21

She immediately wears her jacket and hugs herself.

"Ah..." she even fakes a laugh. "You're early. I...I haven't gotten r—ready yet..."

Flustered, I glare at the servant beside me.

"What is happening here?" I ask firmly.

The servant flinches and steps back.

"I...I d—don't know. I am just doing my job..."

"You may leave us...alone. Serra, please..." Seulgi interrupts.

Biting my lip, I head inside even though I want to scold him for being useless to his master.

"Miss, I will be waiting outside," Rizza declares and closes the door.

The room feels stuffy and the three of us are quiet.

Those bruises... They don't look like those from an accident. It's like...she's being abused!

"Seulgi, what happened to you?" I ask after a few moments of thinking.

"It's...nothing..." she mumbles.

"Are you being harrased?" Nana bluntly asks beside me.

She... Ahh...of course. She's always been that straight-forward. I can't help but face palm myself.

Nana gets closer to her and Seulgi steps back only to fall seated on a chair.

"Hmm...it's obvious. Someone's treating you badly so why are you denying it? By the way, my name's Im Nana and I'm Serra's friend," she says as if the atmosphere's just fine.

Ugh. Nana, you really are one...nevermind.

I sigh before hugging Seulgi.

"Tell me what happened to you. Please, I'm worried," I honestly say and she just starts to cry.

I have no clue but Nana immediately locks the door and pulls the curtain down. It's as if she's hiding us from the people outside. "Come on. You can speak now. You're safe here," she says arrogantly.

I was about to shush her when Seulgi started to utter words. From short stutters, she managed to give us the reason behind her wounds.

It turns out that her step-mother has been abusing her all this time even though she only got here this year. Seulgi said that that woman found out about her secrets and she used it to threaten her. On some days, she'd also come and hurt Seulgi because Seulgi's the reason why up until now, her father hasn't given her step-mom any shares in his businesses.

"Well, that sucks," Nana comments. "So what's that secret anyway?"

I really have to hold my patience until I go home and part ways with Nana today.

Seulgi peeks at us before looking down.

"No, it's fine. You don't have to force yourself to tell us—" I try to say when she shakes her head.

"I...I've been...molested by...my uncle...before and...and t—that woman said...that she'll tell my father about...how much of a slut I am. She also knows...that I had a crush on this b—boy who's the son of a competitor. I was...I was deceived and accidentally shared some trade secrets of...our company..." she confesses while sobbing.

What?! Her uncle...molested her?

"You had a crush at a young age?" Nana asks out of all that she revealed.

"H—Huh?" Seulgi asks, a bit confused. After a few more sobbing, she nods. "Yes, I had..."

I turn to her and she winks at me, still remaining her calm demeanor.

What...oh! Why didn't I realize earlier that she's trying to cheer Seulgi by acting like everything's alright? She's been turning the mood a little less horrible for Seulgi's sake. Nana knows how embarrassed and flustered Seulgi must be right now and here I am...

This won't do.

"You know what? I can't accept this. I know you want to keep this to yourself but...this is wrong. Your secrets are nightmares. They're nothing close to secrets because secrets should be treasured. Those nightmares may be hard to reveal but keeping them in will cause you a lot more pain," I say.

I know because I suffered from nightmares. Even this body's previous owner suffered too.

I give her a reassuring smile. That made her shake and hide her face. Gently, I remove her hands and caress her cheeks.

"Don't worry. We will be here."

"Yeah whatever. We'll be right behind you if Serra says so?" Nana comments.

I smile and pull her up. "Now first, we should teach someone a lesson."

My life in this world has always been lovely for me that I almost forgot what I experienced in my past life. I was also abused and humiliated...but never to this extent.

Therefore, I've been really thankful for having people who cares for me here but I didn't know that some of them are experiencing hell away from me.

I won't let Seulgi be like this anymore. She's a nice friend and she's still young. I will stop this nonsense violent act towards her.

Rizza seems clueless when we left the room while marching towards somewhere.

"Miss?" she asks but I didn't say a word so she just follows behind us three.

This house is big but fortunately, we encountered a servant while walking through the hallways.

"Where does the mistress of this house stay?" I ask seriously and the servant backs away.

"Eh?! Young miss? The m—mistress?"

The servant looks devastated. He's probably thinking about three things as of the moment: who are we, why are we looking for the mistress, and how can he make us go away.

"We're Seulgi's friend and we just want to meet her 'mom'. It's our first time here and we actually have 'gifts' for her mom," I say.

We don't.

He switches his gaze from us to Seulgi. I feel her squirm in my hands but I just tighten my grip more. The servant does this a lot of times before sighing in defeat and guiding us.

After a few minutes, we stand in front of a plain-looking door. The servant bows before scurrying away. How rude... He didn't even open the door for us. Tsk!

Based on Seulgi's story, her father mostly stays in his office and the living room. And since there's a lot of rooms in this house, it's hard to see each other's face often. That's probably one of the reasons how that mistress was able to beat Seulgi freely.

"What are you doing, Serra? Let's smash that door open," Nana suggests.

I look at her in disbelief. "That's too unsophisticated. Let's show her manners that she doesn't have," I reply.

Not that we can anyways. We're still too small to be able to do that kind of stunt.

"Then why don't we knock once before smashing the door open?" she sarcastically replies.

What do I expect from her?

Sighing, I glance at Rizza and thankfully she's quick to follow. As expected from he—

Without a word, she kicks the door as hard as she can.

Uhm...nevermind.

"Kyaa! W—hat?! Who are you?! H—How dare you get in here?!" the mad woman asks, startled.

It appears that she's...apparently busy...with a man. Realizing that, Rizza tries to cover the undignified scene in front of us. She only moves aside when that woman had already fixed herself. She's now wearing a robe while the man is hiding under the blanket.

The mad woman then slams the table and throws some things at us that Rizza easily handled.

"Y—You bitch! Why are you here?! And...Seulgi?! Seulgi, you brat! Damn it! Get out of here this instant! You better hide after this! I swear I'll make you pay—"

I grit my teeth in annoyance.

"Hey... How dare a mere mistress treat the daughter of this house like a bug?" I ask.

"M—Mistress? Me?!" she absurdly replies.

"Who else here seduced Mr. Min other than you, auntie?" Nana comments with a bright look.

That made the woman run to us, a hard object in her hand. "You... You fucking brats!"

On her attempt to hurt us, Rizza stands to confront her. Everything happened so fast that I just see her now lying on the ground while being stepped on by Rizza.

That looks painful...

"Get away from me! Ah! You will pay for this! You're just a maid so how dare you humiliate me?! Shit! Seulgi! Ugh!" the woman screams.

It's probably loud enough...that Mr. Min heard it.

"Whoa. She was doing that with the owner of the house present? The audacity..." Nana whispers in my ear.

"What is happening here? Mira?!"

We all turn to look at Mr. Min who's assisted by his servants. He looks at us and then at his mistress.

"S—Seulgi, what is this? Mira why... Ms. Kim Serra?!"

I feel Seulgi squirm even more to hide behind Nana and me.

"D—Darling! They just entered without permission and...and this maid just attacked me!" she lies.

I was planning to object but to her dismay, Mr. Min goes to comfort Seulgi instead. He hugs her tightly and lovingly.

"Darling?"

"Enough. I've had enough of your lies. I...already know the truth. How could you do all of those...horrible things...to my daughter?" he asks in a trembling voice.

Eh? But how? Seulgi only told us and no one was in the room other than the three of us. And based from Seulgi's story, her father was supposedly clueless so how—huh? That boy...

There's this boy behind the two servants of Mr. Min. The three of them are standing outside the room but he doesn't look like he works here.

Suddenly, his eyes land on me and it made me shiver. I gulp but he then turns away to leave.

"W—Wait..." I mumble before running outside to see no one on the hallway. "It...can't be... Julian?"

~*~