DOUBLE UPDATE! YAY!

---

THAT WOMAN - BAEK JIYOUNG

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDcaxZPg2GY

The moment you two stepped into your house, you led him straight to your room, making sure to shield Mingyu’s suitcase that was on the floor out of the way in case Kai caught sight of it. Laying him down on your bed and draping the duvet over him, you began to boil up beef congee on the stove. As much as he protested for you to stop moving around and insisted that he was fine, you ignored him. When the congee was done, you turned off the stove and grabbed a clean towel from one of the cabinets and ran it under the hot water.

Squeezing out the excess water out of the towel, you went back to your room to lay the warm towel across Kai’s forehead.

Kai’s eyes were open the whole time as he studied you taking care of him; the usual glint of mischief was nowhere to be found in them. Instead, the pair of eyes that were reflecting back at yours with such intensity wore a soft and doleful glaze over them. Feeling uncomfortable with the sudden shift in the atmosphere, you averted your gaze elsewhere while Kai, on the other hand, kept his attention solely on you. For the first time ever, Kai now knew the reason behind his every decision in life. On the inside, he was cursing himself for not seeing the signs before and realizing that this whole time that the perfect person for him had been here by his side all along.

“Oh your congee! Let me go grab you a bowl while it’s still hot,” you remembered. Just as you were about to get up, you felt Kai’s hand loop around your wrist, pulling you down next to him.

“Stop moving about and stay put, Hari,” Kai demanded, but the last string of effort to speak made him splutter out in a violent cough. Hearing the rumbles escape his throat, your expression changed completely.

“Should we take you to the hospital? Your face is turning quite pale Jong—I mean, Kai,” you corrected yourself.

A small smile played on the corner of his lips, “Hari-ah… starting today you can call me Jongin again.”

Surprise flickered over your features. Whenever you called his name, Kai had always preferred that you called him by that then his real name… but now, to have him say out right that you could start calling him Jongin again was big, unexpected news.

What could possibly be the reason for this sudden change?

Since his adoption Kai had been his main identity, so to say that you could start calling him by his real name again instead of Kai was as big of news as a declaration for World World III. You just never thought it would happen. You nodded slowly while pressing the warm towel to his forehead, wondering what could possibly have made him change 180 since the high school reunion. It wasn’t very like Kai to come by your place without giving you a message first, and since Hayoung had always taken up most of his time, you thought he would have busier things to tend to than to come to you in this sort of state.

Kai took your palm in his hands and gave it a tender squeeze. “Hari-ah… thank you for worrying. I don’t need to go to the hospital, as long as I’m here and you are here with me, I’ll be healthy again in no time.”

As always, no matter how much time had echoed on and the days have passed since you’ve known him, Kai’s words continued to strike a chord within you every time he spoke in that soft tone of his. Whether he meant his feelings or not, his words had a way of making you feel like you were still as important to him as the first day.

Glancing down at him, you suddenly felt a sting pelt against your heart. Recalling back to a few weeks ago to your meeting with Hayoung, you felt the heavy sense of betrayal and reminder of what he had been doing behind your back begin to emerge. The reminder that he was no longer the same Jongin, and that what lies behind this mask of serenity and sweetness, was someone entirely different than the person you had originally known. For a fraction of a moment, you could have sworn his face had warped into the Jongin you had known when you were six year old… the one who loved chasing soccer balls and hunting for insects, the one who would never let any kind of girl and her cooties take his attention from his ‘family’ and the one who had so much going right for him… But, when you blinked your eyes open, that Jongin was gone. The only person in the room with you now, with his shielded heart and guarded words, was Kai.   

“Why did you do it?” You heard yourself say. The words came out like corrosive venom, clinging to it with thick bitterness, that you could not push back down your throat.

Immediately, Kai knew what you had meant in that question and his expression fell. The smile that he had been wearing went thin, leaving only the look of shock to paint over every inch of his face. Seeing the reaction he had given you was enough validation that Hayoung had been telling you the truth all along. He tried to play it off, but it was too late. You had already seen what you wanted to see.

“Why did I do what?”

“I mean, why are you dealing, Jongin? How could… you?”

When you imagined yourself confronting Kai, you had pictured yourself blowing up and throwing every curse word you could think of in his direction. You had pictured yourself slapping the sense out of him and throwing him over your shoulders and let him deal with all the blows you could give him. You wanted him to feel every pain and ache that he had caused you. However now that you were faced with the man of your problems, for some reason you could not find it in you to find the outspoken, in your face angry Hari. Instead, as you sat here next to him, all you could feel was your own pride shrinking smaller and smaller.

Kai bit his lip, unsure of how to answer. In his mind, he had practiced his speech over and over again, at least a thousand times. He had it pinned down in his memory, knowing what to say exactly when the moment came. However, no matter how much he prepped for this confrontation, he hadn’t expected it to be this hard to confess.

“Hayoung told me that you were dealing drugs and that’s how you earned the money to pay for this house…” You pursed your lips, your hand flying quickly to your chest to where she stepped on you. “Is that true?”

Kai did not miss a beat in your action, his eyes darting towards where your hand lay. Instantaneously, he sat up and ignored your question and asked his own, “Did she do something to you? Did she hit you?”

Before you could hide the evidence, Kai gently tug down the neck line of your shirt, going slowly until it revealed the mark that you had been trying to hide. The scar was a couple of weeks old, the brownish patch had lightened up since it’s redder days, but refused to go away. It was a mark that was going to stay with you for a long time, a reminder of why it was there and who the person who gave it to you was.

You pushed his hands away. “I don’t want to talk about what she did, Kai. I want to talk about why you did it.”

Like a storm that was brooding over his head, his expression was clouded with anger and spite. “How can I even begin to explain the situation, when I see what she has done to you? How long ago was this? Why didn’t you give me a call? I would have came right away, Hari.”

“No, you wouldn’t. Jongin, for more than five years when I was having a hard time with Hayoung, all you did was turn a blind eye away from me. How do you expect me to give you a call when the only person you see in your life is the same despicable person who is causing me the pain?”

As much as he wanted to deny your statements, he knew that you had delivered him nothing but the truth.

All these years when Hayoung was giving Hari a hard time, Kai did nothing to better the situation between them. He never defended Hari from Hayoung, he never protected her in front of Hayoung and he was always on Hayoung’s side. Whatever blinded him from seeing the truth behind Hayoung’s sneaky ways has now flown out the window. To him, she was nothing more than a speck of dirt on the floor that he would gladly to step over again and again if that was what it meant to gain back Hari’s trust.

“I may not have been the greatest of friend these past few months, but I hope you know that deep down, you really are my number one priority, Hari. Whatever was going on between Hayoung and I… I’m done with it now. I’m over her and want nothing more than to get back the friendship I once had with you. You are the one who is everything to me. I’m never going to let anyone get between us again.” Kai clasped his hand over your palm, giving it a squeeze as he looked into your eyes.

Tears began to swell up in your eyes. “Just because you say these sweet things to me… doesn’t mean I’m going to forgive you for betraying my trust and going behind my back to do things I warned you not to do.”

Kai straightened up, his back against the frame. Huffing in a deep breath, he began to tell his side of the story. “Before I start, I just want to make it clear that I don’t want you to take this into guilt or think that I’m blaming you, because I would never, in my life, blame you for anything that I made the decision to do.”

When you didn’t reply, he knew that you were waiting for him to go on.

“Earlier you asked me why I decide to do it. The reason? Easy: my desire to take care of you had always been one of the reasons why I had done the things that I’ve done. I wanted you to live a comfortable life without having to worry about where you were going to sleep the next night or which restaurant you were going to visit to get scraps of leftover meals. I wanted you to have a home, a place to keep you warm and secure, with images of the people that love you. In order to do that, I needed money. I had my parents money, but it was not enough at the time to buy you a house. Granted, I was given this opportunity to make… quick money. I told myself I would do it for only a week, but after I bought you this home, the money became more than just money. It became almost a lifestyle… and seeing how well off you were and how happy you looked, I wanted to keep going. Hari, just to see that look of happiness and smile on your face, I would have went on forever if I could. I would have supported you through and through if that meant protecting your identity and whereabouts about the Blood Dragons.

“However, when the money kept flowing in more and more, I started to lose track of my original purpose. I lost contact with my friends, even you… the one I cared most about. I started doing coke, my customer base expanded and I thought I was with someone who loved me. Or at least, cared for me. Instead, she kept me only to herself selfishly without even bothering to dump her boyfriend. I was so silly… I thought she loved me, too. I took