A Price to Pay
Prosecutor Han Beom-su was not someone Grandfather could entirely dislike. The old man had always preferred people he could mold to his own tastes.
Still, the man had turned out far worse than anyone had expected.
Seo-won already knew that Beom-su would sell his own children for the sake of his connections. First he had forced a career on his son against the boy’s will; now he was forcing a marriage. And worse—he seemed violent on top of everything else.
“Han Yuju!”
The memory of Beom-su shouting down his own daughter in front of so many witnesses remained vivid. So did the way Yuju had flinched and hidden behind Seo-won, every muscle drawn tight with fear.
He had wanted news of the marriage to spread as quickly as possible. That was why he had deliberately leaked it first to the man who would welcome it most. Beom-su would become the perfect messenger and scatter the story everywhere himself. That had been the calculation.
What Seo-won had witnessed that day had been violence in everything but the actual blows. He could not even swear that Beom-su never raised his hand inside the house. The same Yuju who usually found Seo-won so intimidating had clung to him then, desperate for any escape. She had been so terrified she would have fled to anyone—anyone at all—as long as it got her away from her father.
The reaction had startled him and yet felt strangely familiar, as if he had seen that same look somewhere before.
“If you don’t want to do it, why not just refuse?”
He had tossed the remark lightly at Tae-ju, who was wasting away under the forced engagement. Under ordinary circumstances he would never have interfered in another family’s business, no matter how close the friendship. But sometimes his old friend frustrated him. If the marriage was this unbearable, Tae-ju could simply overturn the whole arrangement. He was not a toddler; he held a perfectly respectable job. At the office he seemed capable enough, yet in front of his father he always shrank into something smaller.
Because even that job was never his choice to begin with.
Seo-won had watched them for years and grown complacent, thinking he understood the household completely. Now he realized he had only ever known half the truth.
He finally understood why the siblings clung to each other so tightly. When home itself was the villain, you had no choice but to close ranks.
“Haa…”
The conclusion brought another wave of headache. He had just grasped exactly what he had done to his friend’s precious little sister.
He had thought of her as a simple housemate, a name that happened to share his family register. He could no longer treat her that casually.
“The Chairman…”
Seo-won’s thoughts stretched long. Secretary Lee, who had been watching him carefully, pulled him back to the present.
The conversation had wandered, but the real issue was not that his relationship with his friend’s sister had grown more complicated than planned.
“He’ll catch the scent soon enough. Especially if this is connected to ‘that matter.’ Using a sudden marriage as a smokescreen will only work for so long.”
At the words “that matter,” the conflict on Seo-won’s face cooled into something hard. Secretary Lee looked more grim than the man at the center of the storm.
“You could lose everything. One wrong step and you might end up planting a knife in the Executive Director’s own back.”
Not “one wrong step.” The moment Grandfather learned the truth, he would attack his own grandson without hesitation. That was precisely why Seo-won had staged this little rebellion in secret.
He had never expected to marry for love. He had always known that when the time came he would simply be matched with whoever Grandfather chose. Until now he had never once defied an order. There was a reason he had finally broken the pattern.
“There are so many terrible people in this world.”
And the worst of them all was probably his own grandfather.
Seo-won left the rest unspoken and stared into empty air. A storm of conflicting emotions crossed his eyes.
The road ahead looked like nothing but mountains upon mountains.
The soft chime of the security system deactivating stopped Seo-won’s hand mid-page. He checked the CCTV feed linked to the front entrance. A familiar figure filled the screen—the same person who, as of yesterday, had become the most difficult presence in his entire world.
He had come home early for once. After the disaster of the previous night he needed to clean up the mess, and that meant facing the person at the center of it. He had deliberately arrived before Yuju.
Part of him had half expected to find her already gone, bags packed and fled. Last night she had been either drunk or possessed; once her head cleared she would be confused and, more dangerously, terrified of him.
Yet she had not run. After sending every staff member home early, Seo-won walked to the front door and waited, every sense sharpened toward the woman about to step into his territory.
“Eugh!”
Given the pattern of the last few days, Yuju had surely assumed he would come home late again. She opened the door carefully—only to find him standing right there. She startled so hard she nearly jumped out of her skin.
She stared at Seo-won, who was leaning casually against the entrance wall, as if he were the reaper himself. From his clothes it was obvious he had been waiting for her the entire time since he got home. That only made her more tense.
She could feel how thoroughly he had prepared for this. He clearly had things he wanted to say. There would be a great deal to discuss about last night. The marks still lingering on her body like scars had kept him in her thoughts all day.
Her mind understood, yet her eyes still fled his. The intensity of his gaze burned. The man who had always been difficult to face had become even more so.
“W-why… why are you standing at the door instead of inside…?”
“Why do you think?”
She had mustered the courage to speak, only for his low, rough reply to drive her straight back into silence. The locked-down baritone sounded almost angry.
Seo-won closed the distance until he stood right in front of the woman trembling like a candle flame in the wind. When she tried to bolt, he calculated her range of motion in an instant and caught her wrist.
The casual contact made her freeze. It was only skin against skin, yet the memory of last night flared so hot that the touch itself felt scalding.
“Because a certain someone might try to run?”
Of course.
He had blocked the exit on purpose. Yuju looked up at him with an expression that said she might cry at any second. Just meeting his eyes sent heat racing through her entire body.
The outrageous things she had done last night flooded back. The way her face blazed now told Seo-won exactly what she was thinking; he huffed a soft laugh.
“Where did all that boldness go—the part where you stripped and threw yourself at me?”
“When did I ever strip and throw myself at you?!”
She had thrown herself at a man who had let his guard down, that much was true. But she had been fully dressed the entire time.
Even now she was busy arguing the fine points, as if the fear from a moment ago had never existed. Seo-won burst out laughing, thoroughly amused.
Yuju stared at him in bewilderment. Whatever his intention—whether he was trying to ease the tension or not—it worked. She no longer looked ready to flee.
Has he always been able to laugh like that?
The marriage fiasco had already shown her sides of Choi Seo-won that did not match his public image. Still, she was almost certain she had never seen him smile this brightly before.
She found herself unable to look away from that smiling face, half-captivated. Then, in the blink of an eye, he wiped the expression clean.
“You peeped while I was showering.”
“Peeped…?”
“Decided to take care of a little sexual frustration, so you jumped a man too off-guard to resist and forced a kiss on him.”
“……”
“And then you stole the virginity of your own brother’s best friend.”
“Excuse me? Virginity?”
“You’ll have to pay for it.”
In the end the whole thing had only been possible because Seo-won himself had accepted it. Even so, he piled every scrap of blame onto her, and Yuju could not open her mouth to protest. She knew perfectly well how much she had been at fault.
Yet even she—who had been carefully swallowing every word—could not keep quiet at the word “virginity.”
Choi Seo-won, a virgin?
Impossible. He was the right age, rich, and above all possessed a face that simply could not belong to a virgin.
For a moment she forgot her precarious situation entirely and stared at him with pure suspicion. Before she could voice a single doubt, he released her wrist.
“Come inside.”
Without waiting for an answer, Seo-won turned and walked into the house.
Yuju stood frozen for a beat, then scrambled after him. The confusion cleared completely, only to be replaced once more by fear.
But the moment she reached the living room, an unexpected sight melted the tension away in a single breath.