"Would you marry me if you could?"
"They found another body"
These two sentences circled my head repeatedly as my eyes lost focus on the garden scape scenery in front of me. Chris had thrown on his uniform and sprinted out of the house within a minute after ending the call. In that short period of 60 seconds, he had also managed to kiss my forehead, cup my cheeks and tell me that he'd be back as soon as he could. That he was leaving Changkyung as the guard of the day while I trained with Yahir. His question from before seemed unimportant to him now. Which was the opposite for me. it buried me under its weight.
It took me only a couple of minutes to run out of air inside the house so I sat down in the sitting area of the garden to distract my mind by listening to the birds chirping. It was stimulating my brain perfectly enough to keep me off the edge. Changkyung had been watching me from the entrance of the garden which gradually started to piss me off with each growing minute. Pulling myself together to not stomp over to him, as he had no fault, was not to blame for me drowning in my guilt whatsoever, I reached closer to him and asked if he'd like to give me company while we have some iced coffee. He was unsure if he should accept the offer but the second guard, Farrah nudged him over in return for wanting an iced coffee too. "You can protect her better when you're close to her in an open field, you know?", he had said.
So now all three of us were sipping on our iced coffees, waiting. The silence was pulling me deeper and deeper into the depths of my misery. How much of Jonathan would be left if they found him now? I had killed that man almost three weeks ago.
The timeline was finally registering in my mind.
I had killed three people in a month, two in utter rage. One in a mission.
I had been under home arrest in Chris's house for almost a month.
I hadn't seen King in almost three weeks. Since my last kill.
Something was brewing and I did not like any possible outcome that my mind came up with.
And then there was the message I had seen on Minho's laptop.
"Look out, it's almost done"
One thing was for sure. It was the calm before the storm and things were about to blow up.
The mixture of panic and guilt was blocking my mind so much that I couldn't focus my attention on the second question of Chris. Marriage. Had he proposed that idea to me just minutes ago? Could I even? I was a criminal just like the others he was hunting. I was a killer, a killer who enjoyed her murders. Enjoyed watching the life seek out of their eyes by my hand. I was about to be disguised and Chris would see me for who I was. Someone who had stayed in the underworld, never exposed to the light of life. Someone to leave alone in the darkness until she took her last breath. And why did the thought of marrying him make me so happy? My stomach rolled in happiness and I felt the corners of my lips rise at the imagination.
"When did Yahir say he's coming?", I asked Changkyung to cut an end to the dreadful silence between us. "He is on his way so he should be here in less than 30 minutes, is that okay with you?", he answered my question. And I couldn't help but smile lightly. Changkyung was very caring to the people around him, I had noticed that. He was a lot like Chris in that matter. According to him, Changkyung spoiled his fiancée endlessly, giving her the princess treatment every possible second when he was not on duty. She deserves it.
Not all of us live to experience decent treatment from men, not to speak of being carried through devotion. Maybe I should be jealous of how different our lives could turn out to be. Some of us get everything while others are left with nothing. Some of us choose how the lives of other individuals turn out to be. Some of us get to choose the path of our own life.
But what use was to be jealous over something I couldn't change? My past had been settled and my future was growing more complicated and fragile with each passing second. I could just enjoy my present till the bomb in my hand would blow up into my face while I admired it. At least some of us were lucky in life. And some of them were not which was a truth simply to accept.
Just like Changkyung predicted, Yahir arrived half an hour later, wearing a smile that could battle with the sun. "Yahir is the sunshine of the group. Whenever you look at him, he has a smile plastered on his face that reaches his eyes. The stars are twinkling in his eyes all the time. It's like a universe of stars, and those that did not fit into his eyes anymore, rest on his cheeks", Chris had described Yahir when he showed me a picture of his group. Now I knew what he meant by that description. It had been incredibly accurate.
"Hi guys, how is it going?", he greeted us and I was surprised at how his smile turned even brighter. It seemed impossible just mere seconds ago. "Chris texted me that he had an emergency to attend with Magnus, so I assume it is just us? If that is alright with you? Wait, my apologies! Where are my manners? I'm Yahir, it is nice to meet you", he extended his hand to me and I gently shook his hand with a smile of my own. "I'm Isabelle, it is nice to meet you too. Chris, uh, told me about you".
Yahir's eyebrows crooked up cheerfully. "I hope he told you about the good things only", he joked. "Nah, Magnus and Preston have the wildest stories that Chris can expose whenever he wants. You're in the clear, Yahir", Changkyung mused before taking off the bag Yahir carried behind him. "Do you wanna join the lesson?", the blonde one asked but Changkyung shook his head. "I have to return to duty. She's in your hands, bro. If anything happens to her, Chris will deal with you so be careful". With a pat on the shoulder and a smile towards me that I returned, Changkyung walked down the path of the garden towards the entrance, returning to Farrah's side. "That adds no additional weight to the performance pressure", Yahir joked and sat down on the free spot that his friend had occupied just a minute ago.
"So, Chris told me it is a good idea if you received some self-defence classes. This is a good idea for everyone, in my humble opinion, But I'd also like to make sure that you are doing it of your own free will and that no one is forcing you to participate and learn anything you would like not to. At any time, we can stop, and do something different. Take as many breaks as you want or just call it a day. The choice is always yours. Is that alright with you, Isabelle?", Yahir explained to me, watching me attentively till I answered. "That sounds good to me. With what do we start?", I stood up from my chair to which Yahir motioned me to sit down again.
Confused, I went back to my seat across from him. "Before we start with the physical part, we have to set some ground rules. Defending yourself is a physical task but also a mental task. You have to protect your mind too".
You have no idea, Yahir. How right you are.
