No Strings Attached

INTRO

They called her Subject #178 long before anyone called her Yerin.

She was six years old when she ran from the lab—
barefoot, drenched in blood, and leaving a trail so thick it looked like she had dragged another child behind her.
Her gown was torn, her feet split open, every step a smear of red across the ground.

Men were chasing her.
Dogs tearing through the forest.
Security screaming orders into radios.

But she didn't run mindlessly.

She ran with purpose.

She had spent weeks mapping her escape inside her head—
counting doors, memorizing guard habits, studying their weaknesses, rehearsing everything until her brain throbbed from overuse.

She didn't flee toward freedom.

She fled toward a target.

A mansion.
A name.
A family.

The Baeks.

Not because they were powerful.
Not because they were wealthy.
But because they were raising her biological twin brother—
the boy the facility had sold off for being "normal," untouched, unusable.

She didn't love him.
Didn't care about him.
Didn't even consider him family.

But the Baek family could give her something the lab never would:

Protection. Power. Status. A mask.

So she collapsed at their gate—
covered in blood, shaking, wide-eyed—
and the world believed she was a lost, injured child.

The Baeks took her in.

And from that moment, the world accepted a lie:

That Baek Yerin and Baek Yeseong were the Baeks' biological children.

No one questioned it.
Not doctors.
Not reporters.
Not relatives.

Her forged documents were flawless.
Her story convincing.
Her acting perfect.

Because perfection is the only thing she does.

In days, she became the newest chaebol daughter.
In months, she became Korea's sweet, brilliant, flawless girl.

Perfect grades.
Perfect manners.
Perfect posture.
Perfect smile.

And behind all of it—

A monster the lab accidentally created.

A psycho with a mind built for calculation.
A child who learned violence before language.
A girl who killed without blinking and hid the evidence with unnerving ease.

Her murders terrified cities, but no one suspected her.

Pretty girls with high grades don't slit throats.
Perfect daughters don't break bones.
Polite students don't carve smiles into their victims.

Only one person sees through her:

Han Tae-kyung.
A boy feared more than politicians.
Unpredictable. Ruthless. Untouchable.
A heir who rules his world through violence, not reputation.

He looks at her and doesn't see perfection.

He sees truth.

And when Baek Yerin's path collides with his, the world finally understands:

Devils don't meet by accident.
They recognize each other.
They choose each other.

And Baek Yerin—
the escaped experiment,
the false daughter,
the girl whose footsteps once painted the earth red—