The sun was setting.

Cha Do Ha, who had loaded Yeo Eun’s luggage into the car trunk, opened the driver’s door.

As she stood quietly watching, his black eyes, holding the burning sunset, flashed red.

“Did you cry?”

At the sudden question, Yeo Eun lowered her head.

“No, I didn’t.”

Yeo Eun’s eyelids were swollen and reddish, reflected in the car window.

Her nose was also red.

This made it obvious at a glance that she had been crying.

“I’m sorry. As you saw, the state of the house was a bit…”

Cha Do Ha slowly approached Yeo Eun’s side.

“What about the state of the house? I think it’s just fine.”

“Pardon?”

As Yeo Eun raised her head and looked at Cha Do Ha questioningly, he pulled up the corners of his mouth into a slow smile.

“You won’t be able to run away tonight. Because you have nowhere to go.”

Looking at Cha Do Ha, Yeo Eun blinked her eyelids slowly.

This man is always like this.

As if there were no other women for him, as if she was the only one for him.

He acts as if only he and she exist in the world.

Even tonight, as if it’s natural for her to spend the night with him.

Staring at him, Yeo Eun moved her lips.

“You… ran away this morning too, sir.”

At her response, Cha Do Ha’s smile deepened.

His fingertips lightly touched Yeo Eun’s chin and then withdrew.

“That’s right. So I won’t be able to run away either. Because the hotel is my home.”

Yeo Eun, looking down at Cha Do Ha’s hand moving away from her chin, felt conflicted.

So his words now meant he wanted to go to his hotel together.

Not to Ji Soo’s house, not to Cha Hyun’s house, but to his own space.

It meant spending time together for the few days it would take to fix her house.

To spend nights and mornings together in that sensual space filled with his scent.

Would that even be possible?

“We can’t do that.”

Yeo Eun raised her eyes and met Cha Do Ha’s gaze again.

“The chairman is monitoring my every move. You know that.”

Recalling the events of earlier that day, Yeo Eun’s shoulders trembled slightly.

In the spaces between words, Chairman Cha Ji Seop had clearly conveyed his intentions with intense gazes and sometimes deep sighs.

It meant not to overstep the line carelessly.

It was an implicit threat that if she crossed the line, Yeo Eun would have to face the consequences.

“I don’t think it’s wise to bring me into the hotel completely. The chairman will be angry.”

For a moment, a chilling light flashed across Cha Do Ha’s dark eyes.

His eyes, shining sharply as if they held a well-honed blade, looked somewhat cruel.

With those eyes and a sardonic smile, he spoke in a cold voice.

“Why would the chairman? When he gave you to me, that’s what it meant. To take it lightly.”

In the end, his cold gaze and words became a sharp dagger that deeply stabbed her heart.

Yes, that’s right. That’s what she was.

“Does Ms. Seo Yeo Eun want to attach a different meaning to the nights spent with me?”

His mocking voice contained not a trace of warmth or any affection.

He was simply stating the bare facts as they were.

She had been mistaken.

These past few days. No, last night.

She had been intoxicated by Cha Do Ha, who had heartily eaten the food she made, held her tightly in her house, and caressed her lovingly in her bed.

She had mistakenly thought that their relationship might be love.

“Isn’t that your position, Ms. Seo Yeo Eun? That this is just business, sales, a life-saving project.”

After hearing Cha Do Ha’s words to the end, Yeo Eun hid her welling emotions and curled her lips into a pretty smile.

Cursing her lips that kept trying to tremble, she clenched her toes tightly.

“That’s right.”

This is the reality.

Seo Yeo Eun is Cha Do Ha’s plaything.

Cha Do Ha is Seo Yeo Eun’s thick and sturdy lifeline.

Even Chairman Cha Ji Seop calling her today was to inform her of this fact.

With the old man’s insight that penetrates human nature, he had looked into her and warned her, “No. Stop. Don’t give your heart. Don’t even have feelings. Cha Do Ha’s side is not your place.”

It was a kind thing.

“How could I… dare to attach a different meaning to Director Cha Do Ha.”

She had unknowingly crossed a line, and he had redrawn it clearly.

And Cha Do Ha too, by saying he thought of her lightly, had once again clearly shown that line.

“However.”

“However?”

“I’m afraid that spending nights continuously with you, Director, might upset the chairman. And it’s scary in many ways for you to act like this in front of Director Cha Hyun.”

It wasn’t a lie.

It was truly frightening.

Apart from the sweet moments with Cha Do Ha, every moment was filled with anxiety.

What she was doing with Cha Do Ha was clearly wrong.

A wrongdoing that would not be approved by anyone and would only leave scars on everyone.

And the one who would be hurt the most would be Seo Yeo Eun herself.

“After all, I’m just a frog that could die even from a carelessly thrown stone.”

A bitter smile involuntarily crossed her lips.

A toy to be discarded when its use was over, a frog that could be run over carelessly. That’s what she was.

To keep forgetting this, she was only hastening her demise.

It was then.

“Even a frog can become a prince if it finds the golden ball.”

It was Cha Do Ha who caught her as she was sinking deep into something akin to self-loathing.

“So look carefully. For my golden ball.”

Cha Do Ha, pulling up the corners of his mouth seductively, opened the passenger door and gestured inside.

* * *

Heaven and hell.

It felt like having one foot in each.

Clearly, to Cha Do Ha, she was just a plaything, but the way he treated her was extremely sweet.

Not that his cold and arrogant attitude had changed.

There was not an inch of difference compared to when she first met him.

But the look in his eyes when he gazed at her had deepened, and his touch when he handled her had become hotter.

The subtle consideration and affectionate glances he showed throughout the meal warmly heated the area around her heart.

Even now, the anxiety that Chairman Cha Ji Seop might be watching soaked her heart, but everything about Cha Do Ha was so good that even such anxiety became blurry.

Yet, on the other hand, she resented him.

Because she knew all too well that the sweetness of him embracing her would ultimately become poison.

Why put so much effort into a toy that he would only play with for a moment anyway.

And that, from a man who even had a girlfriend.

“Director, you really are a bad man.”

Seated in a high-end French restaurant in Cheongdam-dong, Yeo Eun spoke as she watched red wine being poured into a large glass.

Perhaps because she had already emptied this large glass twice, a slight tipsiness was rising.

“Me?”

Cha Do Ha, having finished filling the glass, looked at her and asked back.

Staring at him, Yeo Eun smiled brightly.

“Yes, you, Director.”

“You’re smiling and insulting me while I’m trying to comfort you with expensive food and even more expensive wine because your house is in a mess.”

Putting down the wine bottle, Cha Do Ha picked up his glass and continued.

“Looking at that, Ms. Seo Yeo Eun, you’re quite a bad woman too.”

Cha Do Ha lightly clinked his glass against hers.

As the cheerful sound of the glasses touching faded, the classical music once again flowed faintly in their ears.

Yeo Eun’s gaze captured the slight ripples in the red wine in her glass.

It was the trace left by Cha Do Ha’s glass on hers.

It felt just like her heart, and the center of her chest strangely stirred.

“That’s right. I am a bad woman.”

Yeo Eun, bringing the glass to her lips and taking a sip of wine, smiled faintly.

“A bad woman who dines with a taken man in such a romantic place, and even plans to spend the night with him.”

Socially and ethically, she was a bad woman deserving of public condemnation.

Cha Do Ha, not denying her words, asked with a smile of the same texture as hers.

“Then why am I a bad man?”

“Because you have a lover, and someone to share your future with… yet you casually invite me to your bed, Director.”

Though it was a clear truth, somehow saying it out loud made her mouth feel dry, as if she had said something she shouldn’t have.

At her words, Cha Do Ha pulled up the corners of his mouth smoothly and smiled.

“If I remember correctly, it was Ms. Seo Yeo Eun who clung to me, begging me not to go to Kim Hae Ri, wasn’t it?”

Swallowing the wine while not taking his greedy gaze off her, Cha Do Ha looked like the epitome of a bad man.

Yeo Eun, her throat tightening under his black eyes that seemed to lick over her, nodded with a smile.

“That’s right. It was me.”

Her lips, her tongue, were parched under his gaze.

“Me, who willingly became your plaything in order to survive.”

Feeling an extreme thirst, Yeo Eun emptied the wine glass she was holding in one gulp.

“And yet, unable to control even one of my emotions, so pathetically… you, Director.”

Yeo Eun, wiping the red wine from the corner of her lips with the back of her hand, firmly closed her mouth.

What on earth was she saying now?

She wasn’t in her right mind.

“Why did you stop mid-sentence?”

Watching Cha Do Ha’s lips, as red as the wine, form a knowing smile, Yeo Eun lowered her head.

“It’s nothing.”

She must be quite drunk on the wine.

A laugh escaped her lips, splitting them.

“I’ll stop here.”

To think she was shamelessly happy, sitting close to a man who could never be hers, as if he were her own.

To be happy while knowingly committing such wrongdoings.

It was the worst.

“I think I’ve had a bit too much to drink.”

Looking at her, Cha Do Ha laughed.

Laughing with his head tilted slightly back, making a cheerful sound, even that appearance of his was splendid.

To Yeo Eun, who couldn’t take her eyes off him, Cha Do Ha, having stopped laughing, whispered softly.

“If you look so cute when drunk… it makes my heart flutter too much.”

The end of his voice was moist with laughter.

“How could I dare to look at you carelessly when you’re so precious?”

It was then.

Buzz, buzz. The vibration of mobile phones sounded simultaneously on the table and in her handbag.

On the screen of Cha Do Ha’s phone placed on the table, the name Kim Jung Joo, section chief, appeared.

And the one calling her was… Cha Hyun.