The Unrequited Love

V

Hanahaki:
A fictional illness in which a person bearing an unrequited love coughs up flower petals until they die or their feelings are reciprocated.

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[Jungkook's POV]

I wanted to keep loving her without a reason. But I knew I couldn't, for opportunities like these didn't come twice...

"I'm sorry Y/n, but I must move on," I hushed as tears coursed down my face. I cried for a woman for the first time in my life that day. It hurt; so, so much. But some people are just meant to be a phase of your life. And I reserved hatred for it. The concept itself was so unfair.

Regardless, I had made up my mind. I couldn't stay for love. I could've, if I hadn't gotten the chance to get back everything I had lost. It was my cruel destiny that I had to climb this ladder before it broke away.

"Success or love?" Y/n had asked me once.

"Success with love," I had said.

She chuckled. "Sly fox," she said, pinching my nose.

Only if she knew. The sly fox; it was me. I lied to her about my answer, because these things don't work in the real world. Love, it'd be my weakness. Just like it was for my dad. I remember it, how she left my dad all to himself, alone, robbing us of everything we had. I remember, I was eight when it all began. I didn't know how, but that was the part of my life I didn't understand back then. It was just yesterday when we were a happy family and the next day we weren't.

All because of that woman, who had played her game of pretence of loving my father. The only non-pretentious thing she had ever done was robbing us, fleeing to God knows where after borrowing millions of dollars under my dad's name. And dad didn't have a clue. It was only when we were cornered by loan sharks did he figured out the betrayal.

But the big bang occurred in a real sense when along with the loan sharks came Hyun Shik, my dad's competitor. Dad knew then, it was all Hyun Shik's plan.

With a sly smirk on the face, Hyun Shik left only one way out of that situation- handing over the company to him. Dad was trapped. He loved his company dearly, but not at the cost of his son. What else could he do then? With a heavy heart, he had to sell his company to Hyun Shik to repay the loans.

The life we then had was gone, so was the wealth. That lowly woman who was the beginning of our wretched lives had soiled our name forever, our respect forever.

From then we had to live in a small apartment, an alm by the mudlark Hyun Shik. My dad was even more ashamed to live that life of helplessness. He had vowed to get back whatever he had lost. To build his own company, bigger than what Hyun Shik had. He worked hard to restore his name, his glory, but she had done too much, taken too much from us. The company that my forefathers had built with their hard work couldn't be built so easily.

Days and nights went by and dad kept working hard. When I was thirteen, I had my first look- at the brutality of the truth. What my dad was going through. I was guilty when I knew it was me who he had given up everything for. The guilt weighed heavily on my shoulders and I knew I had to give him back what I had taken away. My heart burned with rage for that woman who had torn us apart and also made my dad die with an unfulfilled dream, of having his company back.

At his death, the guilt weighing over me seeped into my heart, filling me with vengeance. I, a silent spectator to all that happened, swore from that day, no matter what, I would rise and get what once was rightfully mine, what was once ours, by hook or crook. Treachery or pretence, didn't matter. I was going to win, using the same tricks she used on my dad, without any strings attached. Without the emotion that had destroyed everything it touched- love.