The protector

The Chase (M)

WARNING: description of violence all around the chapter. Again, provided the period, be cautious and take care of your health

BEFORE READING: warnings had been updated for those who couldn't imagine In-ah's face. 

2027, Spring

- That man has many stories that he can't even tell his best friend

So his heart is full of tears-

Days were getting longer, so that there was still light outside when they came out of the dojang, and Jeong Hyeok often asked In-ah to have a walk. Time was flowing in a succession of piano, taekwondo, swimming, Pilates at her house - with In-ah trying to persuade him to train at the park and his strenuous resistance, for the moment, still beating her enthusiasm -, romantic dinners without In-ah knowing they were romantic, and walks around the city. 

Jeong Hyeok wanted to show her his hometown, and discovering it again with her too, since Pyongyang was now perceptibly different from the quiet and quite fanè city he remembered.

"Haven't you lived here during the last years?" She asked one day.

"Yes and not. Yes till high school," the man listed, "then Swiss. Then yes again during a small period after my brother's death, when I joined the army, then, as soon as I could, I asked to be assigned to the DMZ, and then... you know, I didn't feel like walking around," until you arrived, he addressed her a silent glimpse.

"Why exactly you joined the army? You never told me the reason, If I can ask, don't answ... " Jeong Hyeok puffed a smile to that habit of her to making him know that she was curious about his life, but wanted to be respectful too. A question always followed by the request to not answer if the query was somehow wrong. Always. He adored it. Albeit they were close now, she never forgot to be well mannered – except when she wanted to fool him. It might have seemed old fashioned, or cold, but there was something reassuring in that politeness.

"One of us had to follow my father's career. My brother sacrificed himself in order to give me the opportunity to become a pianist, but when he died it should be me. Stayed in Pyongyang for a little, and then I asked to be moved. He was serving there when he had been murdered. "

"Don't tell me you have invest... "

"Any second." Jeong Hyeok lifted his gaze and took a deep breath in, the nostrils widening at the incoming air, "he died in a car crash, you know, and the vehicle had never been found. You see, there isn't so many cars here, and that one had destroyed a military jeep, it was at least strange that it was nowhere to be found."

"And at the end you... wait a second," In-ah grabbed his arm to catch his attention as she furrowed to him "Jeong Hyeok, was your brother Mu Hyeok Ri?"

The sound of his name had him gasping, the traffic of cars and pedestrians tritely turning into a slow motion mode, he pointed to her with the widest gaze, puzzled "how you... "

"What do you mean with 'how you'? It had been the main corruption scandal of the last ten years, the military vehicles, they had something in ceramic, am I wrong? I've seen a pic of your brother, you two were very similar, he had dimples too," she answered him, extending that last line with a soft smile.

The man was caught up in the emotion as his tall frame diminished under the curved back, his head sunk between the shoulders, like if he was instinctively reducing his size to the boy he used to be, to Mu Hyeok's little brother. People were used to tell him that he looked like his hyun, but it hadn't happened for years now.