Owning You - A Na Jaemin Fanfic

33. Family Tree

I stretch my arms up behind my head and yawn. It is a yawn so loud and so lengthy that the dumb girls are shocked into silence. They stare at me, as if they cannot believe their eyes - and their ears. Jaemin looks like he wants to laugh.

I lean back once more, stretch my legs, and arch my spine, putting my hands behind my head and close my eyes, as if I were reclining in a deckchair on a Sunday afternoon.

"Are you sleepy, Haeri?" he murmurs, grinning.

"Yes," I yawn. The girls glare.

"Haeri here's a bit shy," he says smoothly. "So I'd like to talk about her, if you don't mind." He smiles. "She's my fiancée, in case you aren't aware of that." A few gasps. But otherwise, there is absolute silence. "Haeri is an accomplished pianist. And an artist." Whoa. I almost choke. Last I checked, I couldn't even draw a straight line properly. "She knows so much about modern art." Do I? "She's such a kind and caring person. And such a devoted daughter. Every morning, I wake up and thank the gods for bringing her into my life." His voice is bursting with absurd pride. I blink at him. His eyes are wicked.

"Baby," I say, batting my eyelashes. "You are embarrassing me." I give him a mock-punch. "Stop it."

"Baby," he shakes his head in disbelief. "You're so humble." He leans over, and gives me a quick hug. "You're so humble it's adorable." He flashes a blinding smile at the girls. "Isn't she adorable?" They stare at him blankly.

"You're way more adorable than me, baby," I coo. To the girls, I say in a breathy voice, "Jaemin is the best thing ever that's happened to me." I take a deep breath.

And I launch into it, an effusive, full teeth-and-dazzle description of The Incomparable Na Jaemin. Jaemin provides so much indepth knowledge on US-Korea-China relations. Jaemin discusses the architectural history of Korea with aplomb and flair. Jaemin's deep and detailed reading of Classical Literature has provided us with hours of enthralling conversation.

The girls' mouths fall open, their jaws slacken.

Who'd have thought that the talents I've honed from hours and hours of watching old movies would one day be put on public display? I grow more and more dramatic, more and more exaggerated in my exuberant praise of Na Jaemin, God's Gift to Mankind, throwing in my favourite lines from my favourite movies. "He is a giant among men." "The air shifts when he walks into a room, I swear." "I know when he approaches; the birds start to sing." "Roses don't bloom in winter, except the ones in Jaemin's garden."

If it weren't so bizarre, I'd almost find it funny.

"The roses in your garden bloomed earlier than the roses in my garden," he declares, casting an adoring look at me.

"One day sooner," I say with a giggle.

"How do you know that?"

"I just know."

"You know everything," he says admiringly.

"Does it matter whose roses bloomed first?" I frown.

"No," he says grandly, "What is important is that they bloomed..." In winter, I add, "in winter," he continues, "and we are here and we are engaged and it couldn't be more wonderful," I beam, and he takes my hand, smiling. The girls look sick. They look at us with horror in their eyes. They are a perfect match, indeed, they are thinking.

And indeed, we are. Jaemin is taking on the part of the dizzyingly happy fiancé, and he is nothing if not a superb actor. It takes one to know one.

I glance at him. I smile again, a smile luminous enough to light up the entire camp. I know he senses it - the glee, the exhilaration, the swell of contentment that come with the glib tongue, the smooth acting. He can see the smooth, clever actress that I am.

"Jaemin has such a distinguished lineage. Baby," I say, opening my eyes wide. "Won't you tell us about the Nas?" The girls wince. A few dart desperate glances at one another. But they are too well-mannered to bolt.

"Do tell us," I beg, glossy, confident, and cunning. "Puh-lease."

Jaemin cants forward slightly. "Why, certainly," he says. "I can go on for hours."

And he does.

He goes on for hours - no, days. Decades, possibly.

The faces of the fangirls wrinkle and sag with the passage of time.

The Nas of Busan, the Nas of Singapore. Expanding across the oceans and continents to the Nas of Australia, and the Nas of England, and Scotland. The Nas of Canada. The Nas of Holland. The Nas of New York and California. They are a family with numerous branches and offshoots and Na Jaemin is intimately acquainted with every last leaf on the blooming tree. Or so he believes. As he traces the descent of the family, not a single person whom he mentions more than once manages to stay the same. Daughters become sons; sons become grandsons; a couple who'd have twelve children suddenly become childless. Women who have never married are subsequently referred to as widows. One particular boy is born on two separate occasions and then dies once in London, once in Glasgow, and - as if those aren't enough - one more time five years later in Spain.

Once those beautiful lips start to move, Jaemin sets out with relish to make distressingly less sense the more he talks. And the more distressed his audience become, the more engrossed I make myself appear and the more brilliantly I smile. Every time he draws breath, he looks at me as if I am air, water, and poetry, as if it is the two of us against them, and the world.

"Tell them about the Na Family Motto," I breathe, my face filled with rapture after a beat of silence. More than a beat, actually. A long, horrified eternity of silence.

"Ah. That. Of course. How could I leave it out?" The girls stare dumbly. Their faces are numb. Their eyes are glassy. "Go forth and multiply," he says grandly. 

"Procreate, baby," I giggle. "Multiply is for flies. Or insects."

"Really?" he says, looking suitably impressed. "Damn. You're clever, baby."

"Not as clever as you, baby," I giggle, louder, and a girl makes a strange, choking sound, something between a gag and a moan.

We finally let them leave, and they mutter incoherent goodbyes, and totter away on unsteady legs, their eyes glazed, their ears vibrating with the mindnumbing unleashing of the skull-scrapingly painful recitation of massacred facts on Na births, Na marriages, Na children, and Na deaths.

"What was that all about?" I say quietly.

"They were playing a game," his eyes are cold. "It wasn't very nice."

"What game?"

"Making you invisible." He stares at me. "I didn't like it."

"So you protected me?"

"Yes."

"Will you fight everyone who attacks me?"

"Yes."

"Like a," I laugh, to stop myself from crying, "a fire-breathing dragon?"

"Like a fire-breathing two-headed dragon," his eyes are fierce and possessive.

He puts a hand over mine. His eyes are very sombre. "Nobody hurts you anymore. I won't allow them to." He frowns, grips my hand tight. "If anyone hurts you, says anything mean...hurtful, tell me. Come to me. Promise me, Haeri."

"Okay."

"You've got me now. You know that, right?" His eyes search mine. "Haeri?"

"Yes."

"I've got you. Say it."

"I've got you."

He lifts my hand to his lips, and I feel the pressure of them against my fingers and the warmth of his breath against the back of my hand. There is a soreness in my throat as I fight foolishly against the tears that threaten.

"Nobody's ever fought for me before," I say, my voice wobbly. I hear him suck in his breath.

"From now on," he says quietly, "I'll fight every single battle for you."

He leans forward, and dips his head.

"They'll see," I whisper.

"I don't care," he says, and then he kisses me.