A Billionaire For Hanni

Chapter 47

The silence that followed Soobin's exit was tense. Minji remained still, her gaze on the ground, unable to look at Hanni. The words that had been thrown at her like a whip seemed to continue to reverberate in her mind, and her mind was confused, in turmoil. But there was one feeling that she couldn't quell: the desire to return to that connection she had always hoped for, to once again see Hanni as her own, as the woman she loved with all her heart.

Hanni, however, couldn't remain calm. Her body vibrated with uncontrolled energy, as if every fiber of her was moved by a force she couldn't contain. She approached Minji, with no regard for the delicacy of the moment.

"I don't think you understand something, Minji," she said, her voice shaking in a cold tone. "What you're doing, and how you're behaving, is childish. You can't always make the decisions, you can't always make the situation in your favor as if it were a game."

Minji finally looked up, but the feeling that invaded her was painful. The anger, the frustration, everything she felt for Hanni, for herself, seemed to explode into a thousand splinters. But Hanni wasn't going to stop.

"You know, Minji, *you can't decide* everything on your own," Hanni continued, her face tense with emotional exhaustion, but also with contained anger. "You can't make decisions for two. You can't even decide who I love and how to love, and that's what you did! Don't you realize what you did? You, deep down, have never stopped trying to fulfill your deepest desires by using them. Even though I used you to express my desire, you are imposing yourself against me even though I told you what I feel."

Minji shrugged, but the truth of those words hit her like a blow to the heart. In that moment, she seemed to see Hanni with new eyes, a Hanni who wasn't trying to hurt her, but to make her understand the reality she had never wanted to accept. The reality that Hanni, despite their bonds, no longer saw her as something "hers". And that thought made her falter.

"Was I childish?" Minji murmured, more to herself than to Hanni. "I'm sorry if I made you feel this way... but I can't help but think that you're distancing yourself from me, that you're looking for any excuse not to want to be with me anymore. It's not true that I forced you to love me, Hanni... It was never my intention." Her voice trembled as she spoke, and she felt the frustration growing. But there was also a sadness, a bitter awareness: maybe Hanni didn't see her anymore, maybe he had never really seen her.

Hanni stopped, her eyes fixed on Minji for a moment that seemed eternal. The intensity of those eyes, even full of pain and a sadness that seemed hard to bear, did not change. "No, Minji," she finally said, her voice low, but resolute. "You didn't force me. But the only one who really wanted this relationship was you. It almost seemed like a duty to respect your love and to feel something for you too. It was your wish, a wish that pushed you to make choices that I didn't agree with. You didn't realize that, for me, this relationship didn't mean the same."

Minji felt a pang in her heart. Those words resonated like an echo of all her fears. She had always known, deep down, that Hanni had never loved her the same way, but hearing him say it like that, with that clarity, hurt her more than she could have imagined.

"You've never loved me the way I've loved you, right?" Minji asked, struggling, trying not to let all the pain show in her voice.

Hanni took a step back, and a shadow of sadness crossed her face. "Minji... when we got married, it wasn't what I thought, I thought about my dream and not about us, about you. It wasn't what I wanted. I had no choice, you made my dream easier for me. I did what I had to, I tried to do it. But sometimes, even if I want you, even if my body remembers certain moments, what I felt for you wasn't what you thought. It wasn't love."

Hanni's words had an unbearable weight. Minji felt herself collapsing, her body visibly shaking, but she couldn't look away. *It wasn't love.* Those words were a blade, a deep wound that she didn't know how to heal.