HAPPY NEW YEAR everyone!!! I know i said i’m going to finish this FF before 2015 but was caught up with stuffs. SO here we are, an update and we are closing to an ending! One more chapter after this one and I would have completed my first ever FF hehe! Enjoy xx (And thank you everyone for the well wishes!)

Min Ho sat in defeat, begging God for one last mercy. Please, please don’t let her come. Send her far away. Don’t let her hear.

He watched the Killer hovering over him with his drill, heard his threats, but his mind was on his prayer of desperation to God.

Protect her, I beg you. She’s innocent, she’s naive, she will run here for love, but don’t let my love draw her. Not now, please, not now.

Then Joon bent over and pressed the drill into his shin and the pain was so vicious that his whole leg began to shake violently. His stomach rolled and his vision blurred, but he could not allow the scream tearing at his throat a moment’s breath.

Joon stood. He was talking, but he didn’t hear him. His mind was begging all the more earnestly. Please, please save her. Save her, please.…

Movement from the corner of his left eye stopped him, and he looked and he saw what he had begged not to see. She stood in the wide barn doorway, like an angel of mercy.

He couldn’t breathe.

“Hello, Joon.”

Joon started. Then slowly turned. For a moment they stared at each other and Min ho could only imagine what vile thoughts were running through the mind of this psychopath.

“Hello, Park Shin Hye.”

Min ho wanted to scream out to her. Run, Shin Hye! Run away! He’s a monster and he’s going to hurt you. You’re too naive! Run!

A moan broke from his mouth, nothing more. He struggled to keep from passing out. It couldn’t end this way! She had to run.

Shin Hye just stood there, staring at the killer. And Joon stared back.

Min ho found his voice, breathy and stretched with fear. “Run…” Then again, in a cry. “Run, Shin Hye, run!”

“Ani. Not this time.”

Her voice was so light, so sweet, so innocent. And it sent a shaft of searing anguish through his chest. She was going to die on account of him! And she was too stubborn to see it.

Joon walked over to the table, set down the drill, and picked up his pistol.

She looked at Min ho then, cheeks wet by trails of tears. But she didn’t flinch.

He leaned against his ropes, frantic for her to run. “Please, you can’t do this…” But she wasn’t listening. “Please…”

Her head turned back to Joon, who stood in the middle of the quilted stage, before the wall on which he intended to drain her.

Min ho started to speak again but couldn’t. His words were only noise in his mind. A great lament rolled through him.

Forgive me,! I’m sorry that I let you love me. I’m sorry that your tormented life has led you here to me, to the first man who showed you any love. You don’t have to give your life for me! It doesn’t work that way! Those are the foolish ideas in stories. I’m not worth it, I’m a wretch. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Shin Hye ah!

Twenty feet down the middle of the barn separated them now. Joon seemed caught in some kind of trance, as if in facing the culmination of his plans he could not find the words to express the import of the moment. He stood with his gun at his side, watching her. No wise words, no gloating, no expression of hatred, no cursing, not even a twitch on his face or a tremble in his hand.

He just stared at her, dumb.

Perhaps he couldn’t believe that she really was stupid enough to come back, knowing what faced her. De! That had to be it. Both he and Joon saw the same thing. Only someone so raw, so idealistic could have stepped willingly into harm’s way with no hope for survival.

“You’re wondering why I would come back,” she said.

She stepped forward cautiously and stopped ten feet from him. Her face showed no expression, but new tears broke from her eyes.

“It makes no sense to you,” she said. “Does it?”

He answered after a moment. “You’re innocent and foolish,” he said. “That’s what makes you so beautiful. That is why I have to kill you.”

“Then you’ll be killing the one thing you want.”

They watched each other.

“I’ve been thinking about it, Joon. That’s why you came to me that night seven years ago. You wanted the innocence and beauty that you saw in me.”

“You can’t manipulate me with your words. You’re the most beautiful woman in the world, and I have been sent to kill you.”

“Because you can’t possess me?” Her voice quivered.

“Because you’re God’s favourite and no one can have you.”

“The truth is, you’re afraid of me, Joon. I terrify you.”

“I can break you like any doll.”

But she was undeterred. “I terrify you because you’re afraid that you can never be beautiful like me. You’re like a jealous boy, and now you’re throwing a fit.”

Min ho stared, caught off guard by the exchange between them. This was the Shin Hye who had first drawn him with her simple insight and logic, seeing and speaking about what only she could see outside the window. The naive girl who could see ghosts when others could not.

“You were mixed up then and you’re still mixed up now,” she said. “You are a lost, lonely boy who was hurt by his Abeoji. Just like I was.”

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Her words came to him and in an instant the buzzing stopped. The world went silent, as if someone had pulled the plug.

She knew this? It was a guess, of course, anyone could guess that someone had been abused as a boy, hadn’t half the world? But her tone didn’t hold even a hint of question. Her eyes were reaching past him, into the place of secrets. This was hallowed ground, a place so deep and holy that he himself was only rarely allowed to step into it.

And yet she was walking in, trampling his soul underfoot. Joon felt suddenly and forcefully violated.

The silence between them stretched, and he searched for the buzzing, the voices, the calm, the intelligence that had made him so powerful and such a worthy servant. He hated her for stripping them away.

And then the buzzing was back, screaming in his mind like a swarm of angry hornets. His whole body tensed and his fingers clamped down on the gun by his side.

He’d removed the silencer when he’d replaced the weapon in the case. The discharge thundered through the barn as the gun bucked in his hand and sent a bullet into the ground by his feet.

Shin Hye did not flinch.

“Your Abeoji hurt you just like mine hurt me. That’s what first drew you to me,” she said.

“Ani.”

“I didn’t have a Abeoji to tell me that I was one of God’s favourites,” she said.

He saw something so unnerving that he would have lifted the gun and shot her in her forehead if not for the fact that he had planned so long to drill her. There was empathy in her eyes.

“But that’s one thing you’re right about, Joon. I am one of God’s favourites.”

“Please, be quiet.”

“My Appa never told me who I was, just like yours never told you who you were.”

Why didn’t he move? Why didn’t he just shoot her? Why didn’t he grab her and tie her down and drill her full of holes? Why did he feel as if the glue that held him together was melting?

“Because you are one of God’s favourites, too, Joon.”

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Min ho didn’t utter a word, not now, not while Shin Hye was speaking and Joon was listening. The slightest shift in tension might set him off, as it had discharged his gun moments ago.

Joon had gone stiff. Sweat beaded his forehead. His hands were balled into fists, and his blood vessels ran like cords down his forearm