deceit • Han Seojun x Kang Soojin

61. we fell in love

Looking at the stars
Admiring from afar
you will be my girl

- we fell in love in October (girl in red)

61. we fell in love

"Omma - why do you always try to hold my hand. I'm not a kid anymore, if any of my friends see me - they'll tease me."

"Seojun-nnie, you'll always be a kid to me - my little kid." His mother smiled at her son's tantrum. "And I love to hold your warm hand, makes me feel so happy and safe."

Seojun frowned, "but you can hold Gowoon's hand. Why mine?"

"Well, I have two hands solely for the purpose of holding your hand in one and Gowoon's in the other!"

"Aaah, Omma - you're so dramatic."

Mrs. Han smiled - her smile often reached her beautiful eyes and Seojun loved that smile. He couldn't help but smile back and hold her hand - firmly.

"I like your soft hands too - Omma." Seojun beamed, holding his mother's hand. "Although that's enough hand holding for a year..."

If Seojun knew that one day he'd be longing to touch those soft hands, he'd be grasping them with his dear life. He'd never let them go and hold onto them, until the very end.

Yet what remained was a longing and a remorseful memory.

Han Seojun had felt the warmth of human hand after a long time. The grasp of a bloodied, dead, cold hand hadn't left his senses ever since that visit at the hospital. And despite trying his best to recover, he couldn't really leave the nightmares behind.

And Soojin's hand came to save him, a tiny ray of hope, a little glimmer of life and Seojun didn't think twice before clutching it with his grasp.

She smelled like lilies and fresh flowers, like a sunny day after a stormy night, like life after death.

He didn't know it was Kang Soojin who reached out to him. He was too occupied with his dark thoughts to get a hold of the reality. But he remembered that serenity and that calm - a sense of what he felt a decade ago - when Soojin knelt down to face him.

She saved him. That cold hand was reaching out to get him. It was bound to get him, strangle him, pull him back to the depths of his insane past but she saved him.

Her hands - insanely beautiful hands - saved him.

That was when he leaped out and threw his arms around her, wrapping his arms around the first human who made him feel like one too. He hugged her, slowly allowing his senses to numb and his mind to slow down. He could feel his racing heart steadying. He could feel her soft touches - patting his back. Her comforting voice - allowing him to breathe.

Han Seojun was breathing - not panting - breathing, softly and slowly as he held the woman he missed so much.

"You're not alone, Seojun-ah."

He missed her. He wasn't going to deny it anymore, not when she still held the key to his sanity. He held her, not wanting to let go of the human touch he felt after ages. And not just any human per se.

Kang Soojin.

His petty little princess.

"I'm right here with you." Soojin kept repeating the words, encircling her fingers on his back as she felt Seojun ease slowly. "Right here."

Soojin wasn't fond of human hugs. Ever since her father became violent towards her, Soojin was a bit scared of human touches. She had a hard time to avoid flinching at the sudden, aggresive movements of others and many a times, avoided being intimate with people - even her friends.