Why would Peninsula want to date a lazy dog ​​like me?

"Buzzing—buzzing—"

Wei Wu convulsed violently on the narrow single bed, like a corpse that had been forcibly electrified.

"You son of a bitch..."

With his eyes closed, he relied on muscle memory to accurately reach out and find the erratic brick next to the pillow, then skillfully pressed the power button with his thumb.

The world is finally quiet.

Wei Wu let out a long sigh, preparing to roll over and continue embracing his not-so-soft but cheap mattress. For a lazy dog, sleep is the only legitimate way to replenish energy and maintain vital signs; any act that interrupts sleep is tantamount to murder.

However, less than five seconds had passed.

"Buzzing—buzzing—"

The agonizing vibration echoed again in the cramped space, even creating a teeth-grinding resonance as the phone pressed against the wooden bed frame.

Wei Wu suddenly opened his eyes and grabbed his phone. A completely unfamiliar South Korean number was flashing on the screen, without even indicating its location.

He glanced at the time: 10:05 a.m.

Less than seven hours had passed since he uploaded "Believer," a song meant to fool his mentor, at around 3 a.m., and went to sleep.

"Rushing to be reborn so early in the morning?"

With a thick nasal voice and a grumpy tone, Wei Wu swiped to answer the call and gave a curt "Hey!"

A rapidly speaking, excited Korean male voice, almost cracking with excitement, immediately came from the other end of the phone: "Hello! Is this Mr. 'LazyDog'?! This is the A&R department of Starship Entertainment! We heard your song 'Believer' on SoundCloud, wow, it's absolutely brilliant! We'd like to talk to you about copyright and..."

"Smack."

Wei Wu hung up the phone without expression.

He didn't even bother to listen to the rapid-fire Korean that followed; he only picked out a few keywords from his mind: "sir," "company," and "let's talk."

"Damn, are South Korean telecom scams this sophisticated now? They can even accurately identify my random 'Lazy Dog' ID on SoundCloud? And they're talking about copyright? Why don't you just say you're Qin Shi Huang asking me to pay to unfreeze the Terracotta Army?"

Wei Wu scratched his messy hair in frustration. This was definitely because a few days ago, in an attempt to save money, he had bought the cheapest phone card from a shady agency in some back alley of Myeongdong, which resulted in his personal information being sold to a scam group.

"Penny wise, pound foolish; the ancients were right."

He muttered something, tossed his phone back onto the pillow, closed his eyes, and prepared to go back to sleep.

However, that fraud gang clearly possessed a level of perseverance and KPI pressure that is difficult for ordinary people to match.

For the next half hour, Wei Wu's phone rang every two minutes as if he were having an epileptic seizure. The numbers kept changing: landlines in Seoul, mobile numbers in Gyeonggi Province, and even unknown numbers that didn't display.

Wei Wu accepted three.

The second one was a woman who claimed to be the owner of an independent label. Her voice was sickeningly sweet, and she immediately asked him if he was interested in signing her as a producer. Wei Wu replied, "I'm only interested in being a lord," and then hung up.

The third caller was a middle-aged man speaking with a Busan accent, excitedly shouting into the phone, accompanied by a cacophony of keyboard clatter in the background. Wei Wu didn't listen for a second longer and immediately hung up.

"Is this never going to end?!"

Wei Wu was completely enraged.

His already limited patience had run out.

Blocking a number? Too much trouble, it requires tapping the screen several times.

He pressed and held the volume down button, putting his phone into absolute silent mode, turning off both the ringtone and vibration. Then he flipped the phone over, screen down, onto the bedside table, out of sight, out of mind.

"Whoever hits me again is a dog."

Wei Wu turned over and covered his head with the blanket, and the world finally returned to silence.

He was unaware, of course, that at this very moment, in several luxury office buildings in Gangnam District, Seoul, the talent scouts and music production departments of several large entertainment companies had gone into a frenzy.

The rough, frenetic track "Believer," which wasn't even properly mixed, was accidentally discovered at four in the morning by an underground DJ who was staying up all night looking for inspiration, and then casually shared on a professional music forum.

Within just a few hours, the song spread like wildfire through South Korea's independent music scene and producer circles. Its unadorned explosive power, near-perfect melody, and the lead singer's highly distinctive, piercing vocals sent chills down the spines of everyone who heard it.

In this industrialized, assembly-line-driven world of star-making on the peninsula, such works brimming with primal vitality are truly rare treasures.

The A&R departments of various companies used various gray channels and finally uncovered the phone number linked to the "LazyDog" account, which was registered in Seoul, through SoundCloud's registration information.

Thus began a crackdown on this number.

But to their utter surprise, this "genius producer" who could write such a masterpiece is now treating them all as telecom scammers because he's annoyed that they're disturbing his sleep, and has simply silenced his phone.

……

At 2:30 p.m., Wei Wu, sporting faint dark circles under his eyes, arrived precisely at the GS25 convenience store in Mapo-gu.

Although he managed to get some extra sleep, the interrupted sleep quality was extremely poor, leaving him even more like a walking corpse than yesterday.

He changed into that blue-green uniform, put his hands in his pockets, and stared blankly at a row of chewing gum in front of the cashier.

The phone screen next to the cashier was flashing wildly at a terrifying frequency. Missed call notifications flooded the screen like a waterfall.

Wei Wu merely glanced at it coldly, saving himself the effort of even reaching out a finger to flip it over.

"Are these scammers crazy? They kept calling even when I had my phone muted? Is the scam system in South Korea some kind of automated script-based dialing system?"

Wei Wu cursed inwardly and decided to get a proper phone card after get off work. It would be more expensive, but it was better than being mentally polluted every day.

"jingle--"

The convenience store's sensor door opened, and a familiar figure walked in, accompanied by a very faint yet highly recognizable scent of expensive perfume.

Wei Wu didn't even lift his eyelids; just by the scent and the light, silent footsteps, he knew who had come.

Zhang Zhenying.

She changed her outfit today. A black spaghetti strap dress with an extremely tight cut perfectly outlined her flawless, S-shaped curves. She casually draped a thin white sun-protective cardigan over it, her bare shoulders gleaming delicately under the fluorescent lights.

He still wore that low-brimmed baseball cap and a pair of large sunglasses, completely obscuring his face, which was enough to cause a traffic jam.

"Welcome." Wei Wu mechanically uttered four Korean letters, his tone as flat as a tape recorder that was about to run out of power.

Zhang Zhenying didn't say anything, but simply walked slowly down the narrow aisle of the convenience store with elegant cat-like steps.

Behind her sunglasses, her dark eyes were glued to Wei Wu with an almost greedy intensity.

She looked at Wei Wu's broad shoulders, which drooped slightly from boredom, at his taut forearms with prominent veins peeking out from his uniform short sleeves, and at his Adam's apple bobbing slightly from agitation.

She even noticed the tiny yellowish sweat stains on Wei Wu's uniform collar, which had turned slightly yellow from sweating.

What might seem like sloppy details to an ordinary person exudes a deadly, hormone-fueled allure under Jang Jin-young's morbid filter.

She wasn't supposed to go out today. The housekeeper had prepared a sumptuous afternoon tea. But she couldn't resist.

She was like a traveler who had been thirsty in the desert for three days, desperately trying to absorb the "indifference" that Wei Wu possessed.

She walked to the refrigerator, to the same spot, to the same row of banana milk.

She reached out, but instead of taking the outermost bottle, she deliberately reached inside and took a bottle of banana milk that Wei Wu had definitely touched yesterday while sorting the goods, and might even have left fingerprints on it.

Then, she went to the rice ball section and picked up a rice ball with a "1+1 Discount Promotion" label.

Holding the two items, Zhang Zhenying walked to the cashier.

Wei Wu finally shifted his attention from the chewing gum to the products. He picked up the barcode scanner and scanned it twice.

"It costs 2500 won in total."

As he quoted the price, Wei Wu's brain, which was like a rusty gear, finally couldn't help but start working, and a huge question arose.

Is this woman mentally unstable?

Wei Wu, who was her Chinese tutor, had visited her home.

It was a detached villa located in Cheongdam-dong, Gangnam District. The living room alone was more than ten times larger than Wei Wu's semi-basement house. The interior decoration was extremely luxurious, and even the drinking cups were from a European brand that Wei Wu couldn't name but could clearly not afford.

Why would a rich heiress who carries bags worth hundreds of thousands of won and wears limited-edition shoes go to a convenience store in this run-down street in Mapo-gu for two consecutive days to buy discounted banana milk and promotional rice balls that are about to expire?

Experiencing ordinary life? Or is this kind of nostalgic drama popular among wealthy people in South Korea?

"Teacher Wei doesn't seem to be in very good spirits today?"

Zhang Zhenying took off her sunglasses, revealing a concerned smile on her exquisitely flawless face. Her voice was sweet with a hint of languor, like a gentle brush lightly scratching at one's heart.

She handed over a 10,000 won banknote.

Wei Wu took the banknote. This time he was smarter. He held the banknote by the edge with his fingers, not giving Zhang Zhenying any chance to accidentally touch it.

"Didn't sleep well." Wei Wu said succinctly, mentally grumbling as he made change:

Nonsense, if someone mistook you for Qin Shi Huang and called you all morning, you wouldn't be in good spirits either.

"Oh? Is something bothering you? If you need any help, you can let me know." Zhang Zhenying leaned forward slightly, a breathtaking glimpse of snow-white skin peeking out from her neckline.

Her gaze inadvertently fell on the secondhand Samsung phone next to the cashier, whose screen was still flashing wildly.

In that instant, a dangerously cold glint flashed in Zhang Zhenying's eyes, which had been smiling.

who is it?

Who is frantically contacting him? Who is taking up his attention? Who has made him look so agitated?

The serpent of jealousy writhed wildly within her heart, spitting venom.

She wanted nothing more than to smash that damn phone to pieces, find everyone who had called Wei Wu, and tear them to shreds one by one.

But on the surface, she still maintained that well-behaved and caring socialite demeanor.

"It's nothing, just a bit of a telecom scam." Wei Wu slapped the change on the table, his tone revealing undisguised annoyance. "Here's your change: 7500 won. Goodbye."

Upon hearing the words "telecom fraud," the venomous snake in Zhang Zhenying's heart instantly subsided.

So it was a scam.

Her smile returned, genuine and radiant. As long as it wasn't some other woman trying to seduce her treasure.

"Then teacher, please be careful. Scammers these days are really bad." Zhang Zhenying carefully put away the change, just like yesterday, and folded the receipt with Wei Wu's name on it carefully and put it close to her body.

"See you tonight, Teacher Wei."

She put on her sunglasses, turned, and left. Her graceful figure was enough to make any normal young man's blood boil.

But Wei Wu only glanced at her retreating figure.

This woman is definitely sick. Her spending habits are just incomprehensible.

It doesn't matter, as long as she pays me 50,000 won per hour every night, I can't stop her from coming to buy plastic bags every day.

……

8 PM, Cheongdam-dong, Gangnam-gu.

Wei Wu rang the doorbell of Zhang Zhenying's villa right on time.

The person who opened the door was Zhang's nanny, a kind-looking middle-aged woman.

"Mr. Wei is here. Miss is waiting for you in the study on the second floor." The nanny respectfully handed over a pair of brand-new guest slippers.

Wei Wu changed into slippers and walked expressionlessly up the spiral staircase covered with a thick wool carpet.

This wasn't his first time here, but he still felt no interest whatsoever in the villa's luxurious decorations. The oil paintings hanging on the walls, which appeared to be genuine works by famous artists, were less appealing to him than a 10,000 won banknote bearing the image of King Sejong.

As I pushed open the study door, a faint scent of sandalwood wafted out.

The study is very large, with three walls lined with floor-to-ceiling solid wood bookshelves, and a large mahogany desk in the middle.

Zhang Zhenying was sitting behind her desk. She had changed out of her designer clothes and put on an extremely loose, homey, and conservative cotton pajama set.

This was a rule set by Wei Wu when he first came to class.

At the time, Zhang Zhenying was dressed very lightly, and Wei Wu told her directly, "If Miss Zhang feels hot, you can turn on the air conditioning; if you feel that your clothes are in the way of your studies, I can leave immediately."

From then on, Zhang Zhenying's attire in front of him became unusually conservative, even covering her neck completely.

"Good evening, Teacher Wei." Zhang Zhenying stood up and bowed slightly. Her attitude was impeccable, perfectly embodying the image of a well-behaved girl who respects her teacher.

"Okay. Let's begin."

Without uttering a single wasted word, Wei Wu walked directly to the desk, pulled out a chair, and sat down.

He pulled out Chinese textbooks and notebooks from his slightly faded canvas bag, and finally, he pulled out the secondhand cell phone that had been bothering him all day.

The phone remained silent. Wei Wu casually flipped the phone over, screen down, and slammed it heavily onto the large mahogany table.

A soft "snap" sounded particularly clear in the quiet study.

Zhang Zhenying's gaze followed that movement, fixed firmly on the back of the worn-out phone.

Although her phone was confiscated, it still contained countless "junk" messages trying to contact Wei Wu. This realization gave her a morbid displeasure.

"Turn to page 30. Today we'll discuss the grammatical structure of complex sentences." Wei Wu's voice was as cold and hard as a block of ice, and he quickly got into work mode.

Zhang Zhenying obediently opened the book, but her eyes kept glancing at the phone.

"The sentence structure 'Because...therefore...' indicates a cause-and-effect relationship. Zhang Zhenying, please make a sentence using this structure." Wei Wu picked up his pen and circled it on the textbook.

Zhang Zhenying withdrew her gaze and looked at Wei Wu's cold and focused face, which was so close to hers. A faint, almost imperceptible smile appeared on the corner of her lips.

"Because Ms. Wei seems very irritable today," she said in extremely slow, clear Chinese, as if each word had been savored on the tip of her tongue, "so I want to know who made the teacher angry."

Wei Wu paused slightly in his grip on the pen.

He raised his dead fish eyes and glanced at Zhang Zhenying.

This sentence is grammatically correct, and even uses very precise vocabulary. However, the content seriously crosses the line.

"The grammar is correct. But the content is irrelevant to the lesson." Wei Wu ruthlessly interrupted her attempt to build rapport. "Ms. Zhang, I'm paid by the hour for teaching you Chinese, not for psychological counseling or casual conversation. If your mind isn't on the lesson, we can end this now."

Wei Wu's tone was utterly devoid of politeness. He was someone who utterly detested trouble. If this rich heiress wanted to play out some kind of "domineering heiress falls in love with a cold tutor" drama, he would quit his job without hesitation.

Although a 50,000 hourly wage is tempting, he's more afraid of getting involved in some ridiculous, melodramatic soap opera about the wealthy. That would be too much trouble.

Upon hearing Wei Wu's almost reprimanding words, Zhang Zhenying was not angry at all. Instead, she felt a strong shiver run from her tailbone straight to her brain.

Yes, that's it.

It was this ruthless rejection, this indifference that kept her at arm's length, this attitude that completely disregarded her!

So captivating.

She could even feel a fine layer of goosebumps rising on her skin under her pajamas from excitement.

"I'm sorry, Teacher Wei, I was wrong. Let's continue." Zhang Zhenying lowered her head, perfectly concealing the crazy infatuation in her eyes, and her tone became more obedient and submissive.

Wei Wu nodded in satisfaction and continued mechanically explaining the tedious grammar.

Time passed by, second by second.

The only sounds in the study were Wei Wu's calm voice and Zhang Zhenying's occasional rustling of turning pages.

Just as the class was halfway through, the phone that was lying face down on the table suddenly emitted a very faint buzzing sound.

Wei Wu frowned.

He had clearly turned off the vibration.

He picked up his phone and glanced at it. The screen displayed a text message, not a call. He had forgotten to silence it because he had set a separate notification mode for text messages.

The text message was sent by SK Telecom, South Korea's largest telecommunications operator.

[Dear user, your number has received over 500 unusual call requests in the past twelve hours. The system has automatically activated anti-harassment blocking mode for you. To disable it, please log in…]

Upon seeing this message, Wei Wu's lips twitched involuntarily.

Five hundred times? !

Damn it, are these scammers insane?! They're ripping people off like madmen!

"Damn it, I have to throw this piece of junk away tomorrow."

He was now absolutely certain that the shady broker who sold him the phone card had sold his information to an extremely large and insane fraud ring.

He slammed the phone back onto the table in frustration, with a bit more force than before.

Sitting opposite her, Zhang Zhenying noticed the change in Wei Wu's emotions.

She saw a fleeting hint of annoyance and disgust in his eyes.

"Teacher, is it really a big problem?" Zhang Zhenying spoke again, her voice as gentle as a breeze. "If anyone is harassing you in Korea, I can help you resolve it. Just tell me that person's name or number."

Her words exuded the confidence and unquestionable authority of someone in a position of power.

As long as Wei Wu asks her for help, as long as he is willing to rely on her even once.

However, Wei Wu merely glanced at her coldly.

"No need. It's just a little trash. I'll just get a new card tomorrow." Wei Wu's tone was firm in his refusal. "Continue the lesson. Turn to the next page."

Asking a student for help? Or is it a wealthy heiress who looks like she's always in trouble?

Wei Wu would rather sleep on the streets under a bridge than incur such a favor. Favors are the hardest to repay and the most exhausting. He only wants to establish purely monetary relationships, and any entanglements beyond that scope will be ruthlessly severed by him.

Looking at Wei Wu's flawless face, Zhang Zhenying knew that she had been rejected once again.

But she was not discouraged.

She was like a patient hunter, quietly lurking in the shadows, watching her prey move within her sight.

"Okay, teacher."

She lowered her head, her gaze sweeping once more over the phone that was face down on the table.

It's okay, if you don't tell me, I'll look it up myself.

Anyone who tries to approach you or bother you will be dealt with swiftly. You just need to stay quietly in my sight and be my teacher, Mr. Wei.

A morbid possessiveness grew wildly in Zhang Zhenying's mind, like an uncontrollable black thorn, tightly binding her reason.