Broken Promise | Monsta X Jooheon

27//Complicated

"You know, you're not fooling anyone when you become somebody else around everyone else, You're watching your back like you can't relax. You're trying to be cool. You look like a fool to me. Tell me, why do you have to go and make things so complicated?" — Complicated, Avril Lavigne

I really don't even know why I bothered to show up. Maybe it was the absurdity of it all. Maybe I was curious. Or maybe, just maybe, a little childish part of me was hoping this would actually be meaningful. That this stupid banquet my father was having "in my mother's honor" would actually be something respectful and emotional and meaningful.

I wasn't surprised to find that that wasn't the case.

So far, it seemed that the banquet was just an excuse for a bunch of high-profile Fortune 500 CEO's to rub elbows and make business deals and their equally stiff-necked wives to get together and gossip about either my mother, me, or their husband's various mistresses.

But I couldn't bring myself to leave.

Something just didn't feel right. The way Andrea's eyes kept cutting over to me with that stupid smug smile on her face. The haughty satisfaction that had my father bouncing around the room. How secretive they were about this big thing they had supposedly done in my mother's honor.

It gave me a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.

Jooheon gave my hand a squeeze under the table when he felt my leg start to bounce up and down in anticipation.

I tried to give a small smile back, but it probably just came out more like a constipated sneer.

I was given a table right at the front near the speaking platform, another anomaly in the equation since, knowing Andrea, she would've had me sit all the way in the back by the trash bins.

Jooheon, Jiho, and the others weren't invited, but the security guards didn't spare a second glance when they saw them behind me, giving a small, encouraging smile and a respectful nod as they let us through wordlessly.

It was nice to know that I wasn't alone at this shark-fest.

I could feel various pairs of eyes focused on me as I sat there and the fucked up part was that I recognized most of them. I just hadn't seen them since my mother was alive and used to make us go to my father's dumb dinner parties. "He needs our support." she'd say with a bitter smile on her face, trying to hide the pain in her eyes as she met my confused ones through the vanity mirror where she would be putting her earrings in.

I was too young to realize that it was the other way around. He didn't need our support, we needed his.

"Ah, Promise!"

Speak of the devil.

I turned my head slightly, not even bothering to get up upon hearing my father's voice, seeing him standing with four other colleagues, each with a smile almost as fake as my father's on their face though contempt, curiosity, and...was that satisfaction in their gaze?

Obviously, they thought they were miles better than me and everyone at this table.

While maybe in the past that would've pissed me off, it almost amused me now. Or maybe it was just because it was them giving me those looks as opposed to someone with someone with an actual fucking conscience.

Besides, one only looked curious, not snark or superior. Why the hell was he hanging around leeches like my father?

"Gentleman, this is my lovely daughter, Promise!" he gestured towards me grandly, completely ignoring the nine other people at my table that he was trying way too hard not to look at.