FALLING SLOWLY ||Complete||

Price

In a matter of moments the axis of his world shifts and So tries to grasp it as steadily as he could. It starts to make sense, as the warmth return to his toes, and his palms tingle with the warmth seeping from the cup between them.

He lets her talk, for he doesn’t trust himself with words yet. He lets her explain. It is not excuses that he wants - for he will never really forget that there is a chasm of two and half decades between them which cannot be bridged by excuses - but he wills himself to listen.

Two lifetimes had taught him that there are two sides to every story and sometimes both are equally right. It matters only where you stand. He has not chosen his side yet. But he will not judge her until her story has finished. Even after, he is not certain that he would find it in his heart to deny her - them - what they had been deprived of all his life. To her a son, to him a mother.

There is a greed in the way she keeps touching him, there is peace in her eyes, he wonders if that’s how it should feel too have a mother - for he has never known it before. So he lets her stroke his hair, and listens to her soft recollections of past.

An accident had brought him into her life - the man she fell in love with, realizing all too late that he was married to a woman who owned everything in his life.

It brought him no surprise to learn that his father was still a man who used marriages to advance his position. Mu’s mother had brought him wealth, attorney Yoo had brought him recognition. Her father was a politician - the man whose shoes prosecutor Hwang wished to fill. It was her legacy that bound him to her, after the death of his first wife. And the Yoos wanted to find a husband to their daughter, unmarried and pregnant before the news went public and resulted in a controversy that threatened their political careers. Tae was the child she gave birth to and the complications involved meant there was little possibility that she would bear any more children.

That year the senior Yoo had passed away, and the ties that bond them had weakened. There was never any love between them and Prosecutor Hwang believed they could part on friendly terms. He was in love. People in love never saw things for what they were. Then again, she was in love too. He respected his wife enough to tell her the truth, come clean on why he wanted to end their marriage. When they had met, on her insistence, Oh Soo Yeon really thought she was all that people said about her, the mother to many children, the woman who understood anyone’s heart to a length that she was willing to let her own spouse go, because they had fallen out of love.

“I always knew -” she had said with a small smile. “There was an angel for him somewhere.”

But they postponed the divorce - it wouldn’t look good to separate as soon as her father passed away - it would cast a bad light on his career - a taint on his ambition. She had pointed it out with a placid expression, a concerned squeeze on her hand.

“We both want the best for him - right?”

She would not thwart his ambition, so she listened. There was enough trust in her heart to wait. But then - then, she had been a fool.

When Soo Yeon found out she was pregnant, he was not in the country, instead it was she who heard it first.

“And do you know what she said -” her voice is wistful. “She said ‘so am I. So am I.’ It was I who foolishly believed that he had no relation with her, that they were friends living under the same roof - because he wanted her family, and her child wanted his name. I believed him. I shouldn’t have.”

Anger drifted them apart and perhaps, she thinks now, that was exactly what Attorney Yoo had planed for them.

“He came after me - swearing it was a mistake. That it meant nothing. That he still loved me.” She shakes her head, thoughtfully. “I was not sure what he wanted anymore. I was not sure, I could give it to him.”