Love is a bizarre concept. Strings tangled and pulled left and right in mysterious ways. Love is like a Rubik's Cube, a puzzle that requires talent to be solved. You knew that. Would testify to how difficult it is to match the colors. You had a palette of four colors, and they were all tied together by a strong connection and a fucked up fate. If there were picks, you would say you were dealt the worst hand ever. If it were a deck of cards, you would say that gambling had something against you. You would go broke from the bets you didn't even personally place on such a botched game. That was all your luck. And that should say a lot.

There was always this huge skeleton under your bed in the form of your dubious past and your shady business, but when the shit hits the fan, it just gets flung everywhere, staining walls, furniture and people. It's never enough when it comes to luck. You knew that as well as you knew you were a bad gambler. What you didn't know, however, was that the consistency of the shit that had hit your fan was pretty lousy, almost runny. The diarrhea of fate.

But you didn't stay clueless for that long. You had Seokjin to turn on the fan to show you just how messy the whole situation was. In addition to the hot shit soiling the fan, which was already stinky and hard to remove thanks to Taehyung's unforgivable crime, you learned the whole truth about the nature of your friendship with Bella, your husband's little sister.

Your friendship with Bella began long before you met Jungkook. You would even say that sometimes you felt closer to her than Taehyung, the man you considered like a brother. Hell, you thought of her as a sister. Your pretty, doe-eyed little sister with the wide smile and sunny disposition. You confided in her, cried on her shoulder when the whole concept of life became unbearable. She comforted you because she was always a good listener — bless her heart. You did the same in return. When she told you one night that she wanted to see more of life, to experience and dive and fall and stand on her own two feet, you gave her that freedom, even as you stayed in the background, watching her closely to make sure you could be by her side if she needed help. You took your rusty car and traveled around to realize the dream she told you about whenever you drank more than one bottle of soju and decided you had a penchant for astronomy and stargazing. She wanted to travel the country in the old American style. No hotel rooms, no comfort. Just a car and a few shirts to change into. You'd sleep in the parking lots of gas stations. Would shower in the restrooms there and dry your hair under the hand dryer, not giving a fuck about the people using the facilities with you.

Fuck, fuck, fuck! How could you have been so blind? Why did not you see the situation for what it was?

But then again, what was there to notice? She never said a word. Sure, she stood by your side, but that's friendship, right? A beautiful friendship that extended to Taehyung over time, and god, you wished you'd never introduced the two of them. It could have remained as innocent a friendship as it started. A girlhood bond born of feminist camaraderie within the walls of a dimly lit nightclub. You had just been dumped by your good-for-nothing boyfriend, and she was the stranger who kissed it better and gave you reasons to smile along with the numerous tequila shots.

Bella never judged you for your no-show parents. Never judged you even when she found out what kind of job you conducted. She was that kind of person, carefree and happy and so alive until you came into her life. Such a pity, really. Some encounters really are deadly poisonous — pardon the pun.

There was one part you couldn't blame Taehyung for: Bella's first encounter with drugs. That was all your fault. Your very wrong move along with the many that followed suit. It was when you came clean about your side gig. You had taken her into your lab and showed her the darkness you never let anyone else see. You weren't a user, but every chef has to taste their recipe, and once she caught you doing it, she asked for a taste to give honest feedback. But while you made her promise that it would be a one-time event, Taehyung made sure it would be a repeat event, what about partying and having fun and that life was so short to give a fuck.

That was the point where it all went down to hell. Fights became frequent when she claimed she wasn't using only to catch her red-handed. You blamed yourself about it, because you were the one who brought a ray of sunshine into the darkness, but really you should have cured the cancer in your home. The more you lifted her to the surface, the more eagerly Taehyung grabbed her ankle and pulled her right back.

Why? The question of the century. Might need Einstein to decode it for you. But the answer was really simple when her death came to light along with the truth about her identity. He wanted her, fucking loved her, he would claim, and the only way to get her was to tie her to the magic potion he'd concocted as a nine-to-five.

Told you, love is a fucked up concept, often romanticized by lonely people with a pen, a few sheets of paper, and a talent for twisting words and turning them into feelings that make you giggle and squirm when you read them.

You blamed Taehyung for everything, but were you any different? You were doing the exact same thing, and to honor irony, you were doing it to her brother, no less. Granted, the methods were different, but the result was pretty much the same. Taehyung used drugs to keep Bella by his side, and you used lies and a plethora of secrets to keep Jungkook by your side, only now your lies were catching up to you.

"What's going on between you and Kim Seokjin, Cassandra?"

Bella loved you. Sure, you were blind to that love. You never really felt it in the way that she did, but you knew that Jungkook loved you. You loved him too and that's the fucking issue at hand. You wouldn't let him go even if you knew you were not good for him. You wouldn't let him go even if you had to add to the pile of lies and secrets. You wouldn't let him go, even if he was now doubting and hurt and pushed to extremes that you were sure you had led him to.

The blow he dealt you straightened your posture, but did little for your brain. You stood frozen, robbed of words and breaths. You hadn't expected such a question. Hell, you hadn't expected that name to come out of his mouth. Kim Seokjin. How the hell did he know his name? Were you finally at the tipping point of truth, you wondered. Was this the moment when every one of your secrets would come to light, you feared.

"Are you keeping tabs on my friends now?" But of course, you wouldn't surrender. One lie after another. Diversion after diversion. That was the protocol and you weren't going to change it now. No. Now there was so much to lose and so little to gain.

Now you had a husband to protect. Not just from you, but from your world too.

"A friend, you say." Jungkook ran his fingers through his dark mane. He mused a little, but you were sure he wasn't buying what you had to sell. "Now you have friends that I, your husband, know nothing about. Interesting. What else I'm unaware of, Cassandra?"

Cassandra. No more Cass. No more baby. Just your name, and fuck, how ugly it sounded right now. An insult, if you dare make the comparison. A punch in the gut. Your head throbbed to the rhythm of your erratic heartbeat. Sweat ran down your back, cold and disgusting, sticking to your skin like an overworking glue desperately trying to stick your lies to his head, to make him believe them.

"You had a sister that I, your wife, knew nothing about. Is it so bad that I have friends? Is it so bad that you don't know about them?"

Jungkook took his time to think about your answer, rummaged in his pocket and took out a cigarette, which he lit in your bedroom. A fucking cigarette. Your husband started smoking and you were so engrossed in your double life that you did not notice. Just how fucked up this relationship had become. He inhaled a hearty drag and exhaled a cloudy puff that obscured his face for a split second, and you hated that you couldn't see his face, even if it was only for counted seconds when he started to speak.

"Indeed, it's not bad. I just find it interesting that you didn't mention your friend, even though he sent a huge wreath to our wedding with his name emblazoned on it." He narrowed the distance between you, stubbed out his cigarette on your vanity, leaving a burnt spot, and looked straight into your soul through your eyes that became the size of saucers. "You have indeed made it clear that no one from your side knew about our marriage. You, my wife, let a single tear roll down your face when you saw the wreaths, and when I had kissed that tear away, you said it was rather pathetic that not a single wreath was sent to you on your big day. Your words, not mine. So please enlighten me as to when this friendship with our family best friend began, Cassandra; I'm pretty curious, you see."

See, love is complicated because people are complicated, dishonest creatures. Love could be so simple if people didn't take it upon themselves to avenge the lack of reciprocity.

The second punch Jungkook landed was an outright knockout. If you were robbed of your words before, now your vocabulary was empty. Endless pages with no definitions. Your eyes looked at him, but your gaze was blank. Bleak. The silence was deafening as your brain struggled to pull an explanation out of Liesville. What were you even supposed to say? Seokjin had sent a wreath to your wedding and you had failed to notice, so engrossed in the happiness you'd built on lies and secrets. So high in the semblance of normalcy that you had missed such a monumental detail. And what was worse was that he was always lurking in the shadows of both your lives — the dark one and the shiny one.

"I didn't know he was friends with your family," you heard yourself say, "it's not as if I know all your family connections. After all, you had a sister I didn't know about, what's a friend compared to that?" Low, even for you. So fucking low and pathetic that you were using the one secret he kept from you as justification for the giant iceberg that was your secrets.

The only secret you knew about, that is. For now.

Jungkook took a few steps back, giving you space to breathe fresh air that was not tainted by his cologne and the musky scent of male and sex. But his gaze refused to give you the same kind of space. It was relentless. Demanding truths and accusing of lies. "Fair enough," he offered in a low tenor, "let's invite him to dinner tomorrow. He's no stranger. After all, he's our only mutual friend."

No, no, no! This can't be real. You didn't want Seokjin anywhere near Jungkook. Hell, you kept that hideous job of yours, the bane of your existence, to keep Seokjin as far away from Jungkook as possible. But did you really succeed? Seokjin was very close to him, keeping a leash around your neck in a way you hadn't considered. You looked around the room as if the walls would help ease your way out of this curse. Breaths became so shallow that you suspected your husband's bullshit detector had picked up the signal. Big brain time for big thinking had arrived and the stopwatch began to count down the seconds of your silence.

"We're not that close, but if you want to invite him as your friend, go ahead. I will close the library early to prepare dinner."

Simple lies were sometimes the quickest way to avoid doom. Now they proved their efficiency as Jungkook graced you with his dimpled smile. He turned towards the bed and gathered his vest, seemingly done with this conversation and to a certain point convinced and ready to leave the whole topic behind. You let out a deep breath as he reached the door and opened it, but it was soon caught in your throat when he turned and struck the final punch.

"Uh, I almost forgot. You're close enough to hug and spend hours in his company, but not close enough to invite him over for dinner? I will need you to check out the definition of closeness, Cassandra, and by tomorrow I will be asking you about it. I suggest you think carefully and do your homework properly. Good night, wife. Don't wait for me; I am going to spend some time with my friend."