Page 28 of A Lab Rat’s Guide to Fated Love

“I need to finish packing,” she said softly. “I’m sorry, Sunny. I’ll call you when I reach there. I promise.”

“You promise?” Sunny laughed, raking a hand through his hair. “Don’t you remember how we fell for each other right away? We’re soulmates, Nori. Are you going to throw us away for a mere science project?”

“Sunny… ”

“You can have your lab right here. I’ll help you. I’ll even invest whatever amount you need. We’ll make your project successful. Together.”

Nori swallowed against the lump in her throat, glancing around the room at her partially packed boxes of things. Last evening’s argument aside, he’d always been so sincere, and so good to her…

“I was really stressed out from work yesterday and got carried away,” Sunny whispered. “But you were mean, too. You can’t ignore that. You know I can’t imagine being away from you for a single day. And I know you can’t either.”

“Let me think about it,” Nori said, her temples beginning to throb. “I’ll be back next weekend. We can talk then.”

“Let’s not wait till fall,” Sunny said, ignoring her. “I want to take care of you properly as my wife. Vancouver is a great place to raise kids. I want a boy right away. And then a girl.”

He placed his hand against her cheek. And before Nori could respond, he clamped her mouth shut with his.

A chill ran down her spine when his hand reached under her skirt. He pinched her thigh hard enough to leave a bruise, and she cried out in pain before pressing her lips together against the onslaught of his tongue. He was so much stronger than her, her resistance only spurred him on.

“Stop playing, Nori. I know you want it.” He laughed, pressing her against the wall before unzipping his jeans with one hand while holding her in place with the other.

Nori bit down on his tongue, hard enough to draw blood. It made him briefly pull away from her, blubbering a slur of expletives, and gave her a chance to escape. But she couldn’t get too far before he grabbed her by the hair and slammed her face into a wall.

She dropped to the floor to crawl away from him, her vision a hazy red.

“Look at what you’ve done now!” Sunny boomed, towering a few feet away from her.

“This is exactly what you wanted, isn’t it?

First, you provoke me with your never-ending tantrums and insults, all the while trying to seduce me with that tight skirt like I can’t see what you’re playing at.

You manipulative little—I’m fucking bleeding, you sl—! ”

He kept going on his tirade, but Nori couldn’t focus on his words anymore. Bile rose in her throat as her back went flush against the wall behind her. She propped herself shakily on her arms while keeping her eyes on the blurry view of his jeans.

Sunny aimed a kick at one of the decorative stands in the corner, making a bunch of small succulent pots come clattering down around her. He gave her one long, hard look before he left, slamming the door shut behind him with enough force to rattle the windows on the opposite side of the room.

An hour later, Nori hopped in a cab to the airport with only a small suitcase of her essentials. She blocked Sunny everywhere and refused to speak with him again. But when he started contacting her with different IDs, she changed her number, too. And that was that. Or so she’d thought.

After several months of quiet, on the evening of her birthday, Nori had just walked into a restaurant with her friends when she received a call from an unknown number.

“Hello?” She took the call, settling into her seat.

“Finally.” Sunny’s familiar baritone sent chills down her spine. “Don’t hang up. I’m right outside.”

“How did you get this number?” All warmth drained out of her limbs as she glanced out of the window and spotted him standing across the street.

“I begged your friend Ryan, and he took pity on me.”

“What do you want?”

“I just want to apologize. I know I’ve been an asshole.”

“Okay,” Nori replied through gritted teeth, her heart racing at the sound of his voice. “Please don’t call me again.”

“Wait!” He waved at her. “If you hang up, I’ll just have to come see you at your table.”

Her throat dried.

“There’s another reason I wanted to apologize to you in person,” he continued.

“I have a fiancé now, and I confessed to her about us. She—she won’t talk to me if I don’t apologize to you properly.

I know what I did was terrible. Please, just give me five minutes.

Right here, outside. Just five minutes. ”

Nori hung up without replying. It was none of her business if Sunny wanted to walk in and make a fool of himself in front of her friends and the entire restaurant.

Her foot tapped anxiously against the floor. In her peripheral vision, she watched him take a step in her direction and instantly sprung up from her seat. She excused herself and marched out in the drizzling rain to where he stood waiting.

He wouldn’t dare touch her in front of an audience.

“Happy birthday!” Sunny grinned, pulling her to him before releasing her quickly with a, “Sorry, just happy to see you again.”

Run, a small voice whispered in the back of her head.

“Thanks.” She took a step back. “Apology accepted. And congratulations on your wedding. I should head back now. My friends are waiting.”

“Oh no, wait! Will you talk to her once?” He pointed to his phone. “Tell her you’ve forgiven me? She won’t believe me otherwise.”

“Sure.”

“Let’s sit in the car.” He jerked his head towards the white sedan parked a few feet away. “We’re both going to fall sick if we keep standing in this darned rain. Don’t know what’s with the weather—it’s supposed to be snowing.”

“I don’t think so.”

Run.

“Please.” He fell to his knees, pinching his earlobes like a child. “I’ll keep begging till you agree.”

The spectacle attracted stares from passers-by. Some people even halted altogether to glare at Nori like she was torturing the poor, innocent man at her feet.

“Fine.” She ducked into the car. “Please hurry. My friends are waiting for me.”

In the split second it took for her to glance towards the restaurant window and back at Sunny, the door locks clicked into place. Her hands flew to the handle and pulled, but it didn’t budge.

Run, the fading whisper warned her for the last time, just as something sharp poked at her side. She looked down to find a sashimi knife pressed against her abdomen .

“Try alerting anyone, and this goes through you. You’ve seen me fillet fish, haven’t you?

” Sunny beamed with such casual innocence, no one looking from the outside would ever suspect a thing.

“But I don’t want to do that. I just want to talk.

You wouldn’t have gone with me otherwise, so I had to be creative.

You love it when I’m creative, don’t you? ”

Inside the restaurant, someone brought a cake to their table—pink, with strawberries on it. Nori’s favorite. She wished one of them would look outside and notice her, but all her friends were busy chatting.

Sunny drove the car to her new apartment building.

He kept the knife pressed to the small of her back as he pulled her out of the car, into the lift, and up to her apartment.

He had a spare key that he used to unlock the door.

And as he did, cold dread pooled in her stomach.

Nobody had a spare key to her apartment. Not her family. Not even Ryan.

As he nudged her inside, Nori spun on the spot and shoved him with as much force as she could muster before making a run for the stairs. Right when she thought she’d made it, his arm went around her throat, jerking her backwards and dragging her flailing form inside.

He threw her to the floor and slammed the door shut, engaging the automatic lock.

She made a lunge towards the utility balcony across the room. It wasn’t low enough to jump from, but if she locked herself outside and shouted for help, someone might notice her from the street.

But her plan failed when something hard rammed into the back of her head, and everything went dark.

She didn’t know how long she was out, but when her eyes squinted open, Nori found one side of her face sticky and throbbing as if on fire. She groaned, attempting to prop herself on an elbow, and an immediate wave of nausea made her collapse again.

Sunny chuckled, sprawled in a chair a few feet away with one arm draped loosely over the armrest, while the other rested on his knee. He slowly twisted the knife between his fingers. And as Nori’s terrified gaze lifted to meet his cold, dead one, he began humming a familiar tune .

“You remember the song?” He spoke in barely more than a whisper, yet every word was sharp enough to pierce through her skull.

“It was playing at the restaurant when I first asked you out. Our song. You were rude back then, too. But now… every time I listen to it, all I see is your audacity, Nori. All I remember is how you betrayed, assaulted, and disrespected me, and then ran away, as if I could never find you again.”

She opened her mouth to respond, but no sound came out.

“You’re smart.” He smirked. “It’s one of the things I’ve always loved about you.

So, you already know who’s at fault here.

But you also know that I’ll forgive you.

Once I’ve made you pay. Use that smart brain of yours and tell me, Nori.

How should I make you pay, so you’d never dare disrespect me again? ”

His words seemed to register in her brain slower than they were leaving his mouth, but even as they did, her body remained frozen. She wanted to move, attack, run, yell, do anything other than lie there like a cadaver, but she couldn’t for the life of her remember how.

Sunny eventually stopped twisting the knife, and there was a brief pause, where he sat staring at the blade, contemplating. As his eyes lifted and latched onto hers, Nori finally remembered how to scream. She screamed till she had no voice left.