Lahat ng Kabanata ng The Second Lead Us - Let's Destroy Their Love: Kabanata 1 - Kabanata 10

The rest of the morning passed in a blur. Not the soft, forgettable kind—the kind where every sound was amplified, every second stretched. The scrape of a chair behind her. The rustle of papers. The low murmur of his voice as David introduced him to other team members. Each noise made Yerin’s shoulders tighten, her spine stiffen. She didn’t turn around once. Her eyes stayed locked on her screen, but the numbers blurred into meaningless shapes.He’s here. Elliot Nam is twenty feet away.The thought looped in her head like a mantra she couldn’t stop.At 11:17, it got worse. David’s assistant appeared with a Facilities worker pushing a cart. They stopped at the empty desk. The one directly to Yerin’s right, separated only by a low partition. Her stomach dropped. That desk had been vacant for six months. It was her buffer zone, her sanctum of silence. She watched, paralyzed, as they set down a monitor, a keyboard, a phone. They were building a workstation. For him.Then Elliot rounded the

A week after that evening in the office—after she’d pressed her hand to her chest and admitted she’d let him in too deep—Yerin threw herself back into order. She came early, left late, and kept her answers to Elliot clipped and professional. The distance was necessary. She was resetting.Elliot, however, seemed not to notice. Or perhaps he chose not to.He appeared at her desk one morning, two empty coffee cups in hand. “There’s a café a few blocks over,” he said. “Better than anything in the building. You should come.”She didn’t look up from her screen. “No, thank you.”“You sure? They make a pretty good Americano.”“I’m fine.” Her tone was final.He paused, then nodded. “Okay. Maybe next time.”He left. Yerin stared at her monitor, her jaw tight. Good, she told herself. That’s how it should be.Twenty minutes later, she was walking past that same café on her way back from a supply run. Through the window, she saw Elliot sitting alone at a small table, a cup in front of him, scrolli

The numbers on Yerin’s screen bled into grey, meaningless static. For twenty minutes, her fingers had remained suspended over the keyboard. The only movement was the slow, methodical tap of her index finger on the desk—a tiny, frantic heartbeat of anxiety.Her entire being was tuned to the man in the cubicle next to hers. Elliot hadn’t moved in an hour. He was a statue of quiet anguish, staring blankly at his monitor. The frantic jiggle of his leg under the desk sent vibrations through the thin carpet and up the leg of Yerin’s desk. When his gaze accidentally snagged on hers, he offered a quick, brittle smile that shattered almost before it formed.He was trapped. Paralyzed by the ghost of Hazel Han and the fear of getting hurt again. And Yerin was trapped with him, a captive audience to a tragedy where she played the supporting role destined for heartbreak.The logical part of her screamed to disengage. To put on her headphones, bury herself in work, and protect the fragile thing in

The bathroom was a small, tiled oasis of cold silence. Yerin gripped the edges of the porcelain sink, her knuckles bleaching white under the strain. The harsh fluorescent light overhead made her reflection look gaunt and pale. Her dark eyes, usually a placid lake, now churned with longing, guilt, a deep, aching frustration.Move on. You have to move on.The command was useless. It was drowned out by the memory of Elliot's laugh from minutes before, a warm, rich sound that pulled her right back under. Every casual smile, every lingering glance was a hook in her skin.She squeezed her eyes shut, taking a deep, shaky breath. The din of the restaurant—the clatter of bowls, the rise and fall of laughter—seeped under the door. A reminder of the performance she had to return to.The door swung open. Yerin's eyes snapped open in the mirror.Hazel stood there, her expression shifting from surprise to concern. "Yerin? You okay in here?"Yerin dropped her hands from the sink, forcing her posture

The office had emptied hours ago. Yerin sat alone in the blue glow of her monitor, the silence pressing in from all sides. She'd told herself she was catching up on reports, but the truth was simpler: she didn't want to go home. Home was where the silence was louder, where her thoughts circled endlessly around the image of Jayden's knowing smirk and the casual way he'd dismantled her defenses.The Henderson project had brought him into their building for the duration of the contract. He had an office on the third floor now, a temporary workspace that gave him unlimited access to her floor, her cubicle, her life. It was excruciating. It was also, she suspected, entirely by design.She rubbed her eyes, the numbers on her screen blurring into grey streaks. The Henderson projection was finished for today. There was no reason to stay.She gathered her bag, switched off her desk lamp, and walked toward the elevator. The building was a ghost of its daytime self—hallways empty, lights dimmed