FALLING SLOWLY ||Complete||

Darkest depth

Obligations. The word comes to her as familiar as breathing. Hae Soo had been living a life of obligations a long before she walked into this hall, in the arm of the man she was supposed to marry next summer. She wasn't even a Hae to begin with - Hae was her mother's side of the family. But for the good will of her prestigious grand father as her uncle liked to remind once in a while - she would have been admitted into the social care program.

She wonders if Wook knows that. The elite image they had portrayed of her she wonders if he knows it is anything but an ill fitting second skin. Underneath all the stuffy designer wear and exotic perfume she is still the orphan Go Ha Jin. His hand lays briefly atop hers, as his mother observes them over the rim of her red wine, her eyes narrowed critically - and his smile is soft touched with pride. He knows not. She decides with an inaudible sigh.

On that account, she silently adds one more to the things Wook does not know. She wonders if it matters to him, that she was not the woman he was supposed to marry. In the end it all boils down to merges and stocks and things she found too stressful to care about. But Soo didn't hate Wook - he was a good man, gentle and caring.A twinkle of mirth in his eyes. The man who brought her back to life after that drastic accident. No, she did not find herself victimized either. Only, it felt wrong - like wearing someone else's shoes. He was charming but not hers. He was meant to marry her sweet cousin Myung Hee. Had she lived a little longer.

Her thoughts run stray as they dine through courses of lavish food, conversation turning around her from one empty topic to the other. She keeps on her face an expression of mild interest. Her aunt had tortured her into perfecting it. Her aunt considered Soo her masterpiece. The lady she made from the scratch she announced with pride. And she did everything she was told - she was too obliged not to.

While she pretends to listen to the conversations going around - her mind turns to darker ends. She ponders over her nightmares that has no end or beginning. They began with the accident she narrows down mentally. After Myung Hee's death. Wook called it PTSD. She couldn't argue with him. Waking up to a world empty of her favorite Unni and fractured knees had been traumatic. But something nudged at her mind, keeping her awake at night even a long after her fractures had mended or her soul had began to heal - the whispers did not cease.

Her eyes met Wook's briefly. And Soo smiled before they were absorbed by the conversations again. She did not forget Wook was also her doctor. He would suspect she was not taking her medicine. Soo did not want him to worry about her. But still she couldn't confess it to him either. The pills blanked her out, putting her under a dreamless sleep. She was too addicted to the world of her nightmares to prefer such peace over the chaos they brought. In the nightmares where she was tortured by ways of old countless times until the pain in her knees returned to wake her up - she found something that was absent in her reality.

Love.

It was a nameless, faceless man. A stranger. A Shadow. Dark as the night itself and as lonely as a wolf. He lingered in the back of her mind like a word at the tip of her tongue. It was imagination. She told herself. But real in her world of dreams, as real as a memory. A man whose beauty was marred, she couldn't recall how, whose scars peered into his soul. He moved her to tears every time she woke up from a longing for something that never was, a sadness that wasn't hers.

Soo never spoke of him to anyone other than Myung Hee.
And that stranger.

She corrects her thought as her memory returns to the morning when she had visited Myung Hee. Soo did not know if she was sad or happy about the fact that her Unni had a grave. It felt some how more fitting for her to lie in those sunny fields, where wind blew with hints of summer in their folds. Myung Hee carried sun in her eyes. She would have been happy nowhere else.

Those visits began reluctantly, more like a therapy if nothing else. But they had always shared everything about each other. Soo was not going to give up their tradition on her own. She had drowned and woken up to find her Unni gone - taken by a fate that should have been hers. If she was to believe her nightmares, a little of which made any sense she would say her trip to past had changed her future. In those nightmares which lingered in her memory after she woke up Unni was married to Wook. But he looked at Soo with affection in his eyes and her heart fluttered at his smile. In those dreams Unni had wanted her to care for Wook. In those dreams she was there when Unni passed away. It was not as deep as love, but it was a feeling she held in to, to help her go on. They could find a happy ending.

But at the end of the day came the night and the stranger in shadows with all his intense all consuming love.

Soo stood up, drying her eyes only to find him there. He was visiting someone himself. And she did not mean to hear his words.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry..." He chanted the word over and over again. Head bowed low and on his knees in the dirt. " I'm sorry I hated you... I didn't understand.It should have been me. It was my fault."

She did not mean to walk up to him. But his was a pain she could relate with. Soo had the same regrets clawing at her day and night to turn around and walk away. Now that she thinks of it, she should have been better prepared.

"You are hurt -!"

The moment he turned around she knew those were the wrong words to say. But the sight of his hands cut on the rocky ground did not help much. For a moment he held her gaze. Those eyes reminded her of wolves and starless nights, of wounded animals ready to spring. Involuntarily she took a step backwards.

His jaw tightened as he turned his back to her.

"Leave."

"I don't think he would have appreciated it. Whatever happened it stays in the past, he would have you go on - don't you think?"

Her courage that had made a rare appearance failed and drained the moment the kneeling man stood up to his full height. He towered over her radiating malice.

"And what do you know of it?" His tone was brisk and sarcastic.

To her disappointment she took another step backwards.

"Nothing." He snapped. "You know nothing."

In the moment she flinched he was gone, walking down the isle so fast as if he feared she would follow with more words of sympathy. Soo didn't want to follow him, in fact she was regretting approaching him at all.

It had been then that she noticed something shimmering gold in the ground.