I've Been There Before

His slender fingers touched the scar.

He could feel the unevenness.

It felt like his fingers were burned as he touched it.

“When it comes to a broken body like this, how could you torture her?” Humbert was still on the phone with his half-taunting tone.

But Caden ignored his teasing as his thumb caressed the scar. Suddenly, he did something so strange to her that he covered it with his palm.

Staring at his palm, he didn’t know what he was doing.

Hearing no voice, Humbert thought Caden had hung up on him.

But he didn’t end the call as he picked up a cigarette and lit it to savor the taste of Nicotine, while Caden said unassumingly, “It’s longer than my palm.”

“What?” Humbert paused a beat before figuring it out. “You mean Grace’s scar on her waist?” Humbert understood him as they had been best friends for so long.

“Even longer than your hand?” Humbert sucked up hard on his cigarette before bubbling a smokey circle.

“Which implies her surgeon was really inexperienced, so terrible that…

Well, when I was in the medical college, our teacher let us remove the human specimen’s kidneys for the first time, but we made the scar much smaller than Grace’s.”

“What do you mean?”

“It means, perhaps…No, it’s certain that her surgeon doesn’t have a medical certificate. You know, people like street surgeons.”

surgeon, surgeons without medical

scar to me,”

can tell me

smoke. “Send me the

didn’t think he’d persuade Caden, who was too cold and arrogant to understand others,

Wallis as he, actually, captured her in the palm of his

should be to blame as it’s hard for people like them to

could send him the picture as he was about to redirect

drop his cigarette, which burned his arm on his lap. The sudden pain made Humbert

It hurts. “Wait up,

asked.

a picture of a “true” scar—a nasty

Why did he think it

could almost confirm it as he studied on

you see it? Is it clear enough?” Caden

“What?”

the scar properly, not to mention

jaw as he could picture Humbert’s words in his mind where a twisting

heck

as it’s your bad attitude and indifference that made her life a living hell for the

not reminding you

was the daughter of family James, and you couldn’t know her better when

shocked by his own words. It occurred to him the reason why Grace, a confident and lively girl, would turn out