Yoon Soomin decided to name her baby “Jeonghan,” because “Jeong” meant clean.

As dirty as the affair that spawned him had been, she was determined to not let that impurity rub off on her newborn. She wanted to give him a good life, even if he was born out of wedlock in these circumstances.

She also wasn’t going to let his father shirk the responsibility of taking care of him. So when the damned father, sitting on his expensive CEO office chair in the top floor of the skyscraper, refused to acknowledge his illegitimate son – created from a lewd encounter with her, his secretary, in the company’s bathroom stall – she threatened him. Either he gave her money every month so she could take care of him for the rest of the boy’s life, or she’ll take him to court and expose the affair to the public.

He wouldn’t let that happen. He gave her a building to shut her up, but he also plagued her with a curse that would torment Jeonghan for the rest of his life.

-

Arin began to realize that maybe what Hyojung had told her was true. Hearing his curse, word for word, silenced her and quelled that raging hatred in her heart, just a bit.

She also felt guilty bringing up his mother.

Jeonghan looked dazed and lost, as if he were reliving something traumatic in his head. She understood; she had her own share of trauma, and she knew very well that saying a curse out loud is like opening a curtain that hides and buries past tragedies.

She could think of nothing to say to him, but she did have some strange and sudden urge to make him feel better. It was weird: she went from wanting to shame and insult him, to wanting to comfort him in a matter of minutes.

As a gesture of solidarity, a proclamation that she understood his pain and empathized with him, she began to recite her own curse out loud. She could tell from the way his eyes focused that he was listening to her, and for the first time ever, she felt connected to him.

When the last lines fell from her lips, he responded with: “shut up. You’re being too noisy.”

That was his curse talking to her like that. She knew that now, so she no longer felt shut down, upset, or self-conscious.

Maybe Hyojung was right: if Arin had known about Jeonghan’s curse all along, she might not have hated him as she did now. But for sure, she could have never loved him. Even now, totally bare and vulnerable before her, all she could do was pity him.

“You should have told me about your curse,” she said to him. “I could have never known you without your curse, so you would have been safe. How can I feel anything about someone I’ve never met.”

“Stop talking,” he mumbled, but he didn’t meet her eyes. He was still looking at the floor, completely aloof.

A long silence followed as Arin grappled with the words of Jeonghan’s curse, making out his story in her head: he was specifically cursed to make his mother hate him, so when she came back to him that one day, he had to push her away again.

The curse also offered a condition and a warranty: if he ever showed kindness, he would feel pain, and then the devil would “take reign.” She remembered when he saved her from what he thought was a bad situation with Woozi, and how he squirmed and cried with pain afterward. He then turned into a monster, which ended in him trying to jump off the building. She also remembered what happened just a few hours ago, when he forced himself not to throw Meemo off the edge of the building, and then turned into that same possessed monster. The curse explained everything: whenever he went against his curse and forced himself to show kindness, he would feel pain, then he’d turn into the devil.

“Right now, at this very moment, you’re protecting me,” she stated as she dwelled on their situation. “You’re preventing me from ending my life. Isn’t that ‘kindness’? Why is your curse even letting you do this? Shouldn’t you writhing in pain right about now?”

He scoffed at her and said: “Death is a comfort. It would be kindness to let you live.”

She could tell that he actually believed he was being unkind to her by preventing her from dying.

But for Arin, that sudden urge to die was gone. She was okay again, and she was glad that Jeonghan stopped her, impure as his intentions were.

The counter-intuition did not end there. A minute later, he said: “I wish you did love me, because then you could say my name, and poof, I’d leave this miserable place once and for all.”

The strange string of words made her realize the absurdity of their situation. Everything was upside down, messed up, and unreasonable. In their world, death is good, and love is bad. Everything was just so wrong, and she wanted nothing more than to make it all right-side-up again.

This renewed her drive to get out of there. Get herself and Jeonghan out of that toxic mindset that was wasting away their youth and reducing their life to a game of survival against the plague of despair. The only way to do that was to confront magic and reverse their world to its natural order.

The only apparent path toward such a distant prospect seemed to be through MRS. Jun had claimed that MRS reversed curses; Arin didn’t know if she believed him but trusting him was the only thing giving her hope at the moment.

Even if her own curse was “irreversible,” Jeonghan’s didn’t seem to be. Irreversibility wasn’t in the words.

She needed to get past both Jeonghan and Hyojung’s enchantment if she was ever going to escape this building...

“Hyojung doesn’t trust me anymore. She’s not going to lift the enchantment for me, but she might for you if you,” Arin thought out loud.

“If you think I’m going to let you out…”

“‘I’m going to find MRS.”

“Why in would you do that?”

“I met one of them. He said they reverse curses. If they really do, they can help you!”

“Are you a ing idiot?!” he exclaimed.

“Maybe I am! But if you let me go, I might find them and they might be able to help you. It’s wouldn’t be kindness to let me go, it would be for your own self-interest. Actually, you think MRS are bad people who want to torture us, right? Then send me off to be tortured! Do it, Jeonghan. Be cruel to me and let me go.”

He glared at her, unamused at what she was saying, but not completely resistant. That was a good sign, which gave her the motivation to keep trying to convince him, to appeal to that cursed side of him.

“What you’re doing right now,” she continued, “keeping me from dying, not letting me go out and find MRS… isn’t that kindness to Hyojung? Why isn’t your curse fighting you on that kindness?”

She could tell that she was playing with his head. He looked confused, with all of his initial convictions wavering.

“You know, she told me that she loves you,” Arin tried.

At that, he laughed. “You’re so ing clueless. You don’t know anything.”

“Then tell me what I don’t know! Are you guys a couple or something?”

He laughed again.

“All I know is what she told me, and she said she loves you. I don’t know what that means, but I do know that the devil inside you would hate that if it were true. Someone loves you? That’s against who you are, isn’t it? Shouldn’t you make her hate you? What better way to do that than to let me go?”

“You’re a !” he spat at her. He was obviously peeved by everything she was telling him, but it seemed to be working.

“Will you let me go?” she asked.

He threw her phone toward her. “Go!” he squalled. “Get yourself tortured and beaten for all I care!”

It worked. Arin couldn’t believe it. “Really?”

“I’ll message that other and trick her into lifting the enchantment so you can scram out of here and never return. Also, I don’t want either of you to talk to me ever again!” With that, he turned to leave.

“Wait!” she called after him.

He turned to her with a frown on his face.

“I’ll find a way to help you, Jeonghan. I will, I promise.”

He didn’t acknowledge her words. He just turned around and left, and Arin found herself wondering if she would ever even see him again.

When he was gone, and her door was left open and unguarded, she felt it was too good to be true. She was free to go, to break the chains and never return to this place ever again.

She quickly gathered her belongings, some clothes, her phone and charger, the last of her money and flew out the door before Jeonghan could change his mind.

As she rushed down the stairs toward the exit, she found Woozi seated on the stairs, his injured foot extended. He was engrossed with something on his phone. When he noticed her coming, he nearly jumped and quickly turned off his phone screen.

She wanted to just dash past him without looking back, but she couldn’t ignore him when he called for her.

“What’s going on? Where are you going?” he asked.

“Away,” she answered.

He glanced at her packed duffle bag. “Forever?”

“Well… yeah. Forever.”

“But why? Don’t you want to report him...”

“No. I’m leaving. Don’t follow me,” she insisted, and left, not looking back when he called for her again.

As she descended the final flight of stairs, the loosening of her bones told Arin that Hyojung’s enchantment had been lifted. When she was out of the front gate and out on the streets, she felt liberated and hopeful for the first time in years.

-

A/N: Again sorry for the late update. Still having trouble with mapping the story but now that I quit my job i’ll be focusing a lot more on this! Also I’m actually in a creative writing MFA program now! So that might mean better writing? maybe? Anyways after i post this i’ll be dedicating the next 4 hours to the story mapping so i hope i will make enough progress to give you an update earlier than you might expect :D See you soon! and thanks for being patient and staying with me in spite of long wait between updates!!