North - South

A kiss for protection

"What, she's convinced herself that she really is my girlfriend?"

Eyes on the road, Kwang-beom cast him a knowing smile, "I don't know what to say, Chi-su was teasing her, saying she was like on holiday since she had nothing to do, and Se-ri told us to bring her our clothes to resew because she indeed had time. And then she said that maybe, you too..."

Jeong Hyeok had to turn to the window as a tiny inner warmth was threatening to curve his lips in a small smile. He hadn't seen her for four days, and it seemed that through that short period things had taken an unexpected turn. And... she wasn't supposed to help, but the fact that she was doing it was... pleasurable? Fun? Ridiculous maybe. Yes, ridiculous. That brat fixing shirts and socks. Tsk, the absurdity.

"I don't need any re-sewing."

"She said that if you keep dressing so shabby at work you'll never move up, you'll remain forever a no one and will never be able to help her."

Ishhh! "I'm not..."

"Her words, not mine. Sorry. Oh! Here we are, this is the place."

"Wait for me in the car."

"Anything interesting?" Kwang-beom gave him an anxious and worried look as soon as he opened the car door.

"Mhm," the former pianist nodded before imperceptibly leaning closer to his friend; one could never know where ears or bugs were. "Jung Man-bok."

"Wasn't he a friend of..."

"De. He's back in Pyongyang."

A small chill ran along both's spines. Eventually, after all those years, something. Little, maybe useless, but something.

"Where do I have to bring you now? Office? Home?"

"Stop here, I'll walk to Ju-meok's place. I need to walk."

"Not at home?"

"Ani. They already brought her food, there's no need." Managing to avoid his place was proving pretty successful, and things were perfect like that. Se-ri needed a place and food, not his company, and he definitively didn't need hers.

He was really feeling like walking. Too many emotions, too many thoughts crowding his head. Something. Something little, useless maybe, but eventually something. And that something felt everything, in that late afternoon. 

When Mu Hyeok had been arrested and his dad had called him back to North Korea, when he had ordered him to join the army, there was just one reason why he had accepted. 

His mom had insisted, screamed even. To her, the safest solution was for her son to be sent back to Swiss. She didn't want another son in that nest of vipers. And he himself had spent days staring at the ceiling, crying, and biting his nails, mourning the end of two lives instead of one.

But in the end, he had accepted his fate. With the first son out of the way, it was up to the second, to follow the father's career.

Though it hadn't happened out of filial respect. It had happened because those days spent in crying and staring at the ceiling had been useful for him to gather the pieces. Mu Hyeok was investigating someone. He had been many times in Swiss, through the last years. Officially to visit the little brother, unofficially because he was suspecting a connection between some people in that country and the Pyongyang Business school, the school of economics founded by the European Business Association of North Korea, an organization whose investments had attracted suspicion since the first days, and around which had always gravitated people his brother didn't trust at all. People like Kang.