Now I finally understood why Eun-sae had kept her lips sealed until the day she died.

That desperate silence – born of a secret so shattering, a dignity so violated, a shame so deep – I was afraid to even fathom.

I felt guilty just for hearing it, as if I were killing her a second, a third time.

But now I was sure.

How could anyone believe that Eun-sae had a normal, consensual relationship with a man who threatened her like that?

In everything between them, her will had never been part of the equation.

And yet – after turning Eun-sae’s once peaceful, normal life into a living hell – this man continued to threaten her with perfect ease.

He threatened to release the videos.

Even putting aside how dangerous those videos would be for someone like me – someone with the same face – the fact that Eun-sae couldn’t escape, even in death, was devastating.

Her life had been twisted against her will.

I felt such sadness and anger for her.

My blood ran cold.

“Hhh…”

How did breathing work again?

I couldn’t remember.

A crushing pain gripped my chest, tightening around my ribs.

I hunched my shoulders and gasped, sucking in ragged, shallow breaths.

I wanted to take in cool air, deep into my lungs, but it kept getting stuck in my throat, making it harder to breathe.

“Wait, what the hell? What’s wrong with her all of a sudden?”

“Is she faking it to get out of the car? It’s no use, Hyun Eun-sae. We won’t call an ambulance for you.”

“Does anyone here know how to do CPR or something?”

“What the f*ck?! Who the hell is that?!”

Suddenly, the driver let out a high-pitched scream and slammed on the brakes.

The car shook violently, shaking from the sudden stop.

“Damn driver, what the hell are you doing?”

As the driver cursed through gritted teeth, I managed to lift my head and look out the front window.
And then—I froze in disbelief.

‘That car… why is it here?’

Even from the back, I could tell – the heavily tinted SUV was a car I knew all too well.

It was the same car I’d tried to avoid by sneaking to and from work like a thief, the same reason I’d left my perfectly good home behind to live like a vagrant in a cramped goshiwon.

But there was no time to sit and process the shock.

The SUV was now cleverly blocking this car’s path, cutting in with sharp, aggressive maneuvers.

Each time, the driver swerved dangerously to change lanes and honked his horn in frustration.

The ride had become so rough that I began to feel sick.

My head was bobbing from side to side, and the nausea blurred my thoughts.

I kept squeezing my eyes shut and opening them, trying to stay conscious.

“Get out of the lane, move!”

“Sh*t, there’s one right behind us, too.”

The man glanced at the rearview mirror and clicked his tongue.

“It must be this girl. We’re surrounded – front and back.”

“What the hell? This wasn’t part of the deal. If I had known it would turn out like this…”

“Uh-hey! Hey! Watch out!”

As the car weaved through the lanes, looking for a way to escape, the SUV suddenly slowed, forcing them to hit the brakes.

The driver slammed on the brakes, but the cars were already too close.

A collision was inevitable.

The bumpers slammed together, and the impact shook everyone inside.

Both cars had sturdy frames, so the shock wasn’t as bad as expected – but a crash was a crash.

There were grunts and groans as heads and shoulders hit various parts of the car.

I lost my balance too – but in my case it turned out to be a stroke of luck.

I was thrown forward into the gap between the driver’s and passenger’s seats, slipping out of the control of the men who had been holding me down on either side.

Before the impact of the collision had fully subsided, another car appeared, completely blocking the escape route.

“Sh*t, we’re screwed.”

“Lock the doors, now!”

The attackers quickly locked the doors, preparing for a standoff.

But it seemed the other side had anticipated this move.

Men from both SUVs got out, pulled axes from the trunks, and smashed the driver’s side window with brutal force.

The glass cracked and shattered in a spiderweb pattern, and the attackers’ resistance quickly crumbled.

An arm reached through the broken window and unlocked the driver’s side.

The kidnappers sitting on either side of me were pulled out one by one.

I curled up like a shrimp, pressing my aching ribs with my numb hands, trying to ease the sharp pain in my chest.

The men watched me closely.

“Eun-sae, Hyun Eun-sae. Are you okay?”

Even though we were meeting for the first time, they already knew my name.

“You can relax now. We’re the security team assigned to protect Hyun Eun-sae under the orders of CEO Lee Seol-won.”

They seemed to think that I wasn’t in a state to absorb much information, so they kept their explanation brief.

Of course, my mind became even more confused.

Personal protection?

Lee Seol-won assigned a security team to me without telling me? Why was that?

The sense of confusion outweighed any relief I might have felt.

It was as if I realized too late that despite my best efforts to struggle beneath the surface, I had been in a fishbowl all along, not the ocean.

The past surrounding Eun-sae had felt like an endless ocean to me-vast and distant.

But for her, it was like looking into a small, transparent fishbowl, something so obvious.

Ah.

My heart was pounding as if I had lost my mind, but the greatest agony pressing down on me was the feeling of suffocation.

The wall of absurdity was so high and solid that it felt hopeless.

The despair that Eun-sae had carried with her was overwhelming.

I couldn’t say where things went wrong, where everything started to fall apart.

The men helped me out of the car and led me outside.

The problem was that I couldn’t muster any strength in my limbs.

As my focus faded, my vision blurred into a gray noise.

At that moment, my back swayed and I almost fell over.

“Pull yourself together.”

As I was about to collapse, someone’s arm caught me.

A familiar scent, a familiar touch, a familiar warmth.

Even though my vision was blurred and I couldn’t see their faces, I knew immediately who was holding me up.

It was him.
Lee Seol-won.

He said he had sent a security team to protect me.

That means he must have expected something like this to happen.

Now it made sense why the SUV had been circling near my home and work. Lee Seol-won must have known my real identity.

On the other hand, the unidentified man who threatened me on the phone earlier believed that the inappropriate relationship between me and Lee Seol-won was real. That’s why he sent the attackers to Songun Art Hall to get me.

The involvement of this man and the whole process leading up to this moment felt completely unreal to me.

“Don’t look at anything, don’t think about anything, just breathe slowly.”

A large hand covered my eyes.

The noise turned into inky black darkness.

Strangers, unknown places, unknown accidents, unknown fears…

All kinds of unfamiliarity surrounding me slowly faded into the distance.

Only then did I begin to breathe a little easier.

In a way, the man who saved me was the most unfamiliar of all these unfamiliar things.

And yet I felt both strangeness and familiarity from him at the same time.

It was ironic.

The attackers caught by the guards were dragged into the SUV one by one like dried fish.

Lee Seol-won, who was still holding me in his arms, looked carefully at someone and then called over a guard who was dragging the man who had first kidnapped me.

As the guard brought the man over, Lee Seol-won suddenly reached into his pocket.

“What… what is this?”

The attacker tried to back away in surprise, but it was too late.

Lee Seol-won quickly grabbed the item the man had hidden in his possession.

“Enough. Take him away.”

As the man moved, his fingers loosened slightly and through the gap I could see exactly what he had been hiding.

It was a cell phone.

The very same one the attacker had used to report to “him” earlier, and the one he had pressed to my ear to answer a call.

The attacker let out a short sigh.

His voice was heavy with defeat.

He probably hadn’t expected to lose the phone.

I was just as surprised.

How did he know the phone was hidden there?

Does this man have some kind of special ability?

Besides, the phone was still plugged in.

It seemed that he had hidden it in his pocket while keeping the call active, probably to relay the unexpected developments from this side.

He immediately lifted the phone to his ear.

Then a deep, heavy voice settled in my ear.

“It’s been a while, Lee Jae-hyup.”

‘Lee Jae-hyup.’
The name of the person I had always thought would remain a mystery – “him”.

It was the name I had been trying to uncover that had led me here.

Suddenly, the atmosphere around me changed and it felt as if time had stopped.

I froze, stunned.

“What exactly are you doing? Don’t you think you should set some boundaries?”

The tears I had been holding back poured out in a flood.