Bruised (Completed)

Chapter 30

The world was not created in an hour nor in a day. It took time, just as healing does. Her return and my body after a frightful encounter require the minutes of countless days in which the painful emptiness is somewhat driven back by the thought Ali is finally truly mine, but until I can hold the photographer that captured me in more ways than one again life feels incomplete.

I wonder how long it will take before The Mandarin can say his goodbyes to her. Yet at the same time, I know how hard it is to let her go. Alistaire has that effect on you: she captivates you and makes you unwilling to see that beauty vanish. Just as Hades did not want Persephone to abandon him in order to let spring return to the realm of the living.

The thought of her made the beating easier.

After our cafe meeting, the walk home is being undertaken with feet made of lead, reluctant to walk away from the one they always seem to run to. They follow the peaceful shoreline, the waves reduced to white noise, to the safe harbour where two broken souls take refuge.

That is what they attempt in any case, for a monstrous sight stops them in the midst of the red brick boulevard lined with various restaurants encircled by tall buildings.

The demon has a drunken swagger in his step, swaying from side to side as he laboriously makes his way forward. Alcohol on the air, a raspy firm voice calling out, a determined hunter set on his prey. He will not stop until he has caught it, which is fairly easy since it does not run.

'There you are,' Abeoji greets me with a thick voice and a mocking wave. 'I've been looking for you. For a while, actually.'

He should not be here, but at work. The drinking has to start in the evening, not when the afternoon has just started. What is he doing here?

'What are you-' He grabs the collar of my jacket before I have a chance to take a step back and simply walk away as if he is a stranger. Before the plan that initially should have been undertaken can be deployed.

'How about we walk home together, huh.' He lets go and puts his hands on my tense shoulders. To outsiders, it will appear as a familiar gesture between father and son, but I know it is to fool the world. To hide the monster I inherited. 'Why are you in this part of town anyway? You have no business here.'

I have her here. Our home is here. You'll never know, however, because if someone has no business being here it's you.

Those are the words I desperately want to yell at him, yet cannot for it shall put her and the castle of glass we built at risk. I refuse to let it shatter and even let the shards be destroyed. Instead, the torture that inevitably will take place once we arrive at the infernal flat which formed my inescapable home for many agonizing years shall have to be endured with gritted teeth and silence. Anything to preserve the most precious relationship in my life. Anything for her.

'You're right, I don't. Let's go, before your mask crumbles and they see you for what you are.'

The grip on my shoulders tightens, his jaw clenches, and his eyes have a similar poisonous glance to Medusa's. There is a difference though, they are not able to petrify me, as much as they want to do whenever I fight back. 'Let's go, son.'

Keeping him upright when he threatens to stumble and make our roles all the more believable to the outside world by righting any mistakes that may betray what is really going on, we head to the apartment he and I shared until I left unnoticed one night as he laid knocked out on the sofa and took up permanent residence in Jung-dong. I had not been back since Ali left to fulfil her promise to the orange-haired guy and left me in a coffee dripping frenzy.

For a while, I was safe from the rage, the wall of numbness that deflects the blows. Not a single thought was spent on him, but now I wonder what rendered him able to come find me.