FALLING SLOWLY ||Complete||

Decathect

As her mother would to say, loving the wrong man leaves behind bitter scars, the older the love - more potent the poison and Yeon Hwa had held him in her heart for so long that, wrenching the feeling away would make her bleed rather profusely. Still her feelings are no longer those of a teenage girl, who would get her heart broken over the fact that her crush would rather entertain her penniless cousin than accompany her to a high end family event. No - that had been Yeon Hwa of yore. Instead, somewhere down the road his actions had pushed her across the thin line that they say separated love from its twin - hatred.

Sitting there waiting for the moment of retribution to pass, she thinks back to when things had begun to change. She had always believed he lied - when So would say that Ha Jin was his girlfriend. Although he sounded so sternly confident when he rejected her advances.

"I have a girl Yeon Hwa," he would say, firmly pushing her away. And his hand would not linger a second longer than is absolutely necessary to remove her from his personal space. "You can never replace her." Then he would leave, hands tucked in his pocket, brushing past her without a backwards glance, as if the most popular girl of their circle hadn't just thrown herself at him. 

There was nothing remarkable about the girl at least in Yeon Hwa’s eyes and after everything she had done for him - frankly she did not believe a nobody who shared a little family history with her would be up for the competition. She had wanted So ever since she had laid her eyes on him and he - well he had been breaking her heart ever since.

Ha Jin could not protect him - she had told herself. A foolish attempt to console her own intelligence into believing a lie a little longer. All she could do - she thinks reflecting back to a scene she had witnessed by chance - was to tend to his wounds. While she - Yeon Hwa, had avenged each cut that brute of a brother had made on him, by bruising his ego in turn, by ripping off all the glory he had snatched from her love. She had volunteered to bring Tae’s doom, when her uncle had been planning for something different. What they wanted was to make him unbeatable - a valuable asset to their business. It was the opportunity she had been waiting for, a few milligrams more it would appear on his test and the stain would never come off his record.

Even a slap and a few harsh words from her uncle would be worth it to watch the brute crumble. And she was to accompany So to the success party the Hwangs had organized for their two sons. Her uncle had arranged it, Yeon Hwa knows and she wishes the night would be beginning of more wonderful things to come. Their families wanted to associate closely and her cousin - the adopted daughter of her uncle would be engaged to the adopted son of the Hwangs soon. What she wished for was hardly impossible. And here she is sure, they will hear the first crack of Tae’s success. So would see how deep and real her feeling are once he realizes the lengths she would go for him. 

She is not unaware that Ha Jin is somewhere around - doing that despicable part time waitressing job of hers. Ignorant as she always is of whose event she had ended up in. Yeon Hwa knows and counts on it - on them coming face to face - on him finally seeing the standard of his so called girlfriend - on her finally realizing how unreachable is the man she had set her eyes on and how dazzling a couple he made with Yeon Hwa instead.

A miscalculation it turns out to be.

Ha Jin freezes the moment she sees them, the glasses she carry rattles when her hands tremble. Yeon Hwa watches keeping her smirk in check, how her features are shadowed by betrayal. Her heart is soaring the moment So follows her line of vision and rests his eyes on the loathsome sight - and goes rigid as the street rat her uncle feeds to honor his late father’s wishes scatters away.

But then he goes after her.

Without a word of explanation, apology or farewell wasted on the girl he was supposed to bring to the party - on expressed instructions of his father, he runs after her. And Yeon Hwa - the foolish girl that she is - follows him, knowing full well she will only end up breaking her heart even further.