Chandelier light skates across the Lechen ballroom floor and catches nothing but pity. Erna Hardy stands at the edge of the debutante procession in a dress that fits wrong, a country girl whose grandfather's death buried her under a debt so steep the nobles sniff and turn their backs. Her father, a man she barely recognises, has dragged her here not for a reunion but for a transaction — the Lechen marriage market waits for no one, and a ruined daughter is just another lot to be sold before the champagne goes flat . The bids are already circling: a drunkard, a wastrel, or worse. Then the doors sweep open and the air curdles. Prince Björn Dniester has arrived, and the kingdom did not nickname him "the Royal Poisonous Mushroom" for nothing .

He steps into her path not as a suitor but as a strategist — courting the new country curiosity keeps his scheming ex-wife's reconciliation overtures at arm's length . Erna is a prop, a pawn, and he tells her so with the same flat smile he uses on everyone: don't try to consume the poisonous mushroom, or you'll die . But one misstep in his orbit lands her saddled with an impossible debt, chained to the prince's whims until every last coin is repaid. She scrubs floors, dodges whispers, and waits for freedom, watching the mushroom from the corner of her eye. The question Lechen refuses to answer aloud is whether the real poison sits in the prince who warned her — or in the gilded cage she never chose to enter.

Also known as: 문제적 왕자님, Munjejeok Wangjanim, The Problematic Prince.