Oh my god, that was so cool. Dara tried to refrain from grinning victoriously from the way she delivered her lines. She had spent a couple of hours in the mirror trying to perfect the expression to use with that lines she had composed since last night. She might be crazy but she really had a flair for the dramatics. What can she say? Acting is her frustration.

Right after her friends left, she had rummaged her luggage for the perfect outfit to wear to channel her inner Cersei Lannister. If she is going to come out as an evil antagonist bent on destroying her enemies in every way possible, she had to look the part and who would be a better model than the queen Cersei Lannister from that TV show she is so fond of watching?

She considered if letting Jiyong stay blindfolded would be more effective in scaring him but then thought that it would be better if her face would be the first thing he would see when he opened his eyes. So she very carefully took the bunny sleeping eye mask off Kwon Jiyong, careful not to nudge him awake. It will totally waste everything she had planned if he suddenly opened his eyes with her not being ready yet. Including the outfit she wore just for its desired effect.

Taking the wine she had taken with her, she poured some on her wineglass. For props. She hated the taste of any alcoholic drinks.

When Kwon Jiyong shifted right before her impatience run out—how long is he going to stay unconscious, jeez! It’s already getting dark!—she immediately stood up from her seat and adopted her no-nonsense face that she had practiced in the mirror while lifting her hand holding the wine glass as if she had been drinking in her victory.

“What?” Jiyong said after a minute of suspension, his forehead creasing. For some reason he really couldn’t connect the words coming out of this woman’s mouth to the woman’s face. Sure, they sound threatening and the woman looked so serious but it’s probably because she looked too… dressed up for an occasion that depicts kidnapping and murder. At least that’s what he understands by her saying his body being shipped inside a crate.

Dara sighed heavily feeling impatient at his question. God, how idiotic this guy is. Can’t even understand the meaning of her well-delivered lines! All of that wasted. She was expecting him to look scared, not confused. “I had kidnapped you. You know? Last night?”

Kidnapped? Jiyong let his eyes roamed around the room but he couldn’t detect anyone else apart from him and this girl. He looked back at her. “I guessed that.” He let a huge breath out as he finally understands how he suddenly got here. “You were the one who sent me the message to meet you at that bar right? And then you hit me on the head. Aish! That’s why my head feels it had been hit.”

“Not to mention that we had dropped you a couple of times,” Dara muttered remembering how they carried him to the helicopter and dropping him three times on a cobbled path as they were in a hurry and their feet are not in sync.

“What?” Jiyong heard her muttering something.

“Nothing,” Dara answered with a dry expression. Also not counting the fact that she hit him again earlier today.

Jiyong squirmed in his seat before glaring at him. “Can you just untie me?”

“Uh… no?” Dara said.

“I can’t breathe in this thing.” The ropes are too tight in his chest.

“Uh… I actually don’t care and your being tied up is not open for negotiations. You are my prisoner if that is not obvious enough.”

Jiyong sighed loudly. “Okay. Can you just tell me why?”

“Why what?”

“Why you kidnapped me,” Jiyong answered slowly as if she wouldn’t understand him if he spoke fast.

“Oh right, I was about to get to that,” Dara said with a satisfied grin. “You see, your dad….” Wait, she forgot what she had memorized. It sounded good and perfect when she typed it in her phone earlier but she forgot!

Jiyong watched as she scrunched up her face with her eyes looking up at her ceiling. What the hell is she doing now? Oh great! He wasn’t abducted by a mental person is he? That would’ve been worse than being kidnapped by someone with a sane motive.

Dara sighed heavily in frustration. Her Cersei Lannister lines gone because she got distracted by the idiocy of her captive. She looked at him again and gave him the main point of her reason. Succinct and brief. To the point. “I kidnapped you because I want to get my dad back.”

Jiyong waited for her to continue. To elaborate, but she seemed to be under the impression that he already understood what she said. “Okaaay….?”

Dara put the wine glass on the table and crossed her arms. “You didn’t understand do you?”

“No,” Jiyong answered wryly.

“I can’t believe I kidnapped an idiot,” Dara muttered loudly enough for Jiyong to hear and he gawked at her. He was the idiot when she was the one barely making any sense? Tying him up without a justified reason? And only giving out half-assed answers?

“Let me start from the beginning,” Dara said sounding as if she was talking to a dull witted child. “Your father, senator Kwon, was recently embroiled in a scandal with corruption right? Who is the whistleblower? Senator Sandre Park. He was the main witness for your father’s crime and was brought to a secluded, heavily guarded facility for protection until your father’s trial is concluded.” In that moment, Dara could feel herself getting worked up again at the thought of her father missing and the anger she felt for who caused it. Fear for her father. Fear for his life. She felt it again like the way she felt at the first time she heard about it. “But he was found missing a week ago. No one can find him. No traces, nothing. It’s like he never existed right after they put him inside that place.”

Jiyong watched her suddenly transform and he could now see the capability of this woman for commiting a crime. Gone was the youthful features in her expression. Now there was only fire and anger emitting from that innocent face.

“Who is Sandre Park? “ Dara continued, her voice getting ominously low. “He was my father.” She watched him drink her words and the look of surprise in his face was evident. “The only family I have left,” she continued. “And your father took him.”

“Wait wait,” Jiyong objected as he finally understands every reasons of his current situation. He had been warned by his mom about this. By his dad. But he had disregarded it all. “What makes you so sure my father took him?”

“Who else would?” Dara said staring him down.

“Someone else who wanted to pin the blame on my father, that’s who.”

“We’ll see about that,” Dara said not the least bit swayed by his logic, her thoughts only bent in how Senator Kwon would be forced to release her father, wherever he was being held to, in exchange for his son. She absentmindedly reached for her wineglass as she regarded Jiyong. “it doesn’t matter how your father will do it but I just want my father back. Alive. Once he did that, I will return you. But I swear I will return you in the same state my father will be in.”

Jiyong watched with furrowed brows as that silent threat echoed between them. Watched as she took a sip off her wine glass, her unnerving gaze fixed on him.

Only to be surprised when she spit the wine, coughing, her face getting blotchy red.

“Ah ,” she managed to curse amid that coughing. The drink was already halfway when her sense of taste hit her brain and before her mind could catch up, already spit and swallowed the wine at the same time. “Blech!” She put her glass down with her tongue out wanting to let the air take the taste off it. She should’ve just filled it with water instead. She doesn’t drink because she really hated the taste of any alcoholic beverages. It tastes so repulsive to her! “Phu! Phu!” She let her tongue stay out before her eyes drifted to Jiyong who is watching her with his mouth slightly open at what he’s seeing and she froze.

Crap! She lost all her cool with that. She immediately pulled her tongue back and pursed her lips wondering how she could erase that… un-villainy action.

Silence followed for a minute before Jiyong finally spoke, his eyebrows furrowed even deeper. “Are you some kind of bipolar?”

That girl had some mental disorders going on, he was sure of it. Right after he had blurted out his question, the expression on her face changed again and she left without a word. Leaving him tied to his chair and his is already hurting. He tried to move but the ropes are so tight he was definite a man did this restraint. Even his feet are bound on the steel chair. His hands are bound behind the chair, his body bound in the chair… he was close to screaming in frustration. How many hours has he been in this trap chair? It’s already night as he could see from the balcony, the moonlight making its reflection on the body of the water. Did that girl intend to leave him here to starve and die? Tied to a chair?

“Chrissakes,” he muttered as the call of nature prompts him that it’s time to go to the bathroom.

He heard a rustle from behind and he heaved a sigh. Thank you for remembering you left me here. He twisted his head around to spit out a sarcastic remark only to be hit with shock and then sudden fear. The girl, now on her pajamas, barefeet, her hair all over her face, her eyes piercing and the whites of her eyes had red streaks on it, walking towards him.

Holding a knife. A very long sharp knife.