"Have you seen it?" asked Nicole.

  I leaned close to my computer so my editor wouldn't hear me making a personal call.

"Seen what?"

"Oh nothing. Never mind. We'll talk when you get home."

"Seen what?" I asked again.

"Nothing." Nicole repeated.

"Nicole, you have never once called me in the middle of the day about nothing. Now come one. Spill."

Nicole sighed. "Okay, but remember: Don't shoot the messenger."

  Now I was getting worried.

"ViVi. The new issue. Gwiboon, you need to go the lobby and get one right now."

"Why? What's up? Am I one of the Fashion Faux Pas?"

"Just go to the lobby and get one. I'll hold."

  This was important. Nicole was, in addition to being my best friend, also an assistant to important magazines. Nicole put people on hold, or had her assistant tell them she was in a meeting. Nicole herself self did not hold. "It's a sign of weakness." she'd told me. I felt a small twinge of anxiety work its way down my spine.

I took the elevator of the building I worked in, waved at the security guard, and walked to the small newsstand, where I found ViVi on the rack next to its sister publications. It was hard to miss, what with the surper-model in sequins beneath headlines blaring "Come Again: Multiple Made Easy!" and "-Tastic! Four Blasters to Get Your Rear in Gear!" After a quick minute of deliberation, I grabbed a small bag of chocolate M&M's, paid the gum-chomping cashier, and went back upstairs.

Nicole was still holding. "Page 132." she said.

  I sat, eased a few M&M's into my mouth, and flipped to page 132, which turned out to be "Good in Bed," ViVi's regular male-written feature designed to help the average reader understand what her boyfriend was up to.. or wasn't up to, as the case might be. At first my eyes wouldn't make sense of the letters. Finally, they unscrambled. "Loving a y Woman," said the headline. "By Kim Jonghyun."

Kim Jonghyun had been my boyfriend for just over three years, until we'd decided to take a break three months ago. And the y Woman, I could only assume, was me.

You know how in scary books a character will say, "I felt my heart stop"? Well, I did. Really. Then I felt it start to pound again, in my wrists, my throat, my fingertips. The hair at the back of my neck was stood up. My hands felt icy. I could hear the blood roaring in my ears as I read the first line of the article: "I'll never forget the day I found out my girlfriend was ier than most people."

Nicole's voice sounded like it was coming from far, far away.

"Gwiboonie? Gwiboon-ah? Unnie! Are you there?"

"I'll kill him.." I whispered.

"Unnie, take deep breaths," Nicole counseled. "In through the nose, out through the mouth."

Seohyun, my editor, cast a puzzled look across the partition that separated our desks. "Are you alright?" she mouthed. I squeezed my eyes shut. My headset had somehow landed on the carpet. "Breathe!" I could hear Nicole say, her voice a tiny echo from the floor. I was wheezing, gasping. I could feel chocolate and bits of candy shell on my teeth.

I could see the quote they'd lifted, in bold-faced pink letters that screamed out from the center of the page. "Loving a y woman," Jonghyun had written, "is an act of courage in our world."

"I can't believe this! I can't believe he would do that! I'll kill him!"

  By now Seohyun had circled around to my desk and was trying to peer over my shoulder at the magazine in my lap, and Hyoyeon, my evil coworker, was looking our way, her beady brown eyes squinting for signs of trouble, thick fingers poised over her keyboard so that she could instantly e-mail the bad news to her pals. I slammed the magazine closed. I took a successful deep breath and waved Seohyun back to her seat.

Nicole was waiting. "You didn't know?"

"Didn't know what? That he thought dating me was an act of courage?" I attempted a sardonic snort. "He should try being me."

"So you didn't know he got a job at ViVi."

I flipped to the front, where contributors were listed in the thumbnail profiles beneath arty black-and-white headshots. And there was Jonghyun, with his puppy-dino look. I laughed to myself of him looking like Dooley. "'Good in Bed' columnist Kim Jonghyun joins the staff of ViVi this month. A freelance writer from Seoul, Kim is currently at work on his first novel."

"His first novel?" I said. Well, shrieked, maybe. Heads turned over. Over the partition, Seohyun was looking worried again, Hyoyeon had started typing. "That lying sack of !"

"I didn't know he was writing a novel," said Nicole, no doubt desperate to change the subject.

"He can barely write a thank-you note," I said flipping back to page 132.

"I never thought my first serious girlfriend would be a ," I read. "But when I met G., I fell for her wit, her laugh, her sparkling, feline eyes. Her attitude, I decided was something I could learn to live with."

"I'LL KILL HIM!"

"So kill him already and shut up about it." Nicole muttered.

Seohyun was on her feet again, and my hands were shaking, and suddenly there were M&M's all over the floor, crunching beneath the rollers of my chair.

"I gotta go," I told Nicole and hung up.

"I'm fine," I said to Seohyun. She gave me a worried look, then retreated.

It took me three times to get Jonghyun's number right, and when his voice mail calmly informed me that he wasn't available to take my call, I lost my nerve, hung up, and called Nicole back.

"Good in bed my ," I said. "I ought to call his editor. It's false advertising. I mean, did they check his references? Nobody called me."

"That's the anger talking." said Nicole. Every since she started dating her yoga instructor, she's become very philosophical

"y woman?" I said. "How could he do this to me?"

"Did you read the whole thing?"

"Just the first little bit."

"Maybe you better not read any more."

"It gets worse?"

Nicole sighed. "Do you really want to know?"

"No. Yes. No." I waited. Nicole waited. "Don't tell me, I'll read it later.. God, that whole time we went out, he never said anything.."

"You dumped him. He's mad at you," said Nicole.

"I didn't dump him!" I cried. "We were just talking a break! And he agreed that it was a good idea!"

"Well, what else could he do?" she asked. "You say, 'I think we need some time apart,' and he either agrees with you and walks away clinging to whatever shreds of dignity he's got left, or begs you not to leave him, and looks pathetic. He chose the dignity thing."

Who else had seen this? Who else had known that G. was me? Had he shown all his friends? Had all my friends seen it? Had, God forbid ,my mother?

"I gotta go." I told Nicole again.

I told Seohyun that I was sick, and took the rest of the day off. I went straight home in a taxi, holding the magazine the entire time. When I entered my apartment, my small dog, Comme Des was waiting for my by the door. Right after I fed him, I sat on the couch, my phone in hand, and dialed Jonghyun's number once more.

"Yoboseyo?"

"Jonghyunnie Oppa?" I was trying to keep my voice from shaking.

"Gwiboonie?" he sounded shocked.

"How's that novel coming? Will I be starring in that, too?"

He said nothing.

"Remind me," I said. "At what point in our relationship did I agree to let you share intimate details of our time together with a few million readers?"

Jonghyun scoffed. "We don't have a relationship anymore."

"We were taking a break." I said.

"Come on, Gwiboon-ah, we both know what that meant."

I glared at the floor imagining him standing there. "It meant what I said. Which makes one of us, it seems."

"Whatever." Jonghyun said attempting to push the situation away. "I don't see why you're so upset. I didn't say anything bad. I think my column is pretty good."

I was speechless. "Are you high? You called me a in a magazine. You don't think you did anything wrong?"

"Face it, Gwiboon. You are a ," he said. "But that doesn't mean that I didn't love you.

"You absolute bastard," I said. "I can't believe I ever thought seriously for even one second about marrying you." I pushed then end button and threw my phone on the couch. I sat for a while, until my phone rang. I thought of not answering it, but I did anyways. It was Nicole.

"You okay?" she asked.

"I'm fine." I said unaware of the tears falling from my eyes.

"Do you want to go get a drink? Some dinner, maybe? Want to go see a movie?"

I hugged the magazine close to me. "I'm just going to stay home." I said wiping my tears away.

After I hung up, I entered my room, still clinging to the magazine, changed to comfortable clothing and laid in my giant bed. Once I was comfortable, I opened the book to page 132 and forced myself to read.

Well.. Epic fail, right? Comment if you want more. :3