THE QUESTION IS JUSTIFIED AND IT has the corners of the female’s mouth twitching and moving in genuine amusement. Emotions, she has learned, aren’t hard to borrow; at the end of the day, all of them are saying this to get that and doing that to get this. It’s a game that mankind must have perfected eons ago, when intrigues had no way of being uncovered and when one simple, wrong word could get you into the pits of hell, damned for an eternity.
Seoyun takes this into consideration, if only briefly. I’ll give you my help in exchange for your eternal gratefulness and that’s just another way of saying I’ve got you in my hand. What does it means? It means: don’t act out. Do as I say. Follow my instructions. If not, your secret will be out for the whole world to know and your most intimate moments will be revealed to the public and what could be worse than that, in all honesty?
That’s the way she has grown up, but it’s no reason to drag others into a game they have no wish of participating. It’s why she can laugh at the question, lean back into her seat and carefully scrutinize the other woman’s intentions. How much of her is real and how much of her isn’t? There’s always another side to the person you see sitting in front of you and right now, Seoyun is intrigued and she wants to know who this person is and what they’d be willing to give and take, if it means rising to another standard, to another level that has yet to find its match, one that cannot be compared to that of her friends and family.
“I suppose there’s no real way of knowing. You either trust me or you don’t.” It’s the way a business woman would speak, features void of any type of emotion, though the small hint of genuine amusement hasn’t disappeared just yet: it’s visible in the depth of her eyes, visible in the way her lips are still curled upwards as though she’s smiling when she’s laughing, inwardly. She’s good at hiding, but she’s nowhere close to being excellent and that’s her very own mistake, though one she intends to learn from.
“I could take you higher than anyone else could.” She pauses, eyes twinkling with a casually cruel gleam of mischief. Seoyun’s up to no good, and that’s obvious she has no intentions of hiding the truth, anyway. “And I could push you from the highest mountain, if I wanted to.” She lets the words echo in the silence that draws longer, one heartbeat molding into another and another and another before she speaks up one more time, voice dangerously low. “It’s up to you, isn’t it?”
Haeri’s laughing, loud and clear, all bright faced with warmth that is quick to settle on her cheeks and spread quickly everywhere down her throat. The sound is not tight, or mocking, it’s just a laugh, a knee jerk reaction probably. Then it’s just a precedent to a silence that has her clearing her throat, she’s squirming in her seat and the amusement hasn’t died from her eyes or the pull of er lips, not just yet. But she’s not voicing it out with the sound that seemed to have gotten some attention from nearby people. Which doesn’t matter, not really, she’s so fucking amused right now there’s no way she would care about what other people thought had made her just laugh like some crazy thing had just happened.
Or she’d gone crazy. She would have thought so too, minutes prior to the girl talking, she would have totally thought, well, that’s it, I’ve gone bonkers, totally batshit insane à la Harley Quinn. But god, she has to say this, like she seriously has to say this, even if it might offend her companion, she has to. Already leaning over the table and bent in such an angle that has her wondering how her body manages to not break under the pressure she constantly puts it into. Legs cross on the chair and now elbows folded on the table, “My therapist would have a field day with you, honestly, I think all the money they pay him would finally be worth it. Listening to you right now felt like I just moved into some sort of you know, villainous drama or manga or something, like do you pull your lines straight out of it? Do people fall for that? Is this what a business meeting is like? Christ, next thing I know you’re not human either. Have you watched W? I have only because there’s manhwa mentioned in it and it’s not quite the same as a god damn good manga but man, man,” There comes the sound again. But this time it’s a snort and she’s covering it with a hand as she leans back in her seat. Anyways, she’s lost the reason why she even mentioned that so she finds herself blinking and frowning before shrugging, “Point in case, you’re nuts. Got it. Wanna know why though? Not because you talked like you’re trying to play the joker to my batman or something, but because well, you think you can play the joker to my batman, that’s why.”
Take her high and push her off? Aren’t those just the most ironic words she’s ever heard if she even took them seriously? Granted, she should give the girl some kind of benefit of doubt because clearly, she doesn’t know who Haeri is. She can’t know, or else she wouldn’t be sitting here talking like Haeri hadn’t fucking climbed and then thrown herself off cliffs again and again, like she didn’t hang on the edge of rooftops wondering if missing a step would be that bad. It wasn’t even about quitting this world, or dying, it was just about knowing. Because she has to know, she has to live it to know and it’s defying the reasons why most people did this for. It was a past that quite did not collide anymore with the present time, it was a reckless past. But it made her who she is now, it did not make her more careful just knowing.
“That went from business like to whatever really quick but who are you again though? I tend to, you know, misplace names until I deem them worthy to be kept or something, since we’re going all drama-ish-like, I might want to warn you too that if you’re the mountain tripper I’m the fucking rock that you stumble on your way anywhere for no fucking reasons and it just hurts but you can’t do anything because it’s a fucking rock, hitting it will just be more painful, like that shit is annoying, isn’t it?” She could only remember her being an heiress to a name she might have heard more than once or twice, Ahn, something like that. But Haeri could careless. Business isn’t even her thing, she still has no clue whatsoever as to why Haemin couldn't have just told their father no instead of acting like he could handle pushing aside his own desires to follow through. For once. At least it felt good to know she wasn’t the only one with a guilty conscience for not doing things as their parents wished them to.
