High on You (Choi Do Il x Oh In Joo - Little Women 작은 아씨들)

28

From: Unknown
In-joo-ssi, it's Choi Do-il. Save this number. Meet me at the little park with a pond near your place, I'll be waiting at the bridge.

From: In-joo
How did you get my number. I'm pretty sure I haven't given it to you. How do I know it's really you, by the way. Prove it.

Two seconds later, In-joo's phone rang.
"It's me. I'm the one who watched over you after you drank a glass full of that blue orchid serum. When you woke up, you were a little bit shaken I was there, and I told you I was just making sure you were breathing."
"Were you?"
"Was I what?"
"Just making sure I was breathing alright."
"Of course," Do-il said over the phone. What else was he supposed to say? He distinctly heard In-joo sighing. Then he added, "And In-hye-ah gave me your number."
"Oh, so now she's In-hye-ah? Since when?"
"Since she so kindly asked me to address her as such." He scratched his head. Why was he in defense mode? He realized his voice had been a little bit harsh, so he tried to tone himself down a notch. "Anyway, meet me at the park, will you? I'll see you in..?" Do-il didn't complete the sentence so that In-joo could let him know if she needed more time than the usual five minutes' walk it would take.
"Give me twenty minutes, I'm not home."
"Alright, see you in twenty. Bye."
In-joo put the phone back into her purse, raised her head and had a hard time looking Hee-jae in the eyes. He opened his mouth to say, "I guess that was my son."
In-joo blushed profusely and could only manage a nod. Hee-jae continued, "You think too much, In-joo-ssi." He paused and glanced at the clock behind his back. "Time's up, you should go. I'll see you again, I'm sure everything will be alright."
"Thank you, Hee-jae-ssi. For your insight."
"No problem, kid. Until next time." He gave her a curt nod and then stood up. The guard called for a colleague, and Choi Hee-jae was taken back to his cell while In-joo got out of the front door, ready to meet with Choi junior.

***

In-joo and Do-il had met by the bridge in the pond park and then had made their way to one of the few benches that weren't occupied by moms or dads watching their kids play.
"Where were you?" Do-il asked her.
"At the prison center."
The man looked at her and then admitted, "I was there a couple of times since I got back as well."
"Went to see your father?"
"Yes, to tell him about my mother." Do-il's head was hanging low, then he stopped talking and turned his head toward the swing, where four kids were screaming at the top of their lungs, and filled his with a deep, steadying breath.
In-joo carried on the conversation, "I went there to talk to Hwa-young and your dad. It had been a while, and given what happened last night..."
"One more opinion doesn't hurt."
"Indeed. He said the note was meant for you." Do-il looked back at her, but the instant after that, his eyes dropped to the ground.
"I suspected as much," he said in the end. "In-joo-ssi, you know I'm not going to let anything happen."
"I hope so, but you know you can't control every single possibility. I trust you enough, though. It's just that... all of this coming back again?" She asked herself more than the guy sitting next to her, "It got me a little bit scared."
"You're fine, though, right? Did anything else happen?"
In-joo searched his eyes, then said, "Nothing else happened, but that note shouldn't have happened in the first place, Do-il-ssi."
"I know," he answered, clenching his jaw. "Did you tell anybody else? About the note, I mean."
"Hwa-young is the only one that knows. I didn't want to worry my sisters. I'm not letting them being trapped by any of this ever again." In-joo could only imagine what In-kyung would do or say if she discovered.
"Let's try to keep it that way for now. The fewer people know, the less we need to worry about them."
"Right. Might I just add that-" In-joo was about to tell Do-il that she had tried to keep it all in five years prior as well and that it hadn't played out too well for any of them for a while. The result of her secrets had been lots of people dying, including their aunt and both her sisters almost being murdered several times. She didn't have a chance to utter any of that, though, because Do-il grabbed her by her left arm and made her walk away from the bench in a hurry.
"What are you doing? Where are we going?" In-joo asked him, but Do-il wasn't about to utter a single word. He was just walking fast down the park path and looking around.
When they got into the nearby parking lot, he unlocked the doors of his rented car and made In-joo get in first, then he buckled up as well, and they took off way too fast for it to be safe.
"Do-il-ssi?" In-joo's voice was trembling now. She definitely hadn't missed any of that.
"I'm pretty sure someone was watching us."
"What? How?"
"I've seen that guy around way too often lately. And it's too big of a city for it to be a mere coincidence every time." Do-il was referring to the guy he had met the day he first went to see his father in prison, the one who had asked him if he was indeed the guy from the money laundering scandal of a couple of years back. The man had tried being subtle, but Do-il had caught him staring or following him on two different occasions already, which was exactly the reason why he knew deep down that that note was meant for him. To intimidate him by threatening In-joo's life. The man wasn't about to take this lightly. He now wondered how many other times he hadn't caught him, though, and how long had they been following In-joo's movements? He continued the race until the suburbs of the city, where he entered a small alley and parked.
"Now what? We're gonna spend the rest of the day here?"
"No," Do-il answered her, "just the next couple of minutes."
Do-il told her to stay inside the vehicle, begged her almost, because he knew she was prone to defy any suggestion. He went outside and started watching the adjacent street for any kind of suspicious movement or person. When he declared that everything seemed to be fine, he got back into the car and started the engine again.
"Are we going home?"
"Yes, but not yours. I just want to make sure we're truly alone out here. I'm not risking your position." Although Do-il perfectly knew that they already knew it, but she didn't have to know that particular. Adding stress to the situation wouldn't be that great.
"So... we're going to the hotel?"
"No, my house."
"You have a home?"
"A house. Can't really call it home yet." He had never managed to call 'home' any of his previous places. His mom's? Sure, wherever she was, he was home. But when he was alone inside a house, no matter how pretty or lived-in it looked, without someone by his side, he had never been able to feel like he belonged for real. Maybe, just maybe, in the middle of all the crazy things happening, bringing In-joo there would let him see things differently. Was he being selfish? Yes, Do-il thought so, but his heart couldn't take it anymore. He had to find a way to tell her everything... before it was too late for him.

***

Thirty minutes later, Do-il stopped in the middle of a street and brought out the keys to a small iron gate. He clicked the button on it, and the wall of iron started moving to the side. Once the gate was open, they were able to get inside. Apparently, no one had been following them, but just to make sure, Do-il had driven above the speed limit all day, regardless of the possibility of being stopped by the police or being ticketed later for speeding.
"Welcome to my new modest abode. Only you know of its existence." Do-il parked and once stopped, the two got out of the car. In-joo was looking forward to having ground under her feet once again. High speed had never appealed to her, neither in a car nor in a train or bus.
"So you mean to tell me that not even your mom knows that you bought a house?"
"No one, In-joo-ssi. Let's just say that it was a guarantee. A place to come to in case of need and, well...what we've experienced earlier was a necessity."
The bookkeeper was following the man as he spoke, but after his last words, she stopped at the very second-to-last step leading to the front door of the small single-family mansion.
"Wait a second." The meaning of his words was slowly starting to set in. "You were prepared for something like this to happen?"
Do-il was turning the keys inside the door lock when she spoke. He stopped what he was doing and sighed. "Can we talk inside? We've had enough eyes and possibly even ears on us for today."
In-joo looked at him disapprovingly but still followed him into the foyer of the house and then into the living room, where he sat her down and asked if she wanted something to drink. A glass of water and a two-minute silence later, Do-il mustered up enough courage to answer the question.
"The way I was raised, In-joo-ssi, shaped me in a way that I don't think will be easy to leave behind. I don't know if I will ever be able to abandon my guarded side. I tried – in Santorini I really tried, I think I was able, at least for a while, to let my guard down, but inevitably, with each new person who came into my life, clients and... others," Do-il let go of this little piece of information voluntarily and looked up at the girl's figure to notice significant changes. She hadn't moved at all. "That voice in my head came back overbearingly. When I landed in Seoul, looking for a house was one of the first chores I did." Do-il sighed once again. He felt like he hadn't done nothing but sigh that day.
"I didn't buy this house because I knew something like this might happen, I bought it because life has taught me that you never know what might happen, and I had to do something about it. I had to feel like I was prepared; otherwise, I wouldn't have been able to sleep at night, and trust me when I tell you I've missed a lot of sleep since I've landed here again." The reason being none of what he was talking about, but he wasn't about to tell her that he thought about her more than what was actually considered healthy.
In-joo still wouldn't look at him, but he saw her moving her head in a nod-like movement. So Do-il continued with what he truly wanted to tell her.
"I'm sorry this is happening again, In-joo-ssi. I've never wanted to bring any of this back from the ashes. If I had known, I would have stayed where I was."
"I trust you on that. That you didn't mean it and that you would have stayed where you were. But it doesn't change the fact that somehow someone is still out there messing with all this again when I thought everything was finally done and over with. Someone is still on your tail, Do-il-ssi." In the end, In-joo raised her head, and the man saw her eyes glistening. "Do-il-ssi. Your father said it was a provocation to you." The girl could already feel her nose turning red due to her trying her best not to spill tears. "I'm sorry, it's just that... I can't. I can't go through this again. I can't let my family be in the middle of something as dangerous as this again. This has never been a game, and I have a feeling this is not a game either. Someone is truly messing with you once more, and I can't stand here letting all this shit sink my family down one more time." At the mention of her family, her tears found a way out and started flooding her cheeks. Do-il watched them fall silently and helplessly.
In-joo made one final request then, "I'll have to ask you to keep your distance until everything is clear. Until you figure out a way out of this. I'm sorry, but I can't risk being involved." She dried her face with the sleeve of her light blouse and then stood up. She was going to take the bus home. Do-il nodded and said, "I... wanted to suggest the same thing."