How It Started, How It Ended || Haechan (NCT)

22

〖 Just An Act 〗

"Why do you hate me so much, Saemi?"

Looking around the office, Haechan asks his soon-to-be fiancée. He admires the paintings hung around the large space, but his eyes focus on the portrait in the middle of the left wall.

It's a family portrait of the Kims, and Saemi's features are surly and unsmiling. It's almost like a scowl, and it's the same look she has at the moment.

Haechan's on a field trip—or rather—just a trip to bypass his boredom. It's the weekend and he just finished his volunteer work at South Korea Children's Future.

But either way, the Kim Heiress isn't so happy to see him.

"What are you doing here?" She hisses across from him on her father's table.

She, on the other hand, is on watch duty while her parents are on an important overseas business trip.

"Just visiting." He shrugs, then continues, "so why do you hate me so much?"

"Oh—wait, did you suddenly have memory loss now?" Saemi replies, tone deadly dripping with sarcasm.

"No, I'm actually serious." He answers back with the same satirical tone. "Why do you hate me so much, Saemi?"

She scoffs and crosses her arms, throwing daggers his way with her ice-cold stare. With an eyebrow raised, she says, "did you forget what you did to me years ago?"

He doesn't speak, waiting for her to explain more. But his stare is as stone-hard as hers, the air surrounding them turning rather serious.

"Did you forget how humiliated I felt when you shouted to the whole restaurant that you didn't want to marry me?" She starts, already fuming from her father's seat. "Did you forget how you made a scene in front of my parents and yours, telling them how you dislike me because apparently, I was too much for you? Because I was too superficial, too narcissistic and stuck-up?"

Haechan keeps quiet. His memories are refreshed of the night of that infamous dinner. He now remembers all of that, but he keeps quiet.

"Did you forget how you suddenly turned cold without even telling me, your best friend, what's wrong? Because I remember it clearly, the day before that, we were okay. We even just called each other on the phone, sharing answers on our English homework. Then your mom called you for dinner, so we hung up. When I was on the way downstairs for dinner too, I heard my parents talking about it. I was going to ask you the next day, on that day, if you knew anything about it."

Saemi's volume lowers, almost as if she just wants to stop talking. But she continues anyway, albeit bitterly.

"Well, it turns out you did, but you were already dead set on ignoring me for the rest of your life because apparently, your 'best friend' is a narcissistic bitch."

And Haechan recalls it.

It's like I was suddenly invisible to you, and I felt like crying but I can't because I was at school—I was at classes, she had said.

He recalls that day at the office, about three years ago. They were in high school then.

The reason why he'd asked her that was because he felt like he didn't know why they were fighting anymore. It's become a routine between them and he'd gotten so used to it that he forgot the real reason why it started in the first place.