✓the three words • kim seungmin

f o r t y f o u r

edited 25aug21

• chapter 44: jeonghoon's a bitch

"Here's your quiz result from yesterday."

Hyemi leaned her back on the chair after peeking at the score. When the teacher left the class, she crossed her arms on the table and buried her face.

"What's wrong?" Jeongin asked.

"Just fine."

The younger guy giggled, "You're not answering the question."

The girl didn't budge. Jeongin glanced towards Seungmin who was blankly flipping through pages without energy. A low sigh escaped his lips.

These two–

‹›‹›‹›

That night when she heard the front door opened, both Hyunjae and Hongjoong run to their parents, cheering as usual. Hyemi just sent a small glance before going upstairs to her room. She took the quiz paper and stared at the score.

After approximately half an hour, she brought the paper with her, along with a jacket and her phone. With emotionless expression she handed the paper to his father.

Both adults looked up to her and before they could say anything, she spoke up.

"It's not my fault I got this result," she started. "Both of you know I studied and even stayed up starting this year just because I want to get the best results, to impress both of you. As a figure for my brothers, you used to say. But you cannot really expect me to get higher than this when you're always out for work, leaving me to take care of Hyunjae and Hongjoong until midnight, making me clean the house and scold me when I skipped the work for a day and pressuring me to study harder. You cannot make me get higher marks when you play with my emotions, comparing me with Chenle of our academics. Even when I got eighty for my previous English test, appa says it's not enough. Do you know how happy I am when I got the score?"

Tears gathered in her eyes and her vision became blurry.

"You don't even care about my health, my safety, my opinion and my feelings. All I have to do is following your orders. Honestly I'm so tired of this. Seungmin was the only one who understands my feelings. He was the one who's fast to catch up what's going on with me, what's my problems at home."

Her parents were silent for the whole minutes. Hyemi harshly wiped off the escaped tears. "But now even Seungmin is gone."

The living room fell silent. There were only her parents sitting on the couch, and Hyemi standing in front of them with her hand clutching on her jacket.

"Honey–"

"I'm gonna take a walk. Don't find me I'll be back soon." she quickly said and exited the house without even  glancing at his parents. When the gate closed, she broke down and scrolled through her contacts.

She clicked on a name, holding her phone against her ear as she walked out from the neighborhood. After two rings the other person picked up.

"Hello?"

"I'm going to Seungmin's." she informed him and a hiccup escaped her lips.

"Wait, are you crying? What happened?"

"Hyunjin, I'm going to Seungmin's house alone can you stay on the phone until I reach there?" she ignored the question as she felt fear slowly crept into her.

"Sure but," he put his phone away for awhile and the girl could hear something clinking onto each other and the sound of him rummaging his wardrobe.