You don’t realize you’re in over your head until it’s too late.

Not when you accepted the job at LYNX Corp, not when you sat in the towering boardroom surrounded by glass and tension, and definitely not when you first shook hands with Han Jisung, the enigmatic CEO with too much power and far too much charm.

It’s later — when his gaze lingers across the room during a meeting, catching yours like it was intentional. Like it always is.

He shouldn’t be looking at you like that. You definitely shouldn’t be looking back.

⸻

Jisung is nothing like the rumors.

They say he’s cold, ruthless, too young to be running an empire but too brilliant to be stopped. What they don’t say is that he’s funny in a dry, blink-and-you-miss-it way. Or that he remembers small things — like how you take your coffee, or that you hate being interrupted mid-sentence.

He challenges you. Quietly. Constantly. And it drives you crazy.

“You take things personally,” he says after a tense strategy session, following you into the elevator.

You turn to face him. “You make things personal.”

The doors close. The air shifts.

He watches you like you’re a problem he doesn’t want to solve.

“No,” he says finally. “I just like seeing how far I can push you.”

And oh, do you feel it. The tension coiling between you, invisible but impossible to ignore. You tell yourself it’s a game. It has to be.

But games don’t make your heart race. Not like this.

⸻

One night, you’re alone in the office. It’s late, the lights dimmed, the city humming outside the windows. You’re scribbling notes when he appears in your doorway, jacket slung over one shoulder, hair slightly messy in that infuriatingly perfect way.

“You’re still here,” he says.

“So are you.”

He steps inside. There’s something different in his posture. Less CEO, more man.

“Do you like working here?” he asks, too casually.

You frown. “Yes.”

“Even with me?”

You set your pen down. “Is that a trick question?”

He doesn’t smile. Just watches you like he’s waiting for something.

“No,” you say. “I don’t like working with you. I like working against you.”

That finally gets a smile. But it fades just as fast.

“You make it hard to be professional,” he says softly.

You pause. “Then don’t be.”

It’s reckless, what you say. You know it. But you don’t take it back.

And he doesn’t back away.

⸻

Things change after that.

You don’t talk about the way his hand grazes yours when he passes by, or how your conversations turn sharp, charged, laced with double meanings. You don’t talk about the elevator ride where his fingers brushed your wrist and neither of you moved.

And you especially don’t talk about the rooftop.

That night, after a product launch, after too much champagne and not enough space between you, he finds you leaning against the rail. The city is alive below. He stands beside you, shoulder almost touching yours.