The pan slipped from my numb fingers and clattered to the floor, its metallic ring a final, tragic note to the catastrophe. My own legs felt just as useless.
"I can't believe it... I-I-I... k-killed him...?" The whisper was thin with sheer, undiluted horror. "The original Austra was a villainess, but did I just become a murderer?!"
Pure, unadulterated panic seized me. I scrambled toward the motionless man on the floor, my hands fluttering uselessly, desperate to assess the damage.
That's when the refrigerator's cold, blue light fell directly across his face, carving his features out of the shadows with cruel clarity.
The sharp, commanding jawline. The perfectly sculpted nose. The brows that were always slightly furrowed in concentration.
"N-no. NO! The universe can't be this cruel!"
I crawled closer, my heart hammering a frantic, terrified rhythm against my ribs. There was no mistaking him. The truth, horrifying and absolute, crashed down on me, turning my world completely upside down.
"It is him."
My hands trembled violently. I stared, utterly paralyzed.
"Did I just kill my beloved Male Lead?"
* * *
A dull, throbbing pain was the first thing to greet Han Eun Woo as he swam back into consciousness.
It pulsed from his right temple in a steady, punishing rhythm, a stark contrast to the cloud-like mattress cradling his body.
As he tried to push himself up, his fingers brushed against a strip of... something. Gauze. Clumsily taped to his forehead.
The room was dark, but from his side, he heard it—a wet, ragged sniffling, punctuated by low, frantic muttering.
"...please, please, don't die on me, you stupid, handsome CEO, I didn't mean to, the pan just slipped—oh god, is that a concussion? What if he has brain damage? I've ruined the male lead, the fandom will skin me alive..."
'Who is that?' His vision, still blurry, strained toward the sound. A silhouette was hunched over his bedside, backlit by the faint city glow from the window. In its hand, something metallic glinted.
A primal, CEO-grade alarm bell rang in his mind. 'Weapon?'
He shifted, the floorboard creaking under the weight of the bed.
The sniffling stopped. The silhouette froze.
Slowly, it began to turn.
A small, practical flashlight—not a menacing one—clicked on, pointed at the floor to avoid blinding him.
The light washed upward, revealing Austra Law.
Her face was a tragic canvas of smeared makeup—black tracks of ruined eyeliner cutting through the blush on her cheeks, her lipstick blotchy and uneven.
Her eyes were puffy and red-rimmed from crying. In her other hand, she wasn't holding a weapon, but a pair of blunt-tipped safety scissors, dangling next to a roll of gauze and a torn-open packet of antiseptic wipes.
She looked less like a sinister phantom and more like a deranged, grief-stricken nurse who had just lost a very important board game.
Her wide, bloodshot eyes locked onto his. A fresh wave of tears welled up, but her mouth wobbled into a shaky, overwhelming smile of relief.
"What happened—?" he began but Austra cut him off.
"You're awake!" she gasped, the words soggy with emotion. "Oh, thank every drama writer in the sky, you're not dead! I was so— I thought I'd— I tried to bandage it but the tape wouldn't stick right and I was looking for the scissors to cut it and—"
"Ahh—!"
The verbal avalanche was too much. The throbbing in his head spiked, a violent protest against the noise, the light, the sheer, unbelievable absurdity of it all.
Han Eun Woo didn't so much faint as he deliberately, purposefully, retreated from a reality that had become completely intolerable.
His eyes rolled back, and the darkness took him again, a sanctuary from smeared makeup and safety scissors.
* * *
'Okay, he's out again. Deep breaths, Austra. He's not dead. That's the important thing.'
I crept closer and adjusted the haphazard bandage on his forehead, my fingers surprisingly gentle.
With him unconscious and the chaotic panic subsiding, I finally got a clear, unobstructed view of his face, lit by a slant of silver moonlight from the window.
'Wow. I always knew he was good-looking on screen, but this is next level.' The camera really hadn't done him justice.
The sharp, clean lines of his jaw, the perfect arch of his brows even in sleep, the sweep of his dark lashes against his skin… It was a different kind of impact seeing it in person, without the filter of a TV screen.
'But still…'
My mind flashed back through our interactions so far.
The water splash. My unhinged laughter. And now, a frying pan to the skull.
'Yeah, I'm batting a thousand on first impressions here. 'Hello, I'm your new, improved, non-villainous fiancée, please observe my portfolio of assault and public meltdowns." that's what my actions seem to scream.'
It was painfully clear the original Austra hadn't exactly been his favorite person either. I was just… a louder, more chaotic version of a problem he already didn't want.
Sighing, I carefully slid a pillow under his head, trying to make him more comfortable.
In the profound quiet, I could hear the steady rhythm of his breathing, the faint, strong pulse at the base of his throat.
Everything about him in this vulnerable state was strangely… enchanting. Real. Not a character, but a person.
My gaze drifted down, landing on his forearm where his sleeve had ridden up.
The moonlight traced the defined tendons and the subtle, elegant lines of veins beneath his skin.
A completely unbidden, utterly shameless thought hijacked my brain. 'Oh. Oh, I get it now. I finally understand the 'veiny forearms' tag on AO3. That is… a thing. A very, very distinct thing. I am, apparently, a veiny forearms girl. Huh. Good to know.'
Heat rushed to my cheeks. I sprang back as if electrocuted.
"Ahem! I-I should take this back," I stammered to the empty room, hastily gathering the scattered first-aid kit—the antiseptic wipes, the safety scissors, the roll of gauze—as if they were evidence of a crime.
Cradling the kit to my chest like a shield, I practically fled from the bedroom, closing the door softly behind me with my foot.
I stood in the dark living room, fanning my flushed face with my free hand.
'Get a grip, Austra. You just concussed the male lead and your biggest takeaway is an appreciation for his vascular anatomy? Priorities!'
I put the kit back in the bathroom cabinet and was shuffling back toward the bedroom when a logical question finally broke through my internal screaming.
"Oh, by the way... why is he even here?" I muttered to the dark hallway. "It's not like the original CEO Han ever willingly visited the original Austra. Not once in the whole drama, unless it was to deliver a scathing lecture about her latest atrocity."
I paused, my stomach dropping. "Wait. Is he here because of the water-splash incident?! Did he come to formally annihilate me? Ah, why couldn't I have been reincarnated just half a minute earlier—!"
I pushed the bedroom door open, my lament dying on my lips.
He was awake. CEO Han was trying to push himself upright, one hand braced against the nightstand, the other pressed tightly to his bandaged temple, his face a mask of strained concentration and pain.
"Oh! You're awake. Let me help you, don't push yourself," I said, rushing forward without thinking.
He flinched at my sudden movement, his grey eyes sharpening on me with a look of pure, exhausted wariness.
After a tense second where he seemed to weigh his options—dignified suffering versus accepting help from the source of his suffering—he gave a barely perceptible nod.
I slid an arm under his shoulder, helping him to his feet. He was solid and warm, and he leaned on me more heavily than I expected. His breath came in controlled, heavy pulls.
Once he was steady, his hand went back to the gauze, his voice a low, gravelly rumble that vibrated with a dangerous, restrained intensity. "What happened?"
The direct question was a spear of ice. "I-I am sorry," I stammered, the full weight of the situation crushing down on me. "I just saw you in the dark and mistook you for a robber and before I knew it, I had... concussed you. With a pan."
He looked at me. Not with the explosive anger I expected, but with a deep, bone-weary scrutiny, as if trying to solve an impossible equation written on my face.
His lips parted, a retort or a demand clearly on the tip of his tongue, but he stopped himself, closing his eyes briefly as if the very effort of dealing with me was too much.
The silence that followed was worse than any shouting.
"Ehm, is your head still hurting? Maybe we should go to the hospital? I'm gonna call Butler Kim to—"
"No need." His voice was firm, cutting through my panic. He winced slightly as he adjusted his stance. "It's... fine."
"Oh. Okay. If you say so..." The words felt inadequate. I swallowed, gathering my courage. "But... can I ask why you were here?"
He looked at me then, a long, heavy stare that seemed to ask, 'Do you really not know?' .
I met his gaze, letting my genuine, bewildered confusion show on my face.
"Didn't you get the contract?" he finally asked, his tone flat.
'The contract...? Does he mean the... m-marriage contract?'
"Oh, yes, I—I just saw it earlier," I said, my voice a little too high. "What about it?"
"So, you didn't read it before you signed it?" he said, more a statement of weary belief than a question. He muttered under his breath, something that sounded distinctly like, "Of course you haven't. Why look?"
"No," I blurted out, a spark of defensive pride flaring. "I haven't signed it. So I haven't looked at it fully."
The effect was immediate. His sharp gaze snapped back to me, the weary certainty in his eyes fracturing into pure, unadulterated surprise.
He must've been absolutely sure I would have scrawled my name without a second thought. My refusal was an unforeseen variable in his carefully managed world.
He recovered quickly, the mask of cold composure sliding back into place, though it was now slightly cracked.
"Anyway," he continued, his voice returning to that low, businesslike rumble. "It says we have to live together here, for now. Until the wedding. After which we'll move to another... prepared place."
'Live... together?'
My brain screeched to a halt. The words echoed in the silent, moonlit room, far louder than the pan's CLANG had been.
'Co-habitation clause. Of course. A 'perfect public image' starts at home. No wonder he was in the kitchen. This isn't my apartment. It's our apartment.'
The sheer, catastrophic reality of it stole my breath.
'Our gilded, minimalist cage. I have to live with the man whose skull I just dented. With the Male lead? I have to share a refrigerator, a living room, probably a Wi-Fi password with the Han Eun Woo?!'
He watched my internal meltdown play out across my face with detached interest, then glanced at the clock. "It's late," he stated, the CEO making an executive decision. "We should... reconvene tomorrow."
Right. Sleep.
Because that was a normal thing people could do after a day like this.
"Y-Yes. Right. Of course." I managed a weak nod, my mind already racing ahead. 'Where do I sleep? The couch? There's probably a dozen guest rooms in this place the size of a hotel. Do I ask? That would require more talking.'
He gave one last, lingering look at the bandage on his head, then at me, as if mentally filing the entire incident under 'Problems for Future Han Eun Woo.'
Without another word, he turned and walked stiffly out of the bedroom, presumably to find his own room in our shared prison.
I stood alone in the doorway, the weight of the day crashing down on me all at once. The truck, the splash, the contract, the pan.
And now this.
I slowly closed the door, leaning my forehead against the cool wood.
'I just spent the most chaotic day of my life—or death—and now I have to spend the night under the same roof as the Male Lead?' I sighed, hoping that at least tomorrow is gonna be better.