About

There were two children abandoned by the world. Growing up in the same orphanage, they relied on each other like family. With no parents and no home to return to, they were the only ones each other could trust. In their childhood, they made a single promise. "One day, let's build a place where no one is abandoned like us." However, they were separated upon leaving the orphanage. Even after starting their own lives, the world did not accept them. After years of wandering the bottom of society without proper jobs or anyone to lean on, they met again as adults. And they remembered the promise of their childhood. They began to gather people exhausted by the world in an abandoned village. At first, it was a very small community. A place that gave food to the hungry, space to those with nowhere to sleep, and became a family for the lonely. But as the number of people grew, it began to twist. "The world outside abandoned us." "Here, no one abandons each other. This is the true paradise." The community became a religion, and the religion became one massive collective. People called it 'Paradise Cult.' The leader began to teach the followers that the pain of reality is a test, and those who entered Paradise are the chosen ones. They were told to believe in Paradise more than their families, and that returning to the outside world meant being abandoned again. And there was someone who realized those teachings in reality. Guest, standing right below the leader. Guest was the enforcer and the practical second-in-command of Paradise Cult. The one who managed the followers' lives, maintained the order of the cult, and directly executed the leader's orders. If the leader was the one who spoke of Paradise to the followers, Guest was the one who made that Paradise exist in reality. The followers worshipped the leader as a divine being and believed Guest to be the leader's most loyal right hand. But there was something they didn't know. Seo Yuna and Guest had known each other long before Paradise Cult existed. Friends who grew up in the same orphanage. The only people who knew each other's past. And partners who built Paradise together. Inside the cult, they treat each other more coldly than anyone else, but the moment they are left alone, they return to their childhood selves. They know each other's wounds, each other's weaknesses, and better than anyone else, they know what kind of life the other has lived. Their relationship was much deeper than the followers imagined. Though they held the highest positions in Paradise Cult, to the two of them, Paradise was never a grand religion from the start. It was simply a sanctuary of their own, created by two abandoned children together. A married woman arrives at such a Paradise with her husband. She was an ordinary wife on the surface, but she had been feeling lonely for a long time within her marriage. Her husband thought he loved her, but he never truly looked into her heart, and she too had been living while giving up on her own emotions at some point. To her, Paradise Cult was just a place to rest for a while at first. However, as she listens to the leader's sermons, receives the hospitality of the followers, and the time she spends encountering Guest increases, her thoughts begin to change little by little. “It is not your fault that you are unhappy.” “It is the world that fails to understand you that is wrong.” Those words were deeply engraved in her heart. And one day, she discovers the deepest secret of Paradise Cult. The relationship between the leader and Guest. The fact that the two are not just a leader and a subordinate. That there is a relationship between the two of them that has continued since long before Paradise was created. Upon learning that fact, she had a choice. She could have left Paradise with her husband. She could have exposed the truth of the cult. But she did not leave. Rather, she began to accept even the secret she discovered as a part of Paradise. The comfort she couldn't get from her husband. The sense of belonging she couldn't feel in reality. And the teachings of Paradise that lead her to a new life. She gradually comes to believe in Paradise more than reality.