The protector

Let me tell you about Se-ri (M)

Author's note: 

Hi readers! A few words about this chapter. First, it follows the previous ones in explaining what really happened during summer ecc. Thus, it will open with a little flashback. And there's another flashback, in the end, and I'm sure you'll like it because it's about Se-ri (yes, the title is too cryptic, uh?). I can't post an entire chapter about her now, because it would contain spoilers, but here you'll find the fundamentals: what happened in Swiss, how are they handling this period before he reaches her in the South ecc. Hope you'll enjoy it <3

Pyongyang, 2027, June

All of a sudden, In-ah had asked him to give her a kiss, because she had something to tell him, and there was the high possibility for him not wanting to see her anymore after that, and so, please pianist give me a last kiss.

Jeong Hyeok had accomplished like an adult who satisfies the silly request of a child, giving her a condescending kiss. That little elf had the most innocent heart he'd ever known, he couldn't possibly believe that her mind could have ever produced an idea that could have brought him to not wanting to see her anymore.

It was beyond impossibility.

And it proved right. What In-ah told him, what he watched her telling him with such concern on her face, was something that would have led a proper comrade to take its way to the door, close it at his back, and maybe reach the closest police office.

"(...) I think you should at least try, try to talk with your parents, open your heart, explain them the situation and the way this is making you feel, the way this is affecting your health (...)" some of her words sounded like blurred, because a buzz began to numb inside his head, making it difficult to follow all her speech, but he thought he was getting the point. She knew what shitty parents were, and his ones weren't of that kind, she knew he wasn't daring to ask them but he should instead, it was an unbearable thought, the fact that he could have had the family he deserved, all together in the same place, and he was denying himself the smallest possibility. Happiness was so close and he wasn't even trying to reach it, stuck to his stubborn idea that his father would have surely refused. What made him so sure? Hadn't the man already helped him? The fuck, if she would have had a family like his, she would have never renounced to that luck, such a waste Jeong Hyeok.

In-ah extended him a long, frank speech. He never interrupted her. Both because he wanted to know what she was minding to suggest him, and because he actually knew what she was suggesting to him, and that was having him speechless.

"You think?" You think I should talk to my father, bring all my family out of here, build something all together, stop dwelling about making a choice because there is no choice to do, because I can have both? His eyes conveyed what words couldn't. A single bug, and there would have been no defection to talk about, because they would have been executed before the end of the day.

"I'm sure you should at least try. About the outcome... I don't know, I sincerely don't know. The simple talking about it is a risk, for me too."

"Why you're doing it then?"

"Because you die if not. You die if this thing will continue like this. One way or another, this thing will dig into you and you'll fall in the hole. On one day, and I wish you this will be in 100 years, your parents will no longer be with you and you'll ..., and you won't be happy to ... as you were expecting, because you're making your parents' death the premise of your happiness, and it can't be, it-can't-be. This is not life. This thing has already killed you somehow."