The Pursuit of Shin Ryujin || Ryeji ff

- 19

Have you ever been so angry you can taste it? Yeji has. It tasted bitter, metallic almost. She could feel it course through her body, pulsating through her veins. She could feel the rage expel from her body like radiation, violent and deadly.

She watched Ryujin with deadly precision. It was as if every inch of skin was placed her a microscope, open for Yeji to examine. The bruises that painted her eye were more vibrant in color. The blood that trickled down her cheekbone and mixed with her tears seemed larger than a mere trickle. The skin sticking out, red and angry, on her head was more prominent than Yeji needed to see.

But the worst thing Yeji saw was the gut-wrenching look on Ryujin's face. The broken, hollow look in her eyes.

Yeji was frozen in place. She couldn't take her eyes off of Ryujin's battered face.

Ryujin letting out a small whimper startled out of her frozen state. On instinct, she reached out and held Ryujin's face in her hands as gently as she could. Her eyes skimmed over the injuries as she asked, "Who did this to you?"

Ryujin just shook her head, letting out a few sobs. Yeji clenched her jaw and led Ryujin into her home, shutting the door behind her. Her desire to see Ryujin safe and comforted would always outweigh her own rage.

A few minutes later, after Yeji wrapped Ryujin in a blanket on the couch and filled a bowl of warm water, she began to clean her wounds. Dipping the hand-towel into the water, she wiped away the semi-dried blood that stuck to Ryujin's forehead.

As she did so, she asked with barely contained anger, "Who did this to you, Ryuddaeng?"

Ryujin's bottom lip trembled and she choked back a sob. Yeji sighed and gently lifted Ryujin's chin to face her. Unable to avoid Yeji's penetrative gaze, Ryujin caved in and mumbled, "Haechan."

Yeji's rage had reached biblical proportions. As she held Ryujin's face with a gentle touch, her mind ran rampant with images of her beating Haechan within an inch of his life. It was the only thing giving her some form of satisfaction in this situation.

"He's been cheating on me," Ryujin mumbled, flinching with the towel grazed her open wound.

Yeji's hand stilled as she said, "What?"

Ryujin began to fidget, playing with her fingers as she said, "His trips to San Antonio — y'know, when he said he was visiting his grandfather — he'd been visiting her there. One of the paparazzi caught them..."

As Ryujin trailed off, Yeji was cursing herself. She blamed herself for not continuing Kai's PI's investigation. If she had known that her suspicions were right, that Haechan was the scum she thought he was, Ryujin wouldn't be sitting here. She wouldn't be bleeding from an open wound, crying. She would be attending Haechan's funeral as she cried into Yeji's shoulder.

Ryujin continued to ramble, prompting Yeji to resume washing away the blood, "I've known for a while what he was doing... I just thought he would have stopped before the wedding, y'know. But then that article came out and his cheating became a public discussion instead of our private conversation."

Yeji thought she was doing a good job of surprising her anger. She calmly asked, "Why did he hit you?"

"Because I called him out on his shit," Ryujin chuckled mirthlessly, "I called him a whore, a cheating whore who couldn't keep his dick in his pants. I didn't realize he had hit me till my head hit the floor. When he was done, he ran off."

Yeji hid a smirk, knowing exactly why he ran off: he knew Yeji was going to find him and murder him when she eventually found out. He was trying to get a head-start in this cat-and-mouse game.