Fractured Souls

Chapter 16 - A Bitter Pill

.

[A/N: 27/1/2022

and here we are... the penultimate chapter. i feel a little sad this is about to end lol but again thank you for reading this story i hold dear and patiently waiting for updates that took a loooong time. thank you for sharing your time to read and hopefully you have reveled in the story of Choi Tae Yong and Nam Jung Woo as myself and perhaps even shed a tear or two for them. you all have a wonderful day! and if you can spare it, please share your thoughts and if you can, and if you liked this story please vote too if it isn't too much trouble lol. much love! <333  - ice]

"To love or have loved, that is enough. Ask nothing further. There is no other pearl to be found in the dark folds of life."

– Victor Hugo, Les Miserables

September 23rd, 1966, Jeju Island

Choi Tae Yong watched the turbulent waves crash against the rocky shore as he stood atop a steep cliff along the edge of Jeju Island, convinced that it mimicked his mood. Even the pearl grey dawn skies matched it. He may have appeared calm and even peaceful on the surface, but the turmoil within him had long been tormenting him since. Too long that he had become used to it, this fowl frame of mind. Especially during autumn when the dried up and shriveled leaves began to fall and chilled gusts lifted them in the air to swirl them about like a little hurricane, of the browning grass carpeting the earth and summer flowering shrubs no longer gave blossoms. It all reminded him of his pain and anguish. Of his loss.

More than twelve years had passed since that fateful and regrettable day occurred, a day he would rather not remember but could never forget. Twelve long and torturous years in a living hell he himself had created, or rather chose to do so by wallowing in his own grief. The grief that slithered into his heart and eating at his battered, fractured soul was a constant companion. He felt too old at almost four decades of living and a quarter of that in a tormented existence.

Tae Yong was convinced and in fact insisted that it was his fault, despite his family constantly telling him it was a cruel twist of fate. That he couldn't have known. That anyone could ever have foreseen the course of events. Tae Yong wanted to believe it but more often than not, he tortured himself with blame and guilt.

Now, more than a decade later he still wracked his brain with what ifs and what could have been. Indeed, no one could have guessed such a terrible end to something he thought was the most beautiful thing that could have happened to him. Loving Nam Jung Woo.

The day he was captured was due to the unfortunate instance that one of the imprisoned enemy soldiers they had imprisoned before recognized him from a scuffle; and failing to kill the said soldier who had escaped had become his 'downfall'. Taeyong suffered for it, they beat him up and manhandled him but thought to himself that he was lucky they didn't kill him on the spot. They incarcerated him along with dozens of other soldiers and rebellious civilians. They were fed boiled rice with more weevils in it than grains. The soldiers put him and the able bodied to grueling labor, toiling under harsh conditions for months.