Empire | ATEEZ

025

"I'm not hearing a whole lot of explanations, Mingi," the blond drawled, ignoring my attempt at getting his attention as he kept his gaze locked onto the treasurer, "You're awfully quiet, actually. What? Do you feel guilty? Have you done something wrong?"

He seemed to grow taller with every word leaving his lips, his eyes darkening with every breath of challenge that he huffed out as silence fell over the four of us again. Mingi didn't answer, didn't react. He just kept his eyes on the ground as he stood a little straighter.

"Seonghwa," I tried again, placing my hand on his arm this time but he simply shook it off without sparing me as much as a single glance.

I felt a jab of hurt in my heart where there had previously been a growing sense of nervousness, frowning as my mouth fell open.

I wanted to say something, anything, but he once again caught me to it as he continued, "You could at least try to make an excuse, to lie. This makes you look awfully guilty despite it 'not being what it looks like', don't you think?"

My flushed cheeks burned hotter with every second that passed as the tension between the two blonds increased, clenching my fists at my sides as I suddenly felt embarrassed, angry, and a little scared as Seognhwa still refused to look at me.

"We were just walking," I mumbled, deciding to take the word since Mingi refused to do so, "There's really no reason to-"

But Seonghwa still refused to look at me, cutting me off before I even got a chance to finish my sentence. "Put a shirt on," he told Mingi; an order from his superior, not a request. Mingi nodded slightly.

I huffed in annoyance, confused and angry and suddenly wanting to cry despite the fact that I wasn't even the one being disciplined, being told off. I was being ignored.

"Stop interrupting me," I hissed, taking a step closer to Seonghwa who slowly turned his head toward me at that.

He looked me up and down with a bored look in his eyes that made my heart ache with a feeling I found to be foreign, scary, as I tried my best to keep my stance straight, tall, to not look small as his voice dipped an octave, "You don't tell me what to do, medic."

I felt as if I had been punched as the words left his lips, watching them move as he spoke them as all of the air surged out from my lungs, a small sound escaping my lips as I unclenched my fists. "I-" I croaked, staring up into those dark eyes of his as he held mine for a second longer.

He had never talked to me like that.

He had never called me anything but princess and when he did, it was always my name, always something endearing.

He had never before used his position against me to put me in place.

"You're a coward," I breathed, trying to keep my voice from shaking as I watched Yunho run his hand across his face from his spot behind Seonghwa.

"No," he stated almost matter-of-factly, "I'm your superior and you should treat me as such. The same goes for the others, all of them being much, much higher in this hierarchy than you," he paused for a minute, scoffing slightly, "Not what it looks like," he mumbled under his breath.

"Well, what did it look like, then?" I hissed, crossing my arms across my chest and biting my lip in an attempt to fight the tears threatening to spill, threatening to reveal the fact that he had truly hurt me.

He had hurt me for the first time in weeks, months, after having worked so hard to put me back together after everything that had happened, to fix me despite not being obliged to.

I had forgotten everything about the unworried happiness and jokes from before, about the high after the mission and the feeling of adrenaline coursing through my veins after I had walked out of the casino, about the fact that I had finally succeeded in becoming more like him, becoming closer to him, to being with him, as I stared at him then.

"It looks like you need to start reevaluating your place in this family."

And with that, he simply walked away, mumbling a command to Yunho under his breath before making a gesture at Mingi that the man immediately seemed to pick up, bowing his head at the second-in-command as he passed by him and continued down the hallway without another word.

A shaky breath left my lips. "What the hell was that about?" I whispered, mostly to myself, though I was well-aware of the fact that both of the others heard me.

I hesitated for a moment as I stared at Seonghwa's back before he disappeared into one of the meeting rooms, slamming the door behind him, before turning to Yunho who simply looked down at the floor as well, clearing his throat as he avoided my eyes.

"And he's not the only one," I scoffed, sighing as I mumbled "coward," once more, the word barely more than a breath as it left my lips, before I turned around as well and stomped down the hallway in the opposite direction from where Seonghwa had just been heading.

I didn't even notice Mingi's attempt at stopping me, how he reached out his hand and immediately unfroze from his stoic, frozen position as he made a move to grab me before I had closed the door on him.

I let the conversation replay several times in my head as I leaned against the door, sinking to the floor where I held my head in my hands and mumbled a string of incoherent curses and complaints to no one in particular, wishing I had stood up for myself, stood up for Mingi.

"If that's how he's going to react to something so trivial then he's no better than every other man that has ever been in my life," I seethed, falling silent for a moment as I leaned my head back against the doorframe.

I groaned, trying to imagine the scene from Seonghwa's perspective nonetheless and realizing, despite my anger and annoyance, that it had indeed looked pretty bad.

But he hadn't even wanted to hear me out, to give me a chance at explaining the situation. He hadn't wanted Mingi to explain either despite having glared him down for every excruciating second of that horrible exchange. Not really.

He had just wanted to put the man back in his place, humiliating him in front of Yunho and stepping on me in the process. He really knew how to multitask.

"I don't even want to talk to him," I mumbled, "He can stay in his room for all I care. I don't even need him. He might be the reason I got into this mess in the first place but a lot of it was my fault as well," I said, furrowing my brows as soon as the words left my lips and I realized that, although it might have been true, I wasn't exactly talking myself up.

"No, wait-" I began, pausing again and thinking better off it as I fell into silence again and fumbled with my fingers.

I sighed, "It doesn't matter anyway," I said, still speaking to no one in particular, to the silence in the room, "He needs me more than I need him. He told me so himself. He'll come crawling back at some point," I breathed, nodding my head a little as if that would make my words more reliable, more true.

"I'm sure of it," I said, hearing the faint sounds of footsteps disappearing from the other side of the door.

A/N:
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Good morning, everyone!
I'm back again and more anxious than ever for the upcoming exams :'( I hope you'll enjoy this week's updates - Cara :))