"Chanyeol is a Park"

In the next hour, Baekhyun seeks comfort in the only person who knows his truth. At least with Yejin, he doesn't have to pretend he was someone who he was not.

Yejin and Baekhyun walk around the hotel talking about anything and everything, as if there was nothing complex in their odd found friendship. As if they weren't supposed rivals in love with the same man.

Baekhyun, without fail, continues to admire his surroundings. He believes that one day, he will never get to experience all these again. The dream will shatter and soon, he will return to his shabby apartment alone - pathetic and miserable - back to watching the people dressed in skimpy outfits at the measly hotel across his.

“Are you alright?” Yejin asks, squeezing Baekhyun's hand as they crossed the garden's bridge for the second time.

Since they had their talk at the gazebo, Baekhyun refused to let her go, and Yejin of course didn't mind. While Chanyeol had always embraced him in security, tonight, seeing the taller in his natural element - in the world he rightfully belongs in - Baekhyun was afraid. Yejin though… the girl who not once shunned him despite knowing his truth - at the moment, she was comfort.

“Are rich people always so judgemental?” Baekhyun asks after they passed by a group of snobby looking brats coincidentally mocking another group of people who didn't look “rich enough” to be there. It was all fun jokes for them, but not for Baekhyun.

Yejin laughs after side-eyeing the snobs. She knew them, a bunch of arrogant teenagers from prominent families. “Isn't that just human nature in general?” She sighs and shakes her head. Not at all offended despite her being one these "rich people". “It doesn't matter who or where they come from, judgement is always going to happen.”

They stop by the staircase leading directly to the grand hall of the party once back inside. Various people step in and out of the venue but everyone was clearly high up in the status ladder.

“You only feel it so heavily right now is because all these important people are gathered into one place busy up on each other seeking for potential benefit." She nods at Baekhyun to look at the people surrounding Chanyeol who happened to be at the top of the staircase. Since he was the next heir to his family's empire, it wasn't surprising that many wanted his attention.

Baekhyun felt himself shrink further at the scene. Chanyeol was starting to carry the same aura as his parents - powerful.

He decides to hide the slamming inferiority that hits him, but Yejin felt it from the hand that tightened its grip on hers.

“At the end of the day, it's how you cope and deal with it.” Yejin pulls Baekhyun away from the scene. Although she nods and smiles at Chanyeol who caught them walking away, silently telling him that she's here to take care of Baekhyun, nothing more. “Allow their words to bring you down, or use it to strengthen yourself.”

“Wow, such wise words.” Baekhyun laughs off the nerves.

“I have the label of a cheater.” She diverts Baekhyun's fear and smiles at him, with pain and remorse. “Rightfully so. I deserve it, therefore I need to learn to live through it.”

Baekhyun was successfully distracted. He closes in more to Yejin's warmth offering his own, silent pity; ecloses his other hand onto her arm snuggling affection that indeed made her burst into giggles.

“I want to go home,” he says. “This place is too suffocating.”

“Me too.”

♠️

Yejin never meant for Baekhyun to meet her mother. She, of all people, knew that her mother was the epitome of a snob herself. But it was unavoidable, for the moment they decide to step back into the party, Mother Han was there beside her in a second.

“Mom, this is Baekhyun, a friend.” Yejin forced herself to say, presenting the young man who bowed in her presence. Not because she was ashamed of Baekhyun but because she wanted him ten miles away from this woman.

As she predicted, Mother Han scanned Baekhyun from head to toe. The elder of course said nothing; just nodded at Baekhyun's choice of fashion as if she approved - he looked expensive, authentic, high class, and not some cheap try hard who only snuck in into the venue uninvited.

Baekhyun felt like a piece of meat, hung up on a clothes pin for a customer to inspect. He has had people scan him from head to toe before. Goodness, Chanyeol's own mother did the same thing just awhile ago. But Mother Han was just a different kind of force that he felt more degraded than before.

While she seemed to closely examine Baekhyun, Mother Han didn't say anything further and instead went straight to pester her daughter.

“Yejin, why don't you take this chance to talk to Chanyeol.” She asked, flapping her delicate red fan over her face that blew on her perfectly dyed ash brown locks adorned by a ruby crested hairclip.

She looked nothing like Yejin apart from the subtly similar features that were saved from all the beauty surgeries and botox if one looked closely enough. Mother Han was a force of wealth and attitude. Her neck, wrists and fingers wrapped in rose gold and swarovsk