Wicked Fate

FIFTYTHIRD CHAPTER

The Battle of Kings

"What do you say about backing off the wager and waiting until Dara wakes up", Young Bae asked him for the nth time already and Jiyong knows it is what everyone wants.

He pressed his lips together and decided not to answer as he began stretching exercises.

It HAS been a month since the accident and Dara has been in a coma ever since. Teddy and Seunghyun did their best to revive her after one of the worst accidents even Jiyong has ever witnessed.

News crews were all over the place and people even began expecting she'd die from it but she held on – as silently and as resiliently as she always has. She is a miracle for all of them and her strength is a source of both inspiration and tears.

She seemed to tell them all that the Mother Hen is not going down easy.

And now, even with Dara unconscious, everything reminds Jiyong of her and sometimes, he just wants to rip his heart right out because of the pain... but he has to remain strong. He has to believe she will come back or he'd lose his sanity.

It's hard as it is but what makes it harder is that he cannot look after her the way he wants.

She is engaged to another man and in the moments before that accident, no one knows what could have been going through her mind when she took that drive to go to him.

"Was it even to go to him at all?", Jay asked everyone.

The hotshot attorney was not and is not going to make it easy. He guards Dara almost everyday and would have even taken to blaming Ji for the incident if only he could do so without acknowledging the fact that his fiancé could be in love with another man.

In truth, though, there are nights when Jiyong wants to blame himself too.

"Ji, did you hear me?"

He looked back at Young Bae. "I don't want to back off that wager. I was the one who made it. I won't break my word."

"You do know that if you lose to him in the Battle of the Kings, he won't allow you to ever go near Dara again?", his best friend reminded him.

"I know. That's why loosing is not an option."

"You have to stop hustling him man", Daesung piped up, "Hyung is from the military. I daresay he has the best chance to win this."

"It's just that... a lot of things could happen you know. And we have to think about what if he doesn't win", Young Bae responded seriously.

"Well... you have to help me stage a kidnapping then", he joked to ease off the tension and began sprinting before any of his friends and cousins could think of an answer to his jesting.

Thirty minutes from now, the clinic's Battle of the Kings is going to start and people are already going out and putting up their places on the beach where the last part of the course is going to run because the stakes for this one are too high and too controversial.

Of course, everyone in the island knows it now – they all know that the famous bad boy had fallen for the island's sweetest girl.

No one has actually talked to him about it outside of his family but in very small ways, he feels their support and understanding of the predicament he is in.

In the past month, not only did he begin to bask in his love for Dara but he truly felt how he was a part of the islanders.

He received hugs, smiles, and nods of support on a daily basis. The old men and women who he hated for being such gossips often called out to him and opened their houses so he could share food with them.