Harem app-Chapter 231: Break up

Third person POV

Karen was irritated, so she exaggeratedly complained to one of her maids. She had the habit of taking out her frustrations on other people.

In the end, the maid broke into tears, terrified at the thought of losing her job. Karen hated that people looked disgusting when they cried.

"Deal with her," Karen pointed at the sobbing woman and ordered Maria, the head maid, to take care of the situation.

Then she stormed out of the room, her high heels striking the floor with every aggressive step. The servants quickly cleared a path, trying to stay as far away from her as possible.

They knew well enough when she was in a bad mood, and no one wanted to suffer her wrath.

"What a pain," Karen muttered as she slammed her bedroom door shut.

She threw herself onto the bed and stared at the ceiling, replaying the past few days in her mind. At some point, everything had started to go wrong, and she didn’t even know why.

Her father had been stressed about something involving work. And things at home always grew worse when that man was stressed.

"Why is that useless man acting like this lately?" Karen complained, completely oblivious to the difficulties her father was going through.

The family business was under greater threat than ever, thanks to Lee Hua’s interference. Still, he refused to tell his wife and daughter, not wanting them to shoulder any stress.

Not that it would matter, Karen wouldn’t have been any help anyway.

That aside, what was truly ruining her mood was her boyfriend, Eric. He had been acting increasingly strange and, all of a sudden, had stopped answering her messages. Apparently, he had locked himself up in his room.

"What on earth is going on?" Karen wondered, hugging her pillow tightly to release some of the tension in her body.

"What a pain, what a pain, what a pain..." she muttered to herself, her face twisting into an irritated grimace.

She hated when things didn’t go her way. And lately, everything seemed to frustrate her.

But just then, her phone buzzed, notifying her of a new message. Naturally, Karen kept notifications turned off for most people. She couldn’t be bothered to reply quickly to the losers around her.

That meant the message could only be from a close friend, her parents, or...

"Eric!" she exclaimed as she saw who had sent it.

As much as she tried to hold it back, a smile spread across her face. She knew she should have been angrier at her boyfriend for ignoring her for so long, but she was hopelessly in love.

She quickly opened the message app to check what her boyfriend was saying.

[Eric: Can we talk? I’m sorry for disappearing like that... Do you want to go on a date so we can talk?]

Her chest tightened as she read it. The mix of relief and apprehension was almost unbearable. She was happy that he was finally talking with her again, but she was also apprehensive...

"What does he want to talk about?" She murmured.

Anyway, she agreed to meet him at their favorite restaurant, which was an elegant place, where they had their first date and became special to their relationship.

But her anxiety quickly subsided. She was a naturally optimistic person; after all, she was used to things always going smoothly in her life.

"I need to look my best," She muttered to himself, a wide grin spreading across her face.

She bounded out of bed, a spring in her step, and practically danced towards her closet. Tossing aside a few shirts, I finally settled down on an elegant blue dress.

Then spent an absurd amount of time on her hair and make-up, a spritz of her favorite perfume, a final check in the mirror, and she was ready.

When she arrived, Eric was already there, waiting by the window. His eyes lit up when he saw her, but there was a shadow behind his smile.

"Thank you for coming," he said softly as she sat down, but he was not smiling anymore.

She tried to answer with a smile, though her heart was pounding. "I was starting to think you’d forgotten me."

Eric reached for her hand but stopped midway, his fingers curling back into his lap. "I never forgot. I just... needed time."

For an instant, Karen felt her chest tighten, and then felt relieved as it seemed things would go well. She even gave Eric a smile, thinking he would just apologize for disappearing and locking himself in that room.

However, what happened was the complete opposite.

"Now, I realize I can’t keep dragging this empty relationship," he said with a cold tone. "Being completely honest, I don’t love you, and I don’t even like being near you,

Her breath caught. The words hit her like ice water, unexpected and sharp. 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

"What?" Karen asked, dumbfounded, her heart racing, and she begged the world for all of that to be just a dream.

"Don’t pretend you didn’t hear me," Eric said coldly, each word slow and deliberate. "I don’t want to date you anymore."

The world seemed to tilt. She blinked, struggling to steady herself as the words sank in. She couldn’t believe it, but it was real.

"You’re ending this just like that? Why? You can’t throw away everything we’ve built up to this point."

"I can. And I am."

His cold eyes nearly shattered the foolish girl’s heart right then and there, but she pressed on, desperate.

"Why? You owe me an explanation! Why do you want to end things like this? What did I do?"

Eric’s expression didn’t soften in the slightest. If anything, his voice grew sharper, colder, as he perfectly recalled the script Lee Hua ordered him to say:

"Oh! Don’t worry, it’s not about something you did. It’s about you as a whole; you are arrogant, stupid, annoying, and spend your days thinking about the most useless things. I just can’t imagine myself being happy even for one second with you by my side."

"Stop lying, we were happy just a few weeks ago!" Karen screamed, tears forming in the corners of her eyes.

"No, we weren’t, we have never been. I endured it because it would be good for business, but my father is gone and my sister owns the money, so I don’t care anymore."

Without another word, he began walking away, leaving the desperate girl behind. But Karen couldn’t accept that this was real.

She pinched her own cheeks with her long nails, drawing blood in the process. Yet even the sharp sting of pain wasn’t enough to wake her from this nightmare.

By the time she looked up again, Eric was almost at the restaurant’s exit. Her vision was blurred with tears, but she still forced herself to run after him.

Half-blind, she stumbled into a little girl returning from the bathroom, crashing to her knees and scraping her knees painfully on the floor.

Karen shoved the child aside with a vicious glare, ignoring her startled cry, and staggered back to her feet. She wouldn’t stop, not now. She ran again, chasing Eric with every ounce of desperation left in her.

"You can’t just leave me like this!" she screamed when she finally caught up, her voice breaking as she reached for him.

Eric turned around slowly, his eyes like ice. He looked at his pathetic ex-girlfriend for a long moment before finally speaking.

"You shouldn’t cry," he said flatly. "You look horrendous without makeup."

And with that, the driver pulled up. Eric opened the car door, slid inside without a second glance, and left her standing there in the street, shaking and abandoned.