Those who ship Hyomin with Jaejoong, you're in for a treat >:D

I'm sorry Joon i still love you

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Hyomin's POV

I was relieved to see Hwayoung and my mother watching TV when I walked into the living room. Our remote home means Hwayoung relies on me for company. But Dad's accident had zapped some of the pluck and curiosity out of her. Instead of following me around the house like an eager puppy, these past few weeks she had switched allegiance to Mum, and become timid and clingy. It unsettled me. I relied on Hwayoung to be the life to my soul. She encouraged me to take risks and, though I'd never thanked her to her face, I knew that without her I would be a whole lot lonelier and more 'insolar' than I already am.

"Hey, kiddo." I ruffled her untidy black hair. "Wassup?"

Hwayoung looked up. "Can I sleep in your bed tonight?" She glanced uneasily at my mother, who ree of mock disapproval. "Just one more night," Hwayoung pleaded. "Please?"

"If it's okay with Hyomin, then I suppose ..." Mum smiled at me. "One more night?"

What I really wanted was to curl up on my bed and unpick the unbelievable events of the past hour. I need to rationalise. Convince myself I was a normal sixteen-year-old girl.

But I had never been 'normal', and what was happening in my life now, though it should surprised me, kind of didn't. I also needed to get to the bottom of why Jaejoong freaked me out less than Joon did. With Hwayoung next to me, I wouldn't get the chance.

"Sure," I said. "One more night."

"Thank you, sweetie," Mum said, getting up to go into the kitchen. "I'll make us something to eat."

Narrator's POV

"You're brave," Hwayoung said, winding melted cheese round her fork. "Don't you feel brave?"

Dad was asleep upstairs and Mum had made them all cheese on toast. Hyomin was still too churned up inside. Hwayoung was morbidly obsessed, as she had been for the past few weeks, with the night of the accident.

"Not really," Hyomin muttered. "I didn't do anything."

"I wouldn't say that. You ran to get help." She squeezed a large dollop of tomato sauce on to her plate. "In the freezing darkness. You must have been terrified." She shook her head. "Thank goodness for that boy. It's such a shame he ran off before we could thank him."

"Yeah." Hyomin said, looking down at her plate.

"Makes me shudder to think we have wolves around here," she went on.

Hwayoung's eyes were wide, her hands still clutching her knife and fork.

"Do wolves eat people?" she asked anxiously.

Hyomin and her mum exchanged a look.

"They're predators, sweetie," Mum told her. "But they're very rare." She glanced at Hyomin. "We just have to make sure we don't go wandering into the woods at night. Alone. Then we'll be okay."

Hyomin lowered her head, feeling her eyes still on her. Did she know?

"Did you see its face?" Hwayoung couldn't stop asking questions.

"Think so ..." She had a flash of those black eyes, the red mouth, the teeth, the huge, vaulting body. Hyomin got up abruptly. "I'm going to be sick."

"Hyomin?" Mum stood up too, hovering awkwardly over her. "Sweetheart ..."

Hyomin ran, nearly tripping over the sleeping dog, to the bathroom downstairs. After she'd been sick, she stayed crouched over, a mixture of fear and disbelief coursing through her.

Hyomin had waited sixteen years for something to happen in her life, for a sign that she fitted in somewhere ... with someone. Was her destiny a strange, skinny boy in a black overcoat? A boy who came to her in her dreams, who'd never die. Who came from a world straight out of Tolkien, but with whom she felt no fear.

And what about Joon, a mysterious human boy in her waking life, who made her hair stand on end just by being next to her?

"What's happening to me?" Hyomin said out loud.

The sound of footsteps outside the door made her look up. Hyomin's mother stood, holding a dishcloth in her hands. She was looking at her, not smiling.

"I made you some hot chocolate," she said, her eyes dropping away from Hyomin's. "It'll make everything seem normal."

"Normal?" She said quietly.

"It's important to get back to normal," She half turned to go back to the kitchen but stopped. "Back to what you know."

"I'm not sure if that's possible," Hyomin told her, stupidly melodramatic. "Stuff has happened ---"

"I know, and you have been very brave." But her tone was abrupt, hostile even. "And now you have to try even harder to move on." She turned round again and there was warning in her eyes. "To leave it behind." She stepped into the hallway and shouted to Hwayoung to finish her meal, leaving Hyomin baffled. What was she getting so riled about?

Hyomin waited until Hwayoung was asleep before she slipped out of bed and padded as quietly as possible to her hoodie. She took the notebook out of the pocket and, glancing quickly back at her sleeping sister, pushed the rest of her crumpled clothes off the chair and curled up on it.

She opened the book to the first page.

To my dearest darling,

I don't know if I will ever see you again, it's getting harder to come to you. I am needed at home. I know that soon I will have to choose between you and my family, and it is SO hard. I love you. I didn't think it was possible to love a boy so much. But ...

The page was torn and she skipped to the next page to find a clearer entry.

I saw you today and we lay in our favorite spot, listening to the babbling, spitting brook, and I had my head on your chest and felt your heartbeat so strong, and wanted never to come home. But real life is intervening, sweetest. I am lying on my bed, knowing that soon I will need to go to my mother and tell her I will never leave her, and always look after her because I am all she has got. She won't live forever. That is clearer to me now than it ever has been.

Hyomin turned the page to see a drawing of a river and some trees. It wasn't good, it was naive and out of proportion, and in the corner there was a crudely drawn pair of wings with the words My Angel written underneath. She felt as though she was intruding and she wondered who she was, this love-struck girl. And how on earth Jaejoong come to have her diary.

Real life is intervening ... What did she mean?

Hyomin shut the book, saving the rest for another time, and got back into bed, gently shifting Hwayoung over as she slept.

She didn't dream that night. She fell into a peaceful sleep, but her last though was of a rushing stream, beside which a girl and a boy lay blissfully in each other's arm.

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Comments! ♥ 

Oh, and Happy Birthday To Qri & Eunjung & Seungri!! \o/