Just Let It Happen — Episode 13

Tap, tap, tap.

Yun-seul pretended not to hear the knock, offering no answer at all as she kept typing, buried in her script work.

The door swung open almost immediately. It had been a comedy from the start — Sara, who had barged in and out of this room her whole life without permission, actually knocking.

Sara slipped inside and perched on the edge of the bed, watching Yun-seul's face carefully.

"What is it?"

Yun-seul asked flatly, her eyes never leaving the monitor.

"Nothing. What are you doing?"

"Working."

"Working?"

Sara gave a hollow, incredulous laugh, then scowled fiercely. After all that scene she pulled with Tae-kyung oppa, she's just calmly... working? Is she insane? Is she broken?

She had expected to find Yun-seul holed up in a corner, bawling her eyes out. Instead, Yun-seul sat there in flawless, unruffled composure, writing her script — and resentment boiled up inside Sara. So she picked a fight on purpose.

"Hey. A person's talking to you and you can't even be bothered to look at them? Rude much?"

When Sara yanked hard on the chair's armrest, it spun around, bringing Yun-seul face to face with her.

But something about Yun-seul's face looked different today. Her features were exactly the same, and yet somehow she seemed more refined. More beautiful.

"What's going on with you? Did you get plastic surgery behind my back?"

"I just groomed my eyebrows and put on makeup. That's all."

"Really...?"

Sara had seen the newspaper photo of Yun-seul a while back and dismissed it as a hundred percent Photoshop job. But today, for some reason, Yun-seul's face didn't look all that different from that picture. Just tidied brows and a little makeup could change a person this much?

The thought that Yun-seul had been fluttering around in front of Tae-kyung looking like that — in the very moments Sara herself had been stuffed inside a stinking closet — twisted her insides.

Until she'd walked into this room, Sara's only plan had been to probe Yun-seul's feelings and patch things back together between her and Tae-kyung. But now, without warning, a deep, inexplicable revulsion surged up from the pit of her stomach.

"If you don't have a reason to be here, could you leave? I have work to do."

"No! I do have a reason."

Flustered by Yun-seul's dry brush-off, Sara's eyes darted around desperately. Something told her she couldn't just walk out like this.

"I'm going to borrow some clothes."

Sara threw out the excuse she'd squeezed out of her reluctant brain and moved toward the closet. But the moment she opened it, the memory of being trapped inside just hours ago surfaced, and her brow creased on its own.

Yun-seul watched Sara's back with a chill in her eyes as she babbled her flimsy excuse. Borrowing clothes, was it?

Ever since they were children, everything of Yun-seul's had effectively belonged to Sara. The toys Yun-seul treasured. The books she loved. Even the friends she was close to. Sara had taken it all from her.

'You're a thief! You stole my mom from me!'

'What, you miss this pathetic little thing? You're the one who took my mom away!'

Those words had been Sara's absolution. Because Jeong-hee's affection had to be divided, Yun-seul had been forced to play the honey-tongued mute in front of Sara every moment of every day.

'If I'd known back then that it was all fake affection, I would never have let you take anything from me.'

Yun-seul cooled her boiling rage into something cold and still.

"There's nothing in here worth wearing."

Sara grumbled as she pulled a two-piece suit from the closet. It was the dress Lee-gun had given Yun-seul for the awards ceremony.

Yun-seul, who had been watching quietly until then, sprang up and snatched the hanger from Sara's hand.

"What? I said I'm borrowing it — don't tell me you miss this pathetic little thing?"

Sara had chosen that dress deliberately, to provoke her. She'd worried there might be no reaction, but seeing Yun-seul come rushing over lifted her sinking mood a little. The thought of stripping away something Yun-seul cherished made euphoria rise like heat haze. No matter what, this time too, Min Yun-seul would hand over what was precious to her without so much as a peep.

Just as Sara's mouth curled into a crooked smile—

"I wore that today. It'll reek of sweat. You sure about that?"

"Today?"

Sara's brow knitted briefly. The image of Yun-seul from the newspaper article flashed through her mind. The thought that she'd dolled herself up like that to meet Tae-kyung made her frown.

"I went on a date with Tae-kyung. I wanted to look pretty, so I put in some effort. But..."

Yun-seul deliberately dropped her gaze to the floor and put on a bitter expression. Like a viper that had spotted its prey, a cruel light kindled in Sara's eyes.

"Why? What happened?"

"Something happened. Something huge."

"What was it?"

"Tae-kyung has a woman."

"Seriously?"

Sara widened her eyes and clapped a hand over her mouth, feigning genuine shock. She'd been racking her brain over how to steer the conversation toward her real purpose, so it felt like a gift that Yun-seul had started spilling an unprompted story all on her own.

"We filmed a whole trashy drama today, you know."

"A trashy drama?"

"I went to Tae-kyung's office earlier, and from the second I walked through the front door, the place reeked of women's perfume."

But Yun-seul's story flowed in a direction Sara had never anticipated.

"At first I figured someone had just come and gone — no big deal. But then I saw a stocking peeking out from under the sofa."

Goosebumps rippled up Sara's arms. Yun-seul had apparently seen that stocking — the one Tae-kyung had hastily kicked under the sofa while Sara scrambled to pick up her panties.

"Tae-kyung kept fidgeting, insisting we go outside. That's when I was sure there was still a woman inside."

So that was why she'd dragged out pointless small talk to stall for time.

'So she fed me that humiliation on purpose?'

It felt like Sara had been struck in the head with a hammer. The memory of being drenched in sweat inside that closet came flooding back — and at the end, that genuine terror of running out of oxygen, of suffocating.

And it had all been deliberate?

Sara wanted to slap Yun-seul across the face right then and there. But doing that would be as good as confessing that she was the woman in the closet.

'This is infuriating...'

She felt like she'd die of the injustice. Sara clenched her fist so hard her nails bit deep into her palm, fighting down the surge of fury.

But it didn't end there.

"Tae-kyung tried to pass it off as noise from the upstairs neighbors. Isn't that hilarious? I guess he thought I'd actually buy that."

Yun-seul said that when she'd opened the closet door, she'd somehow had a feeling a woman was hiding behind the coats. That her premonition had been right. How comically pathetic that woman had looked when the coats were swept aside — did Sara have any idea?

Shame burned Sara's face crimson.

"She had her T-shirt pulled all the way over her head — honestly, she looked more pitiful than anything. Crouched in the corner like a cockroach."

A cockroach?

For a moment, Sara's anger made her head go blank. She gritted her teeth, her whole body trembling with humiliation.

"So I told Tae-kyung we were done. But I do feel a little sorry for that woman. If Tae-kyung valued her even one percent more than me, would he have hidden her away like that? She must have known herself, in the end, that she was nothing but a second choice."

Sara wanted to scream no on the spot. That Tae-kyung oppa treasured her far more than the likes of Yun-seul. That she was only with Yun-seul for the money. So don't flatter yourself.

But she couldn't say any of it, and it was driving her insane. Min Yun-seul — pathetic little Min Yun-seul — was sneering at her, calling her a pride-less second choice, and she couldn't utter a single word.

Then Yun-seul took Sara by the shoulders and asked in a voice dripping with sweetness:

"Unnie, why do you look so pale?"

In that instant, the memory flashed through Sara's mind — being gripped by the shoulders inside that closet, Yun-seul's hands clamped down hard.

'I don't need this trash anymore, so it's yours.'

'I'm throwing it out, so go ahead and pick it up.'

Yun-seul's words echoed through her skull like a tolling bell. Sara's patience hit its limit. Something burst in her head with a pop, and the last fraying thread of her reason snapped clean through.

Unable to hold it in any longer, Sara spat out a curse.

"You fucking bitch—!"