The protector

BitterSwiss (M)

Warning: food/alcohol

Previously in Se-ri's life: willing to revenge his daughter, Sang-a's father attacks the Se-ri's choice with various stock manipulations. In order to save the company - and lacking the funds she needs to buy enough stocks to do it by herself, Se-ri marries a brilliant chaebol, Gu Seo-jin, CEO of the Wonder Group and son of the Go's eldest enemy. Gu Seo-jin buys the stocks Se-ri needs, and the wedding secures the company. Albeit the stocks are a sort of wedding gift, the two decide to keep them under Seo-jin's name, so that the man can join the board of the Se-ri's Choice and better protect his wife.

Both are aware that their marriage is a business and not a love one. Se-ri hides many things to Gu Seo-jin, included the existence of Jeong Hyeok, and she's sure he has affairs during his business trips abroad. Though, throughout the years, the man proves to be a considerate husband, a deeply kind person, a clever businessman who is pushing her to open Seri's Choice's subordinates in the US, an expert lover and a fun friend.

Se-ri also realizes that he's constantly humiliated by his father, who blames the couple for not having (still) given him an heir. This brings the woman to develop feelings toward him, even if she isn't aware of the nature of them.

As time passes, Go's father becomes a bigger problem. Se-ri's mother thinks that the man hates her for her being born out of the marriage, he is one of the few people to know the truth about her origin, having him investigated about her many years before, when Se-ri and Seo-jin were little more than teens and the old man was looking for a proper wife for his son.

In a first moment, when Seo-jin tells her that his father wants a nephew, Se-ri decides to try. She ponders her age, and the fact that it will be barely impossible to definitively reunite with Jeong Hyeok in a few years, when she's still in a childbearing age, so, Seo-jin is her only opportunity to become a mother, things that she definitively wants. But then the in law turns to be more dreadful than expected, and following her mother's advice, Se-ri changes her mind, opens a secret bank account and uses an IUD unbeknownst to her husband. In spite of the feelings, and albeit Seo-jin seems every day closer to her, she is preparing herself for the eventuality of a divorce.

In the while, Se-ri reunites with Jeong Hyeok, albeit just for two weeks per year. She tells him about the wedding, about the decision to have an heir, and about the following impossibility to have a child, albeit she explains herself poorly, even due to his request to not talk about the entire situation at all. Summer by summer, she notices that he is becoming weaker, sometimes he smells of alcohol, sometimes he is tired or limps with no reason. At the same time, he refuses to hear from her anything about her marriage, which brings the man to imagine the worst scenarios. This frustrates Se-ri, as well as the fact that she has lost the only person who had always listened to her.

It happens once again during the last summer, and she comes back to Seoul furious. Once at home, she finds an invitation from her husband to reach him in the USA and accepts it, finding in Seo-jin the calm and the bliss she has lost in Swiss, which increase her feelings for him. A few months later, in winter, she receives a brief message from Jeong Hyeok, informing that he had found a channel to communicate with her. She sends him a reply, but the woman doesn't really trust in the message, believing it could be a scam, and waits for another message to come. On the same night, during the last gala, Seo-jin publicly thanks Se-ri from the stage calling her "the best partner." This elicits the attention of the press, and the day after many newspapers quotes him. She doesn't know that one of them ends on Jeong Hyeok's desk.

2027, February – Seoul