Desperate for a Catch (Completed Main Story) - Chapter 11
The memory of that day isn’t very long. After all, they barely exchanged words for less than five minutes.
Yet for Woo Yeon, watching over him lasted far longer—it was a day she had devoted a considerable amount of time to him.
To Woo Yeon, the man named Cha Tae Kyung was etched into her mind as a single word:
Back then, she didn’t even know his name. She had simply been stunned into blankness the moment she first saw him, feeling from head to toe with vivid clarity what it truly meant to be overwhelmed by someone.
“Yoon, why’d you come so early today?”
“My class ended early. Give it here, Soi—I’ll take it.”
Seven years ago, twenty-two-year-old Woo Yeon had been selected as an exchange student and was living in the U.S. Thanks to full coverage of both dormitory fees and tuition, she didn’t face major hardships—except for living expenses.
She searched everywhere for any job that could bring in money, and eventually, an opportunity came.
She landed a position as both a babysitter and tutor for the child of a wealthy Chinese-American couple.
The pay was generous, and more importantly, living in such a spacious house while caring for their child felt like an extraordinary stroke of luck for the Woo Yeon of that time.
“Yoon, when are you going back to Korea?”
Everyone there called her Yoon.
Holding Soi, the adorable six-year-old girl, in her arms, she gave a curt reply to her Chinese employer’s question—“In eight months.”
“And what will you do once you’re back in Korea?”
“I’ll have to keep attending school. I’m still a student.”
“And after graduation?”
“I’m not really sure yet. I haven’t thought of anything specific.”
“You know, I’ve been thinking—Yoon, you’d be great in broadcasting.”
“Broadcasting?”
“Yeah! You’re pretty, have a great figure, and you speak well too!”
Woo Yeon blushed.
“But I don’t have any talent.”
“Really?”
While the woman tilted her head in doubt, Woo Yeon was about to take Soi upstairs to the second floor.
“Yoon! It seems Madam left her phone behind. I’ll tell you where she is—you’ll need to go fetch it.”
With that, she gently pressed the mistress’s phone into Woo Yeon’s hand.
She assumed it was just a simple errand.
She already knew that the mistress sometimes attended social parties in New York, and had often heard stories of her drinking heavily until dawn, returning home utterly wasted and barely able to stand.
Though the mistress tried to hide it, everyone employed in that household knew she’d originally been just an ordinary restaurant worker.
She’d married into the wealthy family after becoming pregnant with Soi, and ever since, had lived luxuriously, indulging in every extravagance and pleasure imaginable.
Everyone gossiped about the mistress’s vanity, but Woo Yeon couldn’t care less.
After all, those who judged her for marrying rich and transforming her life—given the same chance—would’ve acted exactly the same way.
“Please show your invitation.”
“Excuse me?”
“You can’t enter without an invitation.”
At the entrance to the 49th floor, Woo Yeon was stopped by a burly man who looked like a security guard.
She calmly explained the mistress’s name and the situation, and he told her to wait a moment.
And then, at that very instant—
He appeared, as if by magic.
A towering figure well over 190 cm, impeccably styled pompadour hair, an expensive suit, and a face radiating raw masculinity.
He clearly came from a chaebol family—his entire presence, from head to toe, exuded not just nobility but outright arrogance.
Even Woo Yeon, who never backed down in front of strangers, found herself momentarily breathless without even realizing it.
It felt as if the air around him shifted subtly and every color in the surroundings blurred into obscurity.
The moment their eyes met, his brow furrowed slightly.
His gaze seemed to demand, “Why are you staring at me like that?”—yet she couldn’t bring herself to say anything.
She quickly turned her head toward the event hall to avoid his eyes, and fortunately, the security guard soon returned and ushered her inside.
“Oh…!”
She kept gasping inwardly.
The world created atop that soaring building instantly mesmerized Woo Yeon.
It was a landscape of unfamiliar things and people she’d never experienced in her life.
Elegant piano melodies, dazzling chandeliers, and people dressed in clothes that shimmered like jewels.
Each of them sipped champagne with sophisticated expressions.
Just as she swallowed, her throat clicking soundlessly, she spotted the mistress among the crowd.
Though the mistress had a flamboyant personality, she actually hated it intensely when others approached her in an equally boisterous manner.
Woo Yeon was carefully stepping closer to avoid making her uncomfortable—when suddenly, she noticed him standing not far from the mistress.
Eyes like dawn, beautifully shaped lips.
While everyone else wore cheerful, excited expressions, only he looked inexplicably lonely.
Woo Yeon enjoyed looking at him.
Standing by the window, he had already taken hold of a champagne glass and slowly brought it to his lips.
As if she’d completely forgotten her task, Woo Yeon couldn’t take her eyes off Tae Kyung for a long while.
Eventually, the mistress spotted her first and called out loudly:
“Yoon! What are you doing over there?! Did you bring my phone?”
Startled, Woo Yeon dashed toward her—only to be bombarded immediately by the mistress’s furious scolding.
It was mostly in Chinese. Whenever angry, the mistress often peppered her speech with Chinese—and most of it was swearing.
The mistress had no idea Woo Yeon was fluent in Chinese and exceptionally gifted with languages.
Woo Yeon had kept smiling until that very moment—when the mistress crumpled a wad of cash and tossed it into her hand.
“Take it. It’s for running the errand.”
“……”
“What? Is it not enough?”
“No, no.”
The humiliation she felt the moment money was thrust into her hand in exchange for delivering a phone was an indescribably fragile kind of shame.
And to make it infinitely worse, at that exact moment, Tae Kyung’s gaze from across the room landed right on her.
He was a man she would never have encountered had she not come here—someone she believed she’d never see again in her entire life.
Yet on that day, under Tae Kyung’s gaze inside that event hall, Woo Yeon felt herself shrinking smaller and smaller.
For the first time, she envied the mistress.
“Then I’ll take my leave now.”
“Alright. I’ll be late tonight—just explain it well to him.”
“Yes.”
She stuffed the crumpled bills into her pocket and turned to leave. She was still anxious about whether his eyes were still on her, though she knew it wouldn’t change anything.
Though there was nothing physically weighing her down, each of her steps felt like those of a girl punished to walk with sandbags tied to her legs.
Keeping her eyes fixed on the floor, she was abruptly stopped by Tae Kyung calling out to her in fluent English:
“Excuse me.”
She sucked in a sharp breath but couldn’t exhale, holding it in until she thought her face might burst—then finally summoned her courage.
When she lifted her head to meet his eyes again, a cryptic smile hung coolly on his lips like a demon’s temptation.
“……”
“Could you take care of this for me?”
What Tae Kyung offered her was an empty champagne glass. For a moment, Woo Yeon didn’t know what expression to make—and her face instantly flushed red.
His assumption that she was staff, combined with his flawlessly arrogant tone as he handed her the glass, utterly crushed her pride.
She wanted to deny it, but the words stuck in her throat and refused to come out.
The world seemed to freeze in place the moment Tae Kyung spoke again to her, still standing there dazed and motionless:
“Want to come upstairs with me?”
At those words, Woo Yeon immediately dropped the champagne glass to the floor and fled from the place as if escaping.
Even years later, the meaning of that offer remained ambiguous.
Only much later did she learn that a luxury hotel occupied the floor directly above the event space—and an even higher floor housed New York’s most famous spot for watching the sunset.
But it didn’t matter.
Convinced she’d never see him again, Woo Yeon came to loathe and resent that day’s Cha Tae Kyung—and worked ferociously hard because of it.
So this time, I won’t let you sway me like you did back then.
Pushing aside those old memories, Woo Yeon murmured to Tae Kyung:
“You haven’t changed at all, President—then or now.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“You always look like a dog in heat—just itching to play with me.”
At Woo Yeon’s unrelenting jab, Tae Kyung finally burst out laughing.
In the eyes of that fragile girl who’d once fled, blushing and flustered, he saw the exact same thing—then and now.
Twisted desire.
Perhaps she’s just like me.
Tae Kyung liked Woo Yeon’s eyes. Maybe it was those eyes—reminiscent of the sunset—that had drawn him to Yoon Woo Yeon from the very beginning.
“I knew from the start you weren’t staff.”
“…What?”
“Just as Yoon Woo Yeon kept glancing at me, I was watching you too.”
“……”
“Back then, you clearly had expectation in your eyes—you wanted me to say something, anything.”
Woo Yeon gave a sharp laugh.
“You got it backwards. It was the opposite.”
“You wanted to avoid me?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“It made me feel sick. It was like seeing face-to-face the new world that people who abandoned the one I knew had entered—and realizing I’d never belong there, no matter what I did. And in that world, you looked the most powerful of all.”
“……”
“Every detail of your face and expression from that night—I remember it all perfectly. It only made me feel even more pathetic.”
“How flattering.”
With a thin, mocking smile that bordered on derision, Tae Kyung’s gaze lingered on the corner of her lips.
He added,
“I just wanted to share a very ordinary, clichéd kind of story—something that could happen between a man and a woman—while watching the sunset.”
“……”
“But even then, Yoon Woo Yeon rejected me. You made me seem like some horny mutt and ran off so smoothly.”
Woo Yeon covered her face and laughed. It was all in the past now, but back then, those words had genuinely wounded her.
As if that even mattered anymore.
Lowering her hand and erasing her smile, Woo Yeon spoke.
“You don’t actually think I believed that, do you?”
“Believe it or not—it’s up to you.”
By now, she’d completely wiped the amusement from her lips and laid bare the truth of how she’d truly felt that day.
It felt ridiculous to be confessing this to Cha Tae Kyung of all people—but just as he’d said, whether he believed her or not was irrelevant.
Life’s weight is carried according to one’s own sense of it; others’ judgments are utterly useless.
“I guess I was already materialistic at just twenty-two. I’ve always been greedy—but back then, I couldn’t have anything I wanted, and that desperation nearly drove me mad.”
“And now? Aren’t you holding onto plenty these days?”
“No. Even now, I’m not that different from back then. I still desire so much, President.”
Seemingly pleased with her answer, he laughed aloud.
Before the echo of his laughter could even fade, Woo Yeon dropped him off in front of the Wedding Tower.
In that world, and in this one, Cha Tae Kyung still looks the strongest of all.
And so, once again, bitterness surged—and irritation flared up inside her.
Male lead first thought she played hard to get, only to realize she
really disliked him
Short intro:
What she can’t stand the most is the streets full of effeminate men, especially that so-called top beauty whom she avoids at all costs.
Shen Yaoxing looks at Jiang Mingyue, who keeps approaching her with coy shyness.
Shen Yaoxing: Bro, don’t be like this, I’m really about to throw up!
She fears nothing in heaven or earth, except for him getting close to her.
*
At first he thought she was just using the trick of feigning indifference to attract his attention. Later, he learned that she truly despised him.
This dealt a heavy blow to Jiang Mingyue, and he vowed to make her, like everyone else, fall at his feet in worship!
***
Synopsis:
Before transmigrating, Shen Yaoxing only wanted to find a reliable man to spend her life with. Who knew that after transmigrating, she would become a reliable woman herself…
A forced misandrist, highly skilled, and reliable female lead
vs.
An initially aloof and arrogant, later morbid, obsessed male lead
_____
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So she is missing him so hoping what happens next!