The Love Scandal ♪ Nishimura Riki

14 ♪ wait, kissing?

Chapter fourteen

"Jihyun! You actually have to hear this—"

The light is bright on her eyes as she sits up in bed. She had woken up a while ago, but as the sun continued to rise evermore, the brightness increased tenfold. Her eyes weren't adjusted for that just yet. "Wait." She says, her tongue trying the word out as if it was new. It felt just like a tight pack of limbs, her body. Regardless of having woken up a while ago, she felt as if she had just woken up now that she was finally moving.

"Hold up. Say that again. What?"

It was always like this when waking up. Disorienting and confusing. That's why Jihyun deeply disliked whenever she was asked a question right when she woke up or whenever she was told important information because it always took a while for her—recently consciously inactive—brain to register everything she was being told.

"Check your phone first," Rohee says, sounding bright (well not necessarily bright) and clear. She woke up early even on weekends, maybe around 7 am, so as Jihyun notices that the time reads 10 am in the morning she understands why Rohee was so lucid.

She checks her phone and the first thing shown is her locked screen, banners of notifications dragging down to the home button at the bottom. Jihyun glimpses at them, doesn't quite read them, but understands that behind each and every one of those messages is a sense of negativity.

Some on Instagram, some on Twitter.

"I got a lot of messages."

The frown is present in Rohee's voice. "Jihyun..."

"What is it?" She indifferently asks, not being affected by the matter at all, for a part of her came to terms with the fact that she would wound up experiencing something like this anyway, but for them to find her accounts? Yikes. Though, at least they didn't find it earlier.

"There's a photo roaming around. People assume it's you and Riki—y'know...kissing. Of course, I don't think so, but other people are just going to go with whatever fits their narrative, and yeah."

A photo of them kissing? That had to be the main thing Jihyun could stuff under the Malarkey category because it doesn't make any sense. Well, to those who think they are dating it may, but for Jihyun who knows that she and Riki were never going to happen, it was absurd. It was a bit astonishing, how everyone could make such big of a deal out of little things.

The case of the tail-wagging dog.

She tiredly huffed and dropped her back against the bed, her body bouncing with the contact. Now, though, she wondered what Riki thought of all of this. If anything, they could bond over how insane the public is for being so obsessed about their lives, but that's about as far as bonding will go.

"Welp. Nothing I can really do there."

"I don't get it," Rohee frustratedly bursts. "Why can't the company just say something? Then everything will be over and you won't have to go through all of this. They're practically chaining you against a wall and throwing rocks, like what?"

"It's complicated, Rohee. Company has their mind made up with how they want to settle it so I'm just here to sit through it I suppose." She decides not to go into detail about it, it's too many words for her to think over and say this earlier in the morning. "I know how to ignore it anyway."

"But this isn't fair for you at all," Rohee complains.

"Yeah, but that's a company. Since when do they care about normal people like me?"

"When they want them to join their company," Rohee responds lightly.

"Yeah but I'm not one of them," Jihyun sighs.