Being the lover of the painfully good-looking Kim Taehyung was probably the dream of every girl, but it was Yeon Hayan's worst nightmare.
She? Falling in love with Taehyung? Ha! What a joke. Hayan scoffed, remembering Sara's obscene suggestion of the two of them getting together, as she drove down the road in a mad frenzy.
Hayan believed it was simply impossible for her to fall in love with somebody. She was anti-romantic. She hated love and she hated men. Taehyung, out of all men, was specifically detested the most. Reason? She wasn't sure.
Did people really need reasons to feel a certain way towards someone? One could look at someone and love them, and one could take a glance at the same person and absolutely hate them.
It was not difficult to love or hate, but Hayan found hating particularly easy.
When she thought about it enough, there were several things about Taehyung that irked her. She hated how he was better than her at everything. It was like he was perfect, flawless, the best man out there. Hayan couldn't help but feel like she'd grown to have an inferiority complex around Taehyung because she was seldom good at anything ever since she was young. He had better grades than her. He was better at sports. He was better looking. He had more 'productive' hobbies than Hayan.
Him. Him. Him. Everything was about him. She'd grown up seeing everyone admire him like he put the stars in the sky and she'd grown sick of that.
Hayan hated how he was put on a pedestal and praised endlessly while she stood on the side, watching silently.
Their parents were also to blame for the comparison done between the two which made Hayan despise Taehyung even more. And then his name, it was on everyone's tongue. His parents, her parents, her friends, her coworkers. There wasn't one person that disliked Taehyung. Everyone seemed to love him so much more than they loved Hayan, even her own parents.
She was always told to become like Taehyung. Growing up, she'd gotten tired of hearing 'Be brave like Taehyung', 'Be smart like Taehyung', and 'Be successful like Taehyung'. Hayan never felt like she was herself. Her parents had never even given her a chance to choose what she wanted to be. Instead, her life was forced into the mold of Taehyung's life and she was bound to follow in his steps as if she didn't have a will of her own.
She never felt like the main character of her own life. Her spotlight was always stolen by Taehyung. Her existence was overshadowed by his, and Hayan knew that wasn't fair to her.
While to some people, these might sound like petty reasons to hate someone, they were real to Hayan. That was how she had felt all her life. And if these were petty reasons, then petty reasons were all she ever needed to want to destroy Taehyung's ready-made glory.
He was arrogant, beautiful, and perfect. Hayan was utterly jealous of him.
If hating someone who is better than another individual makes that person petty, so be it, then Hayan was a petty woman, and she did not regret being that way.
As she parked her car in front of a bakery, her phone rang at the same time, as if on cue, and snapped Hayan out of her raging thoughts. She removed one of her hands from the steering wheel to grab her phone. Seeing Bora's contact number displayed on the screen, she picked up right away.
"Do you have any idea how terrible it was? He almost lost it in front of me!" Bora shrieked through the microphone just as Hayan put the phone against her ear. She winced, pulling the phone slightly away from her ear because Bora's shrill voice hurt her eardrum.
"Did he say he'd fire me?" She asked nonchalantly.
"No. But he looked like he wanted to strangle you to death." Bora clarified somewhat sarcastically.
"That's disappointing. I thought it'd work this time." Hayan mumbled to herself, sighing.
"Hayan, don't be rash," Bora warned, her voice more stable now as if she'd finally calmed down. "Get back here and apologize to Mr. Kim before he schemes something horrible to get back at you. You're forgetting you still work under him."
"Nope. I'm calling it a day and going home. If he's mad, he can go cry about it to his sophisticated mama."
"You're really playing with fire right now. You should just resign if you hate working here that bad," Bora suggested, sounding concerned about the consequences Hayan was going to have to face the next day.
"I can't resign. I can't. You don't know what my parents are like." Hayan pressed, causing Bora to let out an exasperated sigh.
"Hayan, don't you think all of this beef between CEO Kim and you would ruin your family relations more? Aren't your parents going to be harsher on you if he told them about this behavior of yours? And what about his parents? What are they going to think about you? Do you seriously think acting like this is a good plan to make him fire you?"
Hayan hated that Bora was right. She had a fair point. Hayan wanted to quit working for Taehyung but she didn't want to resign but wanted him to fire her so that she wouldn't have to face her parents or explain herself. But this behavior of hers could get her in more trouble than a normal resignation would. And Taehyung. Was he simply going to accept her resignation without making a drama out of it? Hayan doubted it. He had been keeping his mouth shut about her reckless attitude until now but he was definitely going to expose her if she resigned.
Taehyung was not going to fire her so easily. Hayan knew. He wanted to keep her under his thumb so that he could get back at her for every little prank, every little insult, every time she stressed him out. If he fired her, it was equivalent to setting her free. She could go far away from him and he won't have his way with her, so he needed her to keep working at his company. Hayan wondered if this was his plan all along. If this moment was why he had endured everything and never taken revenge on Hayan back when they were younger.
This was his long-planned revenge. He was so evil.
"Uh, you should probably focus on work, Bora," Hayan said.
"Are you coming back?"
"No, but-"
"Hayan!" Bora stressed.
"Stop worrying about me and get back to work or you'll be the next person Taehyung would want to strangle." Hayan joked, trying to get her clingy co-worker off the phone.
"Gee, I mean I wouldn't mind if he-" Bora started in a cheesy tone that made Hayan immediately cut her off. She'd rather hear the details of a gruesome murder than let the woman finish that sentence. She wanted to hang up, not hear sexual jokes about her worst enemy.
"Ew. Stop."
"I'm just kidding!" Bora burst out laughing which, Hayan was sure, had resulted in her receiving a bunch of annoyed looks from the other workers there. But Bora wouldn't notice that. She was too busy cackling.
"Aish," Hayan clicked her tongue, making a distasteful expression. "I'm hanging up now. See you tomorrow." Completing her sentence, she ended the call and the giggling sounds from the other side were cut off, being replaced by the dull noise of the city. She decided to check Taehyung's texts only from the notification bar so that they won't be marked as read. She was curious about how pissed off he was.
Call me back in 10 minutes or It'll be the end of you.
She read the last text he had sent her and sighed. Oh, well, I guess my life will end soon. Hayan thought as she shrugged and dropped her phone back in her purse. She knew she needed to start behaving more like a responsible adult if she wanted to stay out of trouble, but that could start another day. She wasn't in the mood for that at the moment. Getting off the car without worrying about soon-to-be-heard scoldings from Taehyung, she carefully locked the door before she proceeded towards the bakery.
She wasn't a huge fan of sweets, but she could use a donut today.
~~~
"You're home early today,"
Hayan tried to give the most indifferent look she could ever show, but she still felt hurt by the hint of disappointment in her mother's silvery voice. With her manicured fingers resting atop the fine dining table, she sat in a beige gown, her ash hair pulled up in a tight bun, decorated with some fancy hair accessory, glittering earrings hanging from her earlobes, and the tip of her pointy heels peeking from under her dress that flowed all the way down to the marble floor. Her father sat across the stern-looking woman, dressed just as formally as her. Hayan didn't need to wonder what the special occasion was. Her parents liked to dress fancy even on a normal Tuesday. She thought they were so extra for that.
And the displeased look on her mother's face was also no surprise to her. Of course, Mrs. Yeon was not pleased to see her daughter come home early. According to her, she should overwork herself and excel at work. She should work at the company till the evening and prove herself better than her co-workers. Most significantly, she should stay by Taehyung's side all the time. Hayan hated the last requirement the most. Why was she to stay by Taehyung's side? She wasn't his slave or a personal servant.
"Taehyung let me off because there wasn't much to do," Hayan lied, suddenly feeling worn out even though she hadn't worked much.
"Oh?" Mrs. Yeon raised a curious eyebrow, her manicured nails tapping against the table in sync with the rhythm of the wall clock on the farthest wall. Hayan tensed up when her mother's gaze lingered on her face for too long. The silence made her feel uneasy. She knew her mother was observant, too observant, but that was exactly why Hayan was so good at faking things and lying. She was no child anymore. She'd eventually learned to fool her mother.
"That can't be right," Mrs. Yeon finally spoke, ceasing the tapping of her fingers. "he has a huge company, how come there be nothing for you to do? You didn't make any mistakes, right?"
"No," Hayan replied promptly. "I was quick to take care of the important work so he was impressed and told me to have some time to myself." She told yet another lie, flashing her parents a reassuring smile.
"Is that so?" Mrs. Yeon immediately brightened up. "That's marvelous! I knew my daughter would never be slacking off." She commented, looking so proud of Hayan that it made her feel sad.
That's right, Mom, Hayan thought bitterly, you're only proud of me when I do things just as you want me to.
"I'd like to go and take a warm bath now-" Hayan tried to excuse herself but her father made an undesirable suggestion once her mother's inquiry was over.
"Come have lunch with us first, dear," He motioned for Hayan to come over to the table but she shook her head with a polite smile.
"Thanks, Dad, but I ate at the office already."
"Oh, okay." Mr. Yeon nodded and went back to eating the pricey steak in front of him.
And thankfully, at last, Hayan was allowed to leave the suffocating setting in the dining room and head upstairs to her precious room where the walls were painted lavender, the air was light, and her mother's menacing gaze didn't make her feel uncomfortable. Soon after a relaxing bath, she hopped into bed and was pleased to have her peace and watch Barbie movies while wasting the rest of the day away. Despite the big mansion they lived in, Hayan only liked this one small room in the whole house. She loved the safety of her room, where she could be who she actually was, careless, dreamy, and untidy.
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A/N: here you go, my bestie sunflower, mwah! <3