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Chapter 18: The Interlude

A/N: I can't really put a "mature content" warning on this, but consider it 16+ :)

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When asked, Jeong-hyeok had once said that true happiness was a life free of guilt. It was the ability to experience something in the moment, without fear or obligation - a state of just being that he felt had eluded him for his whole existence.

But as he stands in Se-ri's kitchen with his arms wrapped around her, drawing her to him, he thinks that he might finally have achieved that state.

He'd noticed, every time they kiss it feels like they were made to fit together. He slips his tongue into her mouth and she closes it slightly to build the pressure, she bites his lower lip for a moment and he feels her breath, hot against his face. And then he moves away from her lips, pressing open-mouthed kisses on the smooth expanse of her neck, and Se-ri gasps.

But suddenly, that gasp turns into a hiss of pain, and Jeong-hyeok immediately draws back with worried eyes.

"What's wrong?" he asks.

She leans into him unsteadily, nestling her head against his chest as she tries to catch her breath.

"It's my ribs," she breathes into the fabric of his shirt. "The painkillers from this morning must be wearing off. I was breathing too hard."

At once he understands, and those feelings of guilt he had banished earlier come flooding back into his chest. Why on earth is he standing there in her kitchen, kissing her, when he had presumably come over there to take care of her? He should have put her to bed immediately when they walked in the door.

"I can feel your heartbeat," Se-ri murmurs, breaking into his thoughts. "It's going very fast."

She pauses for a moment.

"That's because of me," she says with a tinge of pride.

He can't help but laugh, distracted abruptly from his self-beratement. The rumbling echoes through his chest and Se-ri sighs.

"I'm very happy right now," she admits. In her voice is the same wonder that he feels coursing through his veins, a wonder which asks how any of this could possibly be real. How, in a world where one gradually expected to have their desires snatched away from them at every turn, their dreams deferred or given up altogether- how this dream could have survived the odds.

"You should rest," Jeong-hyeok says softly. "You're trembling."

It's true, her shoulders shake slightly against him, as the energy which had gripped them like a live wire begins to fade. But she stiffens at his words, and leans her head back to gaze at him uncertainly.

"You're not leaving, are you?" Se-ri demands.

Jeong-hyeok's mouth turns up into a half smile at her tone.

"You'd have to chase me away with a stick," he promises. At his assurance, her face glows again, the surety returning to her features.

How could she think he would just leave her? he wonders suddenly. A tinge of pain twists his heart when he realizes that she's voiced similar questions before.

"What do you want to do?" he asks, trying to brush aside that worry for now.

His eyes move of his own accord to her lips, slightly swollen from their kissing. When she bites her lip, it tells him that her thoughts are moving in the same way. The silence lingers between them.

"I want to take a shower," Se-ri whispers. "Will you help me?"

***

In actuality, the request wasn't meant to sound suggestive as it did. Se-ri had been in the same clothes for what felt like an eternity, and her skin and hair were crying out to be scrubbed of all traces of the accident. And never having broken any bones before, she was unfamiliar with how to bathe or wash her hair with a cast on one arm.