The Dog Named Bibi

"The young mistress made that name a taboo—"

"I take back my question."

"...It was Bibi."

Sojin's eyes wavered violently. She forced the corners of her mouth upward.

Chairman Lee studied her with concern.

"What's the matter, Sojin? Hmm?"

"Nothing. I just suddenly couldn't remember and got curious. It's nothing."

The Chairman let out a bewildered laugh.

"Ho ho. She's my own daughter, and I still can't get a read on her."

"Honey, Sojin seems very tired, so..."

Madam Jeong's voice faded somewhere beyond her ears. Sojin's hands were trembling.

She'd hoped she was wrong. Hoped and hoped. But every clue pointed to one single answer.

Bibi, the dog Lee Sera had raised.

The people who called Sojin "young mistress."

And Chairman Lee and Madam Jeong.

Dohyun, the male lead.

Sojin clasped her shaking hands together.

...This is a dream. It has to be a dream!

It seemed she had become Sera, the fiancée.

Secretary Han guided Sojin to a certain room—no doubt the one "Sera the fiancée" normally used.

When the door opened, white light spilled out.

The walls, a beautiful blend of ivory and white, were trimmed with delicate platinum molding. A small chandelier glittered against the ceiling like starlight.

The room was, quite literally, shimmering white.

Sojin flopped onto the bed and stared blankly up at the chandelier.

"The owner of this room is a demon, but the room itself looks like it belongs to an angel."

Even applying every ounce of common sense she had, the idea of stepping inside a drama refused to make sense to her. It felt as though her brain was actively rejecting the reality of it.

Then, abruptly, Sojin shot upright.

Come to think of it—what exactly had the fiancée gotten up to in the drama?

"She torments the female lead, pressures the male lead into marriage, obsesses over him. She's the final villain, and..."

And also...

"...In the end, she dies."

Sojin let out a long, heavy sigh.

The fiancée's destiny was death.

Worse, she didn't even die trying to kill the female lead—she died by her own blunder. A death so pathetically anticlimactic it almost hurt to remember.

That was very likely the ending waiting for Sojin.

"Ha..."

She washed her dry face again and again, then kicked off the covers and rose to her feet.

She couldn't just sit back and wait to die.

Whether she changed the ending or got herself written out of it entirely, she had to try something.

Sitting down at the white desk, Sojin opened her notebook and picked up a pen.

Shh! At Work had been a famous short-form romance drama—one that ranked high enough to prove it.

The spine of the original story began with a single project.

The Replay Project.

Its goal: for Replay, the OTT platform run by Kangseong Group, to create a hit IP powerful enough to utterly crush its rival, the streaming service Honest.

At the heart of that project, naturally, stood the male lead—Kang Dohyun.

Two more figures mattered just as much.

Son Yuna, Team Leader of Planning Team 1, who supported him. A woman who led her team on merit alone, resolved every crisis that arose, and ultimately won people's hearts—the heroine of this drama.

And then the other one: the character who clung to Dohyun in the name of love and glared at Yuna like a thorn in her eye.

The sort of character whose absence would leave any story unbearably dull.

The villainess, Lee Sera.

That was my role.

Sojin drew in a deep breath.

I have to change it.

In this drama, Lee Sera dies in the end.

And as if carrying a doomed fate weren't horrifying enough, Sera's role was a dead ringer for Son Yeji—the person Sojin had despised most in the world.

An incompetent parachute hire.

A leech who feasted on other people's accomplishments, that rotten piece of—

As if that weren't enough?

However much she hated it, she would have to cling to someone. However much it sickened her, she would have to obsess.

She would be forced to say words she didn't want to say, just like before.

Sojin recalled what she'd seen in the restaurant.

The lines of dialogue that had popped up like a game's system window.

"I couldn't move my body while delivering a line... except my arms. Barely a little."

She had clearly been able to cover her own mouth, after all.

Sojin wrote down Rule #1 in her notebook.

'Dialogue must be delivered. Mandatory. But arms and hands can still move.'

Sojin tapped her lips lightly with the end of her pen.

If she wanted to change the original story, where should she start?

'The fiancée began her slow walk into hell the moment she followed the male lead into his company.'

Desperate to catch Dohyun's eye, the fiancée had parachuted into the company where he worked.

And not just any position—a team leader, one of the higher ranks.

"So the woman who got burned by a parachute hire becomes a parachute hire herself."

So this was what they meant by life's little ironies. Sojin heaved another deep sigh.

How could she escape this hell?

Just as she was turning the problem over in her mind, a good idea flashed through her head.

A knowing smile spread across her face.

"I just never walk into hell in the first place. Problem solved."

"Daddy, I don't want to go to the company anymore."

"What?"

"I'm going to live as a layabout. I don't feel like working."

She gave him the full bratty-layabout treatment, but it did no good. Chairman Lee began his campaign of persuasion.

"You pestered me for a solid week, saying you wanted to work with Director Kang. What's got into you all of a sudden?"

"I don't like him anymore."

The Chairman's eyes went wide. His daughter had always been capricious, but he hadn't expected it this time, of all times.

"Just like that? Goodness, what a shock. Feels like only yesterday you were declaring, with absolute confidence, that you'd win him over."

Chairman Lee stroked his chin and studied Sojin.

No matter how he looked at it, his daughter had been strange lately. She'd always been prone to outrageous pranks, but this time he was certain something had genuinely shifted inside her.

'Every fiber of me wants to give her whatever she asks for. But not this time.'

This involved that Kangseong Group.

He had gone to enormous lengths—slipping a lavish bribe to the president of Kangseong Media—to parachute his daughter into the company.

And if she suddenly announced she wasn't going after all, his credibility would be in tatters.

Worse still, word of her arrival had almost certainly already reached Chairman Kang's ears.

'Fortunately, Kangseong Media is a smaller subsidiary, so the Chairman seems to be letting it slide—but I can't go handing him a fresh excuse to pounce on.'

Having finished sorting out his thoughts, Chairman Lee turned to Sojin with a smile.

"Daughter, you know how much your father loves you, don't you?"

"I... suppose?"

Sojin fudged a vague answer with an awkward smile.

The moment he started talking about love, he was obviously going to grant her request.

But Chairman Lee only gazed at her with a meaningful smile, and a flicker of unease shot through Sojin's mind.

"Then surely my daughter loves her father in return?"

"...Of course."

"Then report to the company as scheduled."

"What?!"

Sojin forced a smile and pleaded with him.

One more round of whining and he'd cave. He was a hopelessly devoted daughter-fool, after all.

"I'm telling you, I don't want to go to work?"

"I cannot grant that request. Your father has circumstances of his own, you see."

Yet Chairman Lee kept issuing refusals that defied every one of her expectations.

Sojin felt like grabbing the man by his sleeve and shaking him.

She didn't need anything else from him—just this one thing. Why couldn't he just say yes!

"Please, just this once. I'll do whatever you say next time."

"Do you have any idea how many times I've heard that line? Not this time. Final. You made a promise about working at that company, and you will keep it."

Sojin failed to budge the impregnable fortress that was Chairman Lee and trudged back to her room.

The man she'd assumed would nod along automatically had turned her down with staggering firmness.

'Unbelievable. In the drama, this father never, EVER disobeys his daughter!'

Could it be that he instinctively blocks anything that would defy the original plot?

Sojin clutched her head in her hands.

One thing was certain: parachuting into that company was now set in stone.

Which meant she would have to walk straight into hell with her eyes wide open...

"What am I supposed to do?"

At seven in the morning, Dohyun's phone rang.

Still lying in bed, he opened his eyes slowly and picked up the phone. The screen read Secretary An.

"...What is it?"