North - South

London date (M)

The cold breeze of the Swiss dawn lashed their faces with all the merciless frostiness of the alpine glaciers. It was a different kind of cold, the mountain one. A cold that reddened the cheeks and gave people the want to take slow, deep breaths. That air couldn't manage to not smell clean, not even in an airport parking.

Approaching the door, Se-ri cast him a smiling glance across the car's roof.

"It'll be difficult, now."

"What?"

"I was getting used," was her mysterious reply. And maybe not that mysterious, because the man hurried to look inside the vehicle to hide from her view the brightening red that was springing on his cheeks. And no, not because of the alp's cold air. 

Ishhh. That woman.

The interview with Scotland Yard had been as long as expected, and way harder than anticipated. Jeong Hyeok had seen her trying to discretely wipe the tears more than once. He had never seen her so prostrated in front of stranger people. It had hurt him.

"It's done," he had remembered her while walking off the building, the rubbing on her shoulders a small attempt to give her some comfort, "they just have to wait for the operation. It won't take long they said, no?"

As silently as possible, Se-ri had sniffled once again. Those two idiots, tsk. They were really using the family mansion to stock their damn stuff. She'd always known it. In her heart, it was as if she knew it since forever. And yet she couldn't believe it. Saying it aloud in the big interview room, making it real, it had been traumatic. And even more traumatic had been getting confirmation from the agents. She would have needed time to process all of that. The businesswoman had taken a mental note to contact her therapist as soon as she would have been back in Swiss. It would have been fool, to face that thing alone.

He didn't want her to face that thing alone, Jeong Hyeok was repeating to himself like a mantra, he didn't want to let her alone. "Cab or walk? Choose whatever you want."

"Oh?" Stirred from her spacing out, Se-ri had given him a confused look, battling to go back to the trivialities of their present. "N... no, it's still afternoon, let's have a walk and we can grab something to eat for tonight," she had concluded with a tender smile, trying to reassure him and steel herself at one time.

"I have a better idea. Chief Kim said that there's a good restaurant close to the hotel. I think we need a night out."

"You..." and her look had been even more confused than before. Jeong Hyeok was definitively not the 'night out' type.

"Let's go to the hotel to have a shower and then we go. We have a reservation at 8 PM."

When Se-ri had entered the living room of the suite, she had found him dressed to the nine with one of the suits they had bought the day before, and a brightening, promising smile that had nearly washed away all the stress of a day spent in recalling the most difficult years of her life.

"Wow, someone looks very handsome here."

"It's a special occasion," he had replied with a timid, small smile, his eyes holding the mixture of shyness and tenderness of a man who had struggled with trying to guess which of those suits she would have liked the most.

"It is," Se-ri had confirmed. And then she had stroked his wrist, the metallic memory shining over it, silencing them for some moment. 

"Without you, I would have never known what was inside it, you saved me, Yoon Se-ri."

"Like you did to me?"

"Mhm."

He had made her pick a couple of dishes from the menu and then had asked for a couple more, choosing those he thought she could have liked. It had been lovely, eating with her, chatting, laughing together, relaxing, pouring her wine.