Chapter Nineteen – The Secret Breaks
It had been weeks since Joon-Ho vanished from campus.
At first, Amara tried not to care. She told herself she shouldn’t. He was the one who ignored her, the one who kept pulling away whenever she reached for him. Still, every time she walked past the library or sat in lecture, her chest tightened with a hollow ache she couldn’t shake.
Why did he disappear like that?
She hated that she still thought of him—how his voice lingered in her memory, how the heat of that night at the party still burned in her skin if she let herself remember too much.
But no matter how much she tried to bury it, Joon-Ho’s absence left a mark she couldn’t ignore.
It was on an ordinary morning, the kind where students dragged themselves to class with half-open eyes, when the silence broke.
“Guys, look at this!” Ji-Hoon, one of their classmates, came rushing into the study hall, waving his phone like a trophy. His voice carried through the room, sharp with excitement. “You won’t believe it—Joon-Ho is in the news!”
That name froze Amara instantly. Her head shot up before she could stop herself.
The students crowded around Ji-Hoon’s phone. Loud gasps and murmurs erupted almost at once.
“No way—he’s the heir to Daehan Group?”
“You mean that Daehan? One of the biggest conglomerates in Korea?”
“Unbelievable… He was sitting here like one of us all along?”
Amara’s pulse quickened. She pushed through the crowd just enough to see the screen.
Her breath caught.
There, on the headline, was his face. Joon-Ho, dressed in a flawless black suit, standing beside two elegant figures she instantly guessed were his parents. The caption read:
“Daehan Group Officially Introduces Future Successor: Lee Joon-Ho.”
The picture hit her like a punch to the stomach. He looked so different—polished, untouchable. The boy she knew at university had always carried himself with quiet confidence, but this version of him radiated something else entirely. Power. Authority. Distance.
Around her, the chatter grew louder.
“No wonder he was always so mysterious.”
“Man, I feel stupid. He sat right next to me in class.”
“Can you imagine dating someone like him?”
Amara’s roommate turned to her, eyes wide with disbelief. “Amara… you—you were close with him. Did you know?”
Her throat tightened. She forced her voice out, low and steady. “No. I didn’t know anything.”
And that was the truth.
She didn’t know. He hadn’t told her.
Instead, he’d left her confused and hurt, wondering why he shut her out. And now this—this secret life revealed to the entire world while she stood here like a fool, realizing she never really knew him at all.
Anger rose sharp and hot in her chest, mixing with the ache she already carried. She clenched her fists under the table, trying to hold herself together while everyone around her buzzed with shock and fascination.
But beneath the anger, beneath the sting of betrayal, a single thought pulsed relentlessly in her mind.
Joon-Ho… why didn’t you tell me?
