MOC | YG [✔]

12.

Yeonjun

"Beomgyu!"

"Sshhh," someone whispered. "You'll wake him."

Huh?

I cracked my eyes open to find myself in a dimly lit room. There was a constant beeping sound, faint, but there, and I could hear the rain pelting the window.

"How are you feeling, sir?"

"Oliver?" The older man's face came into my view. "What are you doing here?"

And where exactly was here?

"You know the answer to that, sir." He nodded his head to the other side of the bed. "I could not leave you two unattended, especially Master Beomgyu."

"What?" I asked when his brow furrowed.

"Master Beomgyu has had to be very brave, sir. Maybe more so than he ever has before. He has held well to the Choi name, but I worry..." Oliver's lips pressed thin for a moment, almost as if he was afraid to say what was on his mind.

"Worry about what?"

"I worry that it will all be too much for him, sir. Despite the strong man he shows the world, I suspect that he has a gentle soul, and I fear it may suffer through all of this."

I glanced over at the man sleeping next to me. Beomgyu was sitting in a chair that he had pulled over to the side of the bed. His head rested on the mattress next to my leg, his hand resting on my thigh as if he needed physical contact.

I knew how he felt.

I lifted my hand and threaded it through his long silky hair. "His grandfather said he had a hard outer shell and a soft gooey center."

"I suspect he was right, sir."

"He'll be all right, Oliver," I said as I stroked the top of Beomgyu's head. "He is stronger than anyone I know, even me."

"With all due respect, sir. I think you are wrong."

I glanced at Oliver in surprise. He never argued with me, not even when he thought I was wrong. "What do you mean?"

"Master Beomgyu cares about you, sir. I suspect he cares very deeply. Watching you get shot right in front of his eyes..." Oliver shook his head, his lips turning down at the corners. "You didn't see him, sir. He was like a zombie. He simply sat there in one of those waiting room chairs for hours, not moving, his clothes covered in blood. He didn't scream and shout. He didn't cry. He didn't do anything except stare at the doors they had taken you through."

Alarm flared through me, making my words sharper. "He wasn't hurt, was he?"

"It was your blood, sir, not his. Master Beomgyu was not physically harmed."

My relief almost made me pass out. The room even spun for a moment. "As long as he wasn't hurt—"

"I did not say he wasn't hurt, sir. I said he was not physically harmed."

I kept my hand in Beomgyu's hair but huffed when I turned to glare at Oliver. "Say what you mean, Oliver."

"I have been, sir. You are just not listening."

There were times when I hated the cryptic way this man talked. Oliver had been with me longer than I remembered. He always talked in circles and usually I didn't mind it.

This time, not so much.

"Just remember to treat him gently, sir. He has been required to be very strong over the last twelve hours. And while that may not seem like a lot of time in the grand scheme of things, it's been a lifetime for him."