Chapter 15

[A Child’s Play]

Ten days had passed since the death of Seo Joo Hyun and the disappearance of Im Yoona. It was the day of Shin Dong Hee’s funeral. After the police finished their forensic investigation on his body (or what could be called as what remained from his body), they returned the poor boy back to his parents. The Shin family was surprisingly calm. Passive, even. Considering that the late Shin Dong Hee had always been the loud, cheerful man, the quieteness of his family contrasted greatly. The Shin family accepted the body of their heir in defeat, as if knowing it was something inevitable. Shin Dong’s mother did not even sob, although fine trail of tears never stopped flowing out of her eyes. Her husband only laid his writhe arm around his wife’s body –his eyes showed how he was trying his best to let everything go.

Jessica averted her eyes from the scene. Funerals almost brought terror to her. It was pretty absurd to say that she was traumatized –because she knew she did not even attend her parents’ funeral. She would not have wanted to attend, but her grandmother had urged her to come. Truth be told, Jessica felt like she had enough contact with the other members of Der Märchenclub. Being a part of it only brought her headache, frustration, and now… fear. Jessica might have been dubbed as the Ice Princess, but with the slowly decreasing numbers of the club she was in, she could not be inhumane to say that she was not affected.

“Are you alright?”

One of the very few people in Der Märchenclub who always seemed to spare his time asking her condition was Donghae. He approached her who was standing beneath the tree a couple of feets away from Shin Dong’s grave. Donghae was an annoyingly persistent man (in his own way), but Jessica thought that she started to tolerate him for being such a nagging man. Somehow.

“Alive, at least,” Jessica responded curtly to his question.

To that, Donghae chuckled. “That’s good to hear. I thought you’d hate this world so much that you’ve lost your living spirit.”

She did not reply back but acknowledged his comment. There was a nice feeling to hear his comment about her. Perhaps it worked like a reminder. Donghae had always been that kind of –

“You have a beautiful smile. I like it. Do you mind showing me more?” a bashful young boy said with a grin.

Jessica clenched her fist and gritted her teeth silently. Why did these random memories come back to her mind? The memories she did not even remember owning, the memories she was not sure of…

Slowly turning her head to look at Donghae for the first time since days, Jessica expected to see that bashful man with a grin, but the sight of him made her heart shrunk somehow. The man was lean to begin with, but his thinness now was something that could be labeled as unhealthy. There were dark circles beneath his eyes, but somehow, the glow remained. He noticed her aghast stare at him and smiled.

“I’m alright,” he said.

Jessica was alarmed. She hated to make herself looked like she cared, because she was not. Well, perhaps she was. She did not know. Either way, she did not want to have her feelings shown blatantly like an open book –like how Donghae always managed to point out. Averting her eyes away from him, she retorted, “I was not asking for your condition.”

He chuckled again, and his big hand found its way to the top of her head, fondly ruffling her neat brown hair. She didn’t normally like people invading her personal space, but the warmth of the hand was still the same, and Jessica thought she was just being too soft to him. Again.

“Don’t think your coldness will chase me away. I know the true you that lies beneath all those masks.”

Something inside her heart was stirred.

She would be lying if she claimed Donghae was not an attractive man. But above it all, even above his caring personality, above his honest concern, she knew that there was something she could not really place that drew her to him.

The thought terrified her.

In order to distract herself, Jessica decided to bring another issue. “What happens, actually?”

She cursed herself for sounding worried.

Donghae still tried to conceal the matters. “Nothing. I’m fine.”

“…Is it about Im Yoona?”

His facial expression hardened.

Bingo.

Sighing, Jessica spoke more, “She’s still nowhere to be found.” It was a statement, not a question.

He mirrored her sigh. “The police can’t even find her.”

An awkward silence was emitted between the two. With Donghae, Jessica seemed to break some rules that she unconsciously set for herself: she dug for more information. She was not usually the curious type of person, but… “What happened between you two, actually? Before… before all of this horrid things happen?”

He took his time before answering. “Nothing wrong. At least, nothing was wrong until she chose to cross the line.”

Jessica’s silence somehow only urged Donghae to elaborate more. Perhaps he just needed a chance to actually spill everything out. Jessica’s rare curiosity was his chance.

“She confessed her love to me.”

“And that is wrong because?”

“Because she is not supposed to develop that kind of feeling to me.”

“…Why not?”

Donghae chose to be discreet again. Letting another audible sigh, he smiled sadly. “You really don’t remember anything, do you, Sica?”

Suddenly she felt sick. Jessica felt sick of how Donghae –how Yoona – acted as if she should have known something. They , but she was not allowed to dwell deeper. If it concerned herself, didn’t she have the right to know?

“Cut it off,” she sternly expressed her silent anger. “Stop hiding things that I need to know.”

He shook his head. “You don’t need to know. At least… we all thought it was better for you not to know.”

Her ears perked up.

“You all?” her tone rose. “Now there’s this big secret that everybody knows that I don’t?”

Donghae’s breath was hitched. “Not all. But it’s just, it’s just…”

She waited. There was a part of her who trusted him and that part of her was almost tolerant enough.

Almost.

In the end, when he still chose to be silent, she chose that it was legit to give up. “Forget it. I’ll just –“

Jessica was about to walk away, but she was stopped midway when Donghae’s arm reached out to strongly grip at her wrist. The physical contact nearly sent tingles towards her spine, but she reminded herself not to act like a teenager in love, because she was not.

Her cold glare was what she managed to show as a response. Before harsher words could slip out of , her grandmother had called out for her. For the rarest time, Jessica was glad her grandmother’s call could actually save her. It was quite a morbid thought, but she used it to the best possible extent. “I have to go. Excuse me, Donghae-sshi.”

She yanked her arm away from his grasp and walked away.

The ride inside Jessica’s car went into its usual silence. Partially, it was the remaining gloom from Shin Dong’s funeral that still chose to linger in the Jungs’ heads. Jessica normally appreciated such silence, but that moment, she chose to break it.

“Is there anything I should know about my past, grandmother?”

Krystal stopped staring out of the window, and her grandmother glared at Jessica instantly. In the next split of second, Jung Hyori regained her composure back and she spoke calmly, “What you should know about your past? You know your past yourself. Aren’t you asking the wrong people?”

“Lately I…I’ve been having these rushes of memories. Memori