. ── ࣪˖ ࣪ ִ ࣪𖤐 ࣪ ˖ ──
Cold-hearted CEO Seo Min-woo hires his optimistic, artistic assistant Yoon Ji-seok to pose as his partner to appease his meddling mother. What begins as a business arrangement soon blurs into some...
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── ࣪˖ ࣪ ִ ࣪𖤐 ࣪ ˖ ──
Act One: The Arrangement 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝟏𝟎. – 𝐇𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭
── ࣪˖ ࣪ ִ ࣪𖤐 ࣪ ˖ ──
TW: Heart Attack
Ji-seok sat on the edge of Min-woo's guest room bed, the low hum of the city filtering through the wide window, casting faint, flickering shadows across the floor. The apartment was so different from his cramped, dim room back home—too clean, too orderly, and yet it felt strangely safe. Or maybe that safety was something Min-woo offered, quietly, without fanfare or pressure.
But Ji-seok's mind was a storm beneath the calm surface he wore with such care.
Every soft word Min-woo had spoken earlier still echoed inside him. No shouting. No harsh demands. Just quiet insistence, a patience that peeled back Ji-seok's carefully constructed layers without breaking them apart—more like easing open a fragile shell. It unsettled him. The silence they shared wasn't empty; it was heavy with unspoken truths and raw vulnerability.
He wanted to retreat. To disappear back into the shadowed corners of his own life—where no one could see the trembling in his hands, the dark circles beneath his eyes, or the exhaustion that clung like a second skin. The refuge of silence and lies, the polished smiles and practiced distance, had kept him afloat for so long. But tonight, those walls trembled.
Min-woo's presence held him in place—not with pity, but with understanding. It was a promise written in the steady way Min-woo looked at him, the quiet strength that made Ji-seok feel less alone. It frightened him and comforted him all at once.
Ji-seok fought the urge to push everything away, to slip back into the role he knew so well: the professional, the guarded, the untouchable. But beneath the fear, a fragile hope blossomed—a desperate, tentative hope that maybe, just maybe, this time he wouldn't have to fight alone.
His chest tightened with the weight of unsaid words, the hidden pain and years of loneliness pressing down on him. But in Min-woo's steady gaze, he found something new—a kind of strength that dared him to believe in more than just survival.
Tonight, for the first time in a long time, Ji-seok wasn't hiding. He was starting to show the cracks, hoping—without quite knowing how—that someone might help hold him together.
Ji-seok sat across from Min-woo at the small breakfast table, the soft morning light filtering through the windows. The aroma of freshly brewed coffee mingled with the subtle scent of toasted bread and eggs, but Ji-seok's plate remained mostly untouched. His hands moved slowly, pushing food around rather than eating, his appetite lost beneath a haze of exhaustion and worry.
