FALLING SLOWLY ||Complete||

Taste of heaven

Memories of a first kiss thousand years old and another not yet a decade old overlaps each other. Former is bitter shadowed by emotions Ha Jin can no longer pin point, desperate, painful and salty. A liberty taken and forgiven thousand years ago. With his fingers laced through hers - a desperation of different kind - So drives with one hand. The passing vistas are lost to her, instead Ha Jin keeps her eyes on the man for whom she had longed for in her meaninglessly shifting nightmares.

His face is bronze again, she notes - that he has started swimming once more. It must mean that his injury has healed enough and that everything is well with Miss Oh. She dares not ask, the silence between them is fragile and expensive. It allows the memories to come effortlessly that if she close her eyes she could almost hear the galloping hooves of their horse, the sound of his breathing next to her ear and feel his hand on her waist as he managed the reins with the other. It feels foolish now - how she never recognized him back then - how he seems to vanish from her recollections each time she wakes up to a new life. Instead every time, she learns to love him anew, and her love - like wine - gets more potent and stronger with each turn.

His thumb draws lazy circles on her palm, unconsciously tracing lines of a forgotten thought. He thinks of how they are so alike down to their blazing need to protect the other. She would condemn herself to a loveless life for a drift of a chance of saving him and he had long back done the same.

He thinks of Tae dying in a pool of his own blood, ruins of his success lying around him in a maze of broken glass. It felt so easy to believe that Ha Jin must have pushed him into the glass case containing his trophies in an attempt to save herself. His father had made it sound so possible at the same time it seems he had known it all along.

He thinks of what Yo had told him, of his brother’s rightful anger.

“He had the tape all along - his key to Hae’s fortune. And even after I found it all he has the audacity to send an attacker...!” Yo’s words had been puffs of anger. So watches him pace back and forth, hands balled and jaw clenched.

"He did that to your head?" So asks pointing at the sizable plaster on his forehead. 

"Yes, I went to see the vintage point." Yo replies darkly.

Yo finds it hard to imagine a father casting away a son so easily, or overlooking the potential murder of a child - but in the light of recent findings So finds it gruesome but all too real. Tae had never been a son to his father and thinking of the way he - the son - was manipulated So is doubtful in front of his ambition Assemblyman Hwang would have cared for anything else.

“I shouldn’t be here,” her voice is small, when Ha Jin breaks his train of thoughts, colored by fears she fails to keep hidden from him. For a moment he wonders if she remembers it all - that thousand years old past - a dark thought perhaps that he wonders if she would start to resent him if she does.

“I made a deal with Aboji once,” when he speaks abruptly a surprise flickers across her eyes before their gazes meet. “I thought I was protecting you by leaving. I was led to believe in a falsehood.” As always. He leaves the last two words to remain a thought and reflects back to the time thousand years ago when he had heeded the words of the same man and left for Jin believing in his absence she would be safe. “I shouldn’t have left you.” His last words are a resolve for himself, not to repeat anymore of his mistakes. It seemed everyone around them was a part of a puzzle he was yet to make sense of - a storm he has no shelter against. As the engine dies down, she looks around with a hint of surprise. “Come -”

He takes her hand before a second thought takes hold of her and helps her out.

The sun is setting. Wind slaps against them in salty waves and the sand beneath their feet is still warm. The beach is secluded as is the norm of the spot, the silence only broken by the crashing waves.