FALLING SLOWLY ||Complete||

Enemy's blade

His touch lingers on her, a tendril of warmth - a lingering kiss. Ha Jin leans her head on the headrest and closes her eyes - last few minutes playing in her head on a never ending loop. Their fingers entwine already in the middle of a conversation, the speed eating away the distance between them and the abrupt ending of the road. Her exhale is loud in her ears and their eyes never leave each other.

“Yo is coming,” he says in the end, shaking his head subtly at the terror in her face. “I must go.”

The engines slow down, the wheels curve and they end up in a half fall, stuck in the shrubs, back wheels in the air. The air bags bloom and sirens go off, his arms come around her in a desperate hug.

“It’s okay - it’s okay,” he chants in her ear. “We are not going to die.”

It has the taste of all departures in her life - being up there, dangling over death. She thinks of her mother, thinks of when attorney Yoo had tried to kill her - and she burrows her head in the crook of his neck and tries to hold back a whimper. So rubs her back, his pulse racing with adrenaline and rests her forehead against hers.

“We are not going to fall - we can climb up once Yo gets here. Hmm? Okay?”

“You said -” her voice sounds rough when she tries to talk. Rusty from fear and guilt. “You said you won’t get caught until -”

“It’s done now,” he soothes. “The files of Omoni’s record room are being copied to a drive I’ve set up, Yo knows how to collect it - in a way that it becomes admissible in the trial. Eun will talk with his grandfather about the plastic surgery matter.”

His fingers tries to pry her face away from where she has it buried against him, so that he could look at her. She refuses though, clinging to the reassuring sense of his very being - the earth and spice that grounds her to reality.

“Ha Jin - ah,” he calls her, endearingly, slowly. “You have lot to do - everything might depend on your statement. They will try to break you - you mustn’t let them.”

It is then than she looks at him, holds the determination in his gaze with one of her own.

“I’ll be back -” he tells her, a promise accompanied by his thumb stroking her cheek. “I promise!”

Eun settles a shawl on her shoulders, his palm remains reassuringly a moment longer until she opens her eyes to the present. Jung drives with a dark expression etched on his face and there are weary shadows under the eyes that meets hers, still Eun smiles and squeezes her hand. Ha Jin is startled when the car takes a turn unfamiliar to her and it is Eun who answers.

“My grandfather wants to see you,” is all he says, in explanation.  

**

“…Rightly called the thriller of the decade the trial of the famed athlete has taken a very different turn to what everybody has been anticipating. Today we will be discussing how after a sensational ride the justice has come to rest on proving or disproving of the testimony of one key witness who the nation believed to be a victim and was at some point doubted to be an accomplice - the Hae heiress who was originally said to be abducted by the accused.”

The announcer is red faced, partly from the early morning cold and partly from the excitement. He shuffles the papers in his hand and turns to the experts who had been invited to discuss the merits of the case. The morning show that normally most people ignored would fetch good ratings for this particular episode - the entire crew knowing it - seemed to be charged with a new determination to perfect every aspect of it.

The case as they had justly put had an impact on several arenas. There was the athlete the accused himself. Then there was his father the politician blamed for obstructing the justice on several occasions and colluding with his mistress to steal the identity of his own legitimate son. The accusation is brought forward by his own wife who is a well known social worker endearingly called ‘mother’ by many.