**

The heavens were testing her strength. Every cell in her body was screaming for her to just put everything down and stop whatever she was doing – every molecule and atom inside of her was screaming for Chorong to take a breather.

The week hadn’t been nice to the young belle. She had found herself busy; extremely and tremendously busy. Aside from her normal curriculum subjects and their tedious requirements, her load had gained quite a heavy one.

She would be participating in their university’s musical – Beauty and the Beast, as the orchestra’s pianist.  It was already expected because the female was one of the best in their major anyway. She was also casted as an understudy in the musical too. How it had happened, she had no idea to be honest. It perplexed her to no end – she hardly ever sings after all.

Another responsibility on her shoulders was being the musical director’s assistant. Chorong was fairly close to the said director. He was a professor of hers during her freshman year and he was considered to be an exceptionally talented musician.

The young belle regarded him as her role model so when the elder had asked her for help, she agreed immediately. Chorong didn’t expect for such a huge obligation and pressure though. Her week was filled with meetings with the musical’s production team, coordinating with the musical director and the orchestra, as well as coordinating with the actors and actresses. The official practices for the musical would start the next week but the belle had already started to feel a tad wear down.

She was organizing schedules, practices, musical pieces, and even memorizing and studying the script – Chorong felt like her head would burst any time soon.

Chorong was running around their university like she was running in a marathon; rushing from her classes to the meetings or to the musical director’s office. And of course her pride didn’t permit her to slack off on her regular subjects. In fact, Chorong willed herself to work harder on her studies. She doesn’t want to slip anything up – her grades or her performances. She wanted everything to be perfect.

But Chorong was at her wits end if she would only let herself to be more honest. Exhaustion and stress was slowly creeping inside of her.

The belle was quite relieved the incident with her senior has already been settled. They had agreed to forget what had happened that night between them. Although it was a mere kiss, well they more of like completely made out with each other, but they were intoxicated at that time. It was obviously a mistake and both had regretted it terribly.

There was still a tiny pang of hurt in her heart whenever she would remember or think of her senior and his lips. She would hastily push the thoughts and images away though. They would be meeting more frequently too because he was the lead in the musical. Chorong was desperately trying to stay strong and focused on her duties.

She had hoped things between them would soon come back to normal. Oh how deeply she wanted things to return like how they used to be.

Add to her numerous concerns was her longtime boyfriend too, Kim Joonmyeon.

Ever since Namjoo’s birthday party last Sunday, the young business major had been acting quite strange lately.

Whenever the couple had time to be together the past week, Joonmyeon was rather distracted and seemed to be in deep thought. There was a constant frown on the handsome male’s face.

There was this one time during lunch; the young lad hadn’t eaten a single bite from his food despite it being his favorite, Joonmyeon merely picked at his food and absentmindedly stared at the table. Chorong had called his name numerous times but he didn’t answer to any of them.

The female only got her boyfriend’s attention when Chorong finally got seriously pissed off and annoyingly grabbed for the male’s chopsticks. Joonmyeon stared at her, his eyebrows furrowed in confusion and wonder. “Ugh. Yes? Did you want some?” the male dazedly asked her. The pianist frowned at him and shook her head. “Why aren’t you eating? Is something troubling you? You could tell me everything you know,” she worriedly prodded as she put down Joonmyeon’s chopstick on his plate.

Joonmyeon blinked at her a couple of times before furiously shaking head. He smiled kindly at her. “I’m alright, Rong. I’m just thinking about our case study, that’s all. Nothing to worry about too much,” he assured her. Chorong apprehensively stared at her boyfriend, not believing his words. “Are you sure? I could tell you’re clearly worried about something, Myeon. We’ve been together for a long time, I could easily read you like an open book,” she told him,