With his hands on either side of her head, Taecho looked down at her. His deep, dark eyes made it impossible for her to breathe. As though she had forgotten how, Yeon-woo could only open and close her mouth silently.

“Trying?”

Unable to understand what he meant, she squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again. She had hoped that him being on top of her was merely an illusion, but when she opened her eyes, he was still looking down at her. Her clear eyes trembled helplessly.

“Did you say you were trying?”

“……Taecho.”

She wondered whether he was drunk, but he appeared far too sober. His pronunciation was perfectly clear, and more than anything, his eyes remained sharp and focused.

“Trying to do what? Tell me.”

It was only then that Yeon-woo realized what Taecho had meant. In front of both their families, she had told her mother-in-law that they were trying for a baby.

He was confronting her about those words.

Moonlight seeped into the darkened room, clearly illuminating his face.

Beneath his jet-black hair, his strikingly handsome features were taut with anger.

As Yeon-woo swallowed dryly, his pitch-black gaze followed the movement of her throat and lingered there. Summoning all her strength, she forced the corners of her lips upwards.

She met his gaze and gave him a radiant smile. Although her lips trembled, Yeon-woo considered it a success nonetheless.

Yet the brighter she smiled, the more furious Taecho became.

“……Trying to have a baby, of course.”

To be honest, she hadn’t felt hurt at all when her mother-in-law asked her about having children. After all, she and Taecho were a married couple who had never even held hands.

There would have to be something between them for her to feel hurt in the first place.

Feeling his piercing gaze, Yeon-woo pressed her lips tightly together. He looked as though he might strangle her at any moment, yet she forced herself to keep smiling calmly.

“A baby?”

He was so furious that the words emerged through clenched teeth.

Refusing to back down, Yeon-woo widened her eyes and glared at him.

“The two of us?”

‘You and me? Me—with someone like you?’

His eyes seemed to demand an explanation for her daring to entertain such a thought. Then he scoffed, and Yeon-woo felt her neck flush crimson. Her skin was so pale that even the slightest hint of color stood out clearly.

Sure enough, when he noticed her reddened neck, a faint smirk appeared on his lips.

“……There’s no reason we can’t. We are legally married, after all.”

After speaking, Yeon-woo bit her lip.

For a moment, silence settled between them.

“Married? You think we’re truly married?”

Although they had entered into a contract to formalize their union, they were now legally husband and wife.

His forehead suddenly fell onto her shoulder. Yeon-woo’s entire body stiffened. Unable to close her eyes, she took a sharp breath.

However, her eyes darkened at what he did next.

“……”

His shoulders shook with quiet laughter.

Yeon-woo’s ears burned with humiliation. Just as suddenly as he had lowered his forehead onto her shoulder, Taecho pulled away. When he raised his head, the contempt in his eyes made her bite the inside of her cheek until it hurt.

“A man has to be aroused to sleep with a woman. Do you honestly think that something which hasn’t hardened for you once in a year will suddenly do so now?”

Even while he was straddling her, he whispered into her ear that he felt nothing at all.

Yeon-woo wanted to raise her hand and scrub furiously at the ear that had been tainted by his cruel words.

He had said the same thing on their wedding day.

What had he said to her back then?

“Just look at them, pairing up two damaged goods! Do your parents really see you as their daughter? They’re marrying you off to a man picked out for them by the TJ Group, who isn’t even the chairman’s real son.”

She could not forget his mocking words. They had lodged themselves deep within her heart and refused to disappear.

“He has a biological son, so why do you think he insisted on marrying you to me?”

Ultimately, Taecho agreed to marry her. Although their contract may have played a part, he still walked into the wedding venue of his own accord. Seeing how desperate he was to hurt her, Yeon-woo refused to stay silent.

“It’s you who’s getting married to protect the woman you love, so you certainly have a lot to say.”

She told him to be quiet and ordered him to leave.

Even now, she could clearly remember the satisfying way his face twisted up.

Holding her father’s hand, Yeon-woo walked into the wedding venue. At that moment, she repeated her vow to herself over and over again.

‘I won’t let him defeat me.’

‘I’ll be happy.’

She had vowed to show her parents that she could live happily, just as they had wished.

Although she was only temporarily married to the man she had fallen for at first sight, she was determined to be the best wife and daughter-in-law she could be for the next two years.

His eyes gleamed as though he were eager to see her get hurt.

However, Yeon-woo refused to let his words hurt her.

“Who knows? It might get hard someday.”

“……What?”

“It could suddenly get hard, couldn’t it?”

When Yeon-woo muttered that nobody could predict the future, Taecho’s eyebrow twitched. Eventually, he got off her.

She considered ending the argument there and then, but ultimately decided to speak her mind. Having endured such humiliating words from him, she refused to back down without defending herself.

If she remained silent now, she would lie awake all night thinking about how unfair it was.

“It’s not as though everyone from a wealthy family marries for love. In fact, how many of them actually do?”

That was simply how marriages among affluent families worked. They were unions between powerful households, and love was often excluded entirely.

They were nothing more than arrangements designed to unite families and combine desirable bloodlines.

“And yet they all have at least two children. Doesn’t that prove people can have children without being in love?”

Most of the wealthy families around them had at least two children. Taking into account remarriages and additional children — not to mention those kept hidden from the public — having four or five children was hardly unusual.

“So don’t be too confident. What will you do if you suddenly find yourself reacting to me?”

Yeon-woo turned away from Taecho abruptly, presenting him with her back.

She heard him scoff in disbelief behind her. She knew he was glaring at her, as though he wanted to tear her apart. Stubbornly, she refused to look back.

Her fingertips tingled as she clutched the sheet so tightly that her hand was on the verge of cramping up. Although she had spoken as though his actions hadn’t affected her at all, she had actually been trembling uncontrollably.

She had never experienced such intimate physical contact with anyone before.

It had left her completely flustered.

Her heart pounded so violently that she thought it might burst.

He had been far too close.

Her face felt so hot that it must have turned scarlet. She didn’t need a mirror to know how deeply she was blushing.

If Taecho ever did something like that again, her heart might truly give out. Perhaps it meant nothing to him. He was probably accustomed to such intimate contact with women.

Yeon-woo was not.

Other than her parents, no one had ever held her in their arms before. Taecho was also the first person she had ever fallen in love with.

Of course her heart would react this way.

Yeon-woo felt bitter as she remembered how Taecho’s expression hadn’t changed at all while she was left trembling and flustered.

Was she feeling this way because of the ridiculous dream she had had the previous night?

She found herself deeply envious of a woman whose face she didn’t even know.

Taecho must treat her with incredible tenderness.

He would never look at her with the same cold eyes with which he had looked at her.

He would never deliberately wound her with cruel words meant to pierce her heart.

He would probably whisper words of love into her ear, too.

A sharp pain pierced Yeon-woo’s chest, causing a faint crease to appear between her fair, delicate brows.

‘Let’s not think about it. He’s married to me now, so I should try to remain positive.’

Although she had changed her way of thinking, the heat in her face and neck refused to subside. The parts of her body that had been touched when he had straddled her still burned.

She could not understand why this room felt so unfamiliar. She had lived there until a year ago, yet it now seemed distant.

Yeon-woo’s gaze settled on the gayageum.

“……”

Today was the day that Yeon-woo had been longing for, when she could play for her father.

After all, it was his birthday.

Her slender shoulders drooped forlornly.

He had always loved her gayageum performances more than anyone else. He had been her very first and most devoted fan.

Every night, he would gently massage her aching fingers, his eyes filled with concern. When she was no longer able to play the gayageum, it felt as though a part of her had been torn away.

Her father’s heart must have been torn to pieces as well.

An untouched gayageum cannot produce a sound.

Yet a delicate, beautiful melody seemed to reach Yeon-woo’s ears. For some reason, the music sounded unbearably sorrowful.

Without realizing it, her fingers began to move gracefully, as though she were plucking the strings once again.

For a long while, Yeon-woo continued her silent performance. Gradually, however, her movements slowed.

Finally, her fingers became still, and she sank into a deep sleep.

***

‘Unbelievable.’

There was truly no other word for it.

Taecho roughly swept back his hair, irritation evident in the movement.

“Ha. Seriously……”

His anger boiled inside him. It had been the same on their wedding day. Lee Yeon-woo would say things he could never have imagined. As expected, she had not allowed tonight to pass peacefully either.

She had infuriated him so much that he was left speechless when he saw her sleeping soundly, making soft, childlike noises.

His mouth had fallen open purely out of disbelief.

‘There’s no reason we can’t?’

The sheer absurdity of it all drew another scoff from him. He couldn’t possibly wake a sleeping woman just to argue with her again. She lived most of the time as quietly as a mouse, but every so often she managed to get under his skin.

She could simply live as though she were invisible. At times like this, however, she resembled a fearless little kitten, charging forward without realizing that she could get hurt.

‘Tsk.’

Yeon-woo’s parents and younger brother, Taehyun, were always concerned that Yeon-woo was too gentle and kind.

What utter nonsense!

It seemed no one knew her true nature. She played the innocent woman so convincingly that Taecho almost wanted to applaud her performance. When she told his mother that they were trying to have a baby, she had sounded so insincere that he nearly did.

He almost pushed back his chair and walked away from the table.

During their first meeting, Taecho had made it clear that he had no desire to marry her. Yet somehow she had managed to manipulate his father into arranging the marriage.

If it hadn’t been for his father, Taecho would never have married her. He had only agreed to it because he needed to secure his position as the family’s successor.

He sighed, remembering how his father had continued to delay the matter despite having promised him the position. Taecho needed to be officially named successor before he could divorce Yeon-woo.

Did he have about a year left?

‘So don’t be too confident. What will you do if you suddenly find yourself reacting to me?’

Remembering her earlier words, he scoffed again and lay down with his back to her.

There was no way his body would react to someone as pale and delicate as her.

He closed his eyes confidently.

!

Something suddenly landed heavily across his thigh. Startled, Taecho sat up and looked down to see what had fallen on him.

“What the hell?”

Distracted by his thoughts, he had failed to notice her rolling across the floor toward him. Taecho’s eyebrows twitched in displeasure.

‘Does she always sleep like this?’

As they had never slept together before, this was his first opportunity to observe her sleeping habits.

He pushed away the leg draped across his thigh, but Yeon-woo pressed herself tightly against his back, wrapping her arms around his waist.

His irritation steadily mounted. Despite rarely drinking alcohol, he had had a few drinks that evening, and now his head was throbbing too.

She was truly an exasperating woman.

Taecho roughly pried her arms away from his waist.

“……This woman, seriously.”

Whenever Taecho pulled his arms away, Yeon-woo would wrap hers around him again. If he pushed her leg away, she would drape it over him once more. If he pushed her away, she would immediately come back and burrow into his embrace.

At this point, he almost suspected that she was doing it deliberately.

The way she clung to him, as though desperately searching for warmth, made his throat feel strangely constricted. Taecho rubbed the back of his neck in frustration.

Simply looking at her put him in a bad mood.

Like him, she was adopted, yet she carried herself as though she had received all the love in the world. She was so bright and untouched by darkness that there was no way he could like her.

Whenever he encountered someone who had grown up surrounded by love, he felt a bitter, ugly twisting inside him.

What made them so happy?

When he first saw Yeon-woo smiling radiantly at the formal meeting between their families, he nearly reached out and wrapped his hands around her throat without realizing it.

Unlike Taecho, who had spent his entire life consumed by darkness, Yeon-woo did not seem to possess even the faintest shadow of it.

Suddenly, a vicious desire surged within him — the desire to taint her radiant innocence and drag her down into the darkness with him.

Taecho turned towards her and stared coldly.

That was when it happened.

!

Taecho’s eyes widened until they nearly split apart.

Her hand had slipped directly between his legs.