sixteen

"You're kidding, right?"

"Nope."

We were standing in front of his parents' house, him with a smile on his face and I with a look of shock. Kiyoshi 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."

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

"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. Kiyoshi turned around and nodded.

"You're supposed to help me get out of an engagement, remember?" He smiled again, "It'll be fine, Ren. I promise you 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 Kiyoshi's girlfriend, huh?" 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 smile. She ignored it and scoffed. I heard Kiyoshi take 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.

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

"I knew you'd say that," Kiyoshi said. "You always say that, always tell me what's good for me and what isn't."

"Of course," his mother spoke. "We only want what's best for you, and that's marrying Haemin."

"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 break. His father opened her 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."

I didn't know how much more of this I could, and I didn't want to find out. I stood up from the table and said, "Do you have absolutely no manners?"

"Ren, what are y—"

I cut Kiyoshi 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. Is this how you greet your guests?"

Kiyoshi's mother stared at me with a look of disbelief, then scoffed. "Who are you to say such words?" she asked. "You're nothing but a teenager."

"That 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?!"

"Sit do—"

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

So 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 smiled to myself, not bad.