𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗽𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝟭 - 𝗦𝗼𝗷𝘂 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗦𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗿𝘀
𝗖𝗹𝘂𝗯 𝗩í𝗰𝗶𝗼 — 𝗛𝗼𝗻𝗴𝗱𝗮𝗲, 𝗦𝗲𝗼𝘂𝗹 — 𝟭𝟭:𝟰𝟳 𝗣𝗠
The bass was a living thing. It crawled up through the sticky floor of Club Vício, into Shin Soo-jin's heels, and settled somewhere behind her ribs where her heartbeat used to be. Now, there was only the thrum of the music—a deep, dirty house track that made thinking optional. That was the point.
She was on her fourth drink. Or fifth? The glass in front of her was sweating more than she was, a tall, treacherous thing, the colour of diluted blood. Soju Sunrise. A lie of a name. There was no sun here. Only neon and noise and the kind of darkness that swallowed bad decisions whole. Club Vício wasn't the kind of place Soo-jin usually went. It was too cool for her, all exposed brick and industrial pipes, the air thick with fog machine mist, and the cloying sweetness of cheap perfume trying to pass as expensive. The crowd was a mix of Hongdae art students, young professionals pretending to be edgy, and the occasional lost foreigner. It smelled like spilt beer, artificial strawberry, and something metallic—probably the ice machine dying a slow death. But it was loud. And dark. And no one here knew her name.
Her phone lay face-up on the sticky table, a glowing portal to hell. She shouldn't have looked. She knew she shouldn't have looked. But the soju had softened her defences, and her thumb had moved on its own, possessed by the ghost of a relationship that should have died two months ago. Jun-ho's i********: story glowed like a taunt. There he was. His arm draped over her shoulder. That girl. The one he'd sworn was "just a sunbae from the office." The one whose name Soo-jin had stopped saying because it tasted like acid on her tongue. They were at Club Octagon in Gangnam—some VIP booth with bottle service, the kind of place Jun-ho had never taken Soo-jin because it was "too expensive" and "not really your vibe." Not really her vibe. The text overlay read: " Best night ♥︎ ." A black heart. He'd used a black heart. She wanted to reach through the screen and shove that black heart down his lying, cheating, sock-with-sandals-wearing throat.
Two years. She had given him two years of her life. Two years of waiting for him to be "ready." Two years of believing him when he said he was "too busy with work" for a relationship right now. Two years of being understanding, patient, stupid. And now he was at Octagon with the sunbae. With bottle service. With a black f*****g heart.
"Best night," Soo-jin muttered under her breath, the words swallowed by the bass. "Best night, my a*s. I'll show you a best night."
...
𝗧𝗢 𝗕𝗘 𝗖𝗢𝗡𝗧𝗜𝗡𝗨𝗘𝗗!