Chapter 1 

Charge Me Up

“Stop playing hard to get and let’s date.”

“What?”

At Bo-bae’s provocative remark, Ho-rang’s eyebrows twitched.

“If you just say okay, Mr. Baek Ho-rang, I’ll at least let you live. So come on. Let’s date.”

He had never met a woman this bold in his life. It wasn’t as though women had never approached him before. But they had only ever confessed shyly or tried to seduce him with a little sex appeal. He had never encountered a woman who charged at him so aggressively, like a wild animal.

Watching Bo-bae pursue him without hesitation, Ho-rang thought, This woman is serious.

If that was the case, then he should take her seriously, too.

Ho-rang rose from the sofa and slowly approached Bo-bae.

One step, then another. Very slowly.

“Can you handle it?”

“W-What?”

The playful atmosphere turned intensely sensual in an instant, and the nervous Bo-bae began to stammer.

“Once I start something, I’m the type of person who sees it through to the end.”

“The e-end?”

There was no such thing as halfway in Baek Ho-rang’s life. Whether something turned out well or badly, once he started something, he always saw it through to the end.

He was over thirty and had never been in a relationship, so he had no idea where a relationship might ultimately lead. But there was one thing he was certain of.

“Once we start, I’m not going to let things end pathetically with just holding hands, you know?”

Ho-rang had come so close that his thigh touched Bo-bae’s knee. Startled, she scrambled onto the bed to get away from him, but Ho-rang didn’t stop. He continued advancing toward her, growling like a tiger that had spotted a delicious meal.

“Are you still okay with that?”

“W-What do you mean?”

Just moments ago, Bo-bae had been doing everything she could to provoke him. But the situation had now turned a full 180 degrees.

Bo-bae was running away, and Ho-rang was chasing after her.

“You said you wanted to date.”

“I-I did, but…”

Ho-rang came so close that Bo-bae lost her balance and fell backward.

But before she could even register the softness of the blanket beneath her, Ho-rang was already climbing over her, moving slowly and deliberately.

“We’re not children, after all.”

Bo-bae’s clear eyes trembled as though she were caught in an earthquake, reflecting the face of a hungry predator. But Ho-rang paid no attention to her nervousness and moved even closer.

His body overlapped hers. He slipped between her legs, his body large and solid.

Bo-bae had never experienced such an intimate, suggestive touch with a man before. Her heart pounded so violently that she could barely stand it. It felt as though a ball of fire had erupted inside her, spreading heat throughout her entire body until she could hardly breathe.

She clutched the blanket with her delicate hands, desperately trying to suppress her trembling.

Then his hot breath brushed against her ear.

“Even if this is just a contractual relationship…”

Bo-bae looked up at him with trembling eyes. He smiled and continued.

“If we’re adults, shouldn’t we have an adult relationship?”

His words sent a thrilling shiver through Bo-bae’s entire body.

And they made her curious.

Just who is this man, and how does he make me feel such electrifying sensations?

There was only one man in the entire world whom she could touch.

Baek Ho-rang.

From the very first moment she met him, Bo-bae had made up her mind.

I’m going to make this man mine.

A few days earlier.

“Sweetheart, will you marry me?”

“Oh my! Darling!”

“A world without you would be like diving 7,000 meters beneath the sea without an oxygen tank, or being abandoned in a space station without an air supply. You’re my oxygen, my air!”

“Oh my, how romantic!”

“And then the two of them kiss.”

Jang, the producer, had been taking turns reading the male and female roles from the script. Now, barely suppressing his rising anger, he rubbed his face roughly with his dry hands.

Watching him, Bo-bae lowered her head as though she were a criminal and let out a quiet sigh.

It seemed this script was doomed, too.

Haa… I’ve spent almost a whole year preparing this.

“Writer Na. If a man proposed to you like this, would you want to marry him?”

“I think it’s a pretty good proposal. The male lead is expressing how desperately he needs the female lead by comparing her to air. Air is one of the most essential things in a person’s life, so he’s saying that his love is just as vital and desperate…”

“Haa. Writer Na!”

At the ominous tone in Producer Jang’s voice, Bo-bae looked up at him, her confidence shaken.

“Have you ever dated anyone?”

“Pardon?”

“Why can’t you get the hang of romance? You sound like someone who’s never been in a relationship!”

“…”

“Is love a matter of logic? Is love some kind of mathematical formula?!”

In the end, Producer Jang’s irritated voice boomed throughout the conference room.

“You know I like your writing, right?”

Of course she knew. How could she not?

Five years ago, Bo-bae had made her debut as a drama writer after winning the grand prize in HBS’s one-act drama script competition.

Her friends, who had studied alongside her, had been green with envy. Back in her hometown, people had even hung congratulatory banners throughout the neighborhood.

She had heard that even if a script won a competition, it could take a long time before it was adapted into a drama. But that hadn’t been the case for Bo-bae.

Thanks to Producer Jang, who was sitting right in front of her, her script was quickly turned into a drama. For a one-act production, it achieved fairly high ratings and even received praise for being a well-crafted piece.

But that was as far as her glory went.

Afterward, she became a writer who possessed the title but had no follow-up project to her name.

It wasn’t as though she hadn’t tried hard enough. She spent so much time hunched over her desk, pounding away at her keyboard, that she developed hemorrhoids. She ran around conducting research until she developed plantar fasciitis.

Yet all she ever received in return were Producer Jang’s deep sighs and words of rejection.

“Everything is good. You still write well, and your concepts are unique. All of that is great, but when I read your scripts, my heart doesn’t race. My heart!”

There it is again! Again! Is his heart made of adamantium or something? Why does he keep saying his heart doesn’t race?

“This is a romance drama! My heart should flutter. A marriage proposal should make me swoon! But what is this? It sounds like an engineering student’s thesis. Seven thousand meters under the sea? A space station? Is your dream to explore the ocean depths? Are you an aspiring astronaut or something? Argh, this is so frustrating!”

Producer Jang thumped his own chest repeatedly, as though he couldn’t stand the frustration anymore.

The truth was, Bo-bae was the one who felt the most frustrated right now.

“Why is there no excitement in a script written by someone who wants to write romance? Where’s the heart-fluttering excitement?!”

Exactly. Romance really is the hardest thing in the world to write.

“And what is this kissing scene? Even if it’s just a stage direction, do you think the actors will feel any chemistry reading this? Chemistry! Other writers are creating cappuccino kisses, candy kisses, even underwater kisses! They’re becoming masters of kissing scenes! And all you can write is, ‘And then the two of them kissed’? Good grief! Writer Na, if someone saw this, they’d think you wrote the script without ever having kissed anyone in your life!”

How perceptive of you. You should set up a fortune-telling mat.

“Wait, that can’t be right. You’ve kissed someone before, haven’t you?”

“O-Of course! I have. Lots of times. I’m a master of kissing! Haha!”

Bo-bae laughed awkwardly.

Producer Jang let out a deep sigh before addressing her in a serious voice.

“Writer Na.”

“Yes?”

“Has it been too long since you last dated someone?”

Too long? I haven’t even started dating anyone in the first place.

“Stop sitting at home writing all the time and get outside. Go meet some men. Date someone. Kiss someone. Okay? You need plenty of experience to write good stories.”

“Yeees…”

“Keep your chin up. Revise the script and bring it back. The department head still has high hopes for you.”

“Thank you, as always, for reading my boring scripts.”

“They’re interesting. You’re just a little short on romance. No, actually, a lot short on romance. Find a way to bring more romance into it. And try writing a more passionate kissing scene. If you do that, someday you might have a huge hit, too…”

“Ah! That stings!”

Producer Jang had been patting Bo-bae on the shoulder to encourage her when he suddenly pulled his hand away and grimaced, as though he had received an electric shock.

“Ah, that really stings. I’ve noticed this before, but is there electricity running through your body or something? Why does it sting every time I touch you?”

“Haha. Of course not.”

“No, I’m serious. I get static shocks whenever I touch you, Writer Na. And they’re really painful, too.”

At his words, Bo-bae gave an awkward laugh.

“Anyway, remember what I said. If you’re going to be a romance writer, you need to know how to write an incredible kissing scene. Understand?”

“Yes.”

After Producer Jang left, Bo-bae let out a deep sigh.

“Easy for you to say. It’s not like I can kiss someone all by myself!”

After leaving the conference room, Bo-bae headed straight to the restroom.

Why had her stomach been cramping so much since yesterday? It was probably because of stress.

Sitting on the toilet, Bo-bae habitually turned on her phone and began scrolling through entertainment news. As she flicked through the rapidly passing headlines, the face of an actor she had always liked appeared on the screen.

“Oh? Actor Oreo is joining a new drama!”

The article announced that Oreo, an actor she desperately wanted to work with at least once before she died, had signed on for a new drama.

Bo-bae quickly searched for the drama he was joining.

“Ah… It’s Ju-hee’s project.”

Ju-hee was a writer with whom Bo-bae had once participated in a writers’ study group.

Seeing Ju-hee’s face displayed on the portal site, complete with an official profile photo, made Bo-bae’s mouth taste bitter for some reason.

“Haa. When will I ever get to work with Actor Oh?”

As she let out a long, heavy sigh, her phone emitted a feeble notification sound and shut down.

“What? Did the battery die?”

She had rushed out without charging her phone, even though its battery had already been dangerously low. She hadn’t expected it to die so soon.

Bo-bae placed her phone on the toilet paper holder and strained her lower abdomen.

“Ah, why does my stomach hurt so much when nothing will even come out?”

She continued straining, desperately trying one last time, when—

Click!

The lights went out, plunging the restroom into darkness.

“What the heck? Did someone turn off the lights? Hello! There’s someone in here! Could you turn the lights back on, please? Is anybody out there?”

She called out loudly, but no one answered.

This was a problem.

The restroom had no windows, and it was so dark that she couldn’t see even a single step ahead. To make matters worse, she still hadn’t finished what she had come in to do.

“Why did my battery have to die at a time like this?”

Bo-bae fumbled around on the toilet paper holder until she found her phone and picked it up. She pressed the power button just in case, but the phone showed no signs of turning on.

Apparently, the battery was completely drained—not even one percent remained.

“Haa. I guess I have no choice.”

Bo-bae clasped the phone tightly between both hands and closed her eyes.

As she concentrated as hard as she could, a faint sparkle appeared around her heart.

The light gradually grew brighter and spread outward, traveling down her arms and into her phone.

When Bo-bae opened her eyes and pressed the power button, the phone that had been completely dead suddenly switched on!

Not only that, but its battery had somehow been charged to 21 percent.

Seeing this, Bo-bae let out a short sigh.

“Haa. With a power like this, how am I ever supposed to date anyone?”

The truth was that Bo-bae possessed a special ability she could never tell anyone about.

An inexplicable electric current flowed through her body.

If other people heard about it, they might ask whether that wasn’t a wonderful ability to have.

But they would be missing the point.

The problem was that she couldn’t control it.

She could charge electronic devices to a certain extent, so in that regard, it was undeniably a useful ability.

But people were another matter entirely.

Relying on the flashlight on her phone, Bo-bae finished up in the restroom and left. After returning her visitor pass and collecting her identification, she stepped outside and saw a large crowd of people moving through the lobby.

But then—

“Why are they all men?”

She had heard that a famous girl group was making its comeback performance that day, so the crowd must have been their fan club.

Seeing more than a hundred men gathered there, Bo-bae let out a heavy sigh. She took a pair of leather gloves and a thick scarf out of her bag and wrapped herself up.

It was completely inappropriate attire for summer, but this was Bo-bae’s last line of defense to protect the men around her.

“Phew. Shall we get going?”

Clenching both fists, Bo-bae cautiously took her first step.

When Bo-bae’s body came into contact with machines, there was no particular problem. But things were different when she touched people.

The funny thing was, women were perfectly fine.

She could hold a woman’s hand, put an arm around her shoulders, hug her, or even kiss her on the cheek as much as she wanted. Nothing bad would happen.

The problem was men.

“Ow! That stings!”

“I’m sorry!”

Unlike women, men generated static electricity from even the slightest physical contact with her.

“Excuse me. Coming through.”

“Ow! That stings! Why am I getting a static shock when it isn’t even winter?”

“Ouch!”

“Aaaah! That hurts!”

“Ah! It hurts!”

“Get out of the way! I’m telling you, you’ll get hurt if you touch me! Shoo! Shoo! Get away from me!”

The more contact there was, and the larger the area of contact, the more severe the shock the men received.

In extreme cases, it could even put their lives at risk.

Of course, Bo-bae’s own body was completely unaffected.

It was only the men who suffered—terribly, unbearably, excruciatingly.

“Phew. I finally made it through.”

After getting past the fan club crowd, Bo-bae let out a sigh of relief and removed her gloves and scarf.

How long had she been like this?

She wasn’t entirely sure.

There was a photograph of her holding hands with a little boy when she was young, so she assumed she must have been fine back then. She had no idea why things had changed.

Perhaps because she had attended an all-girls middle school and high school, the problem hadn’t been particularly inconvenient when she was younger.

The only real difficulty was that she couldn’t hold her father’s hand.

But things became a problem when she entered university.

When she developed feelings for a man and began seriously considering a romantic relationship, she started resenting her own body.

If I was going to develop some kind of supernatural ability, couldn’t it at least have been something that helped me date?

“What kind of useless electric power is this? It doesn’t help with romance even one bit!”

Because of this ridiculous ability, Bo-bae had never been able to have a proper relationship with a man.

Dating meant holding hands, kissing, and going on to more intimate things.

But she couldn’t do any of that.

All she could do was gaze at men from a distance, like paintings hanging in an art gallery.

What? Then why not try platonic love?

You do that, then! Go ahead and enjoy it! Do it for the rest of your life! I prefer Eros!

“Haa. I can’t even kiss a man, or so much as brush against one. So how on earth am I supposed to write a kissing scene?”