The Name // Park Junhee

; twenty-six ;

"I hate my real name. Not that it's an ugly name or anything but I hate how it brings back my old bad memories." She sighed, her fingers fidgeting.

Some parts of me felt bad for asking and even kind of forcing her to tell me about it for it seemed like she didn't really want to.

"I'm sorry." I whispered under my breath, not realising she actually heard it.

"Why are you sorry?" she pouted and for some reasons my heart skipped a beat.

"I- I don't know." I bit my lower lip, stopping myself from blurting out another apology.

Another ring of soft laughter hit my ears and I felt every part of my body melting.

"They used to call me by my real name back at the orphanage but I decided to stop using the name after I left."

"And why is that?" I was being really careful that my voice came out extremely low and soft.

"Promise me you won't judge, or feel the slightest disgusted by me if I tell you the whole thing." She bit her lower lip, nervously waiting for my respond.

"I promise." I assured.

"I used to have a... forbidden relationship, as what they loved to call it?"

"What forbidden relationship and who are 'they'?"

"They as in the ones who took care of me in the orphanage, we call them 'mothers'." I nodded as a sign of understanding as I muttered a low "ah, okay" before gesturing her to continue.

"I met this one girl at school, she was nice. Someone I've always wanted to meet in life. She's pretty, smart, always positive about everything and she brought all beautiful things into my life.

"One day she asked me if I wanted to go to her place and I didn't see why not so I did. I went there." Her lips twitched into a faint smile, obviously reminiscing all the memories of the girl she was telling me about.

"It was a normal hang out at first. We had lunch, watch some movies, played some dumb games." A soft chuckle escaped her mouth and only then I noticed the thin layer of tears welling in her eyes.

She sipped her tea, calming herself down before continued,

"We were playing the typical truth or dare. It was my turn so I chose dare, trying to be bold." She smirked.

"She dared me to... kiss her, and without any hesitation, I did. I didn't really think of it, I just did it simply for the dare but I guess that's where I was wrong.

"Once I kissed her, she pulled me deeper. I resisted but she forced me, trapped me with both her legs and arms.

"The kiss got deeper as seconds passed and the next thing I knew, I was kissing her back, with every passion I had in my body, I kissed her as deep as she did."

Listening to her talking about the kiss reminded me of the one I had with Donghun in the classroom. Our first kiss, I was taken aback when he kissed me at first but unknowingly, I kissed him back and the next thing we knew it was a whole make out session.

I hid my smile behind my mug as I remembered the event, taking a sip of my tea before she continued,

"We kissed for God-knows how long before we parted. She confessed that she'd liked me the first moment she saw me. Of course, I didn't give her any answer right away and she was cool about it, said she'll wait for me no matter how long it takes."

She took a sip.

"She lived in this really huge house, something like a mansion, with quite a number of rooms. So once we were tired of playing games, she asked me if I wanted to see her hiding spot.

"I've always thought people who have their own hiding spot were really cool so I was really excited when she told me about hers.

"I said yes almost instantly and she brought me into this one room."

Another sip.

"At first it looked like a normal room, though it was kind of weird that everything was... red."

Another sip.

"She pulled me into this one walk-in wardrobe and once she turned the light on, I couldn't think of anything. Confused was an understatement."

Another sip.

"I was 16 at the time so when I saw everything in the wardrobe – all the... stuffs that were hung on each wall of the wardrobe – I couldn't think of anything, I didn't even know what they were.

"She told me her parents were not around most of the time so every time she's alone, she'll spend most of her time in that room."

Another sip.

This time she paused longer than the earlier pauses so I asked out of curiosity and impatient-ness.

"Was that room..." She didn't even wait for me to finish my question when she answered, "Yes, 50 shades of grey inspired – the red room."