So, it seems like this man is offering to pay off my debt.
Why?
What are you asking of me in return for paying off such a large amount of money?
Do I have something of that much value to give you?
Eun Jae, feeling a bad premonition, swallowed hard and opened her lips, which she had bitten until they turned red, to ask.
“What do you need, sir?”
“Can you please stop calling me teacher?”
Eun Jae answered, carefully examining the man’s gaze.
“Then what should I call you? Mister?”
At that, his neatly arranged eyebrows sharply furrowed.
“Mister?”
“May I ask you something?”
“If you’re going to ask something pointless, don’t even start.”
“How old are you?”
“Well, that’s pointless.”
Tsk. The man clicked his tongue, his expression suggesting he was quite displeased.
“I’m not old enough to be called mister… at least not by my face. How old are you to keep calling me mister?”
“Twentyseven.”
Unable to find a point to argue, Sun Woo turned his head abruptly and crossed his legs.
“You’re young.”
“So, you’re thirty? Or… thirtyone?”
“Add a bit more.”
Eun Jae’s eyes widened as if she hadn’t expected that.
“Thirtytwo?”
Just by looking at his face, it was believable to say he was in his twenties. Still, because he was a professor, she figured he was at least over thirty.
“Three.”
“Heavens! My gosh. You really are a mister!”
“Only six years difference and I’m a mister?”
Just six years? When I was entering middle school, you were entering university.
She hadn’t expected the man to be sensitive about the topic of age.
Looking back, it really was a pointless question. As the man kept dragging out the conversation, Eun Jae quickly returned the question to its original point.
“So, what do you need, sir? Please tell me quickly. I’m not a person with leisure time.”
“A wife.”
With the man’s words, the space quieted down as if a bucket of cold water had been thrown on it.
Only the soft sound of the air purifier rotating filled the silence.
What did this man just say he needed? Eun Jae wondered if she’d heard wrong. No, she hoped she had.
She blinked rapidly, staring at him, as if asking him to repeat what he’d said.
His calm and deep eyes met hers without wavering.
I heard wrong, right? Eun Jae, tilting her head slightly, asked again.
“What… do you need?”
“I need someone to become my wife.”
As soon as she asked, his response fell from his lips as if he’d been waiting for it.
This time, the words came in so clearly that Eun Jae’s mouth hung open, unable to close.
“I heard you.”
Oh my gosh. I didn’t hear wrong?
Eun Jae, her face reddening as if embarrassed, questioned him.
“Mister, that’s something I can do―”
“No.”
Whether he was upset by the word ‘mister’ in the middle of it all, or interrupting Eun Jae’s words, he gritted his teeth and spoke.
“Enough, if it’s you.”
What’s enough? What on earth is enough?
“No? I don’t want to ruin my life like that?”
As Eun Jae squinted her eyes and retorted, Sun Woo, his eyebrows furrowed, shot back as if he was incredibly displeased.
“Is marrying me equivalent to ruining your life?”
Isn’t that obvious?
I’ve only seen you twice, no, three times, and you expect me to suddenly marry you, not knowing what kind of person you are?
“Why have you been talking informally since earlier?”
“You’re a mister, aren’t you?”
“No, why are you getting angry again?”
“I’m not angry, okay?”
It was overwhelming. A heat rose in her head. She couldn’t believe he was asking for such a thing.
Eun Jae’s lips, tightly closed in momentary speechlessness, slowly opened.
“Rather, let me clean, do laundry, wash dishes. I can do all those for you. But what do you need? A wife?”
Contrary to her expectations, seeing Eun Jae turn pale, Sun Woo suddenly felt hurt.
No, he did anticipate it.
Even to me it seems absurd, how much more absurd must it be for you.
But this is the first time I’ve been treated like a devotee, so I’m a bit flustered.
Sun Woo, who had been gathering his thoughts, lifted one corner of his mouth.
“You seem to be a bit confused, I’m not doing this because I’m crazy about Ji Eun Jae.”
The only person I can connect with is you.
Because I don’t have any other option right now.
Better than waiting for someone like you to show up without any hope while on blind dates.
“It’s easy, a way to return a favor. I didn’t unilaterally ask for it, let’s exchange what we need.”
“No, I said I’d repay the favor, did I say I’d get married?”
“What you’re thinking of as marriage is different.”
Sun Woo slid the document that had been in front of him towards Eun Jae.
“Think of it as a sort of business, you’ll understand quicker.”
Eun Jae looked down at the paper that had been pushed towards her. It was a marriage contract.
“A business of exchanging what we need.”
Is this what he meant when he said there was something he needed to prepare?
A marriage contract of all things, in my life, honestly.
This man, he’s crazier than I thought, isn’t he?
Eun Jae looked up at the man with an unhappy face. But the man continued to speak without changing his expression.
“One year. If things get sorted out quickly, I can let you go even sooner.”
The man continued to lay out a proposal that might pique Eun Jae’s interest.
The down payment would be to clear the debt, and the remaining amount would be given as alimony in the form of a café, one year after the end of the married life.
“The S Coffee that we went to last time, I know the owner indirectly. Your future fatherinlaw is a patient at our hospital.”
From the moment you stamp this contract, there will be no more running from loan sharks, nor will your mother be kicked out of the hospital.
“Furthermore, Ms. Ji Eun Jae’s mother will have access to the best medical services. Isn’t this the best condition?”
Truthfully, she felt she could breathe if only she wasn’t being chased by loan sharks. Adding her mother’s situation to that, her heart kept swaying like a lamp in the wind.
“One more thing. We’ll file for an annulment. It’ll be as if nothing ever happened, and we’ll go back to the beginning. After that, we can live as if it never happened.”
Live as if it never happened…
Eun Jae quietly mulled over the man’s final words. From start to finish, there was no toxic clause. The title was the problem.
“Ms. Ji Eun Jae, give me one year of your life.”
“……”
“Give it to me.”
Everything was thoroughly centered around Eun Jae.
“I’m willing to pay more than 200 million. Because to me, Ms. Ji Eun Jae is worth that much.”
Is my insignificant, aimlessly flowing time worth that much to you?
“I will do my best to ensure that you do not regret this choice.”
Clearly, the man was the one asking for a favor, and he was waiting for my answer.
“Why are you doing all this?”
“If we get married, Yeonlim will become mine. I guess I can’t even do this much.”
“Ah.”
“That hospital is everything to me, no different from my whole life.”
In other words, I was just a means to acquire that hospital.
Eun Jae swallowed the bitter laugh that was rising.
“I understand, it’s a difficult decision.”
He lifted the cup of water placed in front of him and drained it in one breath.
“The men we ran into in front of the restroom the other day, they looked incredibly dangerous.”
I know. That it would become genuinely dangerous if I got caught the next time. That I don’t know what they would do or what I would suffer.
But don’t pretend to worry about me.
It’s all to get what you need, isn’t it?
Sun Woo, who had been silently observing Eun Jae chewing on her lips without being able to answer, exhaled shortly.
“I am here today to ask for Ms. Ji Eun Jae’s opinion. I’m not saying we must do this right now.”
So don’t just think about refusing outright,
“I’ll accommodate whatever you want.”
Think about it more deeply.
“Because this marriage is that desperate to me.”
Let’s exchange what’s desperate to each of us.
The gaze of the man facing her looked utterly desperate.
Male lead reborn without memories — but he still falls for her.
The person he finds displeasing in this life turns out to be his cherished wife-master in previous life…
Xie Zhi and Fang Xianxing who had known each other for less than three days through a blind date sat in the same car in front of the civil affairs bureau. They had a disagreement and failed to get married.
Xie Zhi immediately took out his phone, slid through his contacts, and randomly selected the next marriage candidate.
The woman snatched his phone and hung up. Looking at his phone wallpaper, she awkwardly changed the subject: “An ancient painting, eh? It looks pretty good, it’s just that the person in the painting looks a bit like me.”
When he heard this, he sarcastically mocked her for being so delusional, completely unaware that, the person in front of him was the reincarnation of Wen Ru, the famous prime minister of Yuan Shun whom he most admired…
The female CEO who doesn’t want to get married with a divorce agreement in hand × The male archaeological researcher who will only get married if he’s sure he can get divorced
