The Evil Prince (1/1)

The number you dial is either unattended or out of coverage area. Please try again later,” the voice on the other line said. Seohyun tried to contact Yuri but each time she called, she received the same operator message. She sighed as she looked at her phone, “Yuri-unnie, why aren’t you answering?” she gave up calling her and decided to send her a text message instead.Yuri-unnie, good thing for me, I did not need to deliver the news at all for he himself rejected me. He is a completely EVIL person. It’s a good choice you never meet up with him in the first place. When will you come back? I have lots of questions to ask. Weird things happened yesterday. Anyway, you can just call me.Message sent.Indeed, yesterday’s events left her wondering what happened to her kind prince. Would it be possible that he had a twin? She immediately snapped herself out of this wishful thinking. She told herself to accept the fact that they would never meet again. Certainly, she would never search for her to apologize being as evil as he was.--------------------------------It was late afternoon when Kyuhyun reached the park. It was already crowded of people who just either ended their office works or finished their classes. Kyuhyun had no idea how to find Seohyun in this place. He looked around but there was no sight of her. He started to feel dizzy so he decided to take a break.He went to the spot where artworks were displayed underneath the benches which were arranged in a circle. As he was looking at the paintings, he noticed a girl dressed in a mascot costume sitting at one of the benches. He guessed it was her breaktime because she was not wearing the mascot head. “This is perfect,” he thought. He could ask the girl if she knew someone named Seohyun. He decided to approach her. When he was about to call her attention, the girl turned around. Their eyes met for a second.“Seohyun?” Kyuhyun said when she recognized her face. Seohyun immediately turned her face away from him. “Omo! He’s here… Why is he here? What I’m going to do?” these thoughts ran across her mind.“Seohyun… just run!” she finally told herself. The truth was she did not know why she had to run away. She just followed what her instincts told her to do so. She quickly put on the mascot head and ran away from the scene. That’s when she realized that she wore the mascot head the wrong way. She could not see where she was going. She almost fell on the pavement. There was no time to change it since she heard Kyuhyun’s steps going closer so her only choice is to keep going.“Yah!” Kyuhyun called after her. He was about to chase her when he spotted something on the ground. ------------------Meanwhile, in Cho’s residence, Yesung was having dinner with their grandmother. “Yesung, where’s your cousin?” their grandmother asked as she sliced the meat on her plate.“He went somewhere, I think he’s going to apologize to Seohyun-shi,” Yesung answered while watching the maid fill his glass with water.“Good thing, then,” their grandmother replied. She looked at the vacant seat to her left. “Is he not going to have dinner with us?” she asked.“I don’t think so, he said he’s busy. You know… with the upcoming exhibit,” the other replied. Yesung had been used to this. Whenever Kyuhyun was absent, he was the one in charge of making excuses.“When did he not become busy?” Their grandma was not anymore surprised by this. This was not new to her.“Grandma, I’m sorry but I don’t think it’s a good idea for Kyuhyun to go to random dates,” Yesung started his “task”.“Did Kyuhyun ask you to tell that to me?” their grandma asked. For the first time, Yesung noticed that Kyuhyun and their grandmother were quite the same, their aura of authority and their ability to see through some people. Sometimes, he asked himself why he must always be caught in the middle of these two.“No,” Yesung denied. “It’s my personal concern… Really,” he prayed that grandma would believe it. “What if he ended up with the wrong person?”Luckily, their grandmother was easier to convince than Kyuhyun. She seemed to believe him for she started opening up to him. She told Yesung the reason why she’s been arranging dates for Kyuhyun.  “You mean what if someone breaks his heart again? I do not exactly intend to find him a new lover. I just want him to open up his world to other people. I am looking for someone who can bring back the warmth in his heart. “Yesung could not disagree with their grandmother. It has been a long time since he saw a genuinely happy Kyuhyun and he wanted to see him like that again. He was so touched by her words that he almost forgot his task.“Grandma, you choose those girls very well, right?” he asked.“Of course, I’ve talked to them.”“But most often, people only show their good sides. What about their bad sides…uhm… the… dirty little secrets they hide?” Yesung was really worked up now. “What if they’re social climbers… only interested with his money but don’t love him truly? What if he fell in love with that kind of person? I really think you should stop this.”“Yesung, you’re paranoiid. I think you should rest,” their grandma said as she walked away from the dining table.“But grandma!” he pressed on.  “He must not fail,” he thought.Their grandma stopped for a while. She was thinking if she should consider Yesung’s concern. Eventually, she spoke up.  “Yesung, can you find Seohyun’s address for me?”------------- “That was close,” Seohyun said while catching her breath. She did not know how she managed to get away from him without even a scratch wearing a mascot head in reverse. It must be the adrenaline rush that’s got into her. The night came and their shifts had ended. Seohyun was at the locker room together with the other part-timers.“Ahhh… our work is finally done.” “Aaw… my back hurts.”“Me too.”“I’m so tired.” “Can’t wait to go home and sleep.”Every after shift, the scene at the locker room was always like this. It has become the outlet of the workers’ complaints. While the others kept complaining here and there, Seohyun was just silent at the corner, busy arranging her things. She put the mascot head to its respective shelf and started emptying her pockets then she noticed that something was missing. One of the part-timers noticed that she became pale so she asked her what’s wrong.“My phone was missing,” Seohyun replied. So they searched for it but it wasn’t there.“You might have dropped it somewhere,” the other suggested. “When was the last time you use it?” she asked.“I was trying to contact my friend –“Seohyun paused for a while. She seemed to remember something, then she immediately ran outside.“Seohyun, where are you going? The manager is going to arrive soon!” her co-part-timer called.“I’ll be back. I am just going to get my phone. I think I already know where it is,” Seohyun called back.She went back again at the spot where she and Kyuhyun met a while ago. She started looking for her phone underneath the benches and around them. She was sure that this was where she accidentally dropped her phone but she wondered why it wasn’t there anymore. Could it be that it was already at the lost and found department? As she busied herself thinking where her phone could possibly be, she heard a voice behind her.“Is this phone, the one you’re looking for?”She could have thanked that person if it was not for the fact that she knew exactly that that voice belongs to Kyuhyun. She turned around and saw Kyuhyun playing with her phone with an evil smile on his face.  “I was about to apologize to somebody but I think that somebody also owe me an apology for pretending to be someone else,” he said.“What are you talking about?” Seohyun tried her best to act cool.  “Can you give my phone back to me, please?”Kyuhyun just stared at her. The night was cold but sweat was slowly trickling down Seohyun’s forehead. “Are you really black_pearl or is she someone named Yuri?” He continued to interrogate her. Seohyun felt like she was being investigated by an intelligence officer.“I don’t know what you’re talking about so just give me my phone,” she tried to snatch her own phone away from him but Kyuhyun raised it into the air making it out of Seohyun’s reach just like a bully who picked on a nice girl at the playground.“I want my phone back!” Seohyun demanded.“If you really wanted your phone back, you should tell the truth. You know very well what I’m talking about,” Kyuhyun never showed any sign of giving up. He really would never stop until Seohyun would admit it. “Should I read you a message?” he began reading the message Seohyun sent to Yuri a while ago.  Seohyun tried to grab the phone again to stop him from reading the message but she got off-balanced and she fell over to Kyuhyun. The next thing she knew, she was already lying on top of him with their faces just few inches apart from each other.  She could feel her heart thumping as she looked into his eyes.“How long are you gonna stay in this position?” Kyuhyun asked snapping Seohyun out of her trance. Seohyun quickly got up and fixed her dress. She felt her face turned red so she turned away from him.“Where’s my phone?” Seohyun asked Kyuhyun with her back against him. She was still hiding her face that was blushing so hard.“I don’t know,” Kyuhyun said while standing up and wiping the dirt off his shirt. “It slipped out of my hand,” he added plainly. Seohyun went back searching for her phone again. After a few minutes, she let out a scream. “My phone! You broke it!”“Eh?” Kyuhyun asked, quite clueless of what Seohyun was screaming about.“You broke my phone… See…” she showed Kyuhyun the disassembled pieces of her phone.“It’s not my fault. It’s yours,” Kyuhyun put the blame back on Seohyun. “If you just told the truth, I would have given the phone back to you instantly. You did not need to take it by force. It would not slip out of my hand and it would not be broken.”“Fine! I am not black_pearl. Yuri is the real black_pearl. She is your blind date. I don’t know what really happened but she mistook you for someone else that she did not like. So she asked me to pretend to be your date. Do you think I want to be in this position? If only she had seen you that day, she would have run to you and I wouldn’t be in this situation! Are you now satisfied?” Seohyun was now on the verge of tears.Kyuhyun felt guilty all of the sudden. It was his entire plan after all that put Seohyun in this situation. “I’m sorry,” he said softly. “Sorry?! That’s all you can say… sorry? All the numbers of the people important to me are stored in that phone. Now that it is broken, how can I contact them, huh?”“I’ll buy you a new phone then,” he suggested with a smile.“No, thanks. I do not want to be indebted to you,” Seohyun replied as she started walking away. Kyuhyun’s smile faded at her refusal.  Sometimes girls are really hard to decipher, he thought to himself. Once you’ve made a mistake, they would make a big fuss over it. They would pressure you to apologize even though it wasn’t your fault in the first place. But when you’ve made an apology, they still would not accept it. He did not know exactly what else do he has to do. Kyuhyun went after her.“I said I’ll buy you a new phone!” he yelled.Seohyun reluctantly turned to face him. “I said, ‘No, thanks’.” She turned around and continued walking.Kyuhyun was already losing his temper. He ran after her and when he caught up with her, he blocked her way. “I’ve already apologized to you; I even offered to buy you a new phone but you’re still mad at me. What exactly do you want me to do?!”“Why don’t you just give up and get out of my sight?!” she was surprised of herself. She couldn’t believe what she just said. The words just got away without her knowing. Seohyun then expected Kyuhyun to leave but he did not. He grabbed her hand and dragged her away from the park.“Where are you taking me?” Seohyun asked as she tried to free her hand from Kyuhyun’s grip.“I’ll buy you a phone,” Kyuhyun said simply.“But I don’t want to,” she replied.“I insist.”-----------“Yesung-hyung, what happened?” Kyuhyun answered his phone as the attendant of the shop packed the brand new phone that Kyuhyun bought for Seohyun.“I don’t know if it’s bad news or good news for you but grandma wanted to know Seohyun’s address. Seems like she’s going to check on her.”“What? How did this come to be?” Kyuhyun asked.“I told her that she should stop arranging dates for you because you might end up with a wrong person such as a social climber etc., You know it is a nightmare for her if her own grandsons would marry someone that does not match her standards, right?” Yesung explained on the other line.“What do you suggest me to do then?” He asked his hyung.“Maybe, if you could show grandma that Seohyun is the complete opposite of her ideal daughter-in-law, probably, after that, she will not arrange dates for you anymore,” the older one suggested.Kyuhyun took a look at Seohyun who was sitting at the waiting area. She was staring ahead and from Kyuhyun’s judgment, she still looked a bit angry.“I’ll try to do that,” he then answered.  “By the way, that’s a pretty good idea.”“Of course, I’m great….hahaha,” Yesung answered feeling proud of himself.“Please don’t praise yourself too much,” he advised the older one before he hanged up. Kyuhyun took a deep breath before he approached Seohyun. “Here’s your brand new phone,” he tried to sound cheerful as he handed the bag with the new phone to her. Seohyun took the bag without looking at him.“Uhm…ehem!” he cleared his throat on purpose to call Seohyun’s attention. “Want to have… coffee… together?” he asked cautiously. This time she looked at him, wondering why he was so nice all of the sudden. When she stood up, Kyuhyun did not know if she accepted his invitation or not so he asked her, “Is that a yes?” Seohyun nodded. She decided to accept it because she feared that he might drag her again anyway if she refused.  Together, they left the shop with Kyuhyun leading the way.