INSIDE MONSTER. THE FUGITIVE.

CHAPTER 3: STRANGERS

„613. You have visitors! Follow me!" The guardian shouted, entering the dining room.

Hearing her number shouted, SolHi looked in amazement at her left hand in which she was squeezing the spoon and which started to shake. Then, swallowing hard, she looked to her right at Ha Rin, who touched her arm to make her react. Something that happened only when Ha Rin whispered, „She's calling your number! Won't you go?"

„Mmm, I go!" Murmured SolHi eventually. Then, standing up, she took the tray with the food she didn't touch and went to take it to the usual place to be taken by the cook later. There, even if she was ready, she didn't quicken her pace to follow the guardian. She did that because she felt that she had to stay there. Nevertheless, she moved from her place eventually when the guardian, enraged seeing her delaying things, hit the bars of the door with the truncheon, a signal that SolHi should quicken her pace. Otherwise, she would have been locked in solitary confinement for sure. It wouldn't have been the first time being there because, since she entered prison, she'd been locked up so many times there that she didn't remember the number. Yet, there wasn't a place she would have liked to return.

Later, while advancing on the corridor, she felt her heart madly beating in her chest and her head heavy, with no thought spinning in her mind. Only a single question stuck in her throat, making her feel a lot of pain. That's why she tried to swallow it and chase the pressure away, but she couldn't. She felt more pain when she did this, and that stubborn question suddenly came out of her throat and stopped on the top of her tongue, stubbing her as though she wanted to ask at any cost, „Who? Who came?"

To ask these questions loudly, SolHi didn't dare. She only smiled, feeling a pleasant warmth in her heart, thinking that someone dear to her could have come to see her. At the same time, she was so afraid of that moment. She was afraid to see him, even though she wanted this so badly, even if she'd been the one who chased him away so many times before and didn't agree to see him after entering jail. By doing this, not only did DooSan suffer, but she too. Maybe she suffered more than he did, but she couldn't do things differently because she was afraid to see him and explain things to him. She was afraid to look into his eyes because... how could she look into the eyes of the one she got to love so much, but to whom she didn't dare to tell what she was feeling for him?! What she did instead was to hurt him so much, accepting a crime she said so many times she didn't do, a crime about which she told him that she didn't remember, when so many times before she said that if she had found out that she killed that man, she would have taken her life too. However, she didn't die but had been locked inside a cage. Yes, she did that, trampling DooSan's soul and hers under her feet. That's why SolHi didn't dare to see him and look into his eyes.

She didn't want this until that day when she felt that something was different. What exactly? SolHi just didn't know. She, as always, didn't ask, „Who came?" or said, „I didn't want to see him." SolHi only followed the guardian: at a slow step, with fear in her soul, but with hope in her heart at the same time that she would see him for the last time and, after that, she could die. Only once did she want to see him again. That's all. She wasn't asking too much, even if she knew that she didn't deserve to see that man.

Eventually, she stopped next to the door and waited for the guardian to open it. At the same time, her mind seemed to have stopped too because she couldn't think about anything at that moment. Only her heart was madly beating in her chest while waiting for that reunion. Yes, it was so close: to see disappointment and pain in the eyes of the man she loved. Or maybe she will see love? No, it was too much. It had to be a disappointment because...

It had been a disappointment eventually seen in SolHi's eyes and not in DooSan's because, entering the Visiting Room, she saw a stranger instead of Han DooSan. She swallowed hard when she saw the back of that stranger, who was sitting in a wheelchair, looking in the distance through the small windows with bars of the Visiting Room.