With a quiet smile tugging at his lips, Beom-ki gently unlocked the door, making sure not to make a sound. He wanted to catch them off guard in a good way. But as he stepped inside, the atmosphere felt off. The apartment was unusually silent. No faint sound of the TV playing, no soft hum of music filling the space as it usually did when Ji-soo was home. The quiet unnerved him, a strange feeling creeping into his chest.
His footsteps were light as he moved further into the apartment. That's when he heard it—faint sounds coming from her bedroom. His heart skipped a beat. It wasn't laughter or conversation. It was something else. Moaning. Beom-ki's blood turned cold as realization started to sink in. The sound was unmistakable. His heartbeat quickened, each pulse reverberating in his ears as if the walls were closing in around him.
The world seemed to slow down as he approached her bedroom door, his hand hesitating on the handle for a brief moment. He didn't want to believe it. His mind raced, trying to come up with any rational explanation for what he was hearing. But deep down, something in his gut told him what was about to unfold.
He slowly pushed the door open, and there it was. The scene that would forever burn itself into his memory. Ji-soo, tangled in the sheets, her body intertwined with that of another man. The man who she had claimed was her brother. His supposed "rival," now lying beside her, skin pressed against skin. Beom-ki stood frozen in place, the sight flooding him with disbelief, disgust, and rage. His entire world felt like it was crumbling in slow motion.
He couldn't move. His body was paralyzed, his mind screaming at him to do something, but all he could do was stand there and watch as the woman he loved betrayed him in the most visceral way imaginable. His heart pounded in his chest, each beat louder than the last, thudding like a drum inside his ribcage. His breathing became shallow, his hands trembling at his sides as his grip tightened on the bag of chocolates.
A wave of emotions hit him all at once—shock, fury, heartbreak. He felt sick to his stomach, the bile rising in his throat as he tried to make sense of what he was seeing. He had trusted her. He had loved her. And now, here she was, with this man—this liar—who had wormed his way into her life and destroyed everything Beom-ki thought he had with her.
A bitter, humorless laugh escaped his lips before he could stop it. It was a laugh of disbelief, of irony, of pure, unfiltered pain. The sound was cold and hollow, cutting through the room like a knife. It startled them both.
Ji-soo jolted upright in bed, her face going pale as she scrambled to cover herself with the bedsheet. The panic in her eyes was immediate, and she looked at Beom-ki with a mixture of shock and guilt, her mouth opening and closing as if she wanted to say something, but no words came out. The man beside her sat up quickly, grabbing his clothes in a hurried panic, clearly just as shocked by Beom-ki's presence.
"Beom... I-I can explain..." Ji-soo stammered, her voice trembling as she clutched the sheet tighter around her. But Beom-ki didn't want to hear it. He couldn't. The betrayal was too deep, the wound too fresh. Every word she tried to form only made his chest tighten with anger and disgust.
His mind felt like it was on fire, each second dragging on as he stood there, staring at the two of them. The woman he had fought for, the woman he had risked everything for—had thrown it all away for this? The silence in the room felt suffocating, pressing down on him until he could barely breathe.
"Explain?" Beom-ki's voice came out low and cold, devoid of emotion. His eyes, once full of love for her, were now hard and distant. "You're going to explain this?" He gestured towards the bed, the sheets crumpled, her lover scrambling for his clothes like a coward.
Ji-soo's face contorted in desperation. "I—It's not what it looks like, I swear!" But even she knew how empty those words sounded. She could see the pain in Beom-ki's eyes, the way his body had tensed as if he was holding himself back from completely falling apart.
Beom-ki clenched his fists, his nails digging into his palms as he forced himself to stay calm, to keep the storm of emotions raging inside him from spilling out. His heart ached, each beat heavier than the last, but he refused to let her see just how much she had broken him.
He turned on his heel, not saying another word as he walked out of the room, the sound of Ji-soo calling his name barely registering in his mind. Each step away from her felt like a weight lifting off his chest, yet it left a hollow emptiness in its wake.
As he left the apartment, he tossed the bag of chocolates into the trash bin outside, a bitter taste lingering in his mouth as he got into his car. He gripped the steering wheel tightly, staring straight ahead, his mind replaying the scene over and over again like a nightmare he couldn't wake up from.
He had come here with love, with the intention of making her day better. But now, all that was left was betrayal, and the bitter realization that the person he thought he knew so well had been lying to him all along.
He was done.
As he opened the car door and sat down, the silence inside the vehicle was deafening. His hands rested on the steering wheel, gripping it so tightly that his knuckles turned white. He stared blankly ahead, the weight of everything crashing down on him like a tidal wave. He thought he could hold it together. He had always prided himself on his strength, on being the person who could keep his emotions in check, no matter the situation.
But then, out of nowhere, he felt a tear trickle down his cheek. It caught him off guard. Beom-ki furrowed his brows and wiped at his eye quickly, as though the tear was some sort of mistake. "Huh…what is that?" he muttered to himself, trying to make sense of the moisture on his fingers. He wasn't supposed to cry. Not like this, not over something like this.
But as he wiped away the tear, more began to fall. Slowly at first, then faster, like the dam holding back his emotions had suddenly broken. "Why won't it stop?" he whispered, his voice shaky as he swiped at his face again, but the tears kept coming, spilling down his cheeks uncontrollably.
He bit his lip, trying to stifle the sob that threatened to escape his throat. But no matter how hard he tried to fight it, the tears wouldn't stop flowing. His chest heaved, and before he knew it, he was crying—really crying. Deep, gut-wrenching sobs that wracked his entire body.
For so long, Beom-ki had carried himself like a fortress, impenetrable, never letting anyone see his vulnerabilities. But now, in the quiet of his car, with no one around to witness, he allowed himself to break. The pain was too much, too overwhelming to keep bottled up anymore. The betrayal, the heartbreak, the disbelief—it all came crashing down on him at once.
His body trembled as he rested his forehead against the steering wheel, tears splashing onto the leather. The realization that the person he loved, the one he had trusted with his heart, had shattered that trust so easily, so callously, was unbearable. And now, the emotions he had tried so hard to push down were rising to the surface, pouring out in the form of tears he couldn't stop.
He had always been the strong one, the one who others relied on, but in this moment, he felt so small, so broken. His heart ached in a way he had never experienced before, and the worst part was the helplessness of it all. There was nothing he could do to fix this, nothing he could say to make the pain go away.
As the tears continued to fall, Beom-ki didn't try to stop them anymore. He let himself cry, his sobs filling the empty car, his heart breaking with every breath he took. His mind raced, trying to make sense of it all, but there was no sense to be found. How could she do this to him? After everything they'd been through, after everything he had sacrificed for her—how could she betray him like this?
The questions swirled in his mind, each one hitting him like a punch to the gut. But no answers came. Just the hollow, aching pain of betrayal. His chest tightened, the sobs coming harder now, shaking his whole body as he cried.
He was Beom-ki, the man who fought battles, who faced danger without flinching, but here, in the confines of his car, he was just a man with a broken heart. And no amount of strength could stop the tears from falling.