Where Do We Go From Here

Chapter 2 - Waiting

Author's Note: Hii! Sorry it took so long, but I was trying to figure out which route to go with this fic.. But anyway here it is lol, so I hope you enjoy it! I also made a few changes in Chapter 1 if you want to go back to that. Thanks, and as always, comments and feedbacks are appreciated. Have a good day! :)

P.S. The chapter is also a lot of narration since I wanted to establish some of their backstory, but hope it's not too difficult to read. :) 

--------

After he told her that he needed her, she almost ran out of the room. His proximity and his desperation for her was doing something to her brain, and it is clouding her judgment. If she stayed in that room any longer - stayed that close to him for one more minute - she knows that she will say yes to anything he asks, consequences be damned. So, she mustered all her courage to tell him that she'll think about it, moved away from him, and quickly went out of the room.

It has been a week since then. She has yet to contact him. What little is left of her self-respect is stopping her from reaching out to him. Besides, he has never contacted her again – not one call nor a quick hi or hello. This further drove to her the fact that this was not something that he wants to do. Need? Maybe. But to go as far to say that he wants to do this? Absolutely not.

For the past few days, she has been trying hard to keep the façade. She tries to think about all the consequences of this marriage. What will happen to her, to him, to everyone around them? Everything has been good the past few years and this marriage will change that, either for better or for worse. But most probably for the worse.

She has tried so hard in the past few years to suppress her feelings for him, to move on from him. She immersed herself in work. Day and night, she was working tirelessly at her office, trying to occupy her mind so she does not think about him.

It worked wonderfully.

The success, locally and internationally, that her company has reached in the past few years was something that she thought would not come that fast. In 10 years maybe, not in five. But it did, and it is one of the few things that keeps her sane and happy (if she even knows what happiness is). The awards and recognition she has received the past few years also helps a lot. She has just recently received an award from the British Fashion Awards, making her the first Korean to receive such award, and at 28, the youngest ever to do so. A prodigy, that's how the media has referred to her in the past few years. Not that it wasn't true. But it's almost astonishing how she has quickly become someone that the media admires, considering that she was almost always referred to before only as the spoiled chaebol heiress.

Smart. Beautiful. Powerful. That was who she was in front of everyone, except for one. She tries not to dwell on it, and most of the time she succeeds. She barely has time to think about it – him and their broken engagement (not that there was a formal one) - not with all the people she needs to attend to and all the places she needs to go to. So for the past few years, her life has been stable and happy.

His sudden request a week ago destroyed all that.

All of a sudden she was back to that moment three years ago when he told her that she was the only person standing in the way of his happiness.

That night was so painful that she has blocked out almost everything that happened, except for the look on his face when he said those words. The way his eyes glistened with tears, and that downtrodden look on his face – it was all still so vivid. He said it with so much sadness, and without any bite in his tone, that it broke her heart. She would have preferred if he had screamed it to her, but the way he said it broke her – it was as if he had given up.

It pained her to let him go. But after that night, she felt that trying to have any relationship, whether as friends or lovers (not that he ever loved her, she thought) with him would just hurt them both. So she distanced herself. Not without cost, of course. For a while, it caused a rift between their families. Her dad, who knew her well, quickly found out the reason for her misery. She never said anything to him, but her refusal to do almost anything for a few months, getting up from bed included, clued him in. And so without Ye-jin's urging, he decided to distance himself from the Hyuns and to stop doing business with them altogether. Ye-jin had no chance to object because it had all happened so fast, and truthfully, she wasn't too eager in doing anything at that time, moreso doing something for Bin's benefit.

Bin's family, on the other hand, was just heartbroken. More than anything, his mom and younger sister, Yoona, wanted the marriage to happen. Ye-jin, who was only two years older than Yoona, grew up with her and Bin, and so she has always been family to the Hyuns. His dad was also disappointed, he loved Ye-jin yes, but everyone knew he was disappointed for the potential influence and power that the union would have had, as well as the damaged kinship between him and his longest friend. In turn, which is something Ye-jin is yet to know, that caused a lot of friction between Bin and his family, causing him to feel alienated. But everything has settled now. Does she really want to disrupt that again?

However, if Ye-jin was being really honest with herself, she already knows the answer she was going to give him. Rather than anything else, the main reason stopping her from calling him and saying yes was that she didn't want to be this woman who falls over her knees to come to him when he beckons. And so she waits and thinks some more.