Major plot twist, important info.

Chapter XVII

“There is nothing like a dream to create the future.” 
Victor Hugo

“They can’t incriminate you.”

Jiyong listened to the words coming from his lawyer’s lips but those made no sense in his mind. They were broken letters that had gotten confused and assorted before even reaching his ears, before he was even able to get out some meaning from them. There at his right was Youngbae, there in front of him was his personal lawyer, there inside of him was him. Everything was placed as it had to be, perfectly, correctly and still something seemed out of its place, and Jiyong guessed it was his own sanity. He comprehended then the small black box in which he had been hiding, now that surprises seemed to be reaching his own seashore, uncomfortable and only able to surprise the one who had not been able to see for a long time -someone like him.

“What do they win by doing this?” the voice of a clueless Youngbae asked at his side; a voice that was asking questions that were meant to come from his own lips. But Jiyong had understood, at that very instant, the way his body had being extending until reaching other bodies. As equally as a vine grows, he had learned to wrap around Youngbae, Choi Seunghyun, Seungri, finding them all vital for his own existence, what turned him into a vulnerable being, an extremely vulnerable being.

His lawyer shrank his eyebrows close and some loosen strings of hair fell onto his forehead, then he proceed to explain to them how Choi Company had had financial troubles, troubles Jiyong hadn’t known about. And how the Choi’s had tried and had been finding ways to make alliances to keep the company alive. How the lawsuit meant only a way to take away from Jiyong his shareholdings, one half of KJ Entertainment and put him on jail.

“I did not ask for this,” murmured quietly Jiyong, already weary of dealing with all what was hunting him. “Why do they hate me so much? What did I do to them? I only tried to love his son, as best as I could. Is this their way to clean their hands, to ease their own hearts? Blaming me?” Jiyong spurted out.

And that was when it happened. Almost as if it was already planned or as if those realities had been hunting him down and had decided to attack on the moment his prey was clueless, with no certain place to go or hide to. It just happened.

“I don’t know if only his parents wanted you out from all of this and their lives,” his lawyer added, flicking through some papers and taking one and extending it to Jiyong. But Jiyong, as if he already knew the dangers one piece of paper could carry, backed away and forced Youngbae to take it for him. As soon as what was inside reached Youngbae’s eyes, they turned cloudy and Jiyong could have swear he heard them whisper a low “No” that reached him painfully.

“Choi Seunghyun begun a divorce process months ago,” declared as staggers his lawyer and Jiyong wished he had been deaf. “And asked for ways to broke your partnership and participation in the stockholdings of his firm.”

Confusion was indescribable, if only as a bunch of chances all intermingled in abstract ways. For Jiyong everything sounded as a bad joke, so unreal it accented hardly inside his chest as reality. “Divorce,” how had he come to reach this point? How had he accepted to be dragged to this point? Jiyong searched with one of his hands Youngbae’s knees in an attempt to assure himself he still was there, not if he was dreaming, but if his dream or reality had some sense at all. Youngbae squeezed his hand back and that gave him the arduous answer. As someone who discovers the absence of light means clarity and the presence of it darkness. Jiyong’s life became shaken to its core.

“Divorce?”

“There are a lot of things I don’t understand. Some make no sense at all,” his lawyer kept saying as if Jiyong’s breakdown was something uninteresting to see. “I think there is something behind this, it is suspicious.”

“Divorce?” Jiyong asked again broken, ignoring everything that had been said. And the face of Choi Seunghyun’s father appeared in front of him, with his cruel freckles and gray hair, smiling at him knowingly and whispering into his mind, “Fool”.

Jiyong had many choices: to cry, to be angered, to laugh, to insult. But his nature was that one of running away and so he did, but he could not do it physically so he hid himself in the deepness of his seriousness. He chose not to choose, and therefore not to feel. The rest of the day he spent it doing his work, or what he had been convinced was his work. Not a tear, not a word. Only signing papers and answering letters beneath the worried look of Youngbae who reached a limit of worrisome in which he called in desperation to Seunghyun.

“Let him deal with this his own way,” Seunghyun had said, “Just make sure he arrives home safe.”

So Youngbae dragged a soulless Jiyong to his car when the day ended and had to accept the fact those eyes had no life, those hands had no movements, that heart had no rhythm. Jiyong was in some way unplugged. Until they reached the bridge in which Choi Seunghyun’s ashes had been shed and when Youngbae noticed his mistake it was too late to do something, for Jiyong gasped back to life and murmured, “Stop” with such desperation Youngbae had no strength to say no.

Jiyong walked out the car and approached to the bridge railings but only leaned his elbows against the metal bars and looked at the distance and the waters in silence. He stood there for several minutes, the wind blowing through his hair and curling around his clothes, the rest of the cars and the people walking and passing behind his back in complete indifference to the suffering of one insignificant soul. Youngbae watched him from the driver’s seat of his car with compassion. After a while Jiyong stretched one of his hands to the emptiness in front of him, as if he was waving to the nothing or feeling the winds with his fingers, Youngbae could not define and turned away, returning to the car.

“Thank you,” he muttered once inside.

But Youngbae did not start the engines but watched silently at his friend, expecting for something. Jiyong opened his lips after a while.

“I was trying to find the moment; any memory or clue of when he decided to end it or when he stopped loving me. But I could not,” Jiyong gasped and twisted his hands over his lap, “Which only means he had those thoughts right from the beggining.”

The rest of the distance went silent. They reached the creepy calmness of Jiyong’s neighborhood and the sobriety of his house that seemed empty if it was not for the crunched presence of a man in front of the door, with hands covering his face and restless feet tapping onto the floor. Seunghyun lifted his gaze the moment he heard the engines of the car approaching and Youngbae saw fear in the man’s eyes; and he knew what was the fear about, when Jiyong went out of the car and walked straight to the house without even looking at Seunghyun or recognizing his presence.

“I knew it was going to be like this,” Seunghyun confessed looking at the back of Jiyong with worried eyes but still with hope, something Youngbae found impressive. “Thank you,” he murmured to Youngbae and went inside the house, following Jiyong.

“I don’t need your help,” hissed Jiyong, walking through the living room and continuing until reaching the back garden’s doors and opening them. “I am ok,” he declared and sat over the grass and let his back fall over the ground without caring about his clothes, "I’m just tired.”

Seungri made no attempt to challenge Jiyong’s lies and limited his actions to imitate Jiyong. He lied next to him over the green grass, his head leaning over his right arm. His left hand played with the fabric of Jiyong’s clothes tenderly.

“What are you thinking?” Seungri asked calmly after a moment of silence.

“I’m dreaming not thinking.”

Seungri nodded and let his back fall over the grass as same as Jiyong and sighed. “What are you dreaming about, then?”

“Memories.”

Seungri frowned  yet was amused, “Don’t you mean remembering then?”

Jiyong shook his head fiercely as if the only thing he was sure was that answer, “We can’t remember unreal things or things that did not happen, but we can dream them,” he said.

“Tell me about your dream then,” Seungri asked, getting closer to Jiyong and placing his face just inches from Jiyong’s one. The other man turned his face until their noses almost touched and looked straight at Seungri’s eyes without saying anything.

“My dream is beautiful,” he admitted, his breath brushing Seungri's cheeks, “There is a man who loves another man. There is a wedding, a golden ring and blue coats. There is a house and lots of promises,” Jiyong described without pulling his eyes away from Seungri’s brown pupils. “There is hope in it…”

Seungri listened Jiyong’s talking, the way his lips opened just the necessary or the way his voice sounded grave but kind. Until Jiyong reached the moment in which he had nothing else left to say and lifted his eyebrows, uncertain.

“And where is the unreal part?” Seungri questioned.

“Everything is unreal. That's why it's called a dream,”

“How curious. My dreams are different, they're about real things mixed with my own doings,” murmured Seungri smiling. “If it was beautiful then why are you sad?”

“Because it wasn’t real,” Jiyong answered rolling his eyes subtly and backed away his face, studying Seungri’s one as if the question was plain stupid.

“And?”

“I wish it was real.”

“And the dream isn’t beautiful anymore just because of it?” Seungri asked again, his fingers playing again with the fabric of Jiyong’s sweater unconsciously. Jiyong only shook his head and stared at Seungri’s fingers captivated. “Then why are you sad?”

“I…” choked Jiyong, words getting stuck inside his throat.

Seungri laughed softly and caressed some strings of hair that had fallen down Jiyong’s face, “You don’t need to answer.”

Jiyong lifted his back and felt Seungri slid one of his arms under him and around him. And he unconciously or maybe too conciously cuddled against the chest of that man, listening to the sounds of the night.

“What do you know?” whispered Jiyong over Seungri’s chest, his lips brushing Seungri’s skin. Seungri only murmured a low “humm”, lowering his gaze to see Jiyong. “You seem to know about what I was talking about. What do you know that I don’t?”

Seungri gulped down, unsure about how Jiyong would react but answered. “I found something the other day. A notebook and after that I saw a photo…” started saying Seungri and talked about those things and his doubts and discovers about Choi Seunghyun the calmly as possible but with his right arm grasping onto Jiyong’s body not letting him run away from his side. Though Jiyong only listened in silence and at the end he nodded serenely.

His fingers grasped onto Seungri’s clothes, his body reached for more contact, but not as a desperate soul but as someone only looking for companion. Jiyong’s eyes were looking at Seungri wide opened, without a single trait of tears.

“I can’t feel it. The pain,” sobbed Jiyong with anxiety. "Is something wrong with me?"

In a quick movement Seungri’s lips brushed Jiyong’s nose and kissed the tip, making Jiyong gasp in surprise and his shoulders jump.

“Did you feel that?”

Jiyong nodded, his eyes suddenly rushing with newly discovered tears.

“Then there is nothing wrong with you,” whispered Seungri over Jiyong’s ear and tightened his embrace. 

However there was something broken in Jiyong for that night Seungri woke up to the quite sobbing of an asleep Jiyong mumbling words that resembled just one: lie. And Seungri stood there by his side, eyes opened, mind thinking that the answer “Everything is going to be fine,” was, as same a everything around them, a lie.

After two nights with the same sleepless crying Seungri decided to do something. And for the first time that something wasn’t planned, or premeditated, or thought or made cautiously. His need and wanting for getting his Jiyong back, no matter that thinking so possessively was wrong, but is felt as his Jiyong the one he had discovered. So he ended up driving at the middle of the night to those places that seemed abandoned and empty, where the flicking lights inside the 301 department looked only like solutions for him. His sweaty, nervous hands clenched around the steering wheel trying to gain courage to do what he had came to do.

The first thing Seungri sighted inside the room when he opened it carefully was the figure of a man, crouched down over some pillows, a pot with food waste over the floor just inches away of him and the music of some strange piano playing from a video recorder. It all gave the impression of a defeated man. The man had bushy eyebrows and was resting his head against the wall. When the defeated ex-bodyguard noticed his presence, merely looked at him and said in a raspy voice.

“The money is there, take all you want,” pointing at the box Seungri knew too well.

“I am not here for money. I came to talk with you,” he clarified.

The man extinguished his cigarette against the floor and studied Seungri, crossed his legs and with force, but evident uneasiness, asked.

“Soo Hyuk man?”

Seungri denied with his head. “I am not with him,” and after seeing the way anguish vanished away from the man’s face upon hearing those words, he added. “I am against him,”

“I can’t say anything.”

“Which means you know something,”

“And what if I do?” spited out the man, knocking the pot with one of his feet, making the food waste scatter disgustingly over the floor.

Even though Seungri approached to the man and when he was close enough kneeled down, resting his weight over his ankles. The man looked at his movements questioningly, plastering his gaze onto Seungri’s hands that rested over his tights.

“I could offer you money for your words but someone already did that,” started saying Seungri, “And it seems it was not what you needed or wanted. I am asking you for help. I came here as someone who is losing someone cherished and find you the only way to get him back to me,” ended Seungri, lowering his eyes.

The man stood up, anger and confusion rushing through his face, the edges of his lips trembling, his eye wandering around restless.

“I don’t now what you are talking about,”

“I’m speaking about the same things that made you lose your life, family and happiness,”

“I can’t help you!” the man shouted, grabing Seungri from his shoulders and forcing him to stand up, but Seungri’s hands grasped the floor, denying to move. The man tried harder without success.

“Please,” begged the broken voice of Seungri and he lifted his reddened eyes to the man.

“Leave! Get away from here!” barked the man, pushing Seungri with violence.

“I saw your wife, I saw your kids toys and saw them playing without a father… You can get them back; you can help me get Jiyong back. Please! don’t let these lies destroy more people, destroy your life,” pleaded Seungri, dodging the arms of the man without any intention to reciprocate the violence.

The hands of the man steadied but remained grasping Seungri’s clothes with force. His breathing troubled. It seemed as if the man had recognized the name that had escaped through Seungri’s lips… Jiyong.

“He will find out… If I tell you.”

“No. Soo Hyuk will know only when it'll be too late for him to do something. I can promise you that.”

The man backed away and lowered his hands. And seemed to had an internal debate, shaking his head, closing his eyes and opening them, mumbling incoherent things until he talked.

“It wasn’t an accident… he was murdered. Choi Seunghyun was deliberately murdered,” finally whispered the man. “The Chinese men killed him and shoot him -us- to death.”

“Chinese men?”

“The Hyangs. “This is from the hyangs” they said before shooting us. Soo Hyuk arrived first and I told him this. He threatened me; he told me they would search for me if I opened my mouth… He called someone and told me to, to stay quite, to lie. So I lied to the police.”

“So he paid you for your silence,”

The man nodded silently.

“I did it for my family. I… am not a bad person. I liked Seunghyun. I liked Jiyong. I…”

“Thank you,” murmured Seungri placing one of his hands over the trembling man’s shoulders. 

Hey there! Yes... so now you know a bit more... It might be confusing now., but It will make more sense later.

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Hope you are still enjoying this story. I will try to fasten a bit, but I want to remind you this is a thriller-romance fic. Hope you understand.