New Year's Kiss

On the Fifteenth of December

With the temperature dropping by the minute, Ri Jeong Hyeok quickened his pace down the dark, eerie street that served as the shortcut leading towards his Seoul apartment that late December evening. For the first time, his business trip itinerary did not include bringing home a woman on his last night. He had decided it would be best to catch the last train back to Daegu instead of waiting for the next morning to come as he had some exciting news to share with his father.

The trip, as usual, had been arranged by his old man for him to meet up with potential clients and schmooze his way into their deep pockets. Since these meetings with rich people can go tediously long, he usually allotted a night or two to go bar hopping with his college friends who still lived in the city. They called him a spoilsport for bowing out earlier than usual, but the rush of having a hard-to-please client approve of his multi-billion dollar proposal superseded all other emotion. He cannot wait to see the look on his father's face.

Pushing his hands inside the pockets of his coat for additional warmth, he felt something scratching the knuckles of his left hand and pulled it out to see that the lady he was talking to back at the bar had dropped a piece of paper with her number written on it and a discriminating lipstick mark on the upper corner. With a smirk on his lips, he crumpled it up into a ball, deciding to drop it into the nearest trash bin he found. He did not have time for the usual celebratory one night stands as he still had things to pack if he planned on catching that train.

In his haste, he almost did not see it happen - and he shuddered to think what the outcome might have been if he didn't -  if it were not for the screeching of metal, the loud thud of a body, and a sharp shout of pain that caught his attention. There was a scuffle taking place in the alley between the two buildings he was passing by, and it looked like something straight out of a movie with the two dark silhouettes throwing punches at one another with city smoke enveloping them in billowing clouds.

He stood there, transfixed for a moment, before he saw the undeniable glint of a knife and the long hair of a woman. His flight response immediately turned into fight as his protective instincts kicked in like a punch in the gut. His legs moved before his mind caught up with his body, and before he knew it, he made himself known to the pair with a loud shout.

"Ya!"

Then everything that happened afterwards seemed to have moved in slow motion. The man, caught momentarily off-guard by the presence of a third party, turned his attention towards him, giving the woman just enough time and momentum to pull her arm back before throwing a powerful punch against her assailant's temple and knocking him out cold. The sick thud of the man's limp body falling painfully against the wet pavement made him wince.

When he got close enough to see them both clearly, he finally saw the real gruesome picture: the man donning all-black with a mask covering his head and face with a knife lying a few inches away from his unmoving hand, clearly the perpetrator, and the woman with the dirtied dress sporting a blooming bruise on her jaw and a gash on the side of her head, an apparent victim of circumstance.

"Hey, are you okay? Are you hurt anywhere?" Jeong Hyeok asked her in concern. "Do you need to go to a hospital?"

"No, I'll be fine. Just give me a minute," she wheezed out, leaning against the brick wall behind her to catch her breath. Noticing that the dress she was wearing had been ripped at the sides - probably from the knife, he concluded grimly - and was way too thin to be providing her enough warmth in the freezing weather, he immediately took off his outer coat and draped it over her shoulders. She looked smaller and more vulnerable with the thick material wrapped around her. He then noticed her red-rimmed eyes and her flushed cheeks at their close proximity, giving him a hint that she may have been crying prior to their meeting.