41. THE OVERDUE APOLOGY

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ACT SEVEN SCENE TWO

THE OVERDUE APOLOGY

third person

PERSPECTIVE

TWO WEEKS LATER.

NORMANI GLANCES AT HER CAMERA, it was a picture of Luca. She smiles brightly at the picture she took, it was the perfect way to blackmail the billionaire bad boys club member. His bruised body was a perfect image for the media to eat up. His stocks will fall, she will create the perfect scandal to taint a certain someone's name.

Why? What's her purpose you ask? Because she wanted to destroy Jumin Xu. And to destroy a man like that, you needed to destroy everything that protected him.

She smirks.

Game over.

She edits the article, making it sound as misleading as possible. BILLIONAIRE LUCA VALDEZ HOSPITALISED BECAUSE OF BRUTAL ARGUMENT WITH FELLOW MEMBER JUMIN XU. She smugly glances at the pictures she took of Jumin, he was in the same exact place at the right time. This was the perfect way to damage his perfect image and the most credible way for avenging herself.

"Hm, should I include how he bullied me. I do have the voice recordings from that day he said he'd bankrupt my fathers company, or would that be too mean?" she says to herself, grinning widely. "Actually who am I kidding, he deserves it, it's a good thing I kept an extra voice recorder that day he caught me taking tape recording of Luca and Helius."

She edits the voice recording to make it sound like Jumin was threatening her for no reason and adds all the links to the crash of her father's laundry company. She makes sure to attach documents that showed her father only owned 2% of the company as Jumin owned 98%.

"Father is so stupid, his fault for owning such a stupid company. Jumin would've never spoken down to me if father simply owned a better company. Oh well, what's done is done, after this Jumin should be ruined." she clicks post, Jumin truly messed with the wrong person.

In the matter of seconds the article had already 200 shares. Normani stretches her arms out, yawning. She spent hours trying to make Jumin seem like a bad guy. But her hard effort finally paid off because there's a lot of horrible comments slandering the billionaire bad boys club member.

"Now what? Should I expose Jumin's secret?" she murmurs, laughing at the comments. "Or should I expose Helius for placing his father in a coma?"

"Or maybe neither?"

Normani jumps at the sound of the sudden male voice.

"Asher?" she exclaims, jumping up from her desk. How did he get inside her house.

"Normani! Your friend Asher came over, make sure you give him some snacks, I'm going off to work!" her father Jeff explains, making his way out of his house.

Asher takes a few steps towards Normani, she takes a few steps back, her back slamming against the wall.

"It must excite you, watching others fall." he says, taking a seat on her desk, crossing his arms.

Normani raises her eyebrows. "You should know how that feels too."

"How so?"

"You wanted Luca to fall."

Asher clenches his jaw but Normani continued to speak, further pulling his nerves. "You wanted to take Sahar away from him, you wanted to be the leader of the billionaire bad boys club and wanted the monumental fame that came with it as you stole everything he has ever worked for. I'm starting to think you have imposter syndrome, Asher."

He walks towards her, slamming her on to the wall. Grabbing her chin and forcing her to look him in his eyes. "Don't provoke me, you know best not to." he says harshly, his mind was filled with guilt.

Normani smiles. "You know it too Asher, you want everything Luca has, so why don't you just take it?"

"You're wrong."

"No, I'm pretty sure I'm right, I can see it in your eyes. All that envy, you look exhausted of being his little dog. It's always you doing everything for him since he's the leader of that stupid club." Asher flinches at the word stupid.

"And now he's taking the girl you like, he's basically taking everything from you."

"Shut up."

"And let me guess what's next, he may even betray you later on, what if he kicks you out of your little club? What will you do then? Still listen to him?" Normani laughs, she enjoyed seeing him get worked up.

"He won't betray me."

Normani nears closer to his face. "Come on Asher, just trust me."

Asher jolts back, disgusted of the girl in front of him. "I don't need you to tell me anything, you're just a leech wanting power. Just tell me how much money you want and delete the article on Jumin."

"Oh now we're talking."

"Hurry up."

She grabs Asher's shirt. "It's not money I want Asher."

Asher raises his eyebrows.

"I want you to bring Jumin to me and make him bow in front of me and apologise for what he did to me."

"He'd never do that."

"Make him do it." Normani snaps, clenching her jaw. She was sick and tired of thinking about how Jumin mindlessly ruined her life in the matter of moments. She wanted him to beg for her forgiveness.

"How about I pay you 10 million dollars?"

Normani gulps. That was a lot of money, her father was working day and night to earn back what he had lost from Jumin. She just wanted things to go back to normal, she truly missed her old life but Jumin had ruined everything for her just because she was eavesdropping on a conversation for the gossip club in Devon Academy.

All those tapes and documents weren't even made by Normani but made by members of the gossip club who simply fabricated stories for fun.

But she never thought once to even realise if those tapes were true. Deep down inside her gut was telling her they were never true but just simple misunderstandings.

"I-Could you just let me speak to Jumin about this, I want him to repay me not you, after all, he's the one who ruined my life in the first place." she mumbles, not meeting his eyes.

"Fine, just delete the article and write another one stating you lied."

"I guess I could do that." she says, glancing at the computer screen.

"You will get a call from him soon, from now it's your choice to finally back down and stop whatever nonsense you're doing and graduate this school like a normal person." and with those words, Asher leaves Normani alone to drown in her own guilt.

Stupid.

She takes a seat in front of her desk, deleting the article she spent hours on. She opens up another document, only to begin writing on a new article, apologising for the fabrication and accepting the consequences for lying. Perhaps it was the best way to end this, after all, Jumin was the only person to blame not all the others.

Her eyes fall on the photo frame on her desk.

Sahar, her and Solar. The friendship that was never supposed to break. Normani smiles sadly, I hope the both of you forgive me, it's my fault, I let my anger get the best of me and ruined everything.

Tears cascade her pretty face. "I feel awful." she whispers, leaning on her desk.

Her phone suddenly rings.

She picks it up immediately.

"Hello."

"Come outside." it was him. Jumin. The boy who ruined her life.

She doesn't respond.

"Hurry up, I don't have all day."

The line goes dead.

Normani sighs deeply. She wipes the tears from her face and walks towards her door, how did he even come so quickly?

She opens the front door, only to find him standing in front of her with his expensive sunglasses on paired with his black leather jacket. She forgot how handsome he was, before he forced her out of school, he was her crush since junior year of high school.

"Take it." he hands her a cheque. She motionlessly glances at the numbers on the check, 100 million, 90 million more than what Asher offered. She daringly looks up to face Jumin, her heart churning, she hated him, right?

"I hate you." she whispers, her voice breaking. She wanted to cry, he ruined her life, his actions lead her to losing her friends — he drove her insane. Her former crush, her now enemy.

"Good." he mumbles, shoving his hands into his pockets. Glancing at her face, his gaze was lingering longer than usual.

"Why did you do it?" she murmurs.

Jumin doesn't respond.

Normani chuckles lifelessly. "You've never done it to anyone before, why did it have to be me? Why did you kick me out of the school for one minor mistake?"

"Because..." he hesitates for a few seconds. "I just felt like it."

"Oh." she mumbles, glancing at the cheque. "Take it back." she places her hand forward.

Jumin takes of his sunglasses, his eyes flashing with annoyance. "Why?"

"I don't want your pity, your money will make me feel worse. After all, you ruined my life and I don't want you fixing it for me, Xu." her words were bitter and harsh, causing the boy in front of her to sigh.

"Wow, you really keep surprising me."

Normani smiles bitterly, ripping the cheque into pieces. "In the end, all I wanted was an apology for the way you treated me and my father, you took everything my father worked hard for just because I didn't agree with something you did."

"It's fine if you don't apologise anyways, I'm tired of seeing your face, it's frustrating that things had to be this way. Just leave me alone and we'll be okay." just as Normani makes her way to go back inside, Jumin stops her.

"I'm sorry."

She freezes.

"I shouldn't have done what I did, I was afraid you knew something about my sister, after all, my sister is my world." he says, his words were slowly melting the ice around her heart. "You know how it feels right, your family, you want to protect them with everything you have."

"I will return everything back to normal, I never used a single amount of your fathers profit from his company, I handed it to a professional to manage to accumulate more money in the long term — I think he'd be happy to hear the amount of money it generated."

Normani didn't want to believe it. That the boy in front of her was admitting to his mistakes, she was supposed to hate him for what he did, why is she not angry anymore?

"But a lot of people knew, why did you want to attack me only? Why did it have to be me who took the fall?" she questions, her mind was going crazy, why did he choose her out of all people to harm?

Jumin places his sunglasses back on. "You don't need to know that." he murmurs, making his way towards his cars, trying his best to ignore the beautiful girl in front of him.

"I-I still hate you." she yells, he knew she wasn't telling the truth.

"Well I still like you." he whispers, taking a seat inside of his car. He watches as she enters her house safely, she slams the door shut, it was for her own good — to never like him the way he likes her.

—

jumin likes normani, well he has for a while — plot twist i guess! there will be more chapters! this is kind of a filler to place an end to normani's revenge.

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