This chapter is dedicated to Francesca of Seuta Cafe for making my new banner!! Isn't it lovely eurubun?? She is awesome neh??

Dara’s POV

There was a very faint edge of his voice. Dara knew just how often he had been exasperated to find her tied up with wedding arrangements when he needed her to do something else, but she had to admit he’d been making much of an effort lately. She wondered if Chaerin realized quite how hard he was trying.

          Chaerin had confided to Dara in one of her many phone calls that she wondered at one time if Jiyong had been having second thoughts about getting married. “But he’s been so sweet lately that I can see I was silly to have worried.” She said. “He rings twice a day, and send me red rose every morning just so I know he’s thinking about me.”

          Chaerin sighed with satisfaction. As well she might, Dara reflected. She had arranged the delivery of the single roses herself and knew exactly how much it cost. Her mind boggled at the idea of Jiyong being so sweet. He must really love Chaerin if he was prepared to change to such an extent, she thought wistfully.

          She tried hard to be happy for them. It wasn’t Chaerin’s fault if she was thin, beautiful, wealthy, and glamorous and had a man like Kwon Jiyong at her feet.

          It wasn’t her fault if  Dara couldn’t stick to a diet, devoured a whole packet of chocolate digestives at a sitting and was reduced to dates with men who explained exactly how a mobile phone worked or who actually thought she would be interested in a detailed account of the intergalactic battles is Star Wars.

          “Your trouble is that you’re so picky,” Bom was always telling her. “You’re looking for a prince, and he’s just not going to turn up. You’ve go to be prepared to compromise a bit.”

          “I don’t want to compromise.” Dara could be stubborn too. “I want what I had with Il Woo.”

          Bom sighed. “You’ve got to get over him, Dara.”

          “I am over him.” She thought she was, anyway. “I know he’s happy with Jin Mie. I know he’s not going to come back, But when you’ve had the perfect relationship it’s hard to settle to anything less.”

          “If it had been a perfect relationship, Il Woo wouldn’t have broken it off,” Bom invariably pointed out.

          It was good point, Dara knew her friend was right, and she really was trying to meet someone new. It was that the men she met seemed lacking in even the hint of a single spark.

          Still, perhaps she should give them more of a chance. Dara had decided only the week before. Look at how Jiyong had changed and was trying hard to please Chaerin. He must be in love with her if he was prepared to make that kind of effort.

Sick of yearning after the unattainable, as Bom put it, Dara had vowed to try harder. There was no reason why she shouldn’t find someone she could have a real relationship with, perhaps even someone who might like to come traveling with her, but it hadn’t been going well. Last night she had let Bom’s boyfriend Seunghyun aka TOP set her up on yet another blind date, this time with an engineer who had spent most of his time telling her about his multiple allergies.

No wonder she was feeling depressed this morning. It was nothing to do with the fact that Kwon Jiyong was getting married in a couple of days.

The lights were on in both offices when she went in. That meant Jiyong was here already. He had probably been here since at least seven, in fact, the way he usually was. He wasn’t the kind of man who would take it easy just because he was getting married.

Dara tested a smile In the mirror as she hung up her coat. It didn’t look sparkle to her eyes. Better. She could almost pass for a girl who was genuinely pleased for her boss.

She wanted to be. Jiyong might be grouchy at times, but she admired his self-discipline and integrity. He wasn’t the friendliest of bosses, but you always knew where you were with him.

And he never mentioned an allergy or gave the slightest indication he had even seen Star Wars. He deserves a beautiful wife like Chaerin.

“Good Morning,” she said brightly as she knocked and went in to his office. “This is your last day before the wedding! Where do you want me to start?”

Jiyong looked up from the papers on his desk, and Dara’s heart plummeted as she saw that his face looked as if it were carved out of stone.

“You can start by cancelling the wedding,” he said. There was a catastrophic silence.

“Cancelit?” said Dara, aghast, hoping against hope that she had misheard.

Jiyong nodded curtly. “Pull the plug on everything.”

“But…what on earth has happened? Where is Chaerin?”

“She is on her way back to Japan.” He looked at his watch. “She is probably taking off right now.”

“She’ll come back,” said Dara, thinking that Chaerin would have turned around as soon as she landed to get back in time for the wedding. “It must just be last-minute nerves.”

“She doesn’t want to get married,” said Jiyong flatly. “no, that’s not quite right,” he corrected himself. “She does want to get married, just not to me.”

No matter how hard standing as if rooted to the spot, but at that she turned to close the door and, without waiting to be invited, sat down across the desk.

“Are you sure there hasn’t been some kind of mistake?” she asked carefully. “is it possible you’ve misunderstood what the problem is?”

Jiyong gave a harsh, mirthless laugh. “Oh, no, she was crystal clear. I misunderstood the whole situation, it turns out, but not what she wants to do now.”

He couldn’t bear to be pitied. Swinging his chair round so that he wouldn’t have to look at the sympathy in Dara’s face, he stared out at the window at the bleak February morning. It suited his mood exactly.

“All of Chaerin’s family and friends are over for the wedding, and she’d arranged to spend the evening with them, so I wasn’t expecting to see her. But she turned up at my door at ten o’clock and said that we had to talk,” he told Dara. “It wasn’t the easiest of senses. She said that she was sorry, but she couldn’t marry me because she was going to marry Seungri.”

“Seungri?” Dara felt completely lost. This was all so unexpected it was difficult to grasp what he was telling her. “Who’s Seungri?”

“Seungri is Chaerin’s best friend, always has been, ever since they were at college together. I met him in Japan, and knew they spent lots of time together, but Chaerin always said that they had decided long ago not to spoil their friendship by sleeping together. It was always a platonic relationship, and they both dated other people, like me. That was one of the reason she was always so happy with a long-distance relationship,” Jiyong remembered.” When I wasn’t there, she had plenty of time to spend with Seungri, just “goofing around”, she called it.”

Dara could practically hear the quotation marks around the phrase, and she could understand his baffled distaste. Jiyong probably didn’t even know what goofing around was.

It turns out that Chaerin was in love with Seungri all along,” he went on. “She didn’t want to say anything because she didn’t want to lose him as a friend, but she wasn’t getting any younger and she decided that if she wanted to get married and have a family, as she does, she would, she would have to make a decision to commit with someone else. That’s when Lees here came along.”

Jiyong couldn’t look at Dara. He was burning with humiliation, furious with himself for not realizing the truth, furious with Chaerin for making a fool of him. She had made such a fuss about the wedding, and invited half the world, so everyone would know that he was the man too stupid to realize his fiancée was in love with someone else, too weak to convince her to stay, too inept to build a successful relationship.

Now they would all know he was a failure. They would know he hadn’t been able to control his own life.

His jaw was clenched, but he couldn’t stop the betraying muscle jumping frantically in his cheek. He wanted to bellow with rage, to punch his fist into a wall, but he couldn’t do that. Dara would think he was upset and feel even sorrier for him.

“When I asked her to marry me, she thought it was a good chance to get away from Japan and Seungri, and start afresh.” He went on after a moment. “She liked me, she said and she liked sleeping with me. She thought we had a lot in common and would make a good team. I did, too,” he remembered with bitterness. “Once she’d made that decision, she threw herself into the whole idea of getting married.”

“To compensate for the fact that she really wanted to be marrying someone else?” Dara said numbly. The feverish edge to Chaerin’s planning was beginning to make more sense now. She must have been desperate to get married while she could still convince herself that she was making the right decision. No wonder she had had been keen to have the wedding in Taiwan and so soon.

“She certainly fooled me.” Jiyong’s mouth twisted and he swung round to face Dara once more. He would show her that he was in control. “ I had no idea I wasn’t the one she really wanted to marry.”

“So what changed?”

“Apparently the prospect of losing her was too much for Seungri and he came to his senses. He realized that he was in love with her, too, and probably always had been. It’s quite a touching story, when you think about it.”

Jiyong smiled without humor. “Seungri came over for the wedding, but when he saw Chaerin he told her how he felt, and then of course she realized she couldn’t go through with marrying me. She said she was sorry,” he added expressionlessly.

The look in his eyes made Dara want to cry. “I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry,” she said helplessly.

“It’s probably all for the best,” said Jiyong briskly “Better for Chaerin to realize that she was making a mistake now than after the wedding. At least it’s saved us the hassle –and cost!---of a divorce.”

That would have been an admission of failure too. Either way, Chaerin would have made him look a loser.

And Jiyong was a winner. He didn’t like losing. He never had.

He picked up his pen, almost as if he intended to get on with some work, but put it down again after a moment. The truth was, he didn’t know how to deal with this. He was to angry and he militated to work, but what else could he do?

Dara swallowed. Jiyong wasn’t kind of man who went in for emotional displays but she knew how hard he must hurting. He had tried so hard to be what Chaerin wanted,

“What can I do?” she asked.

“I’d be grateful if you would deal with telling everyone who needs to know.” The curtness in Jiyong’s voice didn’t quite disguise his gratitude that she was going to stick to practicalities.

“Of course”

“Here’s the key to Chaerin’s apartment. She left it with me last night.”

He pushed a key across the desk. Dara recognized it from when she had arranged the short term lease of the flat. Dara had wanted somewhere to stay where she could keep her wedding dress secret from Jiyong.

All the time, Dara had rolled her eyes at the extravagance, which seemed to be taking tradition to extremes, but now she marveled that she hadn’t see the separate apartment as a warning sign. If Chaerin had been really in love with Jiyong, she wouldn’t have been able to wait to move in with him. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have the space. Dara had been to his penthouse flat in the Tokyo to collect some papers once, and there had been more than enough room to hide dozen wedding dresses if necessary.

“the flat is full of presents that will need to be returned. Presumably you’ve got a list of guest?”

Dara nodded. “I’ll make sure they all know the wedding has been cancelled.”

“You’d better deal with Shangrilah Castle First. “

“I’ll do that.” She got to her feet and hesitated, looking at him with concern. With anyone else, she would have offered the comfort of a hug, but she didn’t think Jiyong would welcome a gesture like that. He wasn’t a tactile man.

Still, this would be a devastating blow for a man of his pride. Dara wished she could do something to help him, but she sensed the best thing she could was deal with the practicalities and make a little fuss as possible.

She couldn’t go without saying something, though. “Will you be alright?” she asked after a moment.

“Of course,” he said, as brusque as ever. “I’ve got plenty to do.”

“You’re really going to work, are you?”

“What else is there to do?” He said and even he could hear the bleakness in his voice.

Dara came back a little while later with coffee and a couple of biscuits.

“I never eat biscuits,” said Jiyong, glancing up from his computer screen as she set them solicitously at his elbow.

“You should have something to eat.”

“I’m not a disable person Dara!”

“You’ve had a shock,” she said “You need the sugar.”

“I don’t need anything!” The suggestion of neediness always caught Jiyong on the raw and he glared at Dara. “I’m perfectly all right,” he snapped. “There’s no need to treat me as if I’m about to faint or burst into tears.”

“Eat them anyway,” Said Dara, who thought it might be better if he did.

Kwon Jiyong was a difficult man to help. What was the point of pretending that you didn’t have feelings? He had retreated behind an even more ferocious mask than usual, bottling it all up inside, and was clearly going to lash out at anyone who dared to suggest that he night be hurt, or angry, or in need of comfort.

Well, she would just have to be lashed, Dara decided. She had been spared Jiyong’s public humiliation, but she knew what it was like to realize that the person you loved didn’t love you back and never had. It hurt a lot and, although no one could endure it for you, it helped to have someone by your side to see you through it.

Jiyong would never admit that he needed anyone, but he did.

Dara wished she knew more about his private life. If only there was a friend she could call, someone who would come and be there for Jiyong, the way Bom had been there for her. But it looked as if it was just her.

She transferred her notebook from under her arm and flicked it open. For now she would stick with the practicalities.

“I’ve spoken to the Castle, and cancelled all the arrangements there. I’m afraid that, at this stage, there’s no question of any refunds,” she asked apologetically.

“God, what a waste of money!” Jiyong threw himself back of his neck as he thought of the cost. He hadn’t begrudged paying Chaerin’s increasingly extravagant ideas, but what had been the point of it all? He had let Chaerin have whatever she wanted.

He hadn’t realized the only thing she really wanted was Seungri.

“Then there’s the honeymoon…”

Dara hesitated about raising the matter of the honeymoon, but that had been booked and paid for too, and Jiyong have to make some decision. The cost of Blue Island was phenomenal. It would make a dent in even Jiyong’s bank account, surely.

          “I’ve been thinking about that,” said Jiyong, taking a biscuit without quite realizing what he was doing. “ You said it was somewhere you’d love to go,” he reminded her.

          Dara squirmed. “I’m sorry it turned out to be so expensive.”

          But really, how was she to know Chaerin would turn her back on the wedding of her dreams, the holiday of a lifetime and a man like Jiyong? Chaerin must really love Seungri to give up all that, she reflected. “I’ll see if it’s possible to get some money back at east.

If it had been her own holiday, she would have taken out insurance, but it had never occurred to her to think it would be an issue for Jiyong.

          “I’ll get on to the agents and see what the cancellation terms are,” she said.

          “Don’t do that,” said Jiyong, brushing biscuit crumbs from his fingers and making up his mind.” I don’t want you to cancel the trip.”

          Dara looked at him in concern. Surely he wasn’t planning to go anyway? It would be a disaster. Every time he turned round he would be reminded that Chaerin wasn’t there.

“I’m not sure it’s a great idea for you to go on your own,” she said cautiously.

“I’m not planning to go on my own,” he said. “You’re coming with me.”

“WHAT?!!”

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Sorry guys for making you wait too long!!! I am really sorry…my laziness is really controlling me and I’ve been having this headache..gaaaahhhh. Plus not to mentions the cough and fever T.T. I think I’m gonna be sick again. I hope you enjoy reading this update. I will be updating my on-going fics before I go hiatus on you guys…Mhianie!! Yes I’ll be on hiatus..i have to take care of something really important!!! Please be well guys!!!!! ^.^ Yeorubun Saranghae!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!