1944, Seoul.
"Wait here awhile," his grandmother says when they reach the kitchen. "In case he wants to talk to you."
Hongjoong nods dumbly, still trembling, unable to get the image out of his head.
He knows the weight of that book and it sinks like sludge in his gut.
"What were you thinking, Hongjoong?" she says, tired and scared.
He shakes his head.
He wasn't thinking.
He didn't think what would happen.
He didn't think that would happen to Seonghwa over some book.
It's just a book.
Somewhere, a door slams.
"God," she breathes, heading back out into the hallway. "I'll check on him and be right back."
Hongjoong waits.
A few short moments, till the guilt in his gut is making him sick, and he just starts to realize that if it weren't for what Seonghwa did, he'd be the one being beaten by that man.
He inches down the hallway behind his grandmother, peers around the corner, and Seonghwa is there, and his halmi is pressing her wrinkled hands to Seonghwa's face, bruised at the highest point of his cheekbone, bleeding from the lip, and she's drawing him close, hugging him close.
"Doryeonnim," she says, soothing and pleading and something only grandmothers have in their voices. "My boy, why did you do that? Why did you do that for us?"
He shakes his head, and Hongjoong feels his stomach lurch with guilt.
He can see the older boy shaking like a leaf, staying wrapped in his halmi's embrace.
"Halmeoni," Seonghwa says, and Hongjoong can hear him holding back a sob. "I wish my mother were here."
"I know. I know, my boy, my dear, brave boy," she says, and Seonghwa crumbles, cries like a child in that old woman's arms.
Hongjoong can feel his eyes stinging, his stomach twisting, and suddenly, Seonghwa doesn't feel so far above.
__
"I'll take it up," Hongjoong says, eyeing the tray with a cup of frothy, warm milk and a few cubes of ice in a handkerchief that his grandmother has set on the kitchen table.
She eyes him for a moment.
"You should do that," she says, finally, and nudges the tray towards him.
He balances the tray in one hand, reaches out and knocks on Seonghwa's door.
"Doryeonnim, it's me," he says.
"Come in."
He turns the knob, pushes the door open and steps into Seonghwa's room.
It's dark, save for the lamp at the desk.
YOU ARE READING
↱SEMPITERNAL↲ ⇾seongjoong⇽
FanficA story where Hongjoong and Seonghwa find each other in three lifetimes. "What if I said I'd find you in lifetimes to come? What if I loved you in all my lifetimes past? Wouldn't that be lovely?" "I think I'd say you're a god awful poet."
