Chapter 0 - Prologue (1/2)

Prologue

Life is beautiful but human life is short. The world is a place where money is a man’s true companion, power, and center of life. Even if I was born poor, I wanted to live a decent life.

Because the world is unfair anyway.

God doesn’t reach out to everyone, so I decided to believe in myself.

‘By the way… what am I doing here?’

Her world tilted obliquely. No, to be exact, it wasn’t the world that had tilted, but it was she who was lying in a bed. She could smell the familiar scent of the fabric softener used on all bedsheets of DE:A cruise. But a unique scent of a perfume also floated around in the air.

It was a dark room. She looked around the room to find something that would help her. She wanted to move, but her tightly bound hands and legs made her completely immobile.

“Come on, what the…What the hell is this?

Every time she tried to move, a thin plastic strap dug into her skin. She could see that it was a cable tie.

‘Have I been kidnapped?

This was the first time in her 27 years of life that she had ever faced such treatment, so she was starting to get angry. She thought of all the names that might want to harm her one by one. However she was currently in the center of the vast ocean. Before boarding the ship, she had made sure to memorise all the names of the passengers boarding the ship, and none of them could have held a grudge against her.

Enduring the nausea and fear, Sei found someone sitting at the table in the opposite direction.

A cold sweat broke out on her forehead.

The man had an unlit cigarette in his mouth and was staring at the laptop screen. The screen was filled with graphs and parallel lines that made no sense to her. The screen suddenly blacked out and the corners of his mouth slowly turned up in a small smile.

Sei opened her eyes wide and inhaled sharply.

Rare platinum blonde hair and gray blue eyes. He was a man who seemed to be far from the dirt of the world. From his head to toe, there was only perfection.

It was her ’10th customer’.

But something had changed. His appearance, image and even the dangerous air around him… everything was strange. She was speechless. It was as if she was looking at someone else. Nevertheless, the man in the loose shirt was clearly the ‘customer’ she knew.

‘By any chance……’

Thinking of the butterfly knife hidden deep in her clothes, she paused and raised her body carefully. Her whole body erupted in pain because her arms and legs were tied up.

“Excuse me… sir?”

She knew to escape from here, she needed to act as powerless as a lamb. She didn’t know what exactly happened, but she didn’t want to die here.

‘Tying a poor woman with a cable tie. Are you a sick pervert? Or a psychopath?’

“Did you sleep well?”

By the way, was his voice so low?

“I…”

She looked around confusedly, pretending to be scared. Whether he believed her or not, he didn’t show it. He approached the bed with a sad look on his face. Then he lightly grabbed her chin and forced her to look him in his eyes.

“How does it feel to be the one to be deceived?”

Sei flinched and shrinked away from him. The man she saw up close had an unrealistic appearance beyond her imagination. With his features, it was hard to guess his age.