North - South

Tears are free to drink

Passing through Se-ri as if she was a ghost or something highly insignificant - which was exactly what she wanted to convey -, Dan's gaze stopped on Jeong Hyeok, standing still in front of her after having hurriedly reached their hotel. With the woman, like she had told him - but damn, did he have to start obeying her right on that day?

"First, I need to talk with you. Alone."

"Oh," the man nodded. Whatever uncomfortable feeling – discomfort itself, and a weird guilt that was rooted in their social norms and in nothing more but that was, nevertheless, there, present and material – dissolved in front of the peremptoriness in Dan's voice. 

He knew her manners could be objectionable, yet she was never dramatic for the mere purpose of being dramatic. "Your room?"

"Gu Seung-jun, Yoon Se-ri's close friend, he's here. And needs to talk with you..." she proceeded to explain, managing to keep the conversation as dry as possible and remember all the necessary information.

And while talking, word after word as Jeong Hyeok nodded in acknowledgement, she saw it. Dan saw his glance falling one time, and then a second, and a third, on the clumsily arranged blanket of her bad. No, nobody had never taught her how to make her bed. So what?

"That's it," she concluded, "you can meet him now, he's waiting in the living room."

Again, Jeong Hyeok nodded, he hadn't done anything more than nodding through all her quick speech. Before leaving the room though, his look fell once again on the bed, and then mindlessly turned to her. The thing left her unperturbed, her stare firm and proud. If she was feeling a hint of discomfort, it only was for the lack of privacy.

It had been a long, weird day. Seung-jun had invited her for a chocolate, then for lunch. And then, somehow, it had ended like that. 

It had just happened. She had felt so wanted. So venerated by that man who had looked at her - all the time! - as if she was the most precious gem of the universe.

He had made her talk. She had opened up with him. He had told her that she was a stupid, that she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, that Jeong Hyeok must have hit his head and that she should have stopped bothering for him.

And that she didn't love him. She was just being stubborn. And this last had made her blush, the idea having crossed her mind more than once.

He had said it without ulterior motives, she was sure of it. But then "do you really think that I'm beautiful?" she had asked him. And to prove he really did, Seung-jun had kissed her. And then had kissed her more, and again. And something had awakened in her.

"My place!" She had commanded, and God only knew in what kind of rotten movie she had heard such sentence.

And she had found herself touched by a man who touched her with the same devotion he would have used with a goddess. Never someone had touched her like that. Never someone had touched her at all.

Was it weakness? Being refused for all her life had made her weak, craving for the minimum attention? She couldn't say, but if what she had felt for him at the beginning was nothing but a weak attraction and yes, probably the need to feel wanted – many men had wanted her, actually, but never someone like Seung-jun. He was fascinating, he was in her league -, after the reverence he had showed her in bed, Dan was now sure that her feelings were of another kind. Amour fou, they said, no? Well, whatever.

The only thing she was dearly regretting was to not have met him before. And she would have never admitted it aloud, but that thing, she would have done it again and again all day long.