“HEY, did you hear the news? The business of the Bae’s went down!”

“Yeah! I heard it! My Dad said it is because Mr. Bae was really incompetent and unfit as a chairman.”

“Oh! I heard about that from my Dad too! Mr. Bae was very gullible so it’s easy to fool him. I heard that they just tested him to invest in something that will actually fail but he believed the words of his friends and lost a huge amount of money!”

“Man, if the project was an obvious failure then why would he invest? He’s the wrong one there!”

The group of girls started laughing. They knew what they were talking about. They knew about how their parents made a fool of Bae Kangjoon, the overall CEO of the company where their parents were part of the board of directors.

“What will happen to Bae Joohyun now?”

“Pfft! That can now start to rot in hell!”

“Right! The days of her acting like a queen are finally over!”

“Finally, that girl really irritates me!”

The group then flinched in their places when a faucet suddenly and they all gasped when they saw that it was Joohyun washing her hands.

“J-Joohyun…” One of the girls called. “H-How long have you been—“

She was silenced when Joohyun looked at her in the mirror but the girl remained silent. The girls who were initially frightened by Joohyun’s sudden appearance started laughing.

“Ah, right~ There’s no need to be scared of your anymore!” 

“Look! She can’t even fight back at us!”

“Your happy days are over, Bae Joohyun!”

The group of friends left the restroom, leaving Joohyun alone. The water kept on running and the girl kept washing her hands. Once the soap was washed out she would pump more soap on her hands and continue washing them. 

“Unforgivable.” Joohyun gritted her teeth as she remembered what happened to her father. How devastated he looked when he came home last night. How he wasn’t even responding to her and her mother’s call. How huge of an emotional pain those close friends brought in bringing him down. “And they made a fool out of him just because their kids want to shut me down?”

The girl’s eyes burned in anger as she looked at her own reflection. “Unforgivable. Unforgivable. I’ve been friends with them for so long! Unforgivable!”

~

“I WANT to kill them.”

Joohyun’s mother froze in place when she heard daughter speak like that for the first time. They were in the middle of having breakfast when Joohyun suddenly broke down. Her father was stuck in his study room, still trying to clean the mess that happened even though he was already thrown out as the CEO. He was still trying even though his friends betrayed him.

“What are you talking about, dear?” Her mother worriedly asked. 

Joohyun’s grip on her utensils tightened. “I want to make them suffer… My classmates…”

“Joohyunie…”

“I can’t believe they made their parents do that to Appa just because they envy me, Omma! I hate it that Appa is suffering just because of those brats! I will have my revenge—”

“Don’t do anything that would worsen the situation, Joohyun-ah.”

It was Joohyun’s turn to stiffen. She looked at her mother in disbelief. “But Omma–”

“Joohyun, because of what happened to your Appa, the credibility of my company is also being questioned by my investors. If you make a scene then I won’t be able to calm them down which would lead to one thing.” The gentle look on her mother’s face disappeared when they started talking about business. It’s the business side of her mother that she’s talking with now.

“If all that we have fails then what do you think those people will do?” The woman placed her utensils on the table, leaned back to her seat and had a good look at Joohyun. “They would probably throw a party for getting the job done. You will just give them what they want if you go berserk to them.”

Joohyun felt more confused. “But Omma, are you just going to let it pass like that? Appa crumbled down because of them!”

“Don’t get me wrong, Joohyun. I am in wrath because of what they did to your father. He trusted them with all his heart because they were all friends. Of course I want to make everyone know that your father was just a victim but…” Joohyun’s mother looked at the direction of Joohyun’s father’s study room. “In the end, your Appa could only blame himself. In business, there’s no such thing as friends. It was his fault to give his full trust to those people knowing that he could get stabbed in the back anytime.”

Joohyun’s jaw dropped. “A-Are you saying that it is Appa’s fault? Omma, she was betrayed by her friends!”

“You know nothing, Joohyun. Business isn’t highschool. You don’t befriend people just because you want to have an emotional understanding and connection with them. Being friends in business is like holding someone in the neck, you get to know the weak points, you get to know where to attack once things don’t go your way.”

The woman sophisticatedly wiped the side of her lips with the table napkin. She gave a nod to their maid, a sign that she’s already done eating even though she didn’t manage to finish her plate at all. 

“It’s the truth that you need to know, Joohyun. You can’t trust anyone if you want to do business. You can only trust yourself.” Joohyun’s mother then stood up and pushed her chair under the table. “I have already warned your father about this but I guess his personality isn’t really fit for doing business.”

“O-Omma…”

“You don’t have to worry, Joohyun. What goes around comes around. Those people will have their own time. You don’t have to dirty your hands.” The woman then stood in front of her daughter and gently pulled her into a hug. “I understand what you feel but there’s no need to take revenge. Make sure to study well and retain being the number one student. Crush them in academics.” 

Joohyun felt the gentle caress of her mother on her hair and the girl felt crying. “They want to enter your head, Joohyunie. They want to destroy you and make you cry. You won’t be giving that to them, will you?”

~

“I’M sorry, Joohyun. I can’t go out with you anymore.”

Joohyun stared blankly at her boyfriend, now her ex, whose eyes couldn’t even look straight at her. She was already expecting this to happen. After the news of her father’s company’s bankruptcy, a lot of her close friends left her. Some of them even pretended that she doesn’t exist. She was treated like air in their classroom and the only people she could interact with were her teachers. 

It’s the same with her good for nothing boyfriend. He started avoiding her as well only to find out that he was already dating one of her friends who betrayed her. She’s already prepared for this. Joohyun thought he was different from others but he turned out to be a leech in the end.

“Is that all that you’re going to say?” Joohyun asked. “If you have nothing more to say then I’ll go back to studying.”

The guy suddenly panicked. That wasn’t the reaction that he was expecting. His new girlfriend told him that he should make Joohyun cry but the girl faced him with that stoic face. He knew his new girl would be disappointed with him that’s why he pushed the breakup more into Joohyun’s face. 

“Bae Joohyun!” The guy called as a smug smile curved up his lips. “Are you just really going to walk away? You won’t say anything? This is why everyone is looking down on you now! You don’t have any friends, right? What happened? Dropped so low you couldn’t even talk back at all?”

Joohyun turned back at the guy and the guy flinched when those dead eyes’ stares landed on him. “Dropped so low? We know that I wasn’t the one who took the fall. Aren’t you the one settling on a normal looking, average student and evil-hearted girl? Don’t with me.”

The girl went back to their classroom like nothing happened. No one in their classroom paid attention to her anymore unlike before where she was always surrounded by people. She was indeed the princess of the school and Joohyun wouldn’t deny that she liked it. But now that she found out that all were just a facade of her classmates just to get on the good side with someone from a well-off family, Joohyun’s eyes were opened to the truth. 

Their homeroom teacher went in with a smile on her face. It’s the announcement of the universities the students managed to get into and most of the students really did well which she was very proud of.

Everyone was in awe when Joohyun’s former friends were all announced to be going to prestigious universities in Korea. The group was looking at Joohyun with a smirk as if looking down at her. Joohyun ignored them just like usual…

…because she actually knew those smiles would vanish in just a short while.

“And…” The smile of their teacher widened before looking at Joohyun. “Bae Joohyun, congratulations on being accepted to Yale University! You are the first one from our school to be accepted into Yale University!”

The whole classroom was filled with murmurs. Joohyun’s old friends looked at each other with doubting eyes and agape mouths. 

“D-Did I hear that correctly? Yale University?” 

“The prestigious Yale University?”

“How could she afford studying there? Didn’t their family business go bankrupt?”

“Bae Joohyun is really something!”

“As expected of our top student. You really made the school proud, Joohyun!” The teacher silenced the whole class. “I heard from your mother that you won’t be able to attend the graduation ceremony because you have to go abroad right away. We wanted you to give a speech but it can’t be helped. It’s also sad that you can’t attend the graduation at all.”

“It’s fine, Teacher.” Now, it’s Joohyun’s time to give her former friends that smug look. “Saying pointless goodbyes to my bullies is meaningless.”

The teacher was taken aback with that statement from the usually quiet student. Though they already knew she was being bullied by her classmates, the school did nothing because the perpetrators were the children of the school’s biggest sponsors. 

She would be pushed for no reason. She lost track of how many times she had to clean her desk from all the vandalism. No one would dare let her join in group activities. She would find her locker trashed and her indoor shoes would either be missing or destroyed. At first she would report it to the teachers but she lost faith in them because of their lack of action. 

If only she wasn’t thinking about her situation giving more stress to her father then she would’ve already reported it to her parents. This whole experience was probably the origin of her special talent of hiding her presence.

Joohyun learned to just shut since she knew nothing would be able to help her and she didn’t want to bring more headache to her parents but this time, she won’t be holding back any more. 

She crossed her arms and leaned comfortably to her chair, tilting her head to the side. Joohyun gave them another taunting smile. “You actually thought you could pull me down after you sabotage my father down, huh?”

Joohyun raised her chin and looked down at her former friends who felt frightened for the first time in a while. “You know nothing, you little kids. Highschool ends here.”

~

JOOHYUN jumped to her bed before answering the phone call. It’s a call from her mother. She just finished doing her homework that time and was just doing advanced studies when her phone started ringing. 

“Omma?” Joohyun answered as she rolled to her stomach. “How is it going?”

“Nothing much, dear. How is everything going in there?” 

Joohyun rolled again to lay on her back. “It’s the same. Study. Hangout a bit with my classmates. Then study again. I am just glad because no one here befriends me because of my social status. It’s more free and fun.”

“I’m glad to know that.” Her mother chuckled on the other line. “Anyway, do you remember when I told you that what goes around comes around?”

Joohyun’s eyebrows rose. “Did something happen, Omma?”

“Well, if you still remember the names of the companies they established after the fall of your father then I will leave the searching to you, my dear. Ah! I guess you don’t even have to search for it since it’s at the top of the news.” 

“Alright~~” Joohyun put her phone on speaker mode and opened N**er. Her eyes sparkled at the sight of the first headline. She clicked it and viewed the article. “Wow, Omma… You’re really right at everything. They really have their time and it’s a bigger controversy than what they did to Appa.”

“I didn’t specialise in business for no reason, dear. It’s just that I was always overshadowed by the fame and prestige there is in the name of your Appa.” The woman chuckled once more. “But it was your Appa who trusted me and encouraged me to start my own business. If it wasn’t for him then I won’t make it to where I am now. I just wish I gave him more of my time…”

Joohyun stayed silent. Her eyes were still on the article but it doesn’t interest her at all anymore. She then opened her school schedule and as if they were on the same page, her mother asked her, “Joohyun-ah, are you coming home on the death anniversary of your father?”

“Of course, Omma.” Joohyun smiled in relief. “I’ll make sure I’ll be there for Appa. I didn’t manage to make him feel that I am proud of him as my father. I still regret it until now.”

Before Joohyun left for studying abroad, her father succumbed to illness because of stress. It was a sudden heart attack that took his life but nobody knew that he had been feeling a lot of chest pain, shortness of breath and most of the times, abnormal heartbeat. The doctors could only blame the intense stress that he got for his early passing. There were even doctors that believed it could be Broken Heart Syndrome since he just didn’t lose the company, he lost his friends that he knew ever since he was in university and he even lost the courage to face his family for being a failure.

And, Joohyun believed that what the doctors said might be true because of the letters that she found in her father’s study room—letters that he wrote for her wife and daughter. Letters of regret, letters of expressing disappointment to himself and letters of apology for not being the kind of patriarch they expected him to be.

If only it wasn’t because of the pressure Joohyun’s grandparents gave to her father then he could’ve pursued what he really liked. He could’ve pursued what his heart really inclined to, what he was really good at.

“I really miss singing with Appa…” Joohyun suddenly blurted