The protector

Let it be Pyongyang for one night more (M) (Epilogue 2 - North)

We may be tiny to the world, but in our hearts

We be giants with our tiny, tiny love

(Mika, Tiny Love)

Barcelona, 2030, November

None of the two would have ever been able to describe what they felt on the morning after when, waking up, they surprised themselves framed one in the hug of the other.

The room was echoing an atmosphere muffled and oneiric at one time, the silence bouncing a tenderness which was, and all together, mute and overpowering, mellowed and thundering.

It mirrored the truth of that morning, end and beginning to an equal extent. And too big to believe, but also real, fair even. Dream, and as things should have always been.

Waking up for first, Jeong Hyeok was taking his time to study the woman, to convince himself it was real.

In the broad daylight, she was seeming to him an angel. Even with the sleepy, swollen eyes and the dark circles, even if her skin wasn't the healthy alabaster her was used to, even if her cheekbones were slightly too marked for his liking. The long, curled lashes, the peony mouth were whispering to him that she was his angel, giving him a sense of boundless tenderness.

The little head placidly yet implacably laid on his forearm, making him proud pillow. And her arm wrapping his chest, possessive. Slender, light arm which was to him seal and fence, place and promise. Jeong Hyeok moved his free hand, the one which wasn't wrapping her as well, and secured her limb on him. Just in case.

And it occurred to him that it was like a universe of its own, that hug. The way they were trapped and interlaced so that one couldn't move without the other moving too. The way their bones had softened to mould together. As if it all was permeated with a gentleness of limbs and senses. As if, would have it lasted forever, it would have been ok, they could have survived breathing each other.

In-ah opened her eyes slowly yet, magnets to each other, even with the lids still heavy with sleep her look instantly found and locked his.

"You're real, then," she murmured with a thread of voice.

Was it so for her too? A soft smile curved Jeong Hyeok's lips. Was she doubting if he maybe was just the usual morning dream? Was she maybe prey of his same foggy awakenings, that daydream made of waking up in the arms of the other only to discover, minutes later, that the other was nothing but a ghost?

"And you? Are you real, elf?"

In response, just a deeper snuggling. Nothing but a tighter clench of that slender arm which stated and marked his belonging to her.

Genitive, sometimes he felt he wasn't someone anymore but just a genitive related to her, only existing if and because of her. He was In-ah's.

"Can you wait here for one second?"

She understood in no time, her eyes brightening. "Go, come back as soon as you can."

It wasn't one second, since lovers were as human as anyone else and this implied morning visits to the bathroom and morning breathings unnaturally smelling of toothpaste, but it felt like it.