just get up and leave.”
She abruptly stood up, glaring at him viciously.
Well, this outcome isn’t so bad either.
“Suit yourself.”
Dong-in casually shrugged his shoulders. After glaring at him for a while, Im Arang eventually dropped back into her seat across from him.
Only ten seconds? I thought she’d last a little longer. Hmph, what a disappointment. Then, let’s get to the main point.
“The purpose of this marriage is simple: a child. Give birth to our child.”
He said it bluntly.
But in truth, Dong-in had no intention whatsoever of continuing this meeting. Having already become prejudiced against Im Arang for no particular reason, he made no effort to hide his disgust.
“…….”
His prospective fiancée continued glaring at him, her expression showing that she was grinding her teeth in anger.
“When you’ve made up your mind to marry me, get a medical certificate from a gynecologist.”
“You should go to a urologist and get a medical certificate too.”
She snapped back at the end of Dong-in’s sentence.
At least she has some common sense. Hmph.
As he had repeatedly emphasized, he wasn’t actually demanding that his prospective fiancée be a virgin. His primary purpose was to find out whether the woman who would become the mother of his future children was physically healthy.
“…….”
“To make sure you’re capable of doing it or not.”
His prospective fiancée seemed to be the type who returned a favor tenfold—or, more accurately, returned an insult with an even sharper one.
“…….”
Well, there was nothing inherently wrong with that kind of personality. But he absolutely hated people who were all talk.
Dong-in sincerely hoped that his prospective fiancée was as healthy as she was loudly proclaiming herself to be.
He couldn’t emphasize this enough: she was going to be the mother of his children.
At this point, some people might have been tempted to throw stones at him. Objectively and subjectively, there was some justification for doing so. After all, Dong-in was also nothing more than a tool for continuing the family line, so in that sense, he was in the same position as her.
For that reason, he was willing to cherish, devote himself to, and protect the mother of his children out of a sense of shared circumstances.
But somehow, he had a feeling that this woman wasn’t qualified enough for him to devote the rest of his life to her.
Dong-in stared intently at the back of his prospective fiancée as she angrily waved her hand in front of the automatic door sensor of the coffee shop in the hotel lobby.
She couldn’t even wait for the few seconds it took for the door to open.
Im Arang walked out of the coffee shop.
