Possessive.

It was a side Chaeyeon, herself, never knew existed. It was an alien feeling, she thought. She was certain she was leaning towards the direction of possessiveness when she saw the eyes of both men and women magnetized by her lover.

Chaeyeon was certain she felt a dreadful emotion dyeing her system green and the color flashed before her eyes.

Sakura was donning a black halter dress specifically designed to accentuate her slim body and reveal more of her creamy-white skin, intricately crafted pieces of jewelry adorning her body that could easily give away the fact that she was a girl born with a silver spoon or gold, rather. Even when she was simply standing in the corner-most space of the room, she oozes with the aura of a highborn. The girl was doing nothing but stare blankly at the captivated people who would always end up getting too intimidated by both her otherworldly beauty and the family name attached to her.

Her eyes are cold and dead.

She mumbles to herself as she marveled at the breathtaking appearance of her beloved. She thinks about wanting to approach the woman to pull her in a warm embrace — of tightly wrapping her arms around her slim waist and burrowing her face in the crook of her neck to drown herself in the soft lavender perfume Sakura loves wearing. Her eyes once again wandered around the people who were looking at her lover as if they desired her.

She’s mine.

Chaeyeon growls in her thoughts.

“Sakura-ojousama, as you can see, has been used by her family to flaunt how ‘superior’ they are in public but in truth, it was never the case.” Hyewon’s words managed to push back the peeking demon inside Chaeyeon, bringing her back to reality to focus more on the severity of Sakura’s past.

She in a deep breath to calm the obnoxious green-eyed monster who had started rearing its ugly head from inside her. She blinked her eyes furiously, collecting herself after glaring at Hyewon’s phone that showed how godly Sakura was during her 20th birthday party — the last birthday she attended before fleeing from her cruel family.

壁の花.

A wallflower, the thorny and poisonous kind.

Miyawaki Sakura.

She was once known as Kujou Sakura, a direct descendant of the Kujou Clan; one of the oldest existing elite families in Japan, once a high-ranking noble household that served the Imperial Family generations ago. It was the kind of clan that's deeply rooted in business and politics in the current era, also the kind people who tend to have such a high pride in their family name that it could pierce through the sky. She is their heiress, well, was supposed to be as the actual firstborn.　Sakura was but a girl, a person who will fail to keep their mighty surname alive once she marries a man. Her existence made her greedy father insecure of his standing, further making him loathe her existence and ignoring her presence entirely. She was a flaw to his perfect record, the perfect record which gave him the ability to rise to power against his older siblings. Sakura presented a threat to his position as the next head once he gets chosen by his father to inherit his position. She was a mistake that shouldn't have come to life or so he says.

“By the way, I would appreciate it a lot if you don’t break my phone.” Hyewon nonchalantly quipped. 

Chaeyeon looked at the phone and loosened her grip as she let a wry laugh roll from . She didn’t even notice how her hand had turned white from jealousy. “Sorry about that.”

The younger collected herself as she pondered and tried to connect the puzzles.

Yoshiki, Sakura, and Kujou Group.

Finding more about the extremely displeasing past her girlfriend experienced makes it hard for Chaeyeon to simply swallow everything and move forward. She wasn't one to ignore the person who had hurt someone she loves but this case especially hit her hard. Who would have thought the one she loves and her brother almost went through the same thing? Except Jaehyun was never used for business purposes as the Lees immediately cut him off from their family. They feared and hated him. Her twin brother was deemed to be the harbinger of their family's bad luck which could lead them to their downfall so he was scorned and kicked out of their household once it was proven that Chaeyeon was the better one.

Except she isn’t.

On the other hand, Sakura was never kicked out but she, herself, removed her own name from their family registry the moment she got considered as an adult. She left her family name behind, threw away the wealthy lifestyle she had in order to free herself from the hellish place she grew up in. She just wanted to run away — run away from the place she once called home as she couldn’t stomach the swirling negativity which made her insides twist in repugnance.

She let out a big sigh as she deflated on Hyewon's couch. Her eyes then gravitated to her right, where the layers of protective soft pillow walls stood. It served as a fort that contained her daughter's sleeping figure, cutely wrapped in a warm pink dinosaur onesie. She saw how Wonyoung took small even breaths, how peacefully she slept tonight.

A soft smile immediately made its way to her lips.

Hyewon followed her eyes and like magic, the sight had made her smile warmly. They bathed themselves in comfortable silence as they watched the angel sleep serenely. They didn’t speak for minutes until Hyewon took a deep breath and redirected her gaze to the woman in front of her, finally deciding to break the quiet.

“In any case, I’ve given you a brief summary of Kkura’s story. You should hear more from her if you want to know more.” Hyewon muttered monotonously, wiping a lone tear that somehow managed to find its way down her porcelain skin without her knowledge. “I’m sure she’ll open up to you. She’s simply the type to keep everything to herself but she has changed ever since she met you. She changed for the better and I just know that she will tell you the things I’ve omitted. It’s her story and it’s not part of my privileges to share it with you.”

Chaeyeon hummed, relief finally sipping through her mess of emotions. “But I’m glad that you’re not...”

...her ex or something along those lines.

The CEO couldn’t fight the sigh from escaping through her lips as she swallowed the irrelevant words that almost spilled from . She cursed her jealousy for muddling her reasoning.

Hyewon chortled. “I feel like I know what you’re about to say. I’m not numb. It’s understandable if you thought of that.”

“Sorry.” Chaeyeon bit the insides of her cheeks.

“Regarding what you’ve learned about me, I don’t mind if you tell others. But I hope you give me the opportunity to tell Eunbi-unnie, myself.”

She looked at the older girl in the eyes and smiled in assurance.

Kang Hyewon.

She recalled the details about the past that the latter have finally revealed about herself… of how she was the only child of the founders of the now-bankrupt engineering firm Solhye. It was known to be a house to the top-level civil engineers fifteen years ago... that is, however, only until her parents started being somehow involved with the loan sharks and to make it worse, the yakuza, when they decided to set foot in Japan — her late mother’s homeland.

That was perhaps the biggest mistake that had led them to their downfall. It eventually made her family seek financial help through her Japanese family, the Fujio’s connections. 

A big mansion in Karuizawa with its own mini onsen facility, a few house helpers, a pair of expensive cars — a coupe and a sedan. She recalled how