Seo Woo returned home with a pale face and rushed into the bathroom. She then grabbed the toilet and threw up everything inside her stomach. Of course, there was nothing coming up except gastric juice mixed with bitter liquid. She hadn’t eaten anything since yesterday, so there was nothing to throw up.

Nevertheless, she held onto the toilet and dry heaved for a long time like that. She even put her fingers in her mouth, wanting to vomit out the dirty feelings inside her. Only after she was exhausted to the point of not being able to throw up anymore did she stop dry heaving.

She rinsed her mouth and looked in the mirror. She saw an unfamiliar woman looking at herself with a devastated face. It was a ruined appearance to the point where she questioned if this was really her face.

Clearly, up until going to the wedding hall, she was the glamorous top star Park Seo Woo.

She couldn’t forget the shocked face of the pure white bride looking up at her. The woman had the complete opposite atmosphere from her glamorous self. Yet that strange atmosphere that couldn’t take eyes off her was charming enough to be an actress.

And the moment she saw the bride, she realized. The reason Woo Jin had thoroughly hidden that woman until now wasn’t because he was ashamed of her, but to protect her.

So that no one could touch her, very thoroughly.

Seo Woo knew better than anyone what that meant. That’s why she felt suffocated and her insides twisted. The pain that started the moment she saw the woman scratched her stomach lining and squeezed her thorax.

“Huk!”

Surprised by the stabbing pain, Seo Woo quickly reached out and took out the medicine bottle in the bathroom drawer. It was a stomach medicine prescribed when she was in the US.

The moment she opened that medicine bottle with trembling hands, she collapsed on the spot from the constricting pain in her stomach again.

Seo Woo, who hit her head on the cold tile floor, desperately picked up two pills from the spilled bottle and swallowed them. Tears came out as she swallowed the medicine without water.

She resented Woo Jin.

She thought they loved each other ardently, but he said no.

However, Seo Woo didn’t believe those words. Because somehow, Woo Jin had protected her from the women of the Jang Won family, and he would continue to do so in the future. Seo Woo thought that was love. Even if she couldn’t be his bride, she had no doubt in believing that at least she could be his love.

But the moment she saw Woo Jin’s bride today, Seo Woo felt her clear wish fading hazily.

It felt like everything was being diluted.

What should she do now?

In her scattering consciousness, a voice she missed so much penetrated her ears.

– Park Seo Woo, take everything. Even if oppa can’t, I’ll make it possible for you. I’ll… do everything for you.

With the voice of the deceased Seo Jin last, Seo Woo let go of the string of consciousness.

* * *

It was truly a long wedding ceremony. The wedding, divided into 3 parts, finally ended after Tae Eun wore the third dress and greeted the guests one by one, making eye contact.

It wasn’t that they invited many people, but greeting the guests one by one wasn’t an easy task. Moreover, even though she tried to pull herself together from her shaking heart, she kept getting impatient thinking that Seo Woo might be watching from somewhere. Fortunately, she didn’t see Park Seo Woo after that.

It was a wedding with mixed feelings. Despite acknowledging to herself that the outcome wouldn’t have changed even if she had known about Park Seo Woo’s existence before deciding to push ahead with this marriage, she felt like dregs had settled in a corner of her heart.

Even in the car moving to the hotel for the wedding night, Tae Eun looked up at the sky, which was starting to get dark, recalling the unusually good weather of the day.

Today, when she should have been the sole protagonist. Furthermore, the world called her the Cinderella of the century. And Tae Eun also thought of herself that way. The man next to her was the best lottery in her life, enough to compensate for the past misfortunes all at once. At least until she saw the dazzlingly glamorous Park Seo Woo in person today.

Does he know? That Park Seo Woo came and went?

He probably doesn’t. Tae Eun wasn’t foolish enough to not notice that the uninvited Park Seo Woo intentionally revealed herself only in front of her.

– Please take good care of… my man.

A clear warning.

Her stomach ached at Park Seo Woo’s boldness in calling the man who had now become her husband ‘my man’. It felt like her stomach was being scratched mercilessly by something sharp.

Tae Eun closed her eyes to forget that pain. Because if she can’t control her heart here, everything can fall apart.

“Are you very tired? I understand. Lean on me and take a nap while we go to the hotel. I’ll wake you up when we arrive.”

Woo Jin, who mistook her behavior as a series of drowsiness from fatigue, willingly offered his shoulder for her to lean her head on.

It was devastating. On top of not being able to confront him about Park Seo Woo’s existence, she couldn’t even refuse his kindness.

But what’s the point of confronting him? She directly confirmed the relationship between the two through Park Seo Woo’s mouth. There was no need to receive a confirming kill shot through Woo Jin’s mouth.

So she decided to pretend she didn’t know. Because pretending not to know anything and enduring seemed a little better than being a miserable woman who knows but endures everything.

That’s how Tae Eun chose to become a fool rather than a miserable woman.

It was her last pride.

* * *

The car stopped in front of the hotel. This place was a hotel operated by Young Ja and was a luxury hotel ranked among the top in the country.

After getting out of the car, she followed Woo Jin and got on the elevator. In the elevator going up to the suite room, it was just the two of them. Even though only the two of them were in this spacious elevator, the air density strangely felt higher.

Looking up at him, Tae Eun belatedly realized the reason. Because dark desire was revealed in his eyes looking down at her.

“Why? Is there something on my face…”

Smack.

As she was speaking, he lowered his head and gave her a brief kiss. It wasn’t a deep and lewd kiss, but the sound was crisp enough to ring in her ears. No, maybe she alone thought the sound was crisp.

Smack.

The next kiss clearly didn’t make a sound, but it felt like an illusion as if she heard it because their lips stuck together and parted so crisply. Thanks to that, the feeling was so vivid that she mistook it for a sound.

He didn’t stop here. He lowers his head once more. Tae Eun turned her head, pushing his chest in case the elevator opened, but it was useless. His lips, which caught up with that distance in an instant, eventually swallowed hers.

“Don’t do this… mmph!”

This time, as if annoyed that she turned her head, he held her lips a little longer and wouldn’t let go. In an instant, her lips were chewed and the tender flesh was sucked in.

Everything was complicated. She resented him, but she couldn’t refuse. She should hate him as she pleases, but her body wouldn’t listen.

Every time he pulled and bit her lips, the pulse below her neck soared rapidly, her hands and feet curled up, and heat gathered in her lower abdomen. Moreover, the tension from the elevator door that could open at any time added to it, and the air around them was literally on the verge of exploding.

In the end, unable to push him away, she put her hands on his chest and grabbed his collar, and Woo Jin pulled that hand to place it around his neck.

“No one’s coming.”

“…”

“And so what if they see? Let them see. We’re a couple now.”

As if he sensed her being nervous about being caught by someone, he took his lips off for a moment and whispered.

It’s not wrong.

They are now a married couple. A real couple who perfectly completed their wedding vows in front of all people. And a couple is allowed to do more than just kissing. Even if the elevator door opens and someone sees, what does it matter?

As he clashed his lips again, this time her scattered mind turned white. In the end, to support her limp body, Tae Eun had to forcefully put strength into her arms around his neck. As if such a series of actions poured oil on his desire that was already starting to burn, he delved into her more boldly.

As if not to miss a single thing, he found and thoroughly swept through even the hesitating breaths.

Tae Eun was always surprised by the intensity of his passion, as Woo Jin was usually kind but not warm.

Like that, the air density in the elevator gradually increased, and the pressure that made it impossible to breathe pressed down on her. No, to be more precise, it was the pressure from his body touching her.

The moment he tilted his head to penetrate deeper into her, the elevator door opened. However, once he went in deeply, he couldn’t easily cool down that heat. Thanks to that, just as the elevator door was about to close, he barely took his lips off and reached out his hand through the gap of the closing elevator door.

The elevator door opens again.

“Shall we get off?”

Tae Eun hurriedly got off the elevator, stealing her lips that were glistening from the traces he left. Fortunately, there was no one in the hallway. That’s because the suite room located on the top floor of the hotel only operated a single room. Only Tae Eun, who didn’t know that fact, had her heart in her mouth the whole time riding the elevator.

The door opened and the suite room was finally revealed.

However, Tae Eun had no leisure to look around the suite room she was entering for the first time in her life. Because a huge shadow that soon pounced on her instantly tied her up.

Seeing him being too impatient, Tae Eun finally realized. The composure this man had shown so far was not actually composure, but patience.

However, Tae Eun didn’t want to spend her first night this way. Because even if she was just a nominal wife, she intended to keep this marriage to the best of her ability.

“Wait, just a moment.”

“…”

“Let’s wash up first. Wash up.”

She barely pushed away his heated body. In his slightly distanced face, deep desire that couldn’t be seen until now was wavering.

Only then did Woo Jin open his mouth, evening out his scattered breath.

“Wash up? Yeah… we should, wash up.”

The sound of him chewing on small curses was heard as he tried to suppress his heightened excitement a little. It was a rough curse with double consonants, but even that sounded sexy when he spit it out, heated up.

But he soon looks down at her with her smudged makeup and asks.

“Together?”

“No. Separately.”

As if it was natural, Tae Eun spoke with force and turned her gaze to find the bathroom. Since this suite room is so big, there must be more than one bathroom, and her eyes showed a strong will to go in separately. Then she found a door and quickly disappeared there.

Looking at the door where Tae Eun disappeared, Woo Jin finally burst into a small laugh.

He was also a person who was so obsessed with cleanliness that others might suspect he had a cleanliness disorder. But the moment he gave her a brief kiss in the elevator, everything just blacked out. The desire he had been trying hard to hold back exploded and overwhelmed him to an uncontrollable level.

Damn, he had never lost his reason to this extent in front of a woman. It felt like he had become a beast with only instincts left.

How can this be?

Now, a tingling pain was starting to be felt from his heated body. It seemed he was thoroughly crazy about that woman.