One Temptation | Choi Yeonjun Fanfiction

Chapter 30 - Azalea Flowers

He places one hand on the door's handle to your right while the palm of his other hand rests on the door frame on your left, encaging you between the door and himself. His body so close, you could feel the warmth radiating off of him. "Don't go..." He whispers in a voice that sounded wrong in every way. His eyes stare deeply into yours, emotions swirling behind them.

Ba-dump.

Ba-dump.

Your heart begins racing inside your chest, driving you mad. Out of all the ways you could be reacting – giving a snarky comment, ignoring and leave him hanging, pushing him away, hell, even a kick in between his legs – the only thing you could do was stand frozen in place, unmoving and unable to speak, while that damned heart of yours desperately fought for a way to escape your chest.

How laughable, embarrassing even.

"Why?" The word comes out like a breathless whisper.

Oh, god.

In that moment, Yeonjun suddenly shifts and straightens his back, stepping away from you and readjusting his collars, even though they were perfectly fine. He deliberately avoids your gaze and stares at the tempered glass door behind you as he spoke, "I'll drop you off."

The sudden shift in the atmosphere made your head spin as the oxygen rushed to your lungs. The air around you was still tainted with the sizzling tension from before, which was getting extremely hard to simply brush off like something dangerous didn't just spark between you two, even if for a split second.

"You don't have to." You answer coolly, letting yourself breathe normally again. Yeonjun shrugs. "I don't have to, but I need to." You raise a questioning eyebrow, to which he responds, "I doubt it'll be appropriate for you to be using public transport under the current circumstances." Having no more energy to argue with him when he made a valid point, you relent with a sigh. "Alright."

જ⁀➴

At long last, you turn on your phone – whose speakers were damaged due to the intense rain that day – and navigate your way to your messages with Yuna, while painfully ignoring every missed call and message you had received from your family.

You needed to know what Yuna had found out about two Archers, Liam and Ian, during her little investigation about the guests who had attended the Equinox Gala. You need to know about it now more than ever. Funnily enough, she never got the chance to elaborate it since something would always come up, as if the heavens were deliberately preventing you from knowing about what she had found.

You knew that you had to be discreet about it because you couldn't say for sure if Yuna was still in Black Pearl and if she was working under Liam; if she was, there was no way in hell you were letting Liam get wind of this matter in case he was keeping an eye on Yuna, knowing how paranoid he could be.

He may have gotten what he so desperately wanted, but being the coward he was, you could bet he was having nightmares and sleeping with one eye open in case you would magically appear out of thin air inside his room and stab him while he was peacefully asleep. Which was a very tempting idea indeed, but you had greater plans for his destined demise.

[ice emoji] [newspaper emoji] [fan emoji] [orange emoji] – [lock emoji] [ice emoji] [strawberry emoji] [tire emoji]

You send her a string of emojis in the text, having full confidence in her to decipher the message by forming the two words you wanted to tell her using the first letter of what each emoji represented.

Info list.

Stupid as it was, you had no other option right now. You had to get the message across. If Liam did have access to every call and message Yuna made throughout the day, you hoped that stupid man would brush it off thinking that you've either lost your mind or your phone, if all went well, that is...

"We're almost there." Yeonjun announces from the driver's seat, his sleeves curled up to his elbows like always, one hand on the steering wheel and the other arm resting on the armrest between you two. He was devastatingly handsome. You had to admit, because right now, you were too tired to convince yourself otherwise. "Hey, cheer up a little, you'll finally get to see Pepper. That fur ball must have been missing you like crazy."

You turn off the phone and put it down with a sigh. "I know..." You closer you got to your house, the more exhausted you started to feel. The weight of all the burdens you had been carrying finally beginning to take a toll on you.

Task no. 01, done. Now I need to be patient.

Yeonjun pulls up in the driveway of your house and turns off the engine. You don't waste another second to get out and rush towards the main door. You ring the bell, knock a couple times and call out. "Pepper! It's me, I'm home!"

A nauseous feeling envelops you, maybe because you were finally back home after quite the traumatic experience and the only thing you wanted to do was to lay down and sleep your stress away; praying that when you wake up, you'd realize that it was all just a bad dream.

Hah. How pathetic.

Your brows bunch together in concern as you stare at the door, waiting for it to open. "Why is he taking longer than expected...?" You ask the door, panic starting to creep in. Yeonjun walks across the lawn to try to look at the backyard, but he stops midway. "It's pitch black back there." Unable to stand still any longer, you rise up to your tiptoes and place your hand inside the small opening of the birdhouse that was hanging next to the door and fish out the spare key to the main door. "Well, that's ingenious..." He comments casually, but his voice was dripping with unease.

Your shaky hands take about three tries before successfully inserting the key into the lock. As soon as the lock clicks, you burst inside and switch on every light that came your way. "Pepper?!" You call out, tension building inside your body.

Silence.

Your heart picks up a dangerous pace and adrenaline starts replacing the blood in your veins. You and Yeonjun split up to look for Pepper in every nook and cranny of the house. It wasn't long before you both reconvene in the living room. He shakes his head that makes your heart drop.

You both turn your heads towards the last option, and only hope left.

The back door that led to the backyard.

With hurried steps, you turn on every light in the backyard and quickly scan the considerably small area, still unable to find anything noteworthy that could tell about Pepper's whereabouts. Your unsteady deep breaths begin getting shallower, quicker. Your head spinning and your body trembling. You were starting to lose sense of your surroundings.

You decide to head back to the living room to regain your five senses before thinking of your next course of action. "Wait..." Yeonjun suddenly calls out and you stop abruptly in your tracks. His voice so grave that your heart almost stopped beating altogether. You run over to his hunched figure in the corner of the backyard, near the bush of soft pink Azalea flowers that you painstakingly grew. "What is it?!" You ask anxiously, your voice cracking at every syllable.

Yeonjun grabs onto something that was lying on the ground near the bush and uses all his strength to give it a pull towards him. The bush rustles furiously as a large figure emerges from it. The dim lights of the backyard slowly illuminate the shadowy figure.

It takes you a full minute to register what he pulled out from the bush of gloriously blooming Azalea flowers.

Pepper...