Episode 01
“A Very Nice Bastard… A Capable Bastard.”
Dosil murmured softly, her small lips barely moving.
This was the man she was meant to meet today.
No—this was the man she was supposed to pull into marriage.
They said that in South Korea, there were countless places touched by the hand of the KJ Group.
The space where she now sat was one of them—a premium restaurant inside a KJ Hotel.
The private room reserved for VIPs was adorned with refined furniture, framed artwork, and extravagantly arranged flowers.
Her hands, roughened and darkened from harvesting peaches all summer, looked pitiful against the pristine white tablecloth.
The peach-colored nail polish she had applied in a hurry felt grotesquely out of place.
Even the priceless designer two-piece she wore, and the long wavy hair styled by a professional artist, felt painfully unnatural.
Makeup in shades that didn’t suit her face shimmered crudely under the lights.
No matter how much money was spent, the hastiness of her transformation couldn’t be erased.
The man she was about to face was the Head Director of Planning at KJ C&E.
And the chairman’s second son.
According to Yoo Seon—the secretary who had parachuted into the company one day out of nowhere—
“In one word? He’s a cheat character. Seriously, once you see him, you’ll get it. They say he’s top-tier visuals in this industry. Oh, and apparently he looks like the idol Min-gu.
But you know—just being handsome doesn’t make someone a cheat character.
He was basically a discarded son, then came back as the prodigal heir.
Ran off to the military as an act of rebellion, graduated early from MIT, built a successful content investment startup, and then returned in triumph.
If there were a human embodiment of young, rich, and handsome, it would be Go Jun-i.”
So of course—
The man’s name was trailed by grandiose modifiers.
A cheat character.
The embodiment of young, rich, and handsome.
Embarrassingly cartoonish titles clung to him wherever he went.
How am I supposed to win over a man like that?
Does he even want to get married?
“Honestly? Women swarm men like that. Party people never leave him alone. He’s had countless dating rumors with actresses…”
Actresses?
“Ah—don’t get the wrong idea. I’ll stop there. But if I had to add just one more thing, this is how people describe him.
A very nice bastard.
A capable bastard.”
A very nice bastard.
A capable bastard.
And she—somehow—had to stand at the center of a wedding stage with that bastard, by any means necessary.
A tragic heroine?
No.
She was more like the protagonist of a fantasy novel.
A perfectly ordinary farmer had turned into the youngest daughter of a media conglomerate overnight—at the age of twenty-nine.
It had been the same as any other day.
She’d been busy thinning peaches, her hands deep in farm work.
Then—
Like a misdirected brushstroke splashed across a rural dirt road, a foreign luxury car had appeared.
And from it emerged a middle-aged woman, her hair blown up stiff with hairspray, as if she aspired to resemble Margaret Thatcher.
Chairwoman Lee Seol-hae.
The owner of the Jeonghan Daily Group.
The Iron Lady had arrived unannounced—and with her, turned Dosil into the daughter of a media tycoon.
“My husband—former chairman of Jeonghan Daily—had an illegitimate child.
That child is you.”
She revealed a secret of birth Dosil had never known, never imagined.
In the rumor-filled countryside, Dosil had been nothing more than the daughter of an unwed mother who didn’t even know her father.
A girl whispered about as the child of some damned man her mother met in a bar after failing in Seoul.
And yet—
She had never imagined her life would be interrupted by a secret like this.
Because of that Iron Lady who appeared one day in the middle of nowhere, her status skyrocketed like a Cinderella fantasy.
No.
Status upgrade my ass.
“You must win Director Go’s favor—no matter what.
And you must take it all the way to marriage.
Do you understand?”
She was nothing more than a hired Cinderella tasked with an absurd mission.
To her—who had spent every day buried in dirt and sweat,
to a farmer who knew only peaches and her grandmother—
This was the mission she’d been given:
Win Go Jun-i’s affection.
Proceed straight to marriage.
If she succeeded, her grandmother would never have to suffer again.
She could live long, peacefully, and happily.
Her grandmother—the woman who had protected her through relentless gossip, raised her with grit and love.
Dosil, who had lost her mother.
Her grandmother, who had lost her daughter.
They were two halves of a broken life, leaning on each other like pillars, surviving together.
For twenty-nine years, Dosil had never stepped outside the land of Yongcheon in North Gyeongsang Province.
And now—marriage?
With him?
The very nice bastard.
The capable bastard.
The cheat character.
The embodiment of young, rich, and handsome.
It was a mission doomed to fail.
No—something closer to an impossible myth.
She picked at the hangnail on her thumb with her index finger.
She was nervous.
What kind of man would walk through that door?
The image was blurred, like thick fog.
A bastard.
Did that mean he was truly rotten? A complete mess of a human being?
His relationships with women were supposedly a disaster.
And she—whose romantic history was painfully simple—how was she supposed to win his heart?
Damn it.
She frowned at her reflection, fingers worrying at the hangnail again.
Then—
Click.
The VIP room door slid open.
She lifted her head slowly, eyes fixed on the doorway.
What is he? A door?
At first glance, she was overwhelmed by his sheer size.
A man built like a solid slab stood there, blocking the entrance.
Her gaze drifted upward like a fish caught on a hook—and the moment it landed on his face, Yuseon’s words flooded back.
“A total cheat character. Once you see him, you’ll know.
They say he looks like the idol Min-gu.”
She couldn’t quite picture Min-gu’s face, but she was certain—he must be the visual of the group.
Even in photos, Go Jun-i looked unreal, like a celebrity pictorial come to life.
But in person?
It was worse.
Yoo seon had once said that meeting someone truly famous felt like encountering an alien from another world.
She had been right.
He looked like a being who had descended briefly from a different universe.
Skin so glossy it seemed to reflect light.
Sharp, sculpted features.
Eyes as clear and cold as blades.
A face that looked crafted, not born.
His height nearly brushed the top of the doorframe.
Even his style defied normality.
Instead of a standard suit, he wore a relaxed-fit brown checkered ensemble—something straight off a high-end designer runway.
And worse—
He carried himself like he knew exactly how good he looked.
Her body stiffened under the weight of his presence.
Her face felt like it was turning to stone.
Her own black two-piece suit—chosen for safety and simplicity—suddenly felt painfully dull.
He scanned the room before stepping inside.
The door slid shut behind him.
Up close, she noticed his pupils—unnaturally dark.
Eyes impossible to read.
She rose stiffly from her seat, repeating Margaret Thatcher’s first rule in her head:
Do not use your dialect.
“Hello. I’m Ma Dosil.”
Her voice trembled slightly.
It sounded rough. Awkwardly accented.
He smirked.
She didn’t know what it meant—but on a face like his, it was a lethal weapon.
He sat across from her, eyes flat, voice commanding.
“Sit.”
Ah.
She hadn’t realized she was still standing.
As she sat, his gaze followed her with thinly veiled boredom.
Then—
“I’m Go Jun-i.”
Dialect. Watch the dialect.
She forced a smile.
Clumsy. Uneven.
“Nice to meet you.”
Go Jun-i placed his phone and car keys neatly on the corner of the table.
Then, without warning—
“Do you want to get married?”
