ALL BARK NO BITE | SADISTIC BEAUTY SPINOFF

Chapter 34

6 YEARS AGO

AND

6 MONTHS AFTER CHA WOOKYUNG'S DEPARTURE

~ Teachers' Lounge, Hanguk University, Daehak-dong, Gwanak-gu, Seoul

Minho had made hefty headway into his research for internship under Professor Sa, seeking placements. He had decided that he would like to join Hanguk University again as a part-time instructor and then prayerfully as a full-time professor. It was somewhere at the back of his mind, a job aside from being a writer.

But he had taken it as fate's final say after news had finally sunk in that Cha Wookyung had left the country and had no intentions of returning or ever getting back in touch with him. Minho laughed as he revised the sources for his topic, unable to focus and still finding it funny how hopeful he had become.

He really hadn't tried to get back in touch with him after everything that had happened between them. Not a call... a letter... or a postcard... he could've left him a note if it was so hard to say. Minho had asked the lost and found as well as the front desk of the Business Department if even a scrap of paper had been addressed to his name but there wasn't.

He was so stupid...

A new Byun Minho had emerged from his shell back then, just around the time Wookyung left. Someone who wanted to write, someone who was kind and caring, someone awaiting a bright future, who had started to be happy, someone who wanted to fall in love. Cha Wookyung was the devil for making him human.

A thief for building up all his hopes and dreams and then fleeing the country with a final mock of a phone call. Why didn't he just tell him when he had the chance? all his stupid mumblings and he could've slipped in the news "By the way, I'm leaving for Paris since I'm done with you"

But no, he had to give him the hope of another meeting... I promise I will see you soon. Whenever that's going to be... Minho considered what his fellow batchmates said about him, Paris was always the plan. That means that he never intended to stay in Hanguk University... and worse, he lead him on knowing well that it wouldn't last.

A new thought dawned onto Minho's mind and he crumpled altogether. It was already proven that he didn't know Cha Wookyung as well as he thought but wouldn't it be more fitting if he wasn't even that special to him to begin with. Who was to say that he didn't pursue a hundred random people like he did with him.

That explained why it didn't matter to Wookyung when it came down to something as serious as a goodbye. The competition, the writing, the editing, the bickering, the fistfighting, the verbal back and forth... the kiss, the fucking kiss. What was so new and amazing for Minho was child's play to him. He was, after all, the better experienced.

He simply never cared...

Minho pushed away from the desk, leaning back in his chair, stretching out the soreness in his neck and back from standing for customer service all day. His side jobs weren't much but if only he could pull through. On the bright side, he had finally come close to returning the entire sum of money from the Writing Competition Award.

Waking up on the third morning of his new Cha Wookyung-free life, after 3 days of missing classes, 3 days of not eating anything, 3 days of staying in bed and 3 days of holding back his tears, Minho had decided that he needed to slowly erase all traces of Cha Wookyung from his life. That was the only way to heal from it all.

He couldn't bear to continue in the light of something that made him feel more worthless than he already did. His hopes for writing were already dashed so it was better to come clean to the jury that his work was, in fact, not his own and that he had stolen his ending from someone else.