Something Beautiful
Chapter - 42

As their laughter subsided, Lady Jeon wobbled to the wall and turned to Lisa, looking at the woman with an inquisitive smile. "How do you know that silly man misquoted Machievalli as Horace?"

"I've read her second work" I'm Lisa after a moment of silence because I feel guilty.

"Times!" the Lady said, pretending to look scared by slowing down the voice, "Me too"

Lisa's eyes widened. "I've always thought women who read classics are considered nerds."

"Normally so," I'm Lady Jeon lightly," but in my case, the nobility chose to ignore, uh, I mean to ignore my non-feminine fondness over clothing and embroidery."

Lisa tilted her head, looking at the face before her in awe. "Why did they do that?"

Lady Jeon's voice softened affectionately, "Because my husband will kill all living beings who dare to say I am not a perfect Lady." Suddenly he squinted suspiciously at Lisa and asked, "Can you play some music? Because if you could, I'd have to warn you, friend or not, I wouldn't have come to listen to you play music. Just hearing about Bach or Beethoven alone made me run for sleeping pills, and as soon as I saw the harp I was seriously ill."

Lisa learned to play the piano for a full year because she said as a young girl from the upper class she should be able to play at least one musical instrument. He could hardly believe hearing this kind of condescending comment from a Lady who was renowned as a trendsetter among the noble elite.

"I've learned to play the piano, but I can't play it so well that it's worth the show" Lisa hesitated.

"Good," said Lady Jeon with satisfaction. "Are you also interested in shopping for clothes?"

"Actually, I think it's a bit tiring."

"It's good" exclaimed the woman, then suspiciously added, "You can't sing right?"

Lisa, who inexplicably admits her inability to play an instrument, now reluctantly admits she can sing. "Yes, it seems like it could be a little."

"No human being is perfect" said Lady Jeon cheerfully and generously forgave Lisa's shortcomings. "Again, I've been waiting to meet the woman who reads Horace and Machiavelli's work, and I won't back down from being friends with you just because you can sing. Unless, of course, you're really good at singing?"

Lisa's shoulders began to tremble in amusement, as she was actually quite good at singing. Lady Jeon saw her answer in Lisa's eyes and immediately frowned comically feigning fear. "You don't sing a lot, do you?"

"No." Trying to hold back the laughter, Lisa added, "and if this can help lift my value in your eyes, I can assure you that I usually run out of polite conversation in less than five minutes." After revealing some of the main requirements, the two women re-spangled.

Inside the mansion on Regent Street No. 45, dancers continued to dance and guests continued to laugh, unaware of the important events unfolding outside the doors of France. Only the stars twinkling in the sky witnessed that on the empty balcony of the house, two women of soul finally found each other.

"Then" Lady Jeon dashed out gracefully as they had already stopped laughing, "I'll think of you as the most suitable and pleasant friend." After throwing away all the formalities, Lady Jeon slowly said, "My best friend called me Jisoo."

At once Lisa's heart was filled with happiness but the bitter reality immediately destroyed that happiness when she realized Jisoo Jeon's friends would not want to accept Lisa within their circle of association. All the nobles, including Jisoo's modern friends, already regard Lisa as a person who is 180 degrees different from them. He has been judged by them and unfortunately considered incompatible. It was obvious that Jisoo did not know everything about her. Lisa's stomach stiffened imagining the cynical expression Jisoo would receive if the woman returned to the dance hall with Lisa.

"What do your friends call you?" jisoo asked while looking at him.

I have no friends, Lisa's mind then quickly lowered her head to sweep her skirt, shrewdly hiding the tears that began to bathe her eyes.

"Call me Lisa."

Deciding it was better to end this friendship now, by herself, than to be humiliated by Jisoo Jeon if they met another time. Lisa took a deep breath and hurriedly said, "I appreciate your friendship, Lady Jeon, but as you can see, I've been very busy attending the dance lately, lunch banquet.. And also various kinds of events, and I'm not sure you can. uh we can have time, I'm sure you already have dozens of friends who will take up your time."

"You mean the friend who thinks you're the most innocent person ever to appear in London?" jisoo said softly.

Before Lisa could respond to the words, Yugyeom walked out of the darkness and into the balcony. Lisa hurriedly approached the man and quickly spoke, "Are you looking for me, Your Grace? It must be time to go home. Good night, Lady Jeon."

"Why did you refuse Lady Jisoo's invitation?" yugyeom asked angrily, as soon as they got into the carriage on the way home.

"I can't."

Lisa was a little evasive, her mind still remembered the last words that the woman said in a soft voice before they parted.

"As you say, we're not in the same scope of association."

"I know, and I also know why," said Yugyeom stiffly. "There's someone who has too much self-esteem that can't accept your rejection of him, he's one of the causes."

Lisa is surprised to realize that Yugyeom finds herself disliked, she thinks, ah she means she hopes the man does not know the difficult situation.

"I ask that person to come to my place tomorrow morning," Yugyeom continued frankly. "We have to do something to change his opinion of you and you have to persuade him to forget about the dance floor on the night of your debut, when you left him just like that."

"Pulpated him!" exclaim Lisa. "Yugyeom, she said bad things, ah even vile things about your grandmother!"

"He did always say things objectively." Yugyeom's soothing smile looked rather unconvincing. "He likes to surprise, humiliate, or scare women the most, and if he succeeds he will hate his victims for being timid and stupid. He was like a bird that perched from one tree to another, sowing seeds of hostility wherever he went. Most of what he says is quite funny, as long as it becomes an object instead of ourselves. In any situation, you should dare to oppose him or say something that surprises him."

"I'm sorry, I didn't know that."

"There are many things you don't know" Yugyeom said, as they stopped in front of his home on the west side of London. "But as soon as we get into the house, I'll fix it."

"Lisa," he said suddenly, "you should be able to have great success. God knows that you meet all the necessary conditions, in great numbers. Instead you've been the biggest failure in ten years."

The embarrassment almost made Lisa fall, but Yugyeom quickly explained, "It's my fault, not yours. I hid some things from you, things I should have told you, but my grandmother wouldn't allow it, she couldn't let you think anything. However, now that we both agree you should be told, before you destroy any remaining opportunity for happiness, if it's not too late."

Raising a glass to his lips, Yugyeom gripped the whiskey, as if he needed the drink to gain courage, then said, "Since you came to London, you know, you have been here, you heard most of Mingyu's friends and acquaintances call him Hawk, didn't you?" When Lisa nodded, she continued, "why do you think they called her by that name?"

"I think because he's quite gallant, brave and sharp, like an eagle."

"Some people do mean it that way, but among men, especially, the name has another meaning. The hawk, the eagle, is a bird of prey that has very sharp eyes and is able to catch its prey before its prey realizes it is in danger."

Lisa looked at the man with a polite interest and did not understand at all, had he been partially right. Then Yugyeom put his finger in the hair a sign of frustration. "Mingyu got the name years ago, when she managed to get a beautiful young girl who was contested half-bachelors in London for months. Hawk did it one night just by asking her to dance."

While bowing, Yugyeom propped her hands up in the hands of Lisa's chair, "Lisa," she said sharply, "you assure yourself that you love and are loved by the man you consider a saint. The reality is, Hawk looks more like a demon than a saint when it comes to women, and everyone knows about it. You understand what I mean, right?" asked Yugyeom bitterly, his face was only a few inches from Lisa's face. "Everybody in London who hears you talking about Mingyu as if he were a knight in armor knows that you are just one of his victims, the countless, who became victims of Mingyu's attraction. Although he doesn't mean to charm them, he's usually more upset than happy when women fall in love, just like you. But unlike other victims, you're too innocent to hide it from others."

Lisa's face flushed with embarrassment, but she felt Mingyu could not be blamed if the women fell in love with her.

"I love him like my own brother, but that doesn't change the fact that he's famous as an immoral playboy."

While swearing slowly at Lisa's loyalty and innocence, Yugyeom straightened up. "You don't trust me. Isn't it?"

"Well, this is it again, on the night of your first dance, you openly praised the two women you said were the most beautiful women you'd ever seen. Both of them were Mingyu's mistresses. You understand what that means?"

Slowly Lisa's face paled. The mistress means having slept in bed with Mingyu and the man does intimate things like he did with Lisa.

Yugyeom sees Lisa's face turning pale but he abstains from retreat, determined to reveal it all. "At the same dance, you asked if Mingyu liked to watch ballet, and everyone almost laughed out loud because everyone knew that Jung Una, one of Mingyu's mistresses was not only adept, she said, she is a professional in ballet. And still be his mistress until he dies. Lisa, he stopped by in London and visited the woman before you got on the boat, after you got married. People saw Mingyu leaving the woman's house. And Una told everyone that Mingyu married you only for practical reasons."

Lisa jumped to her feet and shook her head vigorously, trying to deny it. "You're wrong. I don't trust you. He said he had business with someone. He'll never..."

"He can and he's done it, asshole! Furthermore, he intends to take you to Devon and leave you there, then he will return to London to continue his relationship with his mistress. He told me that himself! Mingyu married you out of necessity, but she did not want and did not intend to live in a household with you, his wife. He just pityes you."

Lisa's head jerked to the side as if it had been slapped. "He pity me?" he asked bitterly, drowning in shame, clutching the folds of his skirt, he twisted his cloth until his handbooks turned white. "He thinks I should be pitied?"

Another understanding struck him, and he covered his mouth with his hands, feeling himself about to vomit, Mingyu intended to do the same as Lisa's father did to his mother. Get married, leave a wife somewhere secluded, then go back to the evil mistress.

Yugyeom reached out towards Lisa trying to wrap her hands around the woman's body, but Lisa clasped the hand and stepped back, she looked at Yugyeom as if the man was as evil as Mingyu. "However you?" his voice trembled with trembling and heartache. "How can you really let me cry over that guy and embarrass myself? It's cruel for you to let me believe that she really loves me?!"

"At that moment we thought it was the best thing," said the granny raucously from behind Lisa, then walked into the room with a slight limp, things always arise when the woman is anxious.

Lisa was too hit so as not to worry about the old woman. "I want to go home" he said, trying hard to control the chest-stifling anger and making him unable to breathe.

"No, you can't!" Yugyeom. "Your mother went on a month-long cruise around the British Isles. You can't live alone."

"I don't need your permission to go home. And I don't need your financial support either. According to your grandmother, I have the money Hawk gave me" she said bitterly.

"And it was controlled by me, who was your walimu," Yugyeom reminded.

"I don't want to and I don't need a guardian. All this time I've been able to take care of myself since I was fourteen!"

"Lalisa, listen to me." said Yugyeom firmly, clutching Lisa's shoulder and shaking her a little impatiently. "I know you're angry and misunderstood, but you can't run away from us or hide from London. If you do, what happened to you here will haunt you forever. You don't love Mingyu..."

"Oh really?" Sela Lisa was angry. "Then try to tell me why I spent an entire year trying to make me worthy of his name?"

"You love illusions, not Mingyu. The illusion you created because you were innocent and idealistic..."

"And stupid, blind, moron!" hiss Lisa.

The embarrassment and anger made him dismiss the sympathy Yugyeom offered, and in a desperate tone, he asked himself and ran to his room.

Only after being alone in his bedroom did he give up and cry. He wept for his stupidity, innocence, and hard work for a whole year, trying to make himself valuable to a man unworthy of being called a gentleman. He cried until the sound of his sobbing made him hate himself for wasting tears on the man.

Finally, after forcing himself to sit down, he wiped away the tears while his mind continued to be wracked by his own stupidity. He saw himself in the garden the day before they were married, asking, "Are you going to kiss me?" he asked Mingyu at the time, and when the man kissed her, he almost fainted in the man's arms, and then at once he said his love.

Roseanne once said that men are happy to know they are admired and that she believes in her best friend. Then the expression, 'I think you're as handsome as Michelangelo's David, '" he told Mingyu also made him sick.

Shame invaded Lisa and she groaned loudly, wrapping her hands around her stomach, but the shameful memory never went away. Good Lord! He gave his grandfather's precious watch to the man. He gave the clock and said that his grandfather would definitely like Mingyu! Huh! His grandfather would definitely barricade the door so that the haughty and cunning blue-blooded noble would not be able to enter.

On the carriage he had let Mingyu kiss him repeatedly, he slept on the man's body like a foolish drunken whore! In bed he let the man do all the intimate deeds that the man wanted to do to him, and when he was satisfied, the man the next night did the same with his mistress.

Instead of shooting the person who robbed Mingyu the night they met, he should have shot Mingyu Kim! Surely this inexperienced himself felt very boring to the man, and no wonder Mingyu did not want to hear his innocent declaration of love.