CHAPTER XI

Painful

The sun finally rose by 6AM. But Mari's already been up for an hour before that. It was just her normal body clock waking her — she couldn't do anything about it. 

At 5AM, Baekhyun's apartment looked dark and lonely. There was nothing that she could make out of against the darkness. 

Getting up from the sofa she slept on, she took a quick shower in his bathroom and already spent the next hour cleaning his apartment. The clean freak in her just couldn't stomach the gruesome scene with clothes strewn all over the floor, and cans of iced Americano collecting under his sofa. 

The amount of coffee cans all over his floor was quite worrisome. "Someone shouldn't be drinking this much coffee," Mari thought to herself, her opinion being amplified by the fact that she's only ever had a sip of coffee in her lifetime. She's a Jasmine tea kind of girl. 

By 7AM, she was already pretty hungry. And so, stopping to take a break from washing the dishes, she quickly grabbed some take out for breakfast. She wasn't stupid — she knew how to save money physically, outside of her credit cards and bank accounts. 

She's been thrown out for countless of times already that she's already an expert on this. 

Managing her finances was just that easy for her. Plus, it's not like she had always relied on her parents for cash. Being the prideful person that she is, she didn't even want to bother her parents to shoulder her "unreasonable" purchases. 

In the eyes of her parents, who were basically dealing with serious wealth, buying luxury items, such as Fashion clothes and designer cars was reasonable. But spending some hundred dollars for a concert ticket to support an idol is "stupid" and "irrational". 

That's why she always knew to save money, and eventually, she learned to earn her own to fund her concert experiences. 

Coming back to the apartment, with her purse on hand and the take out on another, she saw that Baekhyun was already home. 

Shock overwhelmed her. She really did not expect him to come this quickly. In fact, she had hoped that he would somehow forget that he lent her his home. Mari just did not want to deal with anyone right now — especially him, the person who basically put her into all of this. 

Swallowing the bulb in , she tried to brush pass him by saying a small "Hi" and walking pass him to get to the kitchen. 

Obviously, Baekhyun was not having that. He followed her to the kitchen, ready to throw her whatever the heck that he was thinking. But when he saw her shaking while pouring out the take outs, he quickly understood that she wasn't at her best. 

She was vulnerable to him right now. And being the tough girl she always presented herself, it was difficult of her to appear this weak to her mighty nemesis, who just happened to lend a helping hand. 

At this point, neither one of them knew where they stood with each other. They were not friends nor enemies, but maybe something in between. The dynamic between the two of them was just too difficult to decipher. 

Seeing her struggling with the hot food, he decided to help her out. It pained him to see her in this state. "Take a rest, I'll prepare the food," he told her as he approached her turned back. 

Mari just walked away from the count