Teach Me How To Love [mxmxm]

XXIII

[Jae Lim]

"Noona," I sighed, barely patting the mattress that my bandaged hand rested upon. "Come sit if you're going to just keep pacing around."

My eyes followed noona who refused to stay put in her seat. She had brought me to some doctor friend of hers—said that they got along really well and that she had saved her from a tight spot—and kept all of the guards posted outside her house.

"You are covered in bandages from head to toe and you expect me to just sit around?"

"Well, you've already got So-Young in your hands. There's nothing more to worry about." I tried to reassure her and patted the bedside softly. "Now come and sit next to your favorite person."

She took her seat reluctantly. It was silent between us, just enjoying our company together. There was no need for words to fill the silence that draped above our bodies like a warm blanket.

"They helped me a lot, you know." Noona began randomly when our eyes connected. She held my gaze with a strange tint of seriousness. "Those Triads. I didn't know how I was going to get you back. It was cowardly of me to still be afraid of the laws of the clan."

"No, it's not," I interjected quickly. We both knew what happened the last time the unspoken rule was broken. We had lost enough from our mistakes to be trained to fear breaking the law that would've been enforced the moment we overstepped the line by So-Young. "You lost your family the last time it happened. Now that you're trying to do it again, it flashes through your mind and clouds every decision you're supposed to make, doesn't it?"

She was silent and I knew my answer, I knew it all too well. Only a moment later did she answer me.

"They were your family too. More than any of those people in that complex. You lost them too, not just me."

A bitter laugh escaped my lips, shaking my head slowly and only as far as my bandages would allow me to shift. It was no lie that they were the closest that I had ever allowed anyone, especially because of my naivety, but I didn't lose them.

"No, noona. I caused their deaths. I brought it to their doorstep and opened the doors for death to barge in. I could've kept them safer than anyone else in that complex and I chose to bring their lives to an end. That is one thing that will never change."

I met her eyes once more and silently noted the hint of grief that remained in her gaze. We knew our struggles—she could never forget her inability to protect her family and I would never forget the danger that I walked to their door. We would never agree and the fights that we had following their deaths nearly separated us permanately. It was simply fact that neither of us could convince the other to change their minds. We were in a permanent stand-still.

"When can I get out?"

"When they say you can. Your muscles have begun to lessen from your time away from training and they need to know what So-Young was having injected into you. Now that you haven't taken the injections, we don't know how your body will react."

I didn't want to admit that my thoughts constantly went back to the clear liquid within the syringes. The crook of my elbow was throbbing, begging for the blissful puncture of the needle back into my arm. Something to make all my hardships run away, something to let me run away from reality—the reality that this is the pathetic person I had become.

The thought came suddenly. "What about the doctor there? White coat, always carrying that damn box. There was a man who gave me the drug. Did you find him?"