There was that resounding slap, the sting that came after. I was pretty sure my left cheek was going to swell up if I didn’t ice it and my mom would be absolutely worried. Who knows what she could do to my boss had she known.

“Hey, intern! Do you even listen to a single thing I tell you?”

Maybe she’d call the boss of the mafia or something and then they’d scare him for making me do his work, for embarrassing me in front of my co-workers, or for slapping me. Heol.

“This is why I don’t like you! You can’t do anything right!”

Perhaps she would call the Executive Director and then asked him to pull some strings to get my boss fired. They were pretty close after all. The ED used to be my mother’s immediate boss before she had an early retirement.

I blinked back at my boss, not saying a word. The slap was hard, but I couldn’t feel anything. I thought I was probably already used to it. The verbal and physical abuse.

“I’m sorry,” I said, bowing in apology. I ate my pride again.

He just scoffed and left while saying stuff like how useless I was or why he didn’t get a better intern. I always asked myself why he said those things or why I wasn’t good enough, but I couldn’t find the answer. I couldn’t ask him either. He scared the hell out of me so I just did as he pleased. Yet I never got to please him.

I was always on the wrong.

The voices around and the secret glances died down. The show had ended so my co-workers were no longer interested in seeing pitiful me at it again. I sighed, looking down at the pile of work on my table I still had to finish for the day. It was five times more than I would have at a normal day. This wasn’t even what you call work but slavery.

Yet, I still always sat down until midnight to finish what I had to. I read through the technical stuff and then I go down to editing. Sometimes when I had to do some creative material for a client, it would add up to the pile of songs, contracts and manuals that had to be attended to.

This was supposed to be the work of an aspiring assistant music producer, but why did it feel like I was already burning in hell as an intern?

My mom said getting to where you want to be would make the journey much easier, but that wasn’t the case for me. I wanted to be like her, but it was as if the bigger world of music wanted to spit me out.

Sooner or later I knew I was going to readily snap.

But I wasn’t a quitter.

I would definitely see this till the end.

“You’re staying?” Kim Jiwon, a fellow intern, asked. I nodded, smiling weakly at her.

She was a pretty nice girl if you’d ask me. I used to not talk to her due to the fact that I wasn’t really a social butterfly, but she was there to make me some coffee the first night I had to stay up late and not go home.

She nodded, smiling as she hiked up the sling of her bag on her shoulder. “I’ll be going first then. My husband’s been waiting for me since 8. Good luck!” she said, patting my shoulder.

I let my mouth tilt up until she was out of sight and then when she was no longer there, I let my thoughts wander back to what she said. It was just a very simple word, but it had always struck a sensitive cord in me.

Husband.

Whenever a girl like her talk about their husbands so fondly, I couldn’t help but become jealous. Sometimes even thought I should have been like her at this age. But I wasn’t. I was already twenty-two and still had not found my so-called ‘soul mate’.

And there was Kim Jiwon, twenty-one, already married to the man that fate had paired her up with. I let my eyes wander once more to the spot where she disappeared to and couldn’t help but be a little envious.

“Everyone is so damn lucky except for me.”

You see, we lived in a world governed by the choices made for us by fate. We didn’t control our own lives. Fate always had it already all planned out. So what happened today and what would happen in the future was something already chosen for us. That was probably also the reason why instead of lashing out at my misfortunes, I embraced it with open arms even if it would leave a scar. For I knew, fate let things happen for a reason. I didn’t know it now, but my mom always told me that one day all these things would make sense.

It was also by fate that we found our lifetime partners. Our other half. Our soul mate.

At the viable age of eighteen, the signs that you were born to be with each other would start to become even more prominent, that most of us tended to find our soul mates at this age. It was also at this age that most people get married.

They said that you would know you had found your soul mate as soon as your eyes would connect. You’d immediately recognize each other just by looking at each other’s eyes, because—as others had described—it was like seeing through another’s soul. Then you’d feel this strong pull that would gravitate you closer to this person and just as your skins touched, you would feel the sparks igniting the feelings well-kept underneath all your other emotions. To seal the deal, you’d both be branded by a special mark that would forever remind you of what you were to each other.

It would have been nice if it was that simple for everyone, for me. I would be truly happy if I was also blessed with a fairy tale ending just like everyone out there.

But why wasn’t fate so kind to give me mine when I was eighteen? It would have been fine even if it gave me mine a little later in my eighteen-ish. That would have been better with a twenty-two-ish lady who had been cussed at by her boss so many times, who wasn’t treated right, and who was at the brink of starting to believe that she was bound to be single for t