The protector

China - dumplings (MM)

Pyongyang-Beijing - day one (24 hours before "Appetizer")

"Elf, you're spoiling me!"

Though being a healthily active couple of lovers, along with a couple of friends that felt comfortable in each other's company, not to mention two people who had seen the darkest hour the one of the other, there never was, between them, a real couple intimacy, each one keeping something for his/herself.

It was something Jeong Hyeok had never realized in actuality. He felt good with In-ah, and he felt good with that barracks atmosphere, that camaraderie, that vicious lewdness in which it often switched.

Thus, initially, the man struggled to understand what was happening.

When the alarm rang, on that morning, In-ah wasn't in bed and the breakfast he was used to preparing already was on the table. "Eat, we can't eat on the airplane,(1)" she told him with a mischievous, amused grin, flying out from the room. Then, when he had gone out of the shower, the two suitcases already were near to the door, "just dress up and we go."

So he did. The flight was scheduled early, and the only things he had to do were to eat and have a wash.

"I swear I could have packed on my own," Jeong Hyeok protested once they were in the taxi. They both had worked till late during the last days, aiming to not find a mess of documents (her) and stiffened fingers (him) at their comeback. The time for packing had been, basically, no time.

"Still, this time you've been elf-packed."

Once on the flight, In-ah brought out of her backpack three sheets that looked suspiciously similar to the ones of the legendary bloc-notes where she reduced all the steps of a life in schemes and little arrows.

"The options for today, pick one."

"Elf you're spoiling me," he had whispered.

In-ah had sunk her pirate gaze in his, like challenging him to go against it. "Yes."

"Elf you're spoiling me!" He repeated in a new taxi. She had stopped one, nimbly fumbling across the crowded airport, told the driver the hotel address, and given him the cases to put in the trunk, all of that grabbing his hand and preventing him from moving. All of that without giving him the time to realize what was happening around him. One minute before he was on the plane, one minute later on a taxi with In-ah coquettishly chatting with the driver to stress her Chinese – "I'm a bit rusty" she had told him. It didn't seem so.

When the awareness that she had been worried for him to get lost in the crowd had come, his heart had skipped a beat. She was taking care of anything, included him.

"Elf you're spoiling me!" He barely managed to protest before she stuffed him with the nth dumpling.

"Yes, sorry, I can't stop, I'm too happy."

Except for the check-in in the hotel, when she had needed two hands to show the documents and the reservation, the woman had never stopped to hold his hand. And she had never stopped smiling. And now that they were eating something to recharge the batteries, she couldn't stop filling his mouth with dumplings.

On that first day, they visited Tiananmen square and the sky temple. The less tiring option, according to her sheets. Jeong Hyeok judged that it would have been better to take the program on a lighter basis for that day.