WRONG NUMBER | NIKI

24 - The Truth Is Mine Now

HANA'S POV

I don't go inside immediately. I stand there for another minute, maybe two, staring at the path Aera disappeared down as though if I stare hard enough, I can somehow make her words rearrange themselves into something less cruel. They don't. They stay exactly where she left them, lodged beneath my ribs with the same precision as everything else she has ever done to me. 

Jungwon was paid to make you like him. The sentence feels different now that I know it is true. Not like a rumor. Not like something someone whispered in a hallway because they were bored. A fact. A humiliating, devastating fact that somehow makes every memory I have of him feel counterfeit. 

I think of the way he smiled at me when I walked into class, the way he once leaned over my desk to explain something I already understood, the way his messages had started arriving at night, the little jokes, the attention, the moments I had replayed because I thought maybe someone had finally looked at me and decided I was worth looking at twice. 

My throat tightens so violently that I have to swallow twice before I can breathe. And beneath all of that humiliation is something worse: anger at myself for remembering Niki's warning so clearly now, for remembering the exact look in his eyes when he told me Jungwon had called me the easiest target, and for knowing that I had chosen not to believe him because believing him would've meant admitting that someone I trusted might be lying to me.

I pick up the watering can, though I don't know why. Maybe because my hands need something to do. Maybe because if I leave it there, with the water slowly soaking into the grass, someone will come across it and ask questions, and I cannot survive another question right now. I carry it back toward the house, my steps stiff and automatic, and when I pass through the doors, the warmth inside feels almost suffocating. 

My grandfather is in the sitting room with my parents and Aera is already there, seated beside him as though nothing happened, laughing at something he has said. She looks up when I enter. Our eyes meet for barely a second. Her expression is perfectly innocent. I almost hate her more for that than anything else. She doesn't need to say a word; she knows she has won this round because she has left me carrying the consequences while she gets to walk back inside and become the sweet granddaughter again. 

My grandfather glances toward me. "Where have you been?" He asks. 

"Outside," I answer. 

His eyes narrow slightly at the watering can in my hand. "You should be helping your mother." 

I nod. "I will." And that is it. Nobody asks why my hands are shaking. Nobody asks why my face has gone pale. Nobody knows that something inside me has just been rearranged so violently that I don't recognize the shape of my own thoughts anymore.

I wait until we're back home before I take out my phone. I don't even change my clothes. I sit on the edge of my bed, still wearing the dress I had on at the estate, and stare at Jungwon's name until my vision begins to blur. My thumb hovers over it for so long that the screen eventually dims. I wake it again. I almost put the phone down. Then I type one sentence.

Can we meet?

His reply comes less than a minute later. Of course. Are you okay?

I stare at those four words until something inside me twists. Tomorrow. The café near school. He agrees immediately.

That night, I don't sleep much. I lie awake staring at the ceiling, replaying every moment between us and trying to figure out which parts were real. It is strange how memory changes when you learn something new. The same smile that once made me feel warm now looks rehearsed. The same words that once made my heart flutter now sound like lines someone handed him before he walked into the room. I hate that. I hate that he has managed to take memories that belonged to me and stain them with something they never asked for. But beneath the anger, beneath the humiliation, there is one question that refuses to disappear.