The protector

That man (M)

When a pianist tried to court a pirate

PART 2: THE CHASE

2027, Spring

The two didn't resume the old habit to spend all the time at her house. He started to invite her for a walk, instead, or to visit a library, to buy some food, have a walk. Later, to drink something near the Dubai or eat together after the classes.

"There's this place where they serve the ramyeon you like so much, let's try" was his usual excuse, wondering when she would have discovered that her favourite ramyeon were served in any single restaurant of the city.

Even his presence in the group increased in frequency, with Jeong Hyeok never missing a movie night or a drinking one. And never missing the chance to drop a casual comment about this or that song. When someone asked him to play, he nodded with a soft smile, always ready to content them. But then he only played the songs she liked the most. He only memorized the words of her songs, he only wanted to see her giggling like a girl.

- That man is timid

So he learned how to laugh -

One night - they had dined till late in a small spot close to his house – he proposed her to walk a little. The street was empty, and the soft city lights let them see all the stars. She was explaining something, missing that her interlocutor was spacing out, staring at the sky with a soft smile on his face.

That one had been an incredibly pleasurable dinner. He was relaxed, and she was funnier than ever and had fascinated him with all her comic opinions 'Jeong Hyeok you're socialist and you don't know anything about Salvador Allende's nephew, how?' inciting him to reflect – 'I can tell you all the male authors I've read, tell me one female author you had, no! Agatha Christie doesn't count' and he realized that she was right -, making him laugh because of her super serious face when he asked if, so, the little poster in her bedroom "God is a woman and her name is Isabel" was because of it. 'Jeong Hyeok' she had replied, extending her palm 'I would like to have back the time of my life I've waisted with you. I was made to believe you were clever.'

"I was made to believe you were a Tolstojist."

"What happened to polytheism not being a crime? Ehi, why you are looking at me like that?"

"Nothing," but it wasn't nothing. Yet it wasn't nothing.

"Seriously" she claimed his attention in the brisk air of the early Spring night "why in Swiss you eat brown bread, you even put cheese on it, and it taste like absolutely nothing, and here you eat noodles with a slice of cucumber on it, and it tastes so good? They use the same buckwheat, this is a mystery we have to solve."

"It's the soybean paste" the pianist ruminatively retorted, still lost in thought.

"Jeong Hyeok, it's always the soybean paste for you. Flu? Soybean paste. Hangover? Black soybean paste in hot water and dramatically calling it a soup."

As per her habit, she was gesticulating to emphasize the concept, when her hand slipped down and its back accidentally, slightly grazed the back of his one. It could have been hardly called a contact, yet both winced, and she hurried to take her hand back.

But he was faster. Grabbed her palm, and when she tried to move the hand again, tightened the grip and launched her a simple, genuine, soft smile.

In the middle of an empty street, the soft city lights worked with the moon and stars to light the flushing cheeks of an elf.