'Are you sure?' Hitomi asked from her perch on the edge of the bed. Rose was curling her hair carefully in the mirror, her back rigidly straight and thoroughly exposed in a low dress which draped around her slim frame elegantly. It was the first time Hitomi had ever seen her friend in such formal attire and, honestly, she'd hoped that when Rose did finally find the confidence to make the most of the body she'd been blessed with, it would be for something far more worth remembering than the night she publicly dumped a celebrity.
It was fair to say that Rose's mother Lily had high hopes that her daughter would be moving in high-class circles while abroad. While most of her daughter's luggage consisted of jeans and t-shirts, Lily had slipped in a few Silver Lilies designs with matching shoes. The hope that her child might suddenly transform into a swan and step out in them was a vain one, but Lily knew that a taste for fashion ran in the women in their family, and she wasn't about to stop trying to capture her daughter's interest and lure her into the family business.
In this case, the navy a-line chiffon gown with a halter neck had appealed to Rose, not because it was a gorgeously elegant and dramatic piece which hugged the waist and floated gracefully with every confident stride she took, but because it was a show-stopping and memorable piece. Even if she was about to dump Tae-won, she wanted him to remember her above all the other women who'd walked into his life, and that she did honestly love him before she'd come to realise just how bad they were for one another.
Selfish, perhaps, but the idea that he wouldn't forget their time together was the only thing that gave her the confidence to end things now, because she wanted to be imprinted on his heart as much as he was on hers.
Rose didn't reply until she'd finished perfecting the final ebony curl. She switched off the tongs and slipped them back inside of their heat-proof jacket before reaching for the mascara. 'I'm sure. If I don't do it now, I'll keep putting it of until we're at the airport and he's telling me that he'll see me in Tokyo.'
'There's nothing wrong with that,' Hitomi said. 'I know I keep telling you to dump him and this makes me seem like a total hypocrite, but if you know that you're going to split when we leave anyway, is there any point in doing this early?'
Taking a deep breath, Rose turned in her seat. Her expression was pained – tormented – and it wasn't at all the look of a girl at peace with her decision. 'If I wait and he does or says something kind to me before we go, I'll never be able to leave him. I can't think straight when I'm around him. When I look at Tae-won I can see a future, but it's not a future I want. I see him hiding me away and wrapping me up in cotton wool like I'm breakable and never letting me do anything for myself.'
'That's not always a bad thing, though, right?' Hitomi asked. 'I mean, obviously when it's Tae-won it's always a bad thing because he sucks. We both know that. But wanting to protect another person isn't the worst thing in the world.'
'It is for people like us, 'Tomi,' Rose said quietly. 'We cut ourselves off from everyone because it's easier than trusting people. I mean, name one person we were friends with in school that we honestly, genuinely liked completely and spent time with.'
Hitomi opened her mouth and promptly closed it. Rose could almost hear memories replaying like an old cine-film reel in her head as she raced through their time in school, searching desperately for a single person from outside of their tight social circle who'd made a lasting impression and proven to be a decent human being.
'See?' Rose asked after giving Hitomi sufficient time to reach the same conclusion. 'You're going to meet so many new people in university and make hundreds of new friends just by being yourself. If I hole up in Tae-won's apartment and make him my whole world and do everything my parents tell me to do then my life would be way, way easier for me. I'll never have to try hard at anything or think for myself ever again. But... what kind of a life is that?'
'A boring one. A boring one without seeing great places and meeting hot guys at parties,' Hitomi said. 'And there are so many hot guys at university.'
'So... I guess, I'm not sure that I want to hurt him or break his heart. I'm not sure that I want to leave him. I just know this is the best way for both of us. I have to stop thinking of him as an easy escape route from living my own life, and he has to stop seeing me as a person that can save him from being alone.'
Hitomi pushed herself off the bed and hugged her friend warmly. The embrace was a tender and gentle one – mostly to avoid wrinkling the dress – and Hitomi hoped that Rose could feel her empathy. Even if she'd never liked Tae-won, and hadn't made a secret of the fact, she knew that breaking up with a person wasn't easy. It didn't matter that Rose's intentions were pure, or that she thought that she was protecting Tae-won from a difficult life as much as she was herself, she was still inflicting pain upon them both and nothing Hitomi could say or do would take that hurt away.
'Did I ever tell you that I love you?' Hitomi asked.
'All the time.'
'And that if you don't find some amazing guy after you go on this brave, incredible journey of yours, then I'll marry you?'
'You've mentioned that before, too. Right after we called Keiji stinky butt cheese.'
'Am I allowed to call Tae-won that?'
'No.'
Hitomi huffed, 'You always spoil my fun.'
'It's my job, I'm your wife.'
Hitomi stood and stretched her arms up above her head, cricking her neck and shoulders as she did. 'Okay,' she said with determination and confidence, 'let's go dump this guy so that we can save him and I can have you all to myself.'
Rose felt her confidence waver with each floor the elevator passed in its descent. She twisted her hands together nervously and pressed her lips together tightly. It was all well and good declaring that her relationship was over to herself and to her closest friends, but knowing that she would have to look Tae-won in the eyes and utterly shatter any love he had for her was a challenge she'd not expected.
Hitomi, to her credit, didn't say anything. Any utterance of doubt would drive Rose back to her room where she would bury herself beneath the sheets and hide until they were due to leave Jeju on their flight back to the mainland. Instead, she stood stoic and tall, every inch the loyal friend and mature heiress rather than the childish high-schooler she'd been mere minutes earlier.
Their arrival at their destination was marked with a chime that felt, to Rose, like the ringing of a bell heralding in the death of all her hopes and happiness. Just as long as she held firmly onto the idea that this was for the best – that there was something better waiting beyond this ill-fated affair – then she would be able to push through and do what needed to be done.
The girls were somewhat overdressed compared to the rest of the staff and models. It was a smart dinner – Yuta wanted to thank everyone for their work so far as they wrapped up the shoots and began to collate their albums and send out promotional material – but no one was made up as formally as the Japanese ladies who walked purposefully toward the dining hall. Their garb earned them a few well-deserved stares. Even Si-woo, who had been resolutely ignoring Rose ever since she'd rebuffed him, felt his mouth drop open and his cheeks warm with a confused and infatuated blush. Rose paid him little mind. Although she regretted the manner in which their friendship had broken – and that she'd slapped him twice rather than just the once – she knew that it was best to put paid to any ideas he had about them being a couple, just as she would put paid to Tae-won's.
'Rose,' Tae-won approached her. He didn't share the same expression of awe as his coworkers. Instead, he nodded his head briefly in greeting to Hitomi and asked, 'Can we talk before dinner?'
Rose felt her heart skip over a beat. She'd thought she might at least be able to end things on a full stomach and have a little more time to prepare herself. If she was to let him go now, then it would certainly make for an awkward start to the night, and Yuta's speech would be overshadowed by their misery.
'Please?' he implored. 'It's important.'
'Five minutes?' Hitomi asked.
'Okay,' Rose agreed, steeling her nerves. She looped her arm through Tae-won's to dispel the concerns of any witnesses and walked with him towards and empty conference room.
The staff who'd been in the middle of cleaning the room bowed their heads and scurried out, fully aware of the implications of a couple seeking a quiet spot to converse; they were about to declare their undying love, or have a blazing argument. Either way, Rose had a sneaking suspicion that they hadn't wandered far, and were pressing their ears against the other side of the door or the wall, hanging on their every word.
Tae-won extracted himself from Rose and walked a few steps away before he turned and leaned back against the enormous walnut table. 'You've been avoiding me.'
'What makes you say that?' Rose asked.
She had been avoiding him – avoiding this moment – but she'd hoped that she'd been subtle about it.
'It's because I shouted at you, isn't it?' he asked. 'That night that I found you on the road, after Si-woo...' Tae-won looked away in disgust, scarcely able to repeat what Si-woo had done to her. 'After you talked to him. You don't really believe anything he said about me, do you? That I yelled because I'm a womaniser? Or do you think that I'm jealous?'
Everything he said merely reinforced Rose's belief that she was making the right decision.
In all his questions, he'd never once asked if there was something going on in her own life that might be impacting her feelings, or if she'd fallen out of love with him. To Tae-won, the idea that a woman may not want him with every fibre of her being simply couldn't be entertained. The thought that she might have other worries in her heart or mind that had nothing to do with him didn't exist.
'It's Jin-hee, isn't it?' he asked as the silence pressed on, frustrated that she'd given nothing away in her expression, still blaming everyone but himself. 'You're angry that she's hanging off me, still? Aish, will you be jealous of every girl that I have to work with? This is why I don't date my fans. I thought you'd be different from them! That you'd understand because of your life and your father –'
'Can you hear yourself when you talk?' Rose asked calmly. Inside, she was breaking, and yet her poker face didn't waver. 'Why bring my family into this? Why not just ask me what's wrong?'
'Because you never tell me things!' he shot back. 'Women like to hide everything and then get angry at men when they can't read their minds and figure it out. Besides, what else do you have to be angry about? What, that you lost your job to Mariko? Do you want me to quit so I don't work with her? This is what actors and idols do, Rose. We pretend to love people for our careers. That's not something I can just stop doing!'
'We're going to be late for dinner,' Rose told him, reaching down to smooth out her dress to distract herself.
Tae-won came to her and held her shoulders, keeping her from escaping until this hiccup in their relationship was resolved. 'Look at me and tell me that you love me,' he demanded of her without offering the same sentiment in kind. 'Tell me that you love me the way you did the night we were together, before we came here and Si-woo came between us.'
'Do you mean the night when you told me that this was a bad idea and it would never work?' Rose asked. She wasn't about to say that Si-woo hadn't come between them at all and she had, in fact, defended Tae-won against the man as she had against everyone who'd spoken ill of him and their relationship.
Tae-won faltered. 'That was –'
'It was what?' she challenged. 'I'm leaving Korea soon, Tae-won. Forever. It doesn't matter if I'm jealous or if I lose my job. It doesn't matter that Jin-hee tells everyone that you're her secret boyfriend. What matters is that no matter what we do, this is ending. You were right that night. It would never work, even if we feel something. It's better that we accept that now rather than later. It'll be easier for both of us.'
'I said that I would find a way to –'
'Keep me. Like an object. Like something that you can seal away from the world and look at whenever you have the time. You're the sun, Tae-won, and you want to keep me in the dark until you have the time to shine on me and then expect me to be grateful to bask in your glow for a little while before you leave me hiding in the shadows again. Do you know what happens to flowers when they're left in the dark? They wither and they die and get trodden into the dirt. I can't live like that! I can't live with you.'
Tae-won's arms dropped against his sides and he paled, shocked by the coldness in her voice. Rose took the opportunity to turn on her heel and walk briskly from the room. Footsteps scurried in the hall and two of the maids fled from the scene, both whispering to one another in Korean. Rose paused to watch them escape before she continued toward the dining hall, her jaw set and her head high, and her heart thrumming in her chest as the hummingbird in its cage fought for the chance to soar free along with all the honest feelings that she was keeping locked away.
The dining hall door was open and Rose had taken barely three steps inside when Tae-won grasped her wrist from behind, turned her around, and pulled her in for one last, desperate kiss. The nausea in Rose's stomach had nothing to do with disgust and everything to do with the battle she was fighting between her head and her heart – a battle to defy the sincerest love any person had ever felt – and to do the unthinkable and unnatural. Against every wish, she pushed Tae-won back, and slapped him hard.
The resonance of her hand colliding with his cheek set off a ripple of astonished gasps from the few who hadn't figured out their relationship, and those who had who'd never expected Rose to turn him down. 'Don't,' she warned, her voice trembling.
Humiliated, Rose looked back over her shoulder. Hitomi had covered her mouth with her hand and Yuta was staring them both down with utter disapproval. There was no way she could sit through the dinner now. Their display would be the only subject of conversation, and Rose wasn't prepared to work her way through three courses of western cuisine while their relationship was laid bare and picked apart by her judgmental peers.
'I'm sorry,' she said, 'but this is over.'
'Rose –'
Rose turned and bowed apologetically to the room, her elegant curls swaying as she did. 'I'm sorry for ruining your dinner. Excuse me.'
It felt alien to act like an adult. Normally, she'd have screamed and cried and not cared who saw it. She'd have made a scene and acted like Tae-won was the villain until someone fawned over her and placated her injured pride with compliments and reassurances. It was the very reason Mariko had called her spoiled, because she always wanted other people to resolve her problems, to take away her pain, and to keep her from feeling anything raw and real. The gut-wrenching ache of leaving a room full of people and the man she loved was more real than anything Rose had felt in her entire life. It was so overwhelming a sensation that she had to pause in the lobby to catch her breath after her flight from the dining room where she'd left everyone in their stunned silence. With one hand on the wall to stedy herself, Rose placed the other over her stomach and willed herself not to throw up as she was consumed by grief.
'This is over.'
They were three simple words – almost nothing at all – and yet they'd toppled her entire world with their power.
Rose could scarecely believe that she'd said them. It had been mere seconds since they'd passed her lips and already, she was full of doubt and regret, shame and disgust. Perhaps in the long run it was for the best, but it was all so clinical and calculated. To her, break-ups were like the ones she'd seen in her father's television shows, where both parties screamed and cried and sobbed, clinging to one another before they were separated by circumstances beyond their control.
If this had been a drama, the obstacles would have been ones they could have faced together – disapproving family members, villainous mob bosses, poverty and class divides – but when the obstacle to their relationship was a will to ensure their future happiness and to avoid the resentment Rose knew she would come to feel for Tae-won if they continued as they were, there was no overcoming it.
It was better that she ended it without feelings so that he could hate her and walk away without attempting to fight for her heart.
'Yah!' Tae-won shouted as he followed her.
Eager to witness the rest of this train wreck, the staff, Yuta, Eun-young, Si-woo, Hitomi, Jung-wook, Mariko and Jin-hee followed him from the dining hall, their footsteps thunderous upon the sleek marble floor. Rose drew herself up and squared her shoulders, adopting her upstanding and proud posture once more. If she showed him even an ounce of weakness then he would take full advantage of it – perhaps even see through her mask and realise that she had a spark of hope that they and their relationship might somehow be saved at the last moment – and she would never be able to walk away.
Rose let out a long, slow breath through her parted lips and continued toward the stairs, telling herself over and over not to turn around or look him in the eyes; not to let him see her break.
Tae-won came to a halt a short distance behind her and shouted, 'Did you ever love me? Or was all of this just a game?'
Rose faltered.
'How can you ask me that?' she asked bitterly, turning around slowly. 'Who chased after whom, Tae-won? Who lied about knowing me from the outset? You hid that we'd met before. You called me a game!'
'Yeah, I knew you. I knew you before you became this. For all I know, you make a habit of playing with famous men and then dump them when you're bored!'
'Tae-won!' Eun-young snapped at him, furious on Rose's behalf that he would accuse her of something so appalling. 'That's enough!'
'Aish, you don't know who she really is!' he shouted back at her, making the poor woman jump. He turned on Rose again. 'Yah, why did you agree to keep this a secret between us? Did you really just want to avoid upsetting my fans, or was it because you were ashamed to tell people that we were together?'
'Ashamed? Her?' Jin-hee scoffed. 'Oppa, she's nobody. If it wasn't for your fans, she'd have told everyone that she'd caught you.'
Tae-won ignored the stupid idol and persisted, 'Did you tell your parents? Or did you think that they wouldn't approve?'
'That's enough!' Yuta barked at the man. 'You've said more than enough, Tae-won.'
'Of course, you'd think so. You've lied, too. All of you have ever since you arrived.'
'Yuta,' Eun-young pressed, 'what is he talking about?'
'Yeah, tell them, boss. Ah, I shouldn't call you that, right? I should call her my boss,' Tae-won said, pointing at Rose. 'Miss. Porter-Abe, do you sleep with all of your employees, or was I just too good looking for you to resist?'
'Porter-Abe?' Si-woo repeated the name as the familiarity of it dawned upon those present. 'Your mother owns...?'
Jin-hee already had her phone in her hands and was rapidly tapping out a message, no doubt posting the news across the internet. Mariko met Rose's gaze and was kind enough to share an expression of sympathy and understanding. Anyone else might have rubbed in Rose's face that they were right to tell her to escape Korea and find people she could genuinely trust, but Mariko took no joy in seeing someone discover that, when provoked by anger and heartbreak, Tae-won would put back on the terrible mask he'd worn to protect himself when they'd first met and tear Rose apart for everyone to see.
Distraught though she was, Rose knew that Tae-won was trying to cling to his reputation like a life-preserver to keep him afloat in a sea of loneliness and abandonment, just as he'd always done since his mother had died and left him to fend for himself in an industry full of people ready to step on coworkers and friends to get ahead, and to stab people in the back to becomes a success. In their brief time together, Rose had been the ship come to save him from that dark and troubling ocean, giving him the hope that he might reach a shore where he could be himself for the first time in a long time.
Now, she'd set him adrift again, and he was lashing out to paint her as the villain and save face.
'Yes,' Rose said, resigned to the idea of being the bad-guy if it would help Tae-won to let her go, 'I lied to all of you.' She bowed her head. 'I'm ashamed of my deception,' she added, making a point of looking at Tae-won directly, 'and I understand that you won't want to see me again.'
Tae-won's lip trembled but he kept his composure, his hands balled into fists at his sides and his jaw clenched. Soon, he would feel the full weight of his words and feel the crushing guilt of betraying Rose's secret, but until then he would only feel anger, hurt, and the stinging loss of her presence in his life.
And Rose would feel his absence forever.