CHAPTER TWELVE

For the past few days, Jina has been thinking of ways on how she could make it up to Jaebum’s family for all the pain and humiliation she and her company have caused them. Although Jaebum told her that they should just forget everything, Jina just won’t settle – not when she feels guilty about Bambam getting bullied by the kids at his school.

‘I just can’t take the fact that he’s being bullied because of things he has no control of… Getting bullied was probably the worst thing I experienced back when I was young so I won’t let someone else experience it especially if it’s due to my own doing…’

Jina once again considers stopping the production of their new product – this is despite knowing that the idea would most likely be unwelcomed.

She calls Mark, hoping she’d be able to convince him to side with her decision and together, they will persuade her father.

“Hello, Mark?”

“Jina, where were you? I called your office and Youngji said you left work early. Where are you? I’m going there right away, just tell me.”

“I’m okay, Mark. I just had… stuff to do…Really, no need to fetch me or anything.”

“Are you okay? You sound tired. Did something happen?”

“Hmm… Remember the cheesecake guy?”

The man on the other line pauses, “Im Jaebum?”

“Yes, yes… You see…”

“Are you again thinking of stopping the production of our product?”

“Well, I…”

“Jina, you understand well that it won’t be easy to just pull out our product from the market. I know that you feel guilty about all this but suddenly cutting everything would just hurt the company’s sales, its performance. Besides, your Dad already apologized to Jaebum in public; we even offered monetary compensation but he declined. Everything’s in place now. What’s the use of stopping production?”

Jina considers what Mark had said. ‘Well, he’s right and Dad’s going to go crazy if I suddenly cancel this product…’

“Jina, are you still there?”

“Yes. Okay. I understand…”

“Why this sudden call and this topic? Did you meet with him again?” Mark asks, worried and a little bit disappointed.

“Yes. Sorry. No need to worry though; he was very accommodating, actually.” ‘The complete opposite of how I treated him…’

“Don’t go meet him again, okay? I don’t like the fact that my fiancée meets with people she barely knows. Or at least ask me to come with you. You know how I am never busy when it comes to you.”

Jina laughs at how cheesy her fiancé just sounded. “Stop it. Okay, okay, Mr. Cheesyboy.”

“Oh come on, I know you like hearing things like this. You’re probably blushing right now,” teases the other.

“Whatever. I’ll see you later.”

Jina hangs up, smiling to herself. This doesn’t last though as feelings of guilt consume her once again.

As much as she wanted to do something, she doesn’t know what else she can do to show how sincere she is about making up to Jaebum and his family.

‘I guess Im Jaebum was right, we should all just move on…’

She bitterly laughs at herself. ‘Like that’s easy…’

Somehow, she feels that Jaebum still sees her as a heartless woman who tramples on whoever or whatever she wants then brushes everything off like nothing happened.

Jina sighs as she thinks of how long the matter will eat her conscience and make her harbor feelings of guilt.

‘How will I forget all these?’

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“Please help me… Please…”

Jackie stares at the faceless woman on the floor. Despite not having a face, the former could tell from the voice who this woman was.

“Jackie… Please…” The woman tries to reach out to her.

Jackie scans the place and all she could see is this woman in front of her while everything around her is white.

“With all her might, Jackie tries to extend her arm to the woman.

As soon as she touches hands with her, the latter, who initially looked like she could not stand, gets to her feet and strangles Jackie.

“How could you?!”

“I’m so sorry, please, stop—“

“Auntie?”

Jackie opens her eyes and she’s back inside Bambam’s room. With tears streaming down her cheeks, she could only whisper. “Thank you so much for waking me up, Bammie…”

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Taekwoon pulls over outside Jina’s house. He carries a bouquet of flowers and basket of fruits. ‘Just a friendly visit…’

He rings the doorbell and a beautiful slender woman with long wavy hair greets him.

“Oh, Taekwoon! What brings you here?”

“I was just around town and I thought of paying you a visit. I heard you were stressed about the scandal Kim Foods was embroiled in.”

“Well, yeah, I was. I’m good now.” Jina smiles brightly at him. “Anyway, come in.”

“Thanks. Here, I brought you some flowers and fruits.”

“Wow, you didn’t have to.”

“Well, I—“

“Yeah, you didn’t have to.”

Taekwoon turns to the direction of the voice and finds Mark smiling – a forced one – at him.

“Hi, Mark.”

“Hello, Taekwoon.”

“Didn’t know you were here.”

“Well, I’m Jina’s fiancé so you can expect that I come here often.” The redhead answers, putting emphasis on the word ‘fiancé’.

Sensing the tension between the two, Jina butts in, “Erhmm, why don’t we eat something, hmm? I’ll make you guys something.”

“That would be lovely,” her fiancé tells her.

The woman runs to the kitchen wanting to escape the uncomfortable situation. ‘What’s wrong with those two?’

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“Markiepooh~ Are you busy?”

“A little. I’ll come over later, okay?”

“Are you with Jina?”

“Yeah. But don’t worry, I’m just waiting for Taekwoon to leave and I’ll go too. We’ve to plan our next move.”

“What is he doing— Oh, I’ll call you later.”

Jackie hangs up as soon as she heard the door to Bambam’s room open.

“Oh, did I interrupt you?” Jaebum asks.

“Ah, no, no. I was just talking to a friend.

“Okay. Anyway, thank you again for watching over Bambam even without me asking. I appreciate your effort to help me take care of him.”

Jackie simply smiles as she tells herself, ‘You won’t be thanking me like this, Jae, if you only knew... I wonder how long I will be doing this with Mark… What exactly have I become?’

A short update but there you have it, I've finally made a revelation. Things will start to pick up (hopefully) from here and I think it's gonna be a little bit fast-paced -- I write oneshots after all and this is my first multi-chaptered fic. I hope you could give me feedbacks via comments so I can improve :) Thank you to those who are still reading this and I hope you could share this to your friends too ^^