“Kai, I’m sorry,” I manage to apologize through gritted teeth, my free hand finding its way to where his fist had struck me. The skin on my freshly hit left arm stings, a feeling I know all-too-well—to the point that I can picture what kind of bruise it will eventually turn into, the purples and the yellows I absolutely despise.

Kai looks at me with the kind of disgust that makes my heart skip a beat—the kind of look that makes hot tears roll down my face even when I don’t want to ing cry.

“If you’re so ing sorry,” he growls, taking a threatening step towards me, “then you shouldn’t have fired Junmi, .”

He doesn’t say anything else as I stand there frozen in my spot, fear getting the best of me. My mind runs with a thousand defenses and retorts I could’ve yelled back at him—how it clearly doesn’t make sense for him to be pissed at me for firing the maid he’d suspected of stealing his watch. But I don’t say anything.

There’s a beat of vicious silence before he turns on his heel and exits the house, slamming the door behind him with tremendous anger. I blink. His absence seems to have amplified the pulsing pain I have on my left arm, but it doesn’t compare to the hurt that I feel on my chest. So I do the thing I do best, cry.

I let the sadness run its course through my body, falling down on the floor with salty tears running down my cheeks.

I sob, even though this isn’t anything new for me. My name is Jang Junah, for ’s sake—even my parents had doomed me from the beginning by giving me a name that most people love to tell me sound “absolutely y”. I guess my name had a part to play in making my own husband hate every single fiber of my wretched being.

Hearing my name makes his lips curl, and it’s not in a good way. Which is absolutely hilarious, because him and I—we had a story back then. Back then was actually just half a decade ago, but it feels like it’s been millions of years since our story had started.

We used to date, back in high school. It was a typical love story—if you could call it love when we’d spend most of the time consumed with lust and everything dirty—where we were obliged to date one another, one way or another, due to the fact that both of our families were one of the most highly acknowledged families in South Koreas. The Kims and the Jangs, strengthening South Korea’s economy with every passing day.

There’s a cliché plot twist to our story, though, because it turned out that I wasn’t The One for him. Kim Kai, in fact, did not love me. Instead, I grew to become the infamous antagonist you usually see in those fluffy, innocent high school themed K-dramas, the one you’d want to pull their hair out for just ing breathing because why the did this have to ruin this perfectly adorable love story the main characters have?

I don’t feel like telling you her name because it makes my mouth taste bitter, but just picture a three-syllable pretty, Korean name, that would make you feel protective over just by the sound of it. She was a new transfer girl, all in her innocent beautiful glory, bright eyes and braided hair with an overwhelming hatred for the school’s resident bad boy that is Kim Kai. Kai, for some reason, returned the feeling, because apparently, he disliked upright girls. They would spew vicious comments at each other and fight all