Chapter 4
That the male protagonist sharing the surname Cha was simply because her tongue had grown used to it due to the team leader;
That it happened to be an office setting merely because it was a trope the readers loved;
That she was running a second job only because she was struggling to make ends meet;
There was absolutely no way to explain all of this to him without it sounding like an excuse.
“I believe you are well aware of the prohibition on dual employment in your employment contract.”
“Though my earnings are so modest that the clause almost feels wasted on it… It’s a tiny amount that wouldn’t even get caught in a sieve, honestly a cute little sum compared to the team leader’s income…”
“Assistant Manager Shin Hye-joo. Are you seriously calling that an excuse right now?”
Woo-seok placed his hand on Hye-joo’s desk and leaned toward her, raising one corner of his mouth. The distance between the two narrowed as much as the distance between the protagonists in her novels. She could practically feel the heat radiating from his immaculate suit brushing against her skin.
“The dual employment prohibition is a clause included to prevent any disruption to company business. Assistant Manager Shin, your case would make a textbook example of exactly why that clause exists in the employment contract.”
Her serialized work, which she had kept afloat by fighting off sleep late into the night just to make a single extra penny—to think that because of it, her rock-solid position at a major corporation was now under threat was enough to drive her insane.
“I will need to contact the HR department.”
“T-Team Leader. Please, could you let it slide just this once?”
Hye-joo dropped her knees to the floor and bowed her head low. Even in that moment, the team leader’s clean, expensive-looking leather shoes and the hem of his tailored suit trousers, fitted to a flawless length, caught her eye. Even while angry, the team leader was, as expected, perfect.
To be having such ridiculous thoughts while getting scolded… Hye-joo squeezed her eyes shut.
“…I will let it slide. However…”
“What? Really?”
Overjoyed, Hye-joo jumped up from her spot, only to lose her balance. It was because the blood hadn’t been circulating properly after kneeling. Stumbling, she accidentally pressed her hands against Woo-seok’s firm chest.
Hye-joo’s eyes widened, and she froze completely on the spot. Because of her shifted center of gravity, her palms were inadvertently feeling both of his nipples clear as day. Unable to do anything about her hands, she could only watch as Team Leader Cha slowly brought his own hands up to her wrists. She felt like she wanted to sink through the floor and disappear forever.
“…You really do all sorts of things, Miss Shin Hye-joo.”
Holding her wrists to support her, the team leader lightly pulled Hye-joo away from his body. Though his tone was cold, there was a gentleness in how he regulated his strength so as not to hurt her wrists.
“In any case, if I simply file a report with HR, you would be fortunate to escape with just a salary reduction.”
“But just now, you clearly said you would let it slide…”
Bursting with a sense of injustice, she argued back loudly before shrinking her voice as she caught his eye.
“…did you not?”
“I’m thinking of proposing a deal.”
“…A deal?”
He stared intently into her eyes with a chilly gaze and spoke.
“You need to give me relationship coaching.”
“…Pardon?”
Relationship… coach?
She was utterly speechless.
Her novels were not like family-friendly romantic comedy movies. They were explicit, dense adult novels laced with erotic scenes. Since she had zero dating experience herself and her main genre of reading and writing was entirely different, providing him with relationship coaching wasn’t going to be of any help at all.
However, Woo-seok seemingly took her silence as interest in his words and began to explain his proposal.
“I have never properly dated a woman. However, due to personal circumstances, I must get married within a year. Within that time, I want to win the heart of the woman I like.”
Hye-joo tried her best not to show her shock as she thought about it.
Granted, the team leader’s icy nature was right up her alley, but there would hardly be any woman out there willing to tolerate his personality. That meant she would have to completely remodel him into a dating-compatible human being in just one single year.
“So I believe I need some practice. Since you specialize in writing romance, Assistant Manager Shin, I think it will be much easier if you help me.”
She couldn’t bring herself to let the words escape her mouth—that she was someone who had learned romance entirely from books. Perhaps accepting his proposal was her only lifeline.
She was about to open her mouth to say she needed time to think, but Woo-seok didn’t seem inclined to wait.
“What do you say?”
Hye-joo felt as though a brief flash of her thorny future was passing before her eyes.
Of course, Woo-seok was perfectly her ideal type, and spending time together would be thrilling, but to put it in perspective, fanboying over a favorite celebrity was a bit different from becoming their manager and dealing with constant stress.
But Hye-joo was given only two choices. Help him, or get fired from her job.
“I will help you.”
Hye-joo nodded toward him. Even though she knew it would mark the beginning of a path filled with hardships.
Having dropped the bomb into Hye-joo’s lap, Woo-seok vanished into thin air just like that, leaving behind only a brief instruction to finish up the work well.
She briefly wanted to challenge him on whether work could actually get done properly in this state, but the delayed realization caught up to her that he was exactly the kind of man who would seamlessly finish his own work perfectly even if something like this happened to him.
In reality, the remaining workload wasn’t that heavy, but because she couldn’t focus, the work was only barely completed around 3 AM. It was a relief that there was even time left to go home and catch some sleep.
In the midst of that, Hye-joo wasted a tremendous amount of time just on the task of attaching the final version and sending the email.
Even while writing the email, the incident from earlier kept flashing back into her mind, making it impossible for her fingers to move.
Of all things, how could she have made such a fool of herself in front of the team leader?
Right at the exact moment she was repeatedly hammering the delete key at the recurring memory, her hand slipped on the mouse and clicked the send button.
She hadn’t even finished writing the body of the email.
[Team Leade]
That text was the absolute entirety of it.
“…Uh. Why did that send. Huh?”
Flushed red with panic, she hurriedly looked for the unsend button, but it seemed the email had been opened immediately, as the recall function wouldn’t work. Sending an email like this to Woo-seok, who never tolerated mistakes gracefully. In the end, she had no choice but to formally send a new email along with an apology for the typo.
“Ah, seriously…”
Her energy entirely drained, Hye-joo collapsed limply right onto her keyboard.
Because such incidents had triggered one after another, Hye-joo couldn’t close her eyes peacefully even after returning home. In a double sense, now that the team leader knew her secret, she wouldn’t even be able to rest in peace inside a coffin.
…Am I really going to be the team leader’s relationship coach?
Since she was a virgin 19+ author, her coaching would obviously be useless.
He was definitely someone who despised a lack of structure, so she wondered if she should map out a curriculum. A syllabus, evaluation sheets, assignments… she didn’t have the slightest clue where or how to even begin preparing.
“…This is truly driving me crazy.”
Hye-joo kicked her blankets like a duck thrashing wildly on water.
Furthermore, she had to support the love life of the man who was the object of her admiration and her long-time unrequited crush. The phrase ‘cooking a meal only to feed someone else’ fit the situation perfectly. Of course, the meal she cooked up wasn’t likely to be a proper, nourishing dish, but rather a tasteless, failed experiment made from an amateur recipe.
Still, Hye-joo tried hard to think positively.
While it was mortifying enough to make her want to die that the team leader had discovered her novel, if she could just finish the relationship coaching successfully, nothing bad would happen. And when she thought about the fact that she would get to spend time stuck close to the team leader, it might not be a bad opportunity after all.
As she indulged in those thoughts, dawn broke before she knew it, birds began to chirp, and it was time to head to work.
Surprised to see Hye-joo arriving at work in an even worse state than yesterday, Eun-ji grabbed her forearm in alarm and whispered.
“Babe, what is up with your condition? Yesterday could pass as the Monday blues, but today is a bit too much, don’t you think?”
“Ahaha, do I look tired?”
“Not just a little. Right now, your dark circles are a panda, a straight-up panda. It wouldn’t be weird at all if you walked into the panda enclosure at Everland and started chewing on bamboo.”
“Is it that bad…?”
She could absolutely never tell Eun-ji the truth. Absolutely never, that she had stayed up all night because she got caught by the team leader while writing an erotic novel.
Just like any other day, she brewed her coffee with an instant mix in the pantry and sat at her desk trying to focus on work when a cool, refreshing scent suddenly wafted over the tip of her nose.
Hye-joo recognized the owner of that fragrant scent. She moved her neck rigidly as if a Grim Reaper had just paid her a visit. Stiffened tight with tension, Hye-joo’s neck barely turned, moving like a rusty piece of machinery.
“G-good morning, Team Leader.”
“Yes. Good morning, very much so. Thanks to someone.”
“Haha…”
