The Elite CEO is Addicted to Her Alleyway Savior - Chapter 1

I picked up a woman in a back alley.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have.

This is the story of how I, a CEO who was supposed to be cold and calculating stepped into the mire of a younger woman’s life, drowned in it, and found myself unable to escape.

That was the third person to slam a resignation letter onto my desk this month.

“I’m done dealing with you, President. You’re not even human.”

The door slammed shut with a bang, and the sound of hurried footsteps vanished down the hallway.

I, Reina Seto—sat alone, pressing my fingers to the bridge of my nose and letting out a long sigh.

Ito had been the top performer in the company for new acquisitions, never shying away from cold-calling, and his consulting track record was impeccable. Because of that, this was a significant loss for the company.

My smartphone vibrated on the table. I checked the client’s name and answered.

“Yes, I agree. I believe it’s better to prioritize improving the CPA and redesign the flow to capture leads from the top of the funnel. If you look at the LTV—”

A while after I hung up the phone.

Knock, knock.

“Excuse me,” said Maho Matsuyama, an employee in her second year. She placed a coffee on my desk and spoke hesitantly.

“President. About Mr. Ito… he’s quitting…”

“I know. He’s already gone.”

“Um. That’s the third person this month… And Ms. Hanaki, she suddenly handed in her resignation last week and hasn’t come back since…”

“There are plenty of replacements. This industry isn’t so soft that people who break under a little pressure from me can last long anyway. It worked out for the best.”

I spoke flatly, my eyes fixed on the computer screen as I continued typing.

I glanced at her from the corner of my eye. “Is that all you needed?”

Matsuyama looked troubled, then cast her eyes down slightly and said, “President, I’ll stay with you until the end.”

I didn’t give her a particular answer, my gaze already returning to the documents for the next consulting project.

“Good work today.”

The last employee had left. I was the only one remaining in the office. I checked the clock; it was 9:00 PM.

I had wanted to finalize the materials for the fundraising meeting, but I decided to call it a day.

I turned off the office lights and stepped outside.

The path to the station was crowded with people finishing overtime and groups heading home from drinking parties.

For some reason, I felt like walking a path where there were no people.

Before I knew it, I had stepped into a narrow alley. Raindrops began to fall from a leaden sky, and I pulled a folding umbrella from my bag.

The sound of the rain grew steadily louder.

I didn’t know a road like this existed.

Small, independently owned izakayas, worn-down love hotels, adult entertainment shops—they all lined the street, huddled close together.

Only the click-clack of my heels echoed, blending with the rain. It was strangely quiet, and my mind felt a bit more settled.

After walking for a while, the path ahead grew dark.

An area without streetlights, where the neon signs didn’t reach.

To be honest, I was a little scared. Even so, I kept moving forward, and then, something shifted in the darkness.

A person.

As I reached a spot where the seductive neon of a sex shop reached, the silhouette became clear.

I stopped instinctively.

Soft, slightly wavy, pale blonde hair. Her skin was less “white” and more “pallid,” if I had to describe it.

Her skin was so smooth it was almost translucently unhealthy.

Her hair and skin reflected the light, drenched in rain. She had sunken cheeks and eyes so large they were startling. Her lashes were long, with droplets of rain clinging to them. She had a slender, straight nose and well-shaped lips.

Every feature of her face seemed to float somewhere outside of reality.

Despite it being winter, she wore nothing but a short-sleeved shirt that barely covered her thighs. That was all.

The wet shirt clung to her body.

I shouldn’t go near her—some intuition told me so.

However, our eyes met squarely. I averted my gaze and began to walk away.

Behind me, I heard the splash-splash of someone stepping through puddles. I looked back slightly.

The woman had stood up and called out to me.

“Hey, don’t you think the sound of the rain echoing in this alley is kind of soothing?”

The woman said something completely random.

I looked at her with a suspicious expression. Without answering her strange question, I asked what I was actually curious about.

“…What are you doing in a place like this?”

The woman looked diagonally upward, seemed to think for a moment, then narrowed her eyes and gave a soft, limp smile.

“I was thrown away.”

Her expression was clearly a smile, but her eyes weren’t laughing. The lightless pupils beneath the dripping lashes were strangely striking.

“So, miss…” the woman continued.

“Could you let me stay with you for just one night?”

No matter how I looked at it, this was too suspicious.

People like this lived in a different world. I shouldn’t get involved.

I turned on my heel, faced forward, and started walking again.

But…

“You’re not even human.”

The words of Ito, the employee who quit, returned to me.

Not human. I thought that might be true. I was the kind of person who could keep walking even if someone had collapsed in an alley.

One step, then another.

But—

As I walked, I stopped.

I couldn’t quite put the reason into words.

I turned back to the woman.

“One night only. I’ll have you leave tomorrow.”

Under the umbrella I held out, the woman’s wet eyes gazed up at me intently.

A high-rise apartment with an automatic lock, five minutes’ walk from the station, 15th floor.

I have no friends, no lovers. I have nothing I could call a hobby. Having no other way to spend my money, I didn’t skimp on my residence.

It wasn’t that I had a particular obsession with luxury; I just couldn’t think of anything else to spend it on.

I opened the door and let the woman in.

“Go take a shower,” I prompted brusquely while folding my umbrella.

It would be a problem if she walked around the room soaking wet. It was as simple as that.

The woman, still dripping rain, gave a small nod.

Then, she headed straight for the bathroom.

While the sound of the shower echoed, I slurped cup noodles bought from a convenience store and opened a can of lemon chu-hi.

Preparing for tomorrow’s client presentation, I researched market trends on my smartphone.

Recent moves by competitors, changes in search volume, industry report figures—I moved my fingers, assembling the data in my head.

A thought occurred to me.

Had that woman eaten anything? Since she had been lingering in an alley like that and was so emaciated, she might not have had a proper meal.

—Well, that was none of my business. There was no reason to provide a meal to a random woman whose identity I didn’t even know.

Click. The sound of the door opening.

There stood the woman, wearing nothing but a single bath towel.

“Pffft!!”

The cup noodles I was slurping went straight down my windpipe, and I choked violently.

“…Wait, what about clothes?”

“I don’t have any. My underwear got soaked too. Hey, do you have anything I can wear?”

The woman tilted her head softly and smiled troubledly.

Then, as if drawn to the large glass window, she approached it and looked down at the Tokyo nightscape.

“Wow… amazing.”

She let out a voice that seemed unable to contain her excitement. Eventually, she looked back at me.

Her expression was like that of an innocent child with sparkling eyes, yet her flushed cheeks looked incredibly erotic, and something inside my chest gave a small thrum.

Then, still in just a bath towel, the woman looked around the room. After a look of slight wonder, she let a few words drop.

“Miss, are you bad at tidying up?”

The woman tilted her head and curled the corners of her mouth. That gesture felt somewhat mocking, and it irritated me.

“I’m busy with work.”

“Hmm.”

“I don’t have time to clean.”

“I see.”

“And I don’t feel the need to.”

“Right.”

The woman neither denied nor affirmed anything; she just nodded along with a smile. The more excuses I piled on, the more I felt like I was digging my own grave, and I grew tired of it.

To be honest, I was bad at tidying. I didn’t understand things like “decluttering,” and when things got messy, I didn’t know where to start.

Since I’d never had anyone in a relationship close enough to invite into my home, I’d never felt any urgency to clean.

…Well, that didn’t matter.

I searched the closet for clothes to lend her.

There was no reason to lend pajamas to a random woman. And as for underwear… out of the question.

However, it was problematic to have a complete stranger lounging in my room in a single piece of cloth.

I handed her some unused underwear and pajamas that happened to be sleeping in the back of a drawer.

Wearing my oversized pajamas, the woman said, “I’ll sleep here,” and flopped down onto the floor.

I brushed the piles of belongings off my queen-sized bed and lay down alone.

I don’t even sleep with anyone, so why did I buy such a large bed?

If I had to say, it was probably because when I was buying new furniture, the clerk had said with a smile, “If it’s just for one person, a single is plenty.” My mouth, driven by vanity, had responded, “I’ll take the queen.”

There was no reason to lend a bed to a random woman.

However, because of the needlessly large size of the bed, I felt a strange sense of guilt for making her sleep on the floor.

And before I knew it, I fell asleep.

Morning.

I woke up feeling a strange sensation near my ear.

The edge of my ear felt gently warm.

Something lukewarm was softly tracing the rim of my ear.

Then, a gentle breath blew into my ear.

—This is… someone’s breath.

“…Eh?”

The voice that escaped me was pathetically small. With a puzzled expression, I looked toward the presence, and there sat the woman I had picked up last night, by the bedside.

Resting her chin on her hand, at a distance where our faces were almost touching, she was smiling brightly.

The morning light streamed through the window, illuminating her white skin to be even paler and more translucent.

“Morning.”

A sweet, soft voice drifted down.

“Breakfast is ready.”

That smile—somewhere between seductive and serene.

The depths of my chest felt strangely ticklish.

—That was the first morning for me and that woman.