There are Many Flowers in Seoul

Chapter Forty-Three

Yuta didn't yell.

The one time Rose wanted him to yell, and he didn't.

Although she'd told him that she wanted him to stop shouting and talking to her like she was a child, Rose needed that frustration and concern from him as a distraction from her own confused feelings. After a night in the company of a man she barely knew without informing her guardian, Rose felt ashamed, apologetic, and desperately wished she could go back to the moment she and Si-woo parted ways in the palace grounds. If Rose could do it all over then she would tell him that she wanted him to take her home where her loved ones were waiting, and then she could have left Tae-won waiting in the rain until he got it into his head that nothing would happen between them.

All the wishing and wanting in the world wouldn't change what had happened, of course.

Rose had gone to Tae-won's home, and she would never forget their encounter, no matter how much she wanted to.

'Rose?' Hitomi called through the bathroom door. She tapped her knuckles against the wood and gave the door a push, but it refused to yield to her while something blocked it from the other side. Hitomi sat beside the door and pressed her ear to the wood, listening for a clue as to what she might be doing. 'Can I please come in?'

'Do you have to pee?' Rose asked from the other side miserably.

'No.'

'Then, no.'

'I meant yes?'

Rose smiled despite herself. A change of clothes sat of the closed toilet lid, dry and neatly folded. It had been her intention to shower, dress, and eat a decent meal, but her energy and appetite had dissipated the moment she'd left Tae-won's apartment. Instead, Rose had sat with her back to the bathroom floor and picked at the band-aid he'd secured about her finger that morning. The cut beneath wasn't deep and had long stopped bleeding. Rose flicked the pointless plaster into the nearby bin and let out a long, withering sigh. She'd felt so well rested that morning despite the manner in which she'd fallen asleep – beneath a table, with Tae-won's chest at her back – and now she felt as though she'd not slept in weeks.

'Rose?'

'Yeah?'

'Did Si-woo do something to you?'

Si-woo.

Rose had almost forgotten about Si-woo. Without her phone she couldn't send him a message to let him know she was home safe. Even with her phone, she wasn't sure she'd want to. The phone call that he'd deemed so much more important than their time together weighed on her mind almost as much as everything else that had happened the previous day.

God, had it only been a day?

In one day, Si-woo had kissed her cheek and professed some manner of feeling for her, and her response to that had been to throw herself into the arms of another man, only to have him break her heart the next morning when his deception was revealed.

Not that she should judge anyone for lying about their identity when she'd been doing just that since she'd arrived.

'Please, let me just talk to you?' Hitomi begged. 'Properly. Not through a door. I mean, it's a nice door, but my butt is starting to hurt sitting here and I can't reach the chocolate from here either.'

If only Hitomi had been there. If only she'd had her best friend to make her laugh at the situation when she'd arrived at the studio, Rose might not have felt so pitiful. Isolating herself in the cold bathroom wasn't doing anything to cheer her up, and so she stood and unlocked the door. Rose pulled it open so sharply that Hitomi tumbled through and landed at her feet.

'Hi,' Rose greeted. 'You okay?'

'No. I need chocolate and gossip. At the same time. Now.'

Recounting the events of the previous evening only served to remind Rose of how stupid she'd been. At nineteen she could be forgiven for a little foolishness – she was, after all, between the stage of adult and child – but she still couldn't believe she'd thought Tae-won might have decided he loved her as a woman instead of thinking of her as a trophy in his game. Rose didn't understand what he hoped to achieve by toying with her in the first place, but she was inclined to think the worst – that he would use her to get more roles with her father, to expand his roles in the Japanese entertainment sector, to gain shares in Silver Lilies, or just to prove that he could have anyone he wanted. Whatever the motive, the end result was the same; Tae-won had lied to her, and all the kindness of that little boy she'd met years ago had gone.

Hitomi didn't dare to interrupt the story. Too enraptured by the dramatic turn Rose's date had taken, she forced chocolate into her mouth and hung on her friend's every word, gasping when appropriate and bouncing excitedly on the bed whenever Rose brought up a moment of intimacy. When she mentioned the kiss, Hitomi all but shrieked with delight. That delight soon turned to fury when Rose revealed the final, shocking truth which had driven her from Tae-won's home that morning.

'I'll kill him!' Hitomi declared, the hushed tones they'd used so Yuta wouldn't hear them long forgotten. Hitomi clambered off the bed and started for the door. 'I'll walk this entire city until I find him and punch him square in his perfect nose!'

''Tomi!' Rose cried, lunging for the girl and holding her back by the arm. 'Don't! Yuta will hear –'

'Let him hear! He should hear this! If he knew what Tae-won had done –'

'Then he'd fire him, I know.'

'Which is good!'

'No, it's not,' Rose said. 'If Tae-won gets fired then Jin-hee will go with him, and it'll just be me. No one is going to buy into the brand if they don't have the celebrity endorsements.'

'We can find new celebrities. Your dad will know people willing to do it.'

'And how will Yuta feel if I run to Dad to bail him out? This is a big break for him – huge – like he could be head of all the Korean branches if he proves he can do this well. I can't ruin that for him, not when I've already caused so much trouble.'

'Fine.' Hitomi turned and held Rose's hands in her own. Her eyes were alight with a fiery, passionate loyalty. 'If Tae-won so much as looks at you the wrong way during the rest of these shoots, I'm going to have him castrated. Publicly. On television. I'll charge people for tickets.'

'Can I have a front row seat?'

'Front row? Rosey-face, you'll be the one holding the knife.'