FALLING SLOWLY ||Complete||

Puppeteer

I yearn for you so much - but I can’t be near you… she wakes up to tear stained cheeks and the words stuck in her head. The night spent in wistful dreams of his hands ghosting over her skin, his lips murmuring against her ear, leaves her feeling as if there’s a gaping hole where her heart is supposed to be.

She drags herself through the day, washes, dresses, smiles and breathes, does it all on loop until she is too tired to continue and numb from repetition. Then she prays and hopes.

She hopes Miss Oh would tell him the truth, she hopes her own words were enough to snap whatever threads bound him to her - enough that he would start hating her.

I’m afraid I left you with hate instead of love. But this time that is what she wants. For she knows anger numbs the pain. She had chosen the words carefully, the sharpest, the most venomous. Hate me she wishes fervently. Don’t hate yourself.

It is her who ruined him. She thinks back to Miss Oh’s words - punctured by her sobs. Thinks of how she had almost snatched a son from a mother who never had the chance to cuddle him.

And Wook is blind she thinks at first, stumbling out from her uncle’s study, where he lays down his terms, in his icy calmness. A life for a life. For her love to live, Ha Jin must end - Hae Soo must return.

At first she wonders at his oblivion for she knows she is not that great an actress. Her pain is stark clear on her eyes and the last time they met should have impressed upon him the intensity of her feelings. He is either blind or he enjoys watching her uncle pulling her strings. And he is a puppet too, doing as her uncle dictates.

A puppet not a monster. She tells herself. Not yet cruel enough to plot the demise of his own brother. It is peace that she sacrifices herself for, so the devil is not roused, blood is not spilled.

You drank poison for me - she thinks unmindful of the tears that blur her visions - there it must stop. This vicious cycle should not continue. But I yearn for you so much…

And Wook keeps touching her - it feels like a sin. She can’t look at his smiling face without thinking - you lied to him all his life - you made him believe he was dying -

She muses if Wook thinks there’s no connection between what her uncle made him do and her sudden return. If a man could ever be such a fool, even after she had told him that she was in love with his brother. She slaps away his hands the first time he tries to embrace her - there are spiders crawling up her spine when she meets his eyes and catches that gleam of victory.

No. She thinks. You knew exactly what you were doing. World may believe you a puppet, but you are your own master. The thought makes her shudder and the words swim back to her. “I will make you come back to me.” And this act of blissful ignorance is to show me how insignificant it all was - whatever I had with So, you think it makes no difference.

It was not a mere threat. He believes that she will return to him. The realization makes her shiver, this is the man who erased So from her mind once - no matter how selective they say her amnesia was - and Ha Jin fears, if the chance was given, he would do it again. And she staggers backwards before his arm comes to steady her.

His grip is a vice, tightening around her wrist until she can hardly feel her fingers, his eyes are cold taking in the sight of her broken self. She knows not of this man who poisoned his brother for a woman who has no feelings for him.

For a moment she sees Tae in him - the same madness clawing at his eyes and she wishes for So, for his embrace, for him to tuck her into his arms and whisper soothing words. But Ha Jin is no longer a teen and her screams of plea are silent. Instead she meets his eyes with the tear stained ones of her own. She might be broken, but still sharp.