Cocktails & Planned Affairs
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"Alright, Ms. Byun," he said as he smiled politely. "Anything you need, please let me know. I'll be in my office. Don't hesitate to call me."

Despite Jimin living in an enormous house, the tour was quick, as most rooms were supposedly untouched. A mansion that had a long spiral stair and six gorgeous bedrooms with walk-in closets and luxurious bathrooms. To Ara's surprise, the house wasn't that much of a mess, except for one of the guest rooms. It was full of shirts and other objects that Ara certainly didn't want to touch. The shirts, however, left her confused. They looked slightly too big to fit Jimin, and from what she had seen earlier, he didn't wear loose-fitting clothes.

Underneath the bed, she found even more hidden things. One of them being a used condom that made her feel extremely disgusted. She grabbed three pairs of gloves and picked up the condom to throw it away. As she continued cleaning, Eunha had arrived from her 'meeting' when she saw Ara in the room. She looked at her and analyzed her for a few seconds. The idea of another woman spending time at her fiancé's house was not pleasant to her. It didn't matter if it was for a simple cleaning or not.

"Oh, it's you," she said in pure disappointment. "Do me a favor. Make me a cocktail when you're done."

Ara turned around to reply, but Eunha was already gone. She didn't really know Eunha, so assuming that she was a monster just because of one interaction wasn't proper of her. Ara just assumed that she was having a really shitty day. It happened to everyone.

When Ara went to prepare the cocktail in the kitchen, she saw Jimin drinking water as he looked her way. When he gulped, he placed the water bottle in the fridge and turned back to her.

"I'm leaving for work soon. When you're done, tell Eunha and you can leave," he said with his hands in his pockets and a welcoming smile on his face. Ara nodded before she started working on the cocktail. Knowing who ordered it, Jimin stayed to watch how it was done. His girlfriend definitely loved cocktails, but he could never do them for her because he was always busy or never did it 'correctly'.

Once Ara was done, she walked over to the pool to deliver the drink as Jimin followed. Jimin immediately smiled when he saw his girlfriend relaxing on the lounge chair next to the pool. He walked to her and pecked her precious lips as she took the drink. Not even a thank you. That was exactly what Ara thought. Jimin just admired her as the goddess he saw in his eyes. He was extremely thankful for the arranged marriage. The arranged marriage that started all because of Eunha.

"I'll be leaving now, baby. I'll be back at night," he said as he kissed her again. She remained emotionless. Ara just thought that maybe Jimin was used to her blank stare. Maybe Eunha was also used to seeing him leave. All Eunha did was nod, replying to Jimin. She then stood up from her chair and handed the empty glass cup to Ara as she turned to him.

"I won't be home today. The rest of the day, actually. I guess I'll be seeing you tomorrow. I have a lot of work, so I might stay at the office," she explained. Jimin looked down, thinking to himself for a good second or two. She smiled and blew him a kiss before walking back inside the house.

A few minutes after Jimin left, Eunha noticed Ara washing the dishes in the kitchen. She knew Ara was going to be an obstacle in her daily life and she couldn't accept it. Ara was clueless about it. She was clueless about all the evil thoughts rushing through Eunha's mind. She was clueless about all the terrible things Eunha was capable of doing to the people who stood in her way.

"You should leave too," she said, taking a small packet from the counter. "I'm inviting someone over."

Ara gulped when she saw what the packet was. She didn't want to think about it, but she was witnessing a sign of a planned affair. Ara stopped what she was doing and stopped the water from running. Maybe her suspicions about the large shirts were true? They weren't in the main bedroom but in the guest bedroom, away from Jimin's view.

When he was showing Ara around the house, he never opened the door to the guest rooms, as he expected them to be clean since they were unused. Regardless, Ara still walked inside when she was cleaning in order to check if they were actually fine, but they weren't. That confused her. Jimin didn't know, but the rooms were being used. He was barely at home because of work, so he didn't know what was going on in his own house.

Ara nodded her head at Eunha and bowed before taking her purse with her. She walked out of the house immediately, before she could witness anything in the situation. Eunha had grabbed a few condom packages from the kitchen counter in front of Ara without a care in the world. She wanted to see Ara's reaction. She wanted to see what she was going to do about it and if she was going to question her, but Ara just obeyed and walked out. That left Eunha slightly less worried than before. However, Ara still lingered in the back of her head. She could be a ticking time bomb in her relationship with Jimin.

A car pulled by on the road. Ara was already too deep in the situation to run away. It was her first day at work and she was already seeing too much. Too much that could do so much harm to her, and she wasn't willing to risk it. She had found a proper job that paid a huge amount of money and she was not willing to abandon it. Now that she had the opportunity of a lifetime, she wasn't about to slip up and cause any problems. If the elites had a conflict in their relationship, she knew it was best to not be involved in it.

Back at Minji's house, she was constantly asking Ara how her first day at work went. Ara wouldn't answer. Somehow, whenever Minji mentioned Jimin's name, Ara would end up thinking about him. Now that she had met him in person, she knew exactly what he looked like. His soft black hair, his eye smile, everything. She finally understood why he was constantly being mentioned wherever she turned to, even in her classes. He was not only attractive, but he had the power to control everything and everyone. Everyone except for his fiancée.

"Do you like him?" Minji asked, getting Ara's immediate attention.

"Well, he is very attractive, but he has a soon-to-be wife and she is such a model," Ara said. Yeah, she had seen Jimin before, but only online and in news articles. He always caught her attention with the way he dressed, the way he talked, and the way he walked. He was even more enchanting in real life now that she met him in person. What she didn't know was that the whole introduction was very much Minji's idea. Minji had an entire plan set up, and Ara was part of it, even though she didn't know it. The crazy thing was that Jimin didn't know about it either, and it mainly involved him.

"Don't you see how much of a bitch his fiancée is? I might have a bias against her because I'm a lesbian and she's extremely fucking homophobic, but that's not the point. The issue here is that she's a whore and I know she fucks every guy she meets. I'm sure of that," Minji said. Ara gulped and stayed quiet. She didn't want to mention what she had seen because she didn't have proof of what was happening. However, she saw something, and it was serious. Something was about to happen. It just wasn't her place to be in.

+

For the second day at work, Minji took Ara once again. It was a regular thing since Ara didn't have a car or a license. At Jimin's house, the same thing from before happened. He greeted his sister and his new maid at the door while Eunha was nowhere to be seen. That day, she actually woke up in his house.

"Where should I start today, Mr. Park?" Ara asked, expecting an answer from the sleepy figure next to her. Ara could tell he was extremely tired, perhaps from working all night. He seemed like that type of guy. The type to stay working all night if he had a stressful amount of work to do. He seemed like the type to want to get it all done in one sitting just so that he wouldn't have to do it later. She was right. He was certainly no procrastinator.

Jimin pointed around the living room, and Ara nodded. He then added, "Work on the rooms after you finish. Not now."

That was when he saw his suit jacket on the floor next to Ara and picked it up immediately. Ara noticed and assumed that something sexual must have happened, but she remained quiet and ignored it. Meanwhile, Jimin went back to his room in order to wake up his sleeping beauty. He smiled as he caressed her naked body under the covers, causing her to move.

"Babe, I think you should start dressing up now. Ara is here, and she started cleaning already," Jimin said. It took a bit to convince her as her body was so exhausted from the night before, but she still got up. When she fixed herself and came out of the bathroom an hour later, Jimin smiled and gently grabbed her by the hand.

"I can't wait until we get married," he said, kissing her forehead gently. He was indeed so in love that he wanted to spend every single moment with her.

Eunha smirked and replied, "In three months, don't worry."

Three months. Jimin didn't want to wait three months. He wanted now. Even though Eunha was his fiancée, he didn't feel like they were really a couple. He felt like that stage of engagement was growing them apart instead of pulling them together. It was a weird sensation that he felt, but he tried to shrug it off because his wedding was just around the corner and he was excited.

A while later, both Eunha and Jimin were at work as Ara was cleaning and organizing the house—which was a terrible mess. When cleaning Jimin's room, she had to once again pick up something she found truly disgusting. She grabbed gloves and kneeled down to reach for the used condom. Before she could even get a hold of it, she heard a voice behind her.

"You must be the maid," the voice said. Ara turned around in complete shock. A man was standing right in front of her, smiling at her and creeping her out. He didn't look like a thief, neither dressed like one, but she was still freaking out. There was no one at home. No one was supposed to be home. The doors were closed, the main and the back entrance, so there was no way that anyone could have gotten in. Unless, of course, they had a key.

"Wait! I won't hurt you. Sorry for not knocking. I'm Jeon Jungkook, one of Jimin's friends." He smiled as he extended his hand politely to reach for hers. "He gave me a key to come in a few days ago because I needed to pick up some of my clothes that I left here when I slept over. I was going to return it to him, but I can't find him anywhere."

Clothes? That was when Ara tried to put the clues together. The shirts she had found in the guest bedroom were too big to fit Jimin and they actually looked like Jungkook's size, but she still wasn't sure. Something wasn't making sense. He said he had to pick up his clothes a few days ago, and that he was going to return the keys now, meaning that he had already picked up his belongings. That wasn't making sense to Ara, since the shirts were still there. That was when she tried to erase those thoughts from her head once again, just because she knew it wasn't her place to be in. Mainly because she didn't want it to be her place to be in.

Ara, still shaking, used his help to stand up as he kept smiling, which was a big comfort to her. Jungkook looked at the messy room, but he wasn't surprised one bit. He knew how his friend was and he knew how his fiancée was, which wasn't something he wanted to know. He had witnessed Eunha doing questionable things multiple times, but when he warned Jimin, he would just shake his head and walk away from the conversation as if Jungkook were making it all up. Regardless of Jimin's obsession with Eunha, Jungkook couldn't leave his side. He knew that one day—he expected that one day—his friend would open his eyes to the horrors that his fiancée was doing behind his back.

"Cute," he whispered under his breath as Ara picked up the condom again in order to throw it away, again, in pure disgust. Once Ara finished, she walked back to the guy she had just met. He grabbed her hand and gave her the key that he used to get into the house.

"I don't want to come here and see Eunha fucking. I just refuse to witness that again." He chuckled, making nothing out of the situation as Ara smiled. She didn't know Jungkook at all, but he seemed too nice to just avoid him. All she did was smile at him without saying much as she showed him the way back to the main living room, which he already knew.

"You know, I think we should be friends," he said, following her down the stairs. "You seem like a nice person. Plus, I think you understood what I meant by my earlier statement. You've certainly witnessed something, too. I get it, it's traumatizing."

Ara stayed silent. That whole 'Eunha fucking' statement meant more than what it was. It never mentioned Jimin and Eunha, it was just her. It meant only one thing. Eunha was fucking in Jimin's house—without him.

"I'd rather not talk about it," Ara answered. She was truly unsure about the guy who randomly walked inside another person's house and acted so chill, but he seemed comfortingly nice. That was when he walked over to a separate room, which was Jimin's office, and came back with a sticky note in his hand.

"Here. Byun Ara, right?" he asked as he grabbed her hand and placed the sticky note there. "Call me, text me. I'll answer."

Shortly after Jungkook's brief visit, Jimin and Eunha returned home. The ambiance was calm. Both of them were doing their own things—whether it was Jimin working in his secluded office or Eunha painting her nails on the white couch. Ara was done with her work and was on her way out when Eunha called after her.

"Before you leave, make me a cocktail," she said as she typed on her phone. Ara's blood boiled at that instant since she was so close to leaving, but she still did it. And once again, no thank you.

Finally, once she was leaving the house, she called Minji to pick her up. Minji didn't do it, though. She was so busy with Seoyoon that she couldn't pass by to pick Ara up. Ara thought she had no other ride until she placed her hand in her pocket only to find a sticky note there.

"So, Jeon Jungkook. We may become friends after all."

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