One gloomy, overcast afternoon, L and I ran into each other at the local coffee shop.

          It’s been a while since we’ve seen each other. During the beginning of this whole fiasco, I knew that we’d both tried really hard to stay together. But fans and the media kept pulling us apart. The negativity got to us. We naturally decided to stay away from each other. It’s not like we wanted to distance ourselves from each other. It just kind of had to happen. For the fans, for everybody else. No one wanted us together anyways.

          So it was a major surprise to finally see him again.

          “Hey,” I said.

          L pulled down the brim of his baseball cap and nodded at me. Things really didn’t seem right.

          The both of us looked around and suddenly grew cautious of the people taking notice of us.

          “Is that L and ______?” I heard some people say.

          In a rush of panic, the both of us instinctively parted ways and left in the opposite direction. I looked back at him as I walked away, watching him get farther and farther away from me. I wanted to tell him that I missed him. But I was afraid of not hearing him say it back.

          Later that evening I went online to find an article about L and Yerim. They’d been reportedly seen having a “friendly lunch” together at the coffee shop today. The same coffee shop that I’d seen him at.

          He’s been hanging out with her?

          And then I saw a comment that really made me want to cry:

          “I prefer L with Yerim than _______. At least they’re not fake.”

          My ears were steaming with anger. In an impulse I commented back on the person saying, “Maybe Yerim and L are the ones who are fake :p”. And without another look, I slammed my laptop shut.

          The thought of him using his free time to hang out with her instead of me broke my heart. I used to have lunch with him all the time. I used to see him every day. Now I barely saw him at all.

          During that night, I was still thinking about him. I replayed the scene over and over again in my head. I felt my heart break every single time I saw him walk away in my mind. I wondered if I could’ve done anything different. I wondered if I should’ve run up to him instead of just walking away. It’s felt like forever since I’d last seen him. The last thing I wanted to do was to walk away from him.

          A blinking light suddenly interrupted my thoughts.

          I pulled my phone out from under my pillow. “Dork” flashed on the screen. I felt myself hold my breath as I answered his call.

          “Hello?”

          “______,” he said. His voice was serious, and that scared me. “Can we meet up?”

          “S-Sure!” I said. He wants to meet up! We can finally see each other!

          “The rooftop of my dorm. In ten?”

          “Yeah. I’ll be right there.”

Listen to K.Will – Love is Punishment

          I got dressed quickly in a simple, casual outfit and slipped out onto the dark streets of Seoul. I pulled my hood up as the rain started to fall down. As of now, it was only sprinkling. I hoped that it would stay that way.

          Upon coming up onto the rooftop, I immediately saw L crouched over the railings. This seemed to be his signature pose up here, almost. I was suddenly reminded of the night of our birthdays. It’d all seemed like so long ago. So much has happened over the past year.

          “L,” I said.

          He’d already seemed to know that I’ve came. He didn’t look at me as he said, “Hey.”

          “How are you?” I asked. “It’s been a while since we’ve—

          “______,” L said, interrupting me.

          “W-What?” I asked. “You’re really scaring me right now.”

          L swallowed and kept his eyes straight ahead. “We can’t keep doing this,” he said.

          “Doing what?”

          “Being together,” he said quietly.

          I felt myself freeze on the spot.

          “What are you talking about?” I asked. “Y-You aren’t serious.”

          “I’m serious,” L said.

          “B-But…I thought…” I couldn’t even talk. “I thought you said that we’d stay together. I thought we promised each other that we wouldn’t let this effect us!”

          “I know we made all those promises,” L said. “I know.”

          “Then why are you doing this?” I asked. “We’ll find the person who revealed the contract, we’ll—

          “We already found him,” L said. “But you didn’t believe me so he was let off the hook.”

          “Jaejoong didn’t do this,” I said. “He never would stoop so low.”

          “How would you know?” L asked, growing angry. “He likes you. He wants to steal you away from me. He ruins everything. He always has!” He finally looked at me. “After how much he’s hurt you, you still dare to defend him.”

          “I’m defending him because I know him. I know that he’s innocent! And you’re acting like a brat for making it seem like I’m defending him for no reason!”

          “Oh so I’m a brat now?” L asked. “You still like him, don’t you?”

          “So what if I do?” I asked. “Maybe I do still like him. But it doesn’t matter now anyways because you’re already running off and having lunch dates with Kim Yerim. I might as well go back to Jaejoong if you dare to have lunch with her! Do you know how much damage that could’ve done to us if I hadn’t stepped in and defended our relationship?!”

        “So you do still like him,” L said, ignoring everything that I’d just said about Yerim. “I knew it. I knew it was too good to be true. You hadn’t meant it at all when you said you loved me.”

          “Well what about you huh?” I said. “Do you know how many times you’ve said your I love yous to me? Many times. And I bet you were lying every single time, being the flirt that you are. But why should I care if you told me you loved me, right? The things that we said were never even real. Our relationship was never real. Never.”

          L swallowed and looked at me. “Then that means our kisses were never real either, right? Our dates were never real. Our hugs were never real. But every time I told you that I loved you, I’d meant it.”

          I rolled my eyes. “Yeah right. Go tell this bull to Yerim.”

          “So we’re breaking up then,” L said.

          “We were never in a real relationship in the first place,” I said coldly. “So how can we be breaking up?”

          L angrily looked at me and sighed in frustration. I felt like crying my eyeballs out but I wasn’t going to let him know that.

          “Whatever,” he said icily. And without another word, he stormed down the rooftop back to his dorm. I stood there, suddenly noticing how wet I was. As I looked up, I felt the big raindrops on my skin. L and I had been too busy arguing to even notice that it’d been raining the entire time.

          That night, I couldn’t sleep at all. Never have I been in an argument so frustrating that it’d made me want to pull my hair out. He didn’t know how much his words stabbed me. I’m pretty sure I cried myself to sleep that night. It’s been a long time since I’ve cried myself to sleep. And I couldn’t believe that this time it was because of L. He really was the last person whom I thought would hurt me like this. And then I suddenly remembered what he’d once said:

          “You’re welcome,” L said. “Just know that…I’ll always hope to make you smile rather than cry.”

          “Why would you make me cry?” I asked.

          “I never will. That’s the point,” L said.

          “But what if you like, step on my foot or something?” I asked jokingly.

          “Wow ______ way to ruin the moment!” L exclaimed. “Whatever. Forget what I said.”

          “No, you already declared it,” I said. “I hope you keep your word.”

          “Don’t worry. I will.”

          So this is what they mean when they say that promises were meant to be broken. I wonder if he knows that he’d broken his promise. But then again, he doesn’t know that I’ve been crying either.

          It’s not like I’d wanted to argue with him. But things just got so complicated that it was inevitable. I sobbed into my pillow, trying my best to go to sleep. Images of him flashed throughout my mind. I kept thinking about our argument and every mean thing he’d said about me. I thought about the image of him and Yerim having lunch together and wanted to kill myself.

          I was going to call G.NA in the middle of the night to tell her about my breakup with L when I realized what I’d said had been right: our relationship was never even real. A breakup can’t happen if a relationship never happened. So technically, I guess we never broke up at all. We couldn’t, because we were fake.

          But to me, it’d still all seemed so real.

Them

          “Myungsoo how’d it go?” Woohyun asked his dongsaeng as he stormed into the dorm.

          “I don’t want to talk about it,” Myungsoo mumbled before slamming the door to his room shut.

          The boys looked at each other in disapproving expressions.

          “Seems like it went bad,” Hoya said.

          “I don’t think she knows that he only told her to break up because it was for the best. He just didn’t want her to get hurt,” Sungjong replied.

          “If he’d never seen the comments that people were making about them, he would’ve definitely continued to save their relationship any way he could’ve,” Dongwoo said quietly.

          “Dang it I regret leaving my laptop on now,” Sungyeol said with a pout. “If I’d turned it off, he would’ve never seen the comments.”

          “He cares about her way too much,” Sunggyu said with a sigh. “I hate seeing him so sad and frustrated over this. If only the contract was never exposed.”

          “They’ll only get hurt if they’re together now,” Woohyun said logically. “Their publicity is bad as it is. It really is for the best.”

          “But he loved her a lot,” Sungyeol said quietly.

          Woohyun nodded in agreement. “Yeah,” he said. “He did.”

A/N: Oh god i've actually had this chapter for a long time but was too scared to post it until now LOL -hides-