Stop, stop, stop. That was all Irene could think about as their meeting brought pain rushing to every fiber of her body, starting as a dull ache in her stomach and traversing her body through the small particles of oxygen which kept her alive but now fueled the fire that burned at her fingertips as she gripped her temples and crouched onto the floor. She wasn’t supposed to meet Seulgi. She wasn’t supposed to exist in the other girl’s life anymore. And yet fate had brought them together once again.

Irene thought she had suffered enough. She had punished herself for years even after Seulgi left, starving and working on little sleep until she was hospitalized time and time again. She had never once thought that she deserved life in the form of potential and only after her friends had talked to her for two years straight about her ultimate positive impact in other people’s lives did she finally acknowledge that she had suffered enough. She may not have forgiven what she did, and she never would, but she wasn’t going to torture herself anymore.

Unfortunately, she had been too late. After the stunt with the student council email, Irene transferred to another school in Busan, choosing to retake another semester over staying in Seoul after deciding that she couldn’t bear to face her classmates at graduation with everything out. It was a lonely time for her, her former friends only being able to converse with her once every week or so, which left Irene incredibly isolated. Unable to maintain her mental and emotional health, she dropped out and remained holed up in her current house for two months until Yeri and Jinyoung came down to drag her out of her shell. They told her to live a little, so she sat on a bench at a park for hours on end, staring mindlessly at the grass and hoping Seulgi was happy. When they realized that wasn’t working, they told her to meet some people, so she went back to volunteering, pushing her body to its physical limits in assurance that Seulgi would have wanted her to repent to the max. When they realized that wasn’t working either, they told her to get a job, hoping that she could be productive and socialize with people watching her when they couldn’t.

So Irene sought out the people she never should have contacted ever again and they got her a job selling miracle vitamins.

Her friends and brother weren’t pleased with Irene’s involvement in a pyramid scheme, but she had stopped hurting herself, so they didn’t force her to quit. They didn’t have to know who gave her the job, Irene reasoned, and they never questioned how she got back in touch with her high school friends, so Irene convinced herself that at least this job was keeping her alive.

It was a rather pleasant setup, Irene believed, because on the exterior, they were just a normal company with different positions and departments. Irene wasn’t expected to take part in whatever sketchy dealings the administration handled, and as long as she met her quota, they paid well. They didn’t expect her to bring in new recruits either, a benefit especially given to her as a perk of “having connections” as per her direct supervisor, and her coworkers were friendly beings, all issues of morality aside.

“Unnie, we’ll be visiting Minhyuk this month. Are you sure you don’t want to come?”

Irene sighed, having half a mind to just hang up the phone. Yeri and Jinyoung started going out two years ago, and they both had continued their visits to the blind man, maintaining close relations with him after his sister had cut contact with everyone involved in t