His face, no longer smiling, was terribly calm.

Seo Jun stared at one spot.

Until the maid who cleared the table set up fruits and cheese to pair with the wine and withdrew. At Eom So Yeon, the only woman who made his heart race wildly in any sense, infuriatingly annoying yet impossible to hate.

Seo Jun had pictured this situation countless times in his mind.

You and me.

This secluded place where no one could interfere.

Bringing Eom So Yeon to the rarely visited Yangpyeong villa was the result of a meticulous calculation that nothing done here would leak out, and a possessiveness he could no longer endure.

So now it was time to test her feelings.

“You didn’t seem to eat well. Was the food not to your liking?”

The villa, with just the two of them, was so quiet even the sound of swallowing water could be heard clearly, and his low voice was as calm as this night.

“I feel strange.”

“What is it?”

“You keep speaking informally to me.”

“Then you’ll have to keep feeling strange. I’m not in the mood to be formal right now.”

Seo Jun slowly brought the wine glass to his lips, taking a sip of the red liquid before speaking in a moist voice across the wide table.

“This was the wine we first drank together. I suppose you don’t remember?”

Château Lafite Rothschild.

Why wouldn’t she know? It was a night she would never forget, one she would cherish even after death – from the hotel initials elegantly embossed on the gold fork to even his soft occasional breaths.

‘A charming wine with a unique aroma and deep color, the result of cedar and grape juice blending well over many years. But do you know something? You’re the opposite of this wine, Eom So Yeon. Delicate at first impression, but the more I see you, the stronger and more intriguing you become.’

So Yeon remembered exactly what he had said on that snowy night.

But why bring up that night now, after staying silent all this time? With tension rapidly rising to her throat, all she could do was ignore that day.

“I’m not sure. It was a long time ago.”

She answered calmly in an even voice, but her delicate hands gathered under the table were already drenched in cold sweat.

“Then we should have a more in-depth conversation about that day.”

“What… what kind of conversation…?”

Suddenly, So Yeon’s face turned cold.

When she accidentally met Tae Seo Jun on the company rooftop, So Yeon was more choked up than surprised.

Because he remembered and called her name. Because she was so grateful and happy for that. Because of the lonely time she had secretly missed him.

But an even greater fear overshadowed all those emotions. Even though she was certain he couldn’t know about the child’s existence, she couldn’t overcome the anxiety of ‘what if’.

With nervousness several times greater than before, So Yeon’s mouth went dry. After swallowing a few sips of water, she spoke in a somewhat mechanical tone.

“Is there any need to bring up the past?”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because it was fake from the start.”

If there was a moment when her crazy tongue moved on its own, it would be now. Even the speaker herself didn’t expect such words to come out of her mouth.

But it was somewhat true, and since it was already out, So Yeon didn’t bother to correct it.

“Fake?”

That word greatly bothered Seo Jun, who immediately furrowed his thick eyebrows.

“Yes, fake. You and me, everything that happened that night.”

“If that’s what you’re saying, then what we did in bed was fake too?”

“…!”

Her brown eyes, losing their place, wavered. Seo Jun’s direct expression awakened the shame and self-reproach latent within her.

Her gaze, falling downward, hit the smooth surface of the table.

Overwhelmed by intense emotions, she had denied everything. So Yeon knew better that Tae Seo Jun couldn’t be fake.

Above all, she shouldn’t have said such things, if only for the child’s sake. Feeling utterly pathetic, So Yeon bit her lips, her eyes filled with bewilderment.

Perhaps that sharply clawed at Tae Seo Jun’s base nature. His voice, suppressed as he barely maintained his composure, was utterly cold.

“After doing it with me over and over, that one night meant nothing to you, Eom So Yeon? Was it so horrible that you had to erase it? Did you hate me so much that you disappeared without a word!”

So Yeon, who had been staring straight at Seo Jun’s face as he blurted out such explicit words without changing his expression, gripped her skirt tightly and raised her voice.

“I told you I don’t remember anything!”

That’s not it.

The large hands that caressed her like his own flesh, the kind voice that soothed her saying she was pretty and it was okay, the trembling and excitement born from intimate contact, how she loved being in his broad, firm embrace so much that even nonexistent feelings sprouted for a moment.

That she left before he woke up, afraid that those ridiculous desires might grow even more.

Unable to utter that honest confession, So Yeon cast her gaze to the scenery outside the window where dusk had deeply settled.

This quiet place seemed unreachable by anyone unless they deliberately sought out the villa. Did he really bring me here just to eat? If not, then…

No, was it wrong to follow him here so fearlessly in the first place? Now that it’s come to this, should I just…

Tell him everything?

No, no. I can’t do that. What could I do now? Rather than making excuses and explanations, I’d rather bite my tongue.

So Yeon firmly held her wavering heart and quickly hid her slightly trembling lips, lest they be noticed.

But he wasn’t one to miss what she tried to hide.

“You say you don’t remember at all, but why does your face look like that?”

Seo Jun looked at So Yeon with narrowly opened eyes, as if mocking her. Leaning back in his chair with an extremely arrogant posture, as if choking her breath.

“Fine. I remember. But you know too, don’t you? That it was just a transaction, not pure feelings. There can’t be anything real in something that started with lies. Even though I brought it on myself, you held me in place of that woman, didn’t you?”

“In place of?”

“I know that much. Even then you were suffering because you couldn’t forget Yoo Jung Hwa, and even now…”

As she spoke, her mind became more and more of a mess. With impatience to leave this place rising to her chin, So Yeon momentarily paused her words, and Seo Jun abruptly cut in.

“On what grounds? Don’t tell me it’s because I didn’t respond to Gu CEO’s question earlier?”

“…”

Why did she bring that up so pitifully? So Yeon, making mistake after mistake today, reluctantly nodded slightly.

“That wasn’t even worth responding to.”

“You don’t always say meaningful things.”

“Well, most of them are useful…”

“Then was ‘I wonder who it is, they must be anxious’ meaningful too? You were seriously worried about who I might meet before.”

So Yeon, interrupting Seo Jun, suddenly poured out what had become a lump deeply embedded in her chest.

“Ha…”

A hollow laugh escaped through Seo Jun’s teeth.

It was an involuntary chuckle that burst out as the person who claimed not to remember anything from that time recited his words verbatim without missing a single particle.

“See, you can’t speak, can you? Shall I do it for you? With those words, you drew a line and nailed it down for me. You wanted to make it clear that we wouldn’t be more than a one-night stand.”

“Did I seem like that kind of person to you?”

“Yes. Just that kind of person!”

“Ha, really?”

“…Yes!”

So Yeon’s answer came simultaneously as she jumped up from her chair and moved away from the table.

I ruined it.

I made this precious time a mess.

Unable to steady my wavering heart, it ended up like this.

No more thoughts come to mind now. I just want to turn to dust and disappear without a trace, even a second faster. Overwhelmed by confusion and self-loathing, So Yeon ran out of the villa and blindly rushed towards the forest path.

Not knowing if the direction her two legs were moving in might be a dead end.

Her frantically running legs came to a stop.

“Ah, what should I do…”

So Yeon couldn’t help but despair for a moment.

She just realized that she had left her bag containing her wallet and phone in the villa. She thought about going back, but having already come far, So Yeon was truly at a loss, unable to even gauge where that place was.

Where could this be?

The surroundings, without a single light, were not just dark but pitch black. It was fortunate that the nearly full moon illuminated the dark view, but the mountain forest, showing only thickly overgrown bushes and trees, was utterly eerie. The further she went, it felt like the same place was repeating somehow.

But it wasn’t as if someone had pushed her; getting lost in the middle of the forest was something she brought upon herself, wasn’t it? So Yeon walked bravely through the dark undergrowth. Like a life that must be overcome with stubborn self-reliance.

However, there was no path to be found no matter how far she went.

No matter how much she strained her eyes and looked around, all she could see was rough ground covered with grass, dry branches, dirt, and gravel.

As she walked endlessly through such barren land, her skirt kept catching on things, and her feet in high heels stumbled precariously. Finally, as the heel of her right shoe came half off, her faltering calf was sharply scratched by a tree branch.

“Ouch! Sssp, it hurts…”

Looking at her leg, blood quickly showed through the unraveling stocking. But as if wounds were nothing to her now, So Yeon sighed and straightened her bent back with an unbothered expression.

That’s when it happened.

“Eek!”

So Yeon screamed in terror as she stumbled backward and sat down hard on the bare ground.

It was partly due to being startled by the rustling sound close to her ears, but the unclear view buried in darkness had invoked extreme fear.

Instinctively clenching her fists, So Yeon looked around the desolate surroundings. A rodent? A deer? At most it would be something like that, but beads of sweat had already formed on So Yeon’s forehead.

“Come out, tiger! I’m not scared at all! Just try to appear, I’ll bite you all up!”

Bluffing made it a bit more bearable.

Just as she was putting strength back into her legs, which had forgotten how to stand up after falling hard in surprise, it happened.

“Kyaaak!”

So Yeon screamed as if she were about to die when she discovered a large figure right in front of her eyes as she raised her head.

In a split second, she recognized it was a person, but her fist, finding humans scarier than wild beasts, was quite quick and fierce.

Whoosh!

Smack!

But the man’s movement was even quicker.

“I knew you were reckless, but I didn’t know you could sting like a bee.”

Seo Jun, who had snatched So Yeon’s wrist in mid-air and gripped it, grinned. The man’s shining face was even more dazzling with the white moonlight breaking over it.

“Mr… Director?”

As soon as she realized it was Tae Seo Jun who had frightened her, So Yeon had a realization.

That she had desperately missed this unusually radiant face, this baritone voice. That she had been thinking about this man the whole time she walked, making the dark and chilly forest path somewhat less scary.