Byun Baekhyun has a huge crush on Kim Taeyeon, a senior in the same school he's attending. He doesn't know how to approach her, so he asks help from Nam Hyora. She agrees to help him, only to regret her decision a bit too late.
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Hyora was so surprised that she looked as if she was stabbed on the chest with a stray arrow, and it was most probably not from Cupid.
The word "cheating" didn't even sink in. How was that possible? She'd seen with her own eyes how madly in love Luhan's parents were, how they seemed to be living in a classic romance novel. They're the perfect couple, she once said.
And yet there really wasn't anything perfect in this world. Most of the time they just looked the part, but behind closed doors, they were far from perfect.
Her mind slipped into disarray, but she chose not to speak her troubles. She searched Luhan's face for any sign of pain or anguish, but he was expressionless, like he'd been preparing for this moment for a long time—for two years, to be exact.
Suddenly Luhan had the ridiculous nerve to smile. "You look funny. You should've seen the look on my face when I found out."
"Luhan..." She faltered.
He gave her a reassuring smile, but his eyes said otherwise.
"My mother filed for divorce because she found out," he continued. "But then all hell broke loose when dad also found out that mom's doing the same thing. It's fucked up, I know."
It took several more seconds before he spoke again. "I didn't want to go back, especially if I have to go home to such a disaster. But I had to. I didn't want my family to get ripped apart, so I went home to try and mend things."
The look on Luhan's face told her that he might not have been successful at mending things, but she chose not to speak her mind.
"No one else really knows about what happened. We made sure to keep it amongst ourselves and a select few we could trust, because if news broke out, it would get pretty nasty since they're well-known to the public. Our company will get affected, especially our employees." He sighed. "And of course, your parents too, Hyo.
"And I think I managed to patch things up between them, although it was a bit tricky to fix the problem with the, uh... my dad's mistress and my mom's—" He hesitated. "What do you call a man cheating with a married woman?"
She wanted to say: Sadly we live in a world where women are branded with derogatory terms that have no male counterpart, but protesting against sexism during a serious conversation probably wasn't the greatest idea. So instead, she just shrugged awkwardly.
He chuckled humorlessly. "Anyway, I fixed things only up to where it was fixable. I mean, cheating is a huge blow to any relationship, so I guess you can say my parents just aren't... what they were back then. They canceled the divorce and they're kinda back to normal, but anyone can feel the rift between them." His eyes glinted with sad, unmistakable yearning. "You know how they were. They always looked so... in love."
