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Se-ri’s heart stops and plunges into the depths of darkness when gentle, yet warm hands seizes her wrist and covers her mouth at the same time with a desperate intensity, to stop her from screaming, pushing her against the wall.
Beneath the dim lights, there are tears of despair swirling in her wide, doe eyes, replaced by contrasting emotions of fear, disbelief and relief when Jeong-hyeok’s distraught face looms into view, and Se-ri’s heartbeat returns to a rapid strings of staccato beats. In spite of the stunning silence in the dark basement, the loud pounding of blood fills her ears, now slowly ebbing away with the passing of danger.
When Jeong-hyeok releases his hand from her mouth, she can’t help but to notice the way he is shutting his eyes in relief, in juxtaposition to how his perfectly carved jaw is clenching tightly, brewing with turmoil. She is distracted by how his cheeks are flushed with fury as he swallows thickly, his Adam’s apple moving up and down once in his beautiful throat.
There’s a flicker of moment, with her pressed closely against the wall, Se-ri’s mind wanders astray. The organ beating in her chest is still hammering wildly, but now, she is uncertain if it’s because of the imminent danger a few minutes ago, or the ferocious tension simmering in between them. With him grasping her wrists firmly with his palms, Se-ri is almost sure Jeong-hyeok can feel her racing pulse underneath his fingertips.
When Jeong-hyeok leans forward with his eyelids fluttering open at the same time, broad chest heaving slowly to take in a deep breath, Se-ri wishes they would kiss, ardently, like in a scene from a movie.
Yet, for Jeong-hyeok, unable to suppress the overwhelming urge of wanting to envelope Se-ri with his fierce protectiveness, to ground him to reality that she is safe and sound after the close call, he surprises her when he rests his forehead on hers.
Se-ri gasps at the sudden contact - the feverish warmth of his touch sending a renewed chill down her spine.
With their foreheads touching, their faces inches away from each other, only Jeong-hyeok allows himself to release his breath as ease spreads across his chest, while Se-ri closes her eyes to indulge in the heat of the moment.
They stay like that for a brief few minutes, consumed by the abyss of darkness of the basement, - hearing nothing but each other’s anxious, soft pants, with gentle puffs of air gusting across their faces, their chests rising and falling steadily, until their breathing becomes attuned to each other, until their elevated pulses regulate to a normal pace, until they calm down.
When he pulls away, the softness in his gaze turns into a seething anger, burning like golden flecks in his irises. Scowling, Jeong-hyeok is about to turn on his heels to search for Cho Cheol-gang, but is stopped by Se-ri tugging on his coat sleeve.
“Please, don’t…,” she whispers, pleading eyes glinting with tears, the words ‘leave me’ dying in her parched throat.
I don’t want you to leave forever.
She cannot bring herself to say it, not when it could go both ways. Jeong-hyeok, capturing Cho Cheol-gang, causing him to leave her immediately, or, or - she arrests with trepidation at the image of Jeong-hyeok…
Brows creasing, the warmth in his gaze, reserved only for Se-ri, returns. Running his eyes all over her to make sure she isn’t hurt one bit, except for the terror displayed in her eyes, and the colour drained from her small, fragile face, she seems to be unharmed. He drags out a long sigh, and the grip around her wrists tightens.
A flame of anger is still manifesting in his chest, and he blames himself more than anything - for blindly falling into Cho Cheol-gang’s trap, for his own mere existence for posing a threat to Se-ri, and, most importantly, for leaving Se-ri out of his sight.
It reminds him of the fright coursing through his veins when the sound of the terrifying gunshot reverberates through the phone, and it shatters him into broken shards of glasses, anguish tearing him apart.
And now, thinking about how it could have happened a second time, and with the frightened look crossing Se-ri’s face, Jeong-hyeok is convulsing with rage. Always a man whose actions speak louder than his words, he pulls Se-ri in, to wrap his arms around her waist, engulfing her in his solid embrace.
Se-ri succumbs to him, like a moth to a flame. She squeezes her eyes shut, erasing the thousand and one scenarios of what ifs actively playing in her mind, and relishes in the comfort of Jeong-hyeok’s lingering scent and radiating warmth.
Her hands desperately fists into the fabric of his coat in a tenacious hold, and she melts deeper into his chest. They remain enfolded into each other, like there’s no tomorrow, ignoring the echoes of hurried footsteps resounding in the basement.
When the fluorescent lights undimmed the basement, the security guards catches them entangled passionately together, as if in a secret world, known only to them.
Se-ri is startled when a security guard with a deep voice calls her out, and she flinches away first, yet, still keenly aware of the way Jeong-hyeok is keeping a firm hold on her wrist, the way he’s taking on a protective stance by stepping in front of her to shield her from danger, intensely scanning the faces of every security guard with an ice-cold stare that could cut glass, until they seem to shrink under his glare.
The perimeter search conducted by the security team ends up futile because the perpetrator is nowhere to be found. Se-ri, whisked away by Jeong-hyeok to safety at her office, seems to have regained her composure after a cup of warm water. Yet, it unravels her to the core again when she notices the slash wound across Jeong-hyeok’s left shoulder. Even as he tries to pacify her worries, she is still upset.
For once, I had to protect you too.
“This is all my fault,” Se-ri mutters tremblingly when they’re in the car, seated in the driver’s compartment, her shaking hands fumbling for the seatbelt that she just can’t seem to buckle properly. “If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t have ended up here in Seoul. And now after all you have done for me, I can’t even seem to protect you here.”
Warm, large hands come to rest and curl around hers. When Se-ri looks up, all she sees are the tender, loving eyes of Jeong-hyeok’s, trained on her. It absolutely ruins her, reducing her into a pool of puddle.
“But you did. You did protect me,” he says in his rich, velvety voice, gaze gleaming proudly as he helps her to anchor the seatbelt.
She goes completely still, gratitude showing in her big round eyes. “I did?” she huffs out a small puff of breath, unable to tear her eyes away from his sincere gaze.
He nods firmly. “It’s never your fault.”
And she trusts him with her whole heart.
…
“I want you to sleep with me tonight,” Se-ri blurts without inhibition when Jeong-hyeok’s about to take his leave from her bedroom.
Jeong-hyeok's eyes widen like saucers. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he starts to say, looking completely mortified. She can see his throat bobbing up and down as he swallows nervously, and it’s only then she realises he’s misinterpreted her words.
It’s her turn to be flustered, evident by how she’s letting out a nervous chuckle and awkwardly averting her gaze from his embarrassed ones.
“Tsk, I don’t mean it that way, what are you thinking Ri Jeong-hyeok -ssi,” she replies, flicking her wrist at him dismissively.
“I’m not…I’m not thinking about anything,” Jeong-hyeok stammers like a child, cheeks tinged with a fabulous shade of pink.
She glances at him, only to look down at her own feet, a flicker of apprehension crossing her face. Heaving out a deep sigh, Se-ri peers warily at Jeong-hyeok, “After what has happened, I just want you near me…Is that too much to ask?” she questions with a whisper, tone laced with insecurity, and she hates how she sounds.
It isn’t. His heart breaks. Jeong-hyeok doesn’t reply verbally, but his hand find its way to hers again, and as he tenderly grazes the skin between her thumb and index finger, he nods, concurring to her request, the warmth in his eyes filling every crevice of her heart.
Still, he is very, very anxious, Se-ri notices, when she returns from the bathroom, dressed in her black satin robe - with his rigid, upright posture, sitting as straight as a tree bark on the bed, donned in a comfortable shirt and sweatpants she had bought for him. With the way his hands are fidgeting in his lap, with the way his gaze is cautiously wandering to her direction, only to shyly dart away again.
The bedroom is filled with the intoxicating notes of her light lavender fragrance, searing permanently into his olfactory senses, all evocative scents that reminds Jeong-hyeok of her ever commanding presence in his small residence in North Korea, and her lingering smell on his bed he would often allow her to sleep in.
Now, it’s making him feel all sorts of things he shouldn’t allow himself to feel.
Additionally, he blames it on the expensive-looking lights hanging from the ceiling, casting an incandescent glow on her flawless, porcelain skin, catching strands of her smooth, luscious locks falling below her shoulders, making her look more exquisite than she really is.
He gulps nervously, unaware he’s holding his breath until he’s gasping for air, and Jeong-hyeok breathes out a sound he isn’t proud of, prompting Se-ri to turn to look at his direction.
“Are you okay?” she frowns. “Please, don’t wait for me. You’re hurt. You need to rest,” she segues worriedly, settling in front of the vanity table for her nightly routine.
But he doesn’t want to.
Over the course of Se-ri’s stay in North Korea, he had enjoyed watching her apply the skincare products he had bought for her, as she sits by the small table in the living room. It seemed like an intricate, tedious process, yet he couldn’t tear his eyes away from her - to the point he could memorise the curves of her delicate face as the pads of her slender fingers brushes against the skin of her face.
And now he is entranced too.
Se-ri catches the weight of his enticed stare from the corner of her eye, and a whisper of a knowing smile twitches on her lips. Momentarily, she forgets about the heart-pounding danger that seems so far away now, simply because Jeong-hyeok is by her side.
When he sees her making her way to the bed, Jeong-hyeok pretends to look around her bedroom nonchalantly, and he slips under the covers at the same time when Se-ri crawls into the bed.
The bedroom is cast into darkness when Se-ri claps her hand, with only a thin shred of light coming from the place where the sheer curtains meet. Silence descends upon the two of them, the tension vibrating between them hanging thickly in the warm air.
Se-ri stares at the ceiling, and is momentarily transported back to the time when they shared a bed in the hospital. Sneaking a glance at Jeong-hyeok, she realises he has politely left a foot of a space in between them.
But at this moment, locked in the safe confines of her home, when the danger has faded, when nothing can hurt them, and what’s left is the glistening silver rays of the moonlight gracing the bedroom, she wants more.
So, Se-ri inches closer to him, until her shoulder feathers lightly against his, and he literally jumps at the contact, his breath hitching in his throat.
She laughs a little, a sweet, merry sound, shattering the silence of the night, and Jeong-hyeok’s heart does a somersault of sorts, fluttering with the tempo of his racing heartbeat.
“It’s not like we haven’t shared a bed before Ri Jeong-hyeok -ssi,” she teases, even as she’s winding her grip tighter around the covers, hoping he wouldn’t hear the way her heart is pounding unapologetically against her ribs.
“That’s because you insisted on sleeping on my bed,” Jeong-hyeok replies, tilting his head stiffly to look at Se-ri.
“Tsk, but I found you sleeping on the couch the next day,” she rolls her eyes as she remembers him uncomfortably curled up on the couch without a blanket, earning himself a scolding from her.
“But now my bed’s bigger, so you won’t have to sleep on the couch this time, and these…,” she smoothens the creases of the covers, “…these are all imported from Italy, made from a thousand thread count, so they’re incredibly soft and breathable…,” she rambles on, causing him to realise he misses her musings more than he had imagined, and a small smile curves on his lips. He closes his eyes, preparing to hear more of her excessive rants.
“You should know how privileged you are Ri Jeong-hyeok -ssi, because you’re the first man who gets to sleep -,” Se-ri bites on her lip, and Jeong-hyeok wonders why she has stopped.
Sleep on my bed, Se-ri thinks sadly. No, she’s never going to wash the bedsheets.
She turns to face him, slipping her clasped hands under the side of her head, and focuses on the silhouette of his attractive side-profile. And then she thinks, thinks of how she feels like a willow tree, bending right to the direction of his wind.
She has never allowed herself to feel that way before, and now, if she could, Se-ri would follow Jeong-hyeok to the ends of the world, to wherever he strays.
Simply because, she loves him.
So, why can’t she have this gentle, soft love she crashed landed onto, why can’t she have just this, just him - the glittery warmth shining in his affectionate eyes, his smile in the dark, the ridiculous adorable dents in his cheeks, and the pout in his pink lips she wants to kiss forever.
“Ri Jeong-hyeok -ssi,” she sings quietly.
He doesn’t know why but he twists over to face her too, attracted to the way his name rolls off her tongue. In the shadows of the night, Jeong-hyeok detects the sadness etched on her beautiful face, and he reaches out to brush the side of her hair away - the tender gesture never ceasing to make her melt into a buttery mess.
“I hope you’ll always remember this…,” he starts, placing a caressing hand on her cheek, thumb gently stroking the curve of her cheekbone, “that even when I’m not with you, I’ll always be in your heart, just like how you’re always in mine,” Jeong-hyeok continues, offering his warm dimpled smile - the smile she has indefinitely engraved in the back of her mind.
Her breath catches in her throat, his words rendering her speechless, and then her eyes start to glisten, twinkling like stars in the galaxy. Boldly, Se-ri brings her slender fingers to trail along the outline of his thick brow, sliding down to the slope of his cheek, and then the curve of his angular jaw that she strongly desires to pepper kisses on.
They exchange lingering stares, wistful gazes screaming dizzily with yearning, deep like the depths of the universe. Because they’re each other’s world.
Jeong-hyeok catches Se-ri’s hand with his, and he presses a small, sweet kiss at the centre of her palm. Slipping his other hand under the crook of her neck, he tugs Se-ri closer to gather her in his arms, until she’s comfortably nestled against his chest, the top of her head tickling his chin, their hands still intimately entwined together.
And it's in this moment, Se-ri wants to hold on to this forbidden love. Wants to keep her head on his chest, the rhythm of his heartbeat ever calming. Wants to remember the brush of his lips on the top of her head. Wants to memorise the way his fingers are grazing over the thin fabric of her nightgown, lighting fire to the millions of nerve endings on her body.
Outside, even as flurries of snow graces the city, and twilight will soon descend, they never want to leave this bed, never want to let go of their tangled hands against the softening light.