Crash Landing on You - Edelweiss Diaries

Part 1 - A Long game

Director Ri's phone rang just as he was about to leave for the bureau office.

"Yes," he carefully avoided the anxiety that began to flood his voice.

"Director Ri, it didn't go well at the exchange." The man on the other end of the line hesitated. "Yoon Se Ri Dongmu also turned up there and Captain Ri ended up crossing the DMZ line again."

His father fell back into the chair. "Did either of them get hurt?"

"Thankfully, no, Director Ri," the agent clarified in a hurry. "Yoon Se Ri Dongmu too is safe. But I just got word that the Military Director's convoy was cleared at the Pyongyang city limits towards Sariwon. I think it's happening, Director Ri."

"Ok. Get our men moving. I'll meet you there." He hung up without waiting for the other man to acknowledge.

Director Ri, scoffed. He expected his Jeong Hyuk would rebel at some point in his life, but never did he believe he would be well into his thirties or do so over a woman. Director Ri had not expected him to pull out of his piano studies without a fight when asked to join the army after Moo Hyuk had passed. He was surprised when Jeong Hyuk had accepted Seo Dan as his fiancee when the elders had finalized the wedding proposal without consulting him.

Moo Hyuk, his eldest was fairly outspoken, taking after his mother. However, when all his life he'd hardly seen his maknae fluster about anything, he'd assumed Jeong Hyuk was more like him. Still waters, he'd presumed; his son was as the still waters of the ocean that kept its chaos in its underbelly. It turned out that his youngest could be that calm stream of running water that ebbs and flows or the raging tsunami that destroys everything in its way.

Jeong Hyuk, Director Ri, understood was his own man. Yoon Se Ri hadn't been his undoing, but the force of nature that had unearthed the man he really was - both a debonair son and a radical lover in one.

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He knew his father would come through for him. Always.

As they rode in the troubling silence of the car toward home, he felt abashed to have put an aging man in a position to kill the Military Director.

Upon entering the Sariwon forest, their convoy alone had turned right. His suspicion that they wouldn't allow him to stand trial held water. The incriminating evidence he held against the Military director was reason enough. It was only a matter minutes before Jeong Hyuk and his men were being held at gunpoint. There was nothing left to negotiate between him and the Military Director, when he pulled out his glock and pointed at Jeong Hyuk.

Man Bok threw himself in front of the gun, but he wouldn't let another man pay for his foibles. Dragging Man Bok around, Jeong Hyuk gave him cover by putting himself in danger's path.

The shriek of the end swept through him. "Yoon Se Ri, Abeonim, Omeonim," he'd called out to within himself. "I'm sorry."

He heard the shots first. But, alongside his father's booming voice too reached him, freezing the Military Director to the spot.

"Military Director didn't I tell you that you cannot carry out an execution without interrogation and a trial?" Even as he ended, his father unloaded two bullets onto the Military director's chest and gut, handling the first of the many threats that awaited his son's return.

There was the weight of taking a man's life on his soul and then there was the tug of paternal love to protect the only son he's left with. Jeong Hyuk knew all that his father would have to do to bury the mountain of evidence against him and the family.