Author's Greetings: Hey there, this is vitamin-blue and I'm so glad to be back with Chapter 14 after such a long week! I know it's been a torturous wait for you as it has been for me. Before we begin, let me introduce this chapter's playlist:

1. Reset by Tiger JK & Jinsil

2. How can I love the heartbreak, you’re the one I love by AKMU

3. The Unseen Enemy - Iljimae OST

4. Can You See My Heart by HEIZE

5. Black Swamp - Iljimae OST

The Iljimae OSTs can be found as a podcast playlist on Spotify under the title "Iljimae Various Artist". Alternatively, you can load those up on YouTube I think! As usual, I will include the scenes with the playlist in the Author's Note at the end of this chapter (do NOT check it now if you don't want spoilers).

Oh, and one more thing! I would like to thank ChaseTheSun for beta-reading this chapter. She's been incredibly amazing in helping me prepare this chapter for release, and I can't thank her enough for helping me even though I'm sure she's already got a lot on her plate. Without much further ado, please, enjoy Chapter 14!

Joohyun isn’t sure what draws her out of the calm darkness of sleep into a world still in slumber. The hotel room is dim, although she can see the sunlight begin to filter through the gap between the curtains, rays of light dancing on the walls of the room. Behind her, she hears soft breaths escape Wendy’s lips. She feels a weight on her and peers down sleepily.

The blonde’s hand rests lightly on her waist.

Joohyun feels her cheeks grow warm. The first thing that comes to mind is wake the manager up and scold her for inappropriate skin-ship. However, she pauses, noting that as much as she doesn’t want to admit it, she does like the touch. The soloist finds herself rationalising that it seems rather innocent, so she doesn’t really have to confront the manager, does she?

A sudden pang of guilt strikes Joohyun, as she recalls Seungwan’s shy words to her on the balcony just before she’d left for Switzerland.

“Because I like you!”

“Um, w-we can…t-talk about it after you’re back from Switzerland?”

She grimaces, feeling disgusted with herself. How could she, knowing and returning Seungwan’s feelings, be attracted to her manager as well? How could she, knowing Seungwan is waiting for her back home, revel in the touch of another? How could she betray her Seungwan like that?

Joohyun eases Wendy’s hand off her waist without waking her and sits up, back still turned to the sleeping blonde as her feet come to rest on the carpet. She watches the light’s rays sway on the walls and lets out a troubled sigh. She combs her fingers through her hair, as if it’ll help ease her frustration.

Without warning, last night’s memories flood her mind, now that sleep no longer holds them back. She remembers Haneul in her dream. Her nightmare. The sharp pain when her best friend gripped her wrist. The hateful whispers that pierce through her. The Haneul in her dream had grown dark, eyes b with hatred that they seemed to glow devilishly. Her friend’s tight grip searing her skin. Cruel laughter echoing in her ears.

She vaguely remembers thrashing against nightmare Haneul, although she’s not sure if it was all just part of her dream. She clearly remembers crying out for Seungwan, however. And like a dream, the younger woman had appeared, breaking through the suffocating grip of her nightmare, comforting her terrified self with the most beautiful voice and the most heartbreaking song.

“Last Love…” Joohyun repeats under her breath and lets out a mirthless chuckle.

Did I miss you so much that I imagined you coming to me when I was having a nightmare? To the point where I could hear you sing me back to sleep with a song I’ve never heard before?

But then she recalls what dream Seungwan had looked like.

She…was crying.

Why was Seungwan crying?

She shakes her head.

Wait. Why am I even asking? It was just a dream.

The soloist rolls her eyes and gets up. She stretches and feels her muscles groan in protest. She lets out a loud yawn and picks up her phone to check the time. 5.58am. Two minutes till their planned wake up time call. That gives her two minutes to annoy her manager awake. She spins around with an excited grin.

The sight that greets her next sends her reeling.

Joohyun squints and rubs her eyes, certain that she’s still trapped in last night’s hallucination. She blinks and stares.

Those golden frames aren’t disappearing.

More images from last night begin slotting themselves into the foggy parts of her memory. Her thrashing in bed. Wendy holding her wrist and pleading for her to calm down. Her desperate cries for Seungwan, only for Seungwan to appear right after. She realises, like a damning strike to her chest, that Seungwan’s presence last night hadn’t been a dream. Because Wendy is—

No.

Joohyun stumbles backwards, her knees nearly buckling. Is it just her or is the floor giving way?

It can’t be—

Wendy’s alarm shrieks though the still air in the room. The blonde shifts, turning over to switch off the alarm. The manager sits up with a groan. Meanwhile, Joohyun feels her limbs tremble as she struggles to process the truth of the person in front of her.

This whole time, Seungwan and Wendy…have always been the same person. All this time, she’s been lying to me.

The betrayal plows into her like a merciless force that drives splinters through her heart.

I thought for once, there's someone in my corner. But to trust the same person twice…and for her to make a fool of me…

The soloist balls her hands into fists by her sides, as she stares and waits for an explanation she knows she doesn’t want to hear. She tries to ignore the burning sting of tears welling up in her eyes.

No, she will not give the younger woman the satisfaction of watching her cry.

The blonde lifts a hand to rub her eyes, and then freezes. For several seconds, the soloist observes the manager, her heart pounding hard. But it’s different this time. There are no butterflies to accompany it. Not the dizzying sensation that makes the corners of her lips tug up uncontrollably. No, she only feels a cold, hurting emptiness, no different from what she’d felt when Haneul had spat cruel words at her.

Wendy turns to face her, startled. Their eyes meet and Joohyun finds herself at a loss of words.

What do I say? What can I say?

So the soloist just…stares.

It’s like…I don’t even know the person in front of me.

And maybe…I really don’t.

After several prolonged moments, the manager is first to break the silence, though Joohyun might argue that the silence is the one that breaks her.

“Joohyun…”

For some strange reason, hearing her name come from the lips of the woman who clearly looks like Seungwan only cements everything. Not “Unnie”, but “Joohyun”. Just the way Wendy would call her.

It all comes back to her.

“Oh, I don’t know, Irene-ssi. Would you even know if truth were to stare at you right in the face?”

They were stringing me along this entire time. And I…fell for it.

I fell for them.

For her.

With that final confirmation, scalding rage fills the older woman.

“So…what do I call you?” Joohyun’s voice squeezes through her constricting throat, “Son Wendy? Seungwan? Son Seungwan? Or none of them?”

The blonde struggles to her feet dizzily, her hurting head causing her vision to swirl. She squeezes shut her eyes as she tries to stabilise herself. She hears the soloist’s footsteps pad across the room, until they stop in front of her. Seungwan opens her eyes, and finds herself staring at a seething Joohyun.

“I- I can expla—”

A sharp pain strikes her cheek as the slap connects, ringing loud and clear, into what otherwise would’ve been quiet morning air. Seungwan wishes she could say it hurt. But her smarting cheek feels numb in comparison to the white-hot stab to her heart, as the wild flames of Joohyun’s hurt sear her.

“Was it fun?”

Seungwan snaps her head up to face the soloist, “Wha—”

“Was it fun to play pretend?” Joohyun cuts her off, eyes shimmering with tears, “Let’s lead Joohyun on like the fool she is?”

“Joo—”

“Everything up till now was a lie…” The soloist seethes, “Every words you said to me…they were all lies.”

Seungwan feels herself growing desperate, “Unni—”

“Don’t you dare call me that!” Joohyun snarls, “Never call me that again. You don’t have the right. Not after what you’ve done.”

Seungwan’s gaze drop to the floor, her own eyes b with tears.

“H-How could you—” Joohyun chokes, her lips trembling, “I trusted you! I told you everything, f-from my past to Haneul to how I feel about—”

The soloist stops, taking in a shuddering breath before breaking into a dark chuckle, “Wow…Son Seungwan. You really outdid yourself this time, didn’t you? Find out where it hurts most then plunge the knife in and twist, right?”

The blonde doesn’t answer.

“I’ll pretend to be Joohyun’s kind neighbour with a lot of sweet words. I’ll make her feel loved and supported for the first time in forever in this ‘cruel’ industry. I’ll call us ‘friends’. And then when she’s finally too deep in, I’ll just tell her it was all…”

Joohyun prods, hard, against Seungwan’s chest with an accusing finger each time she spits out the next three words, “One. Sick. Joke.”

The younger woman silently takes the accusation, although the soloist’s finger feels like a dagger plunging itself into her chest repeatedly.

“I just— I feel so stupid, you know?” the soloist continues, laughing as her tears begin to flow, “How could I be so blind?! It’s just a pair of glasses and the hair, for God’s sake! The way you knew exactly what to say in that convenience store and then apologising before the fan-meet! When we were at the river that night! What? Telling me you’re going to prove me wrong twice?! I must be deaf and blind and stupid to not realise you were lying to me all along!”

Her rant is met with silence, which only serves to fuel her anger even more.

“I bet this childhood friend of yours you made a promise with isn’t even real.”

It is at this accusation that Seungwan snaps out of her tight-lipped stance, “N-No! Sejeong­— She’s real, I—”

“Mr. Jang was right. Friends only hurt you and lie to you and hold you back.”

At the mention of his name, Seungwan grows still, her words leaving her. She recalls everything’s she’s learnt about the man, and her anger towards him starts to raise its head.

“Jang is wrong, he—"

“What do you know about right and wrong, Son Seungwan?” Joohyun scoffs cruelly, “Because I’m telling you now, you’re a greater psychopath than him.”

The declaration pummels the blonde in the abdomen, knocking the wind out of her. Her heart clenches in an agonising pain that nearly sends her keeling over.

To be compared to Jang Hajoon?!

The man she hates with every fibre of her being? The man who broke Joohyun? The same man who destroyed Haneul’s life because he—

“At least he was upfront about his cruelty, Seungwan,” Joohyun doesn’t relent, seeing how hurt and offended the younger woman looks now, “But you? You hide your cruelty behind your smiles and kind words. Never did I think I would meet someone worse than him. Not until yo—”

Something in Seungwan snaps and suddenly, her hand is moving on its own, headed straight for the soloist’s cheek. Joohyun flinches from the impending slap, shutting her eyes in reflex. But Seungwan’s hand doesn’t land.

“Forget it,” the blonde sighs.

The older woman opens her eyes in time to see Seungwan retract her hand from her face.

Those two words, though quiet and defeated, echo, loud and clear in Joohyun’s mind. Her lungs burn from the realisation that everything they had has now been shattered completely.

The blonde pushes past her towards their pair of luggage, tugging at the blue one, “Start packing, Joohyun. We can’t be late for the fligh—”

“You’re fired.”

The blonde pauses for a moment, before heaving her luggage onto the bed and unlocking it. She flips it open calmly.

Too calmly.

“Did you not hear me?” The soloist repeats, louder this time, “I said you’re fired.”

Seungwan looks up to meet Joohyun’s furious glare, “You don’t have the authority to fire me.”

“Oh yeah?” Joohyun hisses, pulling her phone out and dialling Kangta’s number from her contact list, “Maybe CEO Ahn will humour my request then.”

She puts the phone to her ear.

For a strange reason, as Joohyun waits, a small part of her, like a little pleading voice at the back of her mind, prays for the blonde to stop her. To stop her from making that damning call. For the younger woman to give in and show her that she doesn’t want to lose Joohyun. It’s a little sick, the soloist reckons, but she reasons that no amount of cruelty from her can trounce the deceit Seungwan just backstabbed her with.

But Seungwan only continues to wordlessly pack her luggage, as though she doesn’t care she could very well be fired. The warm light is gone from those honey-brown orbs, replaced by a cold indifference to the dire situation they’ve found themselves in.

The call goes through.

“Hello? Joohyun-ssi?” The CEO’s voice comes through.

Joohyun waits for a second longer, watching the blonde for a reaction. Any reaction. But not a single sign of fear or hesitation shows itself on the manager’s face. It’s almost like…Seungwan has already given up.

Gripping her phone tighter, Joohyun starts to speak, her voice breaking, “I…want Manager Son fired.”

Two seconds of silence on Kangta’s end seems to drag for eternity, only to be cut short by his sigh, “She did say you might call. And that you might say that.”

Joohyun stills, her mind racing to comprehend this unprecedented turn of events.

“Joohyun-ssi, I…” Kangta lets out another sigh, “I’ll process a change of managers for you immediately. But…I won’t be firing Manager Son. I still need her help with the company.”

“What kind of help can she give?!” Joohyun raises her voice, anger marring her confusion, “She’s done nothing but- but lie! You want to keep an employee like that in La Rouge?!”

“She’s not just any employee—”

“How the hell does anyone, no more than two months in this company, have more say than me?!”

Beat.

“She’s our hidden Chief Operations Officer, Joohyun-ssi.”

The words send yet another painful jolt of realisation through the soloist.

The COO?!

Joohyun recalls every moment she’d argued with the blonde. Each time the manager would laugh it off, or apologise with an unassuming smile. Every insult she’d taken without fighting back the way the soloist had expected her to.

Joohyun doesn’t get it. Why wouldn’t anyone in Seungwan’s position fight back at all?

All this time…she could’ve been the one firing me.

The fact that the blonde has never waved her real rank over Joohyun’s head somehow wounds the soloist even more. As though it would’ve been more benevolent of the younger woman to retaliate. The ones who know the true extent of their power wouldn’t abuse it after all.

Has she always been way out of my reach?

“So you lied to me too.”

“Joohyun-ssi,” Kangta begins sternly, “I know you must be questioning everything that is happening right now. But I must urge you to withdraw that request. COO Son is aiding me in fixing La Rouge’s failures, by figuring out the parts that really need fixing.”

“And you think I need fixing?”

“Not you, Joohyun-ssi. But the system that failed you.”

Joohyun remains silent, processing the CEO’s words. Seungwan grabs her contact lens case and makeup pouch, heading off to the bathroom. The door clicks shut.

“I don’t expect you to forgive us for hiding this from you,” Kangta continues, “But for a little longer, I need you to keep silent about Seungwan being the COO.”

Joohyun scoffs, “Or what?”

“Or the both of us are as good as dead,” the CEO’s tone is grave and solemn, “Understand that the fissures in La Rouge run deeper than you can imagine, Joohyun-ssi. COO Son and I have taken the risk to embroil ourselves in the company’s dark history and dirty politics…in order to clean house. If word gets out that Seungwan is the COO now, the board will be after her.”

“And why should I care?”

“You don’t understand the gravity of this,” Kangta sighs in frustration, “Fine. Although she expressly told me to not tell you, I will, so you will know exactly what’s at stake here. She’s pitting herself against the corporate big bad, and because of how deep she’s dug…this is now a matter of life and death for her, Joohyun-ssi. One wrong move, one slightly mistimed step…and she could die.”

The soloist feels her blood freeze at his warning.

“I’m not trying to guilt you into keeping this a secret. I don’t know what happened between the both of you for this to happen, because she didn’t tell me anything,” Kangta admits weakly, “But I hope that…even in your anger and your hurt, while understandable…you’ll help me preserve her life.”

[On the road back home, Seoul, at approximately 4.00am]

The twelve-hour flight back to Korea had been nothing but silence. But it wasn’t an easy one. Rather, Joohyun felt like she was trapped in a pressure cooker about to explode. As she tries to make sense of everything between her and the blonde, she only arrives at the conclusion that the friendship between her and Seungwan has been nothing but an illusion.

In less than an hour, she had lost the very last person she held dear.

Joohyun recalls the way Seungwan