The Day You Saved Me

3.

Ever since you were a little girl, your artistic side always stood up above anything else. Your room was packed with colors, brushes, paints, canvases, and coloring books, drawing millions of landscapes and characters from your imagination. As years started to pass by, your passion turned to makeup, you used to steal your mother's lip balms and eyeshadows and turn your face into a mess, she would lovely clean it afterward.

Once you finished high school, you decided to pursue a career as an Esthetician and MakeUp Artist at SBS Beauty Academy School, where you learned a great range of skincare and facial treatments, makeup application, and trends, amongst other skills like time and management.

That's why landing a job at JYP Entertainment was not a difficult task. You and your husband moved to Seoul a few months after the accident. You had to start your life from scratch, leaving the painful memories behind and trying to reconstruct your marriage.

Yunho was such a loving man when you first met him almost 8 years ago. You had just turned 18 and he was 20, you both fell in love with each other so deeply, you decided he was the one, so when he proposed after 2 years of dating, you instantly said yes. You were so excited to marry him, you ignored every warning and red flag coming from your mother and your friends, who warned you to wait, get to know him better, and maybe live together before taking the big step, you wished you would have listened to them.

Your first years of marriage were perfect, you had everything you ever wanted. You loved going to college and coming back home to your husband, preparing him a meal, watching a movie, and then falling asleep next to him after having a moment of intimacy, the perfect white picket fence life. Yunho started working in the music industry when he graduated high school, becoming a producer for a few music projects here and there, until he was signed to produce albums for small K-pop companies in Busan.

You guys were thinking to start a family in a few years, maybe getting a dog and living happily ever after. But life was not a fairy tale, and it had different plans in store for you. A little over a year ago, you decided to go on a vacation with Yunho's sister and a few other friends to Jeju Island. While you were going back home after spending a fun weekend touring around the island, your husband had asked you to drive since he needed to take care of an issue with some of his files.

You guys stopped at a gas station and rearranged the seating positions, you in the driver's seat, your sister-in-law in the passenger seat and your husband and his partner on the back. The rental car had worked perfectly the whole time until it didn't. At one particular turn, the brakes stopped working, causing you to lose control of it and crash against another car that was coming at a high speed from the other side of the road.

It was fatal for both passengers on the right side of the vehicle. Yunho's sister had received the full force of the impact, as well as your other friend on the backseat, your husband and you survived with a few fractures and scratches, but it left a big scar on both your souls and your marriage. Grief had taken a toll on your husband, not knowing how to deal with it, and instead of leaning on you, he started blaming you.

You were a constant reminder of what he had lost that night, and so that's how the abuse began, at first it was only a few light pushes, that turned to slamming you with full force against every possible surface and wall near you when you tried talking to him, trying to comfort him, always getting screamed at. Later on, he started getting rougher while touching you, always leaving fingerprint bruises on your arms and neck, all traces of love gone.

And then it just started to get worse and worse as months went by, coming home drowning in alcohol and hitting you, or trying to have sex with you, and after you denied him, he would unleash all his demons on you. The abuse was not only physical, he had poisoned your head so much so, that you started to believe their death had been your fault, so in a way every time he would hit you or slap you after the slightest offset comment, or mistake around the chores of the house you thought you deserved everything he did to you.

Hiding your bruises was easy, being a makeup artist you already knew how to do it perfectly, concealing everything before going to work, or seeing any of your friends. But you had started to fade away, so mentally and physically drained that you couldn't handle it for much longer, and trying to hide it from the rest of the world was also starting to get very difficult, considering you were his punching bag.

During one of his worst moments, he had come home after visiting the cemetery. He had spent the whole afternoon there, drinking at least one or two bottles of vodka, you didn't even know how he had been able to make his way back home. You had just arrived home from your old job, going straight to the kitchen, figuring out what to make for dinner, you jumped scared as he practically kicked the door, and started grabbing everything in sight and crashing it against the walls, destroying your house.

You got out of the kitchen, your hands already shaking, you knew when he was drunk, things got bad for you, "oh my god, what's wrong" your hand coming to cover your mouth, worriedly seeing the mess he had made throwing all the decoration and paintings around the living room, your house a wreck, reflecting your marriage on it. Once he laid his eyes on you, his gaze turned dark, "You" he lifted his hand, pointing at you, walking closer, "You are what's wrong, you bitch."

You tried scooting back, but that resulted on hitting the wall that separated the kitchen and living room with your back. "Please, Yunho! I'm sorry." Trying to bargain with him, "You're drunk, please, please stop, please don't hurt me." You held out your arms trying to stop him, but he was already in front of you, looking at you with disgust, "YOU hurt me, YOU killed my sister and I'll make you pay for it every single day, so you feel what I feel all the time" his hands flying to your neck, gripping it tight.

"I...I didn't" you said between gasps, his hands getting impossibly tighter, yours coming up to grasp around his wrists in a failed attempt to free yourself, his hands not letting you go, he took your body off the wall for a few seconds, just to slam your head against it with all his strength. A sharp pain rushing through your head and blurring your vision. "Shut up. You don't deserve to talk, shut up or I'm gonna kill you".

Doing it a second time, he finally lets go of you and you instantly fall to the floor, gasping for air and feeling dizzy, both from the lack of oxygen and the pain on the back side of your head. "It's all your fault," he said, the first kick landing on your stomach, "It's... all... your...fault" every word emphasized with a stroke, hitting your ribs, legs, and abdomen. Once he was satisfied, watching you squirm in pain, he laughs at you and turns to leave again, leaving you there.

The next day at work, you fainted from the pain and injuries he had caused you, and your coworkers had to rush you to the ER, as you weren't waking up. You later found out you had a concussion and internal bleeding in your abdomen they had to take care immediately. They had of course call your husband and he arrived with the biggest surprised face and fake worry, acting as if he didn't have a clue as to why that had happened to you.

You were lost and scared, nothing could make him go back to the way it was when you met him, and you couldn't ask for help either, he had been crystal clear of everything he would do to you if anyone found out, so you had just accepted the fact that this was your life now and there was no way out of it.

That's why being around Chris was so dangerous at this point, the day after you had met him, you couldn't go to work, scared of running into him, instead, you excused yourself behind the injury on your wrist and took the day off. Considering you were just starting your job and were in training, your boss was very comprehensive, but as soon as you went back the following day, your anxiety started growing again.

You were seating in a meeting room, waiting for all your coworkers and managers to make it in time for the staff meeting you had been dragged into. A few minutes passed by and everyone was gathering around. "Thank you all for coming. We are finishing your training today and we are going to assign you to the groups you will be working with from now on." The artistic directors from each group started calling names and giving instructions. "Miss Park, you'll be assigned to the boy group Stay Kids." Fuck, what were the odds? "I'll be sending you their schedules and concepts for the comeback, tour, and music videos. We'll introduce you to the rest of the team in a few hours." You were screwed.