A half-empty wine bottle sweats onto the kitchen counter in a Seoul apartment that still carries the scent of someone who left. Yumin stares at the engagement ring she pulled off her own finger three months ago, the sting of her ex-fiancé's words lodged deeper than any diamond — he admitted he did not love her, and she walked, but walking away did nothing to douse the stubborn flame still burning for him. Across the city, Hyeondo nurses his own quiet regret, a man in his thirties who ended a relationship while still tangled in the very feelings he was trying to escape.

They meet not through fate but through a proposition so transparent it almost makes them laugh. If each of them wants an old flame back, why not strike a match together? The scheme is simple: pretend to date, parade the new romance in front of the exes, and wait for jealousy to reel in what pride let slip away. The pact is sealed with coffee cups and ironic toasts — two selfish people using each other to claw backward into the past. But staged hand-holding soon outlasts the audience it was meant for, and private late-night calls begin to stray dangerously far from the script. When genuine heat flickers through the performance, the real question becomes one neither of them drafted into the plan: what if the partner they actually want is already sitting across the table?

Also known as: 이기적 연애론, Igijeok Yeonaeron, Selfish Love Theory.