"You're kidding, right?"

"Nope."

We were standing in front of his house, a smile on his face and a look of shock on mine. Changmin reached for my hand and held it, squeezing it. I stared at him and tried to pull away, but he tightened his grip on my hand. "What-"

"We're supposed to act like a couple, remember?" he said. "They won't believe me if you're being so distant, Mina."

I sighed. "Is it too late to say I don't want to be your girlfriend?" I asked.

"Yes," he said, walking forward and pulling me with him. "All you need to do is answer their questions - if they have any. Leave the rest to me, okay?" He smiled and walked up the steps of the front porch, keeping me behind him.

"Do I really have to do this?" I asked before he knocked on the door. Changmin turned around and nodded.

"You're supposed to help me get out of an engagement, remember?" He smiled again, "It'll be fine, Mina. I promise nothing bad will happen."

I really shouldn't have believed him.

As I sat at the dinner table in his parents' house, I could feel his mother glaring at me from the other side of the table. "So..." she started, somewhat annoyed. "You're Changmin's girlfriend?" Something about the way she had said it made me fill with fear. She was so intimidating from other parents, it scared me.

"Yes," I said, offering a small, but awkward smile. She ignored it and scoffed. I heard Changmin suck in a deep breath, as if to calm himself down.

"Now, honey," his father spoke. "Don't be so hard on... her." From the look he was giving me, I could tell he was judging me too.

"I'm just saying," she looked at Changmin. "Is this really the best you could do? Haemin is a much better match than her." Ouch. I looked down at my hands and sighed quietly, they're really going for it, aren't they?

"But I don't like her," Changmin said. "You always tell me what's good for me and what isn't, but I know better this time.

"Changmin, you have to understand that there's no getting out of this," his mother said. "Your marriage with Haemin is final."

"It's not," he said. "You just want me to marry someone with money. Marrying some girl from Europe isn't going to help you become rich."

The look on his parents' face showed they were slowly starting to crack. His father opened his mouth to say something, but his mother beat him to it. "So what if money is all we're after? Haemin has that, something that she doesn't," she said, her eyes narrowed as she glared at me. "You are going to marry her and leave-" She gestured at me, "-this behind."

As much as I hated to say it, they were shameless people, Changmin's parents. I didn't know how much more of this I'd be able to take, and I didn't want to find out either, so I stood up and said, "Do you have no manners?"

"Mina, what are y-"

I cut Changmin off, "Ever since I walked into this house, you have been nothing but rude to me, putting me down and calling me anything but my name, even though we were introduced. Is this how you usually treat your guests?"

Changmin's mother stared at me with a look of disbelief, then scoffed. "Who do you think you are?" she asked. "You're not a guest - you're a pest."

"Just because you think that way does not mean I will just sit here and let you say whatever you want to my face!" I yelled. "So what if I'm your son's girlfriend?! So what if I don't have money or anything valuable to offer?!"

"Sit do-"

"Don't tell me what to do," I said, raising my voice at his mother. The room was silent, his mother and father staring at me with horrified expressions and Changmin trying to hold in his laughter.

This was as much as I could take before I snapped. This was as far as I'd let people make me feel like absolute shit and make me feel as if I wasn't worth anything. I knew better than to believe their words.

The only words that mattered to me were the ones coming from Changmin anyway.