“So what exactly are you going to do with me?”

I wasn’t supposed to waver.

As always, I wanted to maintain the same dry, unaffected calm.

But my heart, already beating with fear, betrayed my will.

“Hyun Seo-hae.”

It was the first time I’d heard my name in his voice.

I couldn’t bring myself to answer.

Lee Seol-won looked directly at me-his eyes were filled with a hundred, a thousand emotions, all splitting and folding in complexity.

It was strange.

Because the one who should have been the most lost and overwhelmed at that moment… should have been me.

But Lee Seol-won looked like he was struggling with even more confusion and conflict than I was.

He was someone who had always known the right choices for his life – and had faithfully followed that path.

And yet, in an instant, the distance between us disappeared.

The face I always had to crane my neck to look up at was suddenly right in front of mine.

So close that our breath brushed against each other’s cheeks.

There was a texture to his gaze – I could feel exactly where his eyes rested on my face.

A tingling sensation crept across my skin.

My forehead, my eyelids, the bridge of my nose, my cheek… And then – my lips.

The man’s hand cupped my chin gently, deliberately.

The warmth of his touch was soft and steady, and before I realized it, my shoulders shifted instinctively.

And then – he kissed me.

It was nothing like the forced kiss I had forced on him during the media presentation.

Back then, I had focused only on calculating the camera angles – on sealing our lips in a way that would look as provocative as possible.

So there would be no room for excuses, no way to claim it was just a whisper or an accidental overlap of positions.

Unlike me at the time – so preoccupied with who might be watching, so focused on creating a scandal – Lee Seol-won didn’t seem to care at all about his surroundings.

He parted the space between my lips, neither fully closed nor open, and slipped inside.

When I flinched, he wrapped his other arm around my neck to prevent me from turning away and pulled me in.

His tongue entered my mouth, exploring me – grazing, savoring, searching every corner as if he wanted to taste me.

It was a kiss like a flood – one that poured out everything in him.

His confusion.

His conflict.

Was he always like this?

So thorough that it felt compulsive, as if he wanted to swallow me whole – not even leaving room to breathe.

I couldn’t keep up with the intensity of his pace; my breath simply couldn’t keep up with his.

I tapped his chest to signal him to stop.

It was only when his lips, damp and heated from our mingled breaths, finally pulled away that I managed to catch my breath – and look up at him, breathless.

“…H-Hah… why?”

I should have asked him what his intentions were – but the words wouldn’t come out.

All I could manage was a single syllable: Why?

Lee Seol-won looked at me with a calm expression.

Except for his lips, which were slightly red from the intensity, he seemed hardly agitated.

It wasn’t a mistake, nor an impulsive act – he looked as clear and determined as someone who had just found his way out of a maze.

The complexity in his eyes from before had vanished without a trace.

Instead, that swirling confusion had now taken root in me.

I no longer knew which emotion to face him with.

“I just had that thought.”

His voice, as always, was perfectly calm – unshaken, without hesitation.

It was unmistakably Lee Seol-won.

And yet, for some reason…

But why, I wondered, did his voice sound to my ears as if it carried both a quiet acceptance and a quiet resignation?

“Maybe… because of you, the foundation of the life I have endured all this time is beginning to crumble. No – maybe it already has.”

Back at the Songun Art Hall, when I’d done the same to him, I’d quickly fled, leaving him behind.

But Lee Seol-won didn’t run.

He had his driver take us to the nearest emergency room.

My head must’ve been a mess because my memories of the car ride were fragmented.

When I came to, the doctor was already there.

“She’s a musician. Is there any chance her fingers could be damaged?”

“Yes, it’s just a slight ligament strain. It’s not a serious injury, so don’t worry too much-as soon as it heals, you’ll be back playing like you were before. But you will need to be careful for a while. Try not to use your hands as much as possible.”

They taped my injured ankle the same way they taped my hand.

attacker had threatened me with a knife, was only lightly grazed, so no treatment was needed.

When the examination was over, Lee Seol-won led me back to the car.

“Where are we going?”

Since we had already stopped at the hospital, I naturally assumed that he would take me home next.

But the car sped through the late night streets and entered a brightly lit district of five-star hotels.

Still trying to collect myself in the awkward silence, it took me a moment to realize where we were.

Come to think of it, I hadn’t even asked where we were going before I got in the car.

“Your lodging.”

The place he took me, with nothing more than a simple answer, turned out to be the Riche Hotel – out of the blue.

“Why are we in a hotel?”

“With your ankle like that, going up and down the stairs in the villa would be a hassle. It’s better in every way to stay here until you feel better. It’ll also be easier to call for help if you need anything.”

But this hotel was far too expensive for a casual stay.

And all I had with me was my phone and the bag I’d hastily grabbed from the kidnap van.

“What about clothes and other necessities?”

“I’ll give the order.”

Instead of checking in at the front desk, Lee Seol-won made a quick phone call.

Moments later, the hotel manager appeared, greeted him with the utmost respect and personally escorted us to the room.

The room we were shown was a suite, with a separate living room, office and bedroom.

I was expecting a standard layout, but what I found was a room much larger than our apartment – and one that looked like it couldn’t be booked by just anyone.

I was completely stunned.

To be honest, it didn’t look like the room had been prepared for me at all.

“Is this where you live, Mr. Lee?”

Had he left his family home because of the secret of his birth and lived in a hotel all this time?

Had he given up his own suite just to let me stay here?

The scene before me was so unfamiliar that I stood blankly at the entrance of the suite.

When he saw this, he led me to the nearest seat.

Through the wide floor-to-ceiling windows, the blue Seoul night sky shimmered brilliantly.

Even the windows seemed to be designed like works of art.

For someone like me, who usually existed down there as a faint light scattered in the distance, this view, something that people like Lee Seol-won must be used to seeing every day, felt impossible to get used to.

I hobbled across the living room and tried to sit down on the edge of the plush sofa.

But Lee Seol-won gently pulled me a few steps closer and sat me down in the middle of the couch.

Only then did he let go of the arm he had been using to support me.

“I am close to the owner here. When I said I needed a place to stay, he probably lent me the room he usually uses himself.”

“Then… wasn’t this room prepared for you, Mr. Lee? What if he comes here expecting to see you? It would be embarrassing for both of us.”

“He lives with his family in the USA now, so that won’t happen. I told him you’re my guest, so he’ll treat you the same way he would treat me.

“You must be very close. For the owner to just hand over the room he uses himself to a guest of yours… Oh, so that’s why- No wonder I was so confused as to why we were suddenly getting hotel sponsorship from a place that had nothing to do with us.”

So it must’ve been his doing too.

—”Apparently, Hani originally had a different traditional music group in mind for the collaboration. Must’ve been someone they were connected with. But Songun rejected the group Hani brought in and specifically reached out to us instead.”

—”Seriously? How would Songun even know about us?”

—”Exactly! That’s what’s so strange. Hey, don’t you think we should all go get our fortunes read sometime? I swear, someone in our group must’ve hit a streak of crazy good luck.”

The person my colleague jokingly referred to as the group’s good luck charm was me.

If Eun-sae hadn’t made the connection between me and that man, I might have gone my whole life without knowing that the head of the Songun Cultural Foundation had been quietly supporting my career from behind the scenes.

“Um… first of all, thank you. Now that I think about it, things have been so chaotic that I forgot to thank you for saving me from the kidnappers. That should have been the first thing I said.”

Honestly, the whole day still felt unreal to me.

Who could have imagined that my quiet life – spent between home, rehearsal room and stage – would suddenly turn into something as unpredictable as a roller coaster?

“You’re turning the guys you caught over to the police, right?”

I hadn’t seen the attackers since they were taken away in the security van.

They were probably being held somewhere, waiting for this man to decide what to do with them.

“You want to turn them over to the police?”

He asked, sounding genuinely surprised.