Author's note: those who have read 'The Protector - Daesik' will surely find it easier to understand this chapter. For those who haven't, though, I tried to make it as clear and complete as possible. Hope you'll enjoy it.
- Can love be split up?
- It's not that one is cut in half, it doubles.
(My Wife Got Married)
Barcelona, 2030, November
The plan for their first weekend together was to jump on a random train and spend a couple of nights wherever it would have taken them, relishing both the mutual presence and the absence of boundaries, two things that still felt like a fresh newfangled.
However, In-ah's Spanish office proved as delusional as she had described it, so that on Saturday morning she had to run to work and handle a last-second emergency of some sort. Provided her curses, Jeong Hyeok inferred that it wasn't the first time and it wouldn't have been the last.
As for him, anyway, that sudden change of plans felt disappointing but not that much, the pianist holding an alternative, very secret agenda.
Eventually alone at home, he turned the whole apartment upside down, trashing and scrubbing until everything was neat, shining, and disturbingly smelling chlorine. Then, buoyed by the result, the man stressed his adaptation skills by adventuring himself in the first solo grocery shopping.
If anything, on that night he would have welcomed her with a clean, civilized place and their noodles.
He was chopping the vegetables in thin sticks when the home's door opened with its distinctive click. Without leaving the working station, Jeong Hyeok just stretched his neck to show up at the kitchen's entrance and claim a kiss, the idea that she had come back home earlier reflexively springing a bubbling smile on his face.
And it was with the same bubbling smile that the man on the door was looking at him.
Apparently taller than him.
A little bulkier than him.
And with a tan.
Silence and stillness. They looked at each other with the awkwardness of two who knew who the other was yet were officially supposed not to.
It was the man who broke the silence for first.
"In-ah?"
"Office."
"Ok."
The Arabic moved his bag under the rack, and simply walked out the door, closing it at his back.
Would things have gone as he had played them - millions of times - inside his head, Jeong Hyeok would have told him to stay and talk about that woman they both cared so much for, and see how to find a way to make that situation work, and many, many other things.
The tensed muscles on the man's face had told him that a single word and he would have exploded though. Hence, the pianist found himself dazed still, dully staring at that bag.
He had left it with such relaxed naturalness, as if that was its place. It hurt a little.
The phone didn't want to stop wriggling inside his hands like a flipping, riot eel as he tried to text In-ah. He had briefly considered calling her, then deciding not to, in case she would have been busy. The woman called him back in no time.
YOU ARE READING
The protector
FanfictionFor three years Ri Jeong Hyeok had fought to be reunited with the love of his life, only to find out that, in the meantime, something crucial has changed in the life of the woman. With the burden of a tragic choice on his shoulders, the pianist is l...
