{btw, HAPPY NEW YEAR my lovelies! and now, here's my treat for you all.}

L.Joe returned to the hideout, where the rest of his gang members were crowded around the television set, sprawled like a mess on the same, tattered sofa he had been on just the night before. Niel, first to turn his head upon sensing L.Joe’s return, nudged the little one sitting on the arm of the sofa next to him, who then went to whisper something into Changjo’s ears. L.Joe saw this, but he ignored the bunch and headed straight for his room. All he could think about was Jiyeon, and why she hadn’t shown up at the Tunnel earlier. Were all those years of being together really not worth a mere minute of meeting up with him, to explain why she had made the decision she had before he was to respect her choice and let her go? She didn’t even leave him a message to tell him that she couldn’t make it in time. Yes, he had a dangerous reputation, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have feelings, that he wasn’t allowed to love.

“Hyung… I think there’s something you should see.” Changjo managed to say when L.Joe caught his gaze, biting onto the cushion tightly bounded to his chest, pointing at the television screen. Their faces were solemn, and immediately L.Joe’s heart sank some more. The strained features on his face were so clear now that the rest of the team regretted the moment they had informed him about the news report. He looked even more tired than when he had first come out onto the streets, trudging through nights of fights and deprivation of sleep.

Pushing the boys aside, a weak L.Joe, much drained from waiting all day for Jiyeon who had never appeared, stumbled forward. When he caught on with what the lady on the screen was talking about, the poor boy’s heart stopped beating.

“… Park Jiyeon reported missing since this afternoon, the marriage proposal potentially rejected in front of…”

L.Joe took the remote control and almost threw it to the ground, fist tightening around it in so much fear, hurt and anger that he almost cried out in pain. It was like the emotions just split from him; a volcano that had finally decided to erupt after a whole day’s time of bottling up. The eldest two ran to hold onto him before he could trash anything else in the room.

“GUYS, HELP ME!”

“LET GO OF ME C.A.P!” L.Joe yelled, tears gathering on the rims of his eyes, so much until they spilled. “Jiyeon… no… ANDWAE!”

“L.Joe, stay still! You’re only going to hurt yourself!”

It was five against one now. And although smaller and shorter, the boy still managed to tear free of his brother’s grasps, breaking into the open as soon as he found himself onto his feet again.

So Jiyeon didn't marry that guy.

He had to go and find her; find her before her father did, because if he didn't, she was going to get hurt again.

But L.Joe didn’t realise how exhausted he was until then, and before he was able to take another step, his legs fell weak beneath him and his whole weight collapsed onto the ground. This time, no one was there to catch him.

//

Meanwhile, commotion was no less at the Park Manor. All the maids and butlers gasped as they watched the news on live broadcast, while the father of the house had been ceaselessly answering phone calls to certify the issue. He rammed the phone down into its holder again, preparing for another fit as anger welled up in his stomach and then shot up to the back of his throat. He was already startled by his daughter’s behaviour, but her disappearance only added to the fuel. He just didn’t believe his own daughter would go to this extent: playing hide and seek with him, vanishing from the surfaces of the Earth just to get what she wanted. It was disgracing him at such an immature level.

“I knew she had something up her sleeve! Stubborn, just like her mother! Just wait until I get my hands on–”

“Sir! That is quite enough. Please look after your health before anything else!” Mr. Yoo interrupted, hoping to calm him down. Events weren’t looking bright at all, but some things just couldn’t be forced. He had already sent out search teams; all they could do now was wait for, hopefully, good news. “We both know that mistress is a sensible girl. And if anything does happen, she's also tough, she’d hold out… It’ll be okay…” But deep down inside, even the head butler knew that these words would not comfort him, not after he had lost his wife. Jiyeon was the only daughter that his wife had left for him, and he wasn’t about to lose her too.

//

{filler. a step into their past.}

Some six years ago, in the same year that Jiyeon had lost her mother, it was as though the sky had sent down a replacement angel. What grew from a mere save of a little boy who had had his face bashed up to a pulp at the park that evening had led into a love story that Jiyeon would have never expected herself.

Jiyeon too was a er for cute things, but she had always valued her education more than these trivial love drabbles the students at her school seemed to always indulge in. She came from a wealthy family, and because of that, Jiyeon hadn’t been able to walk her own path. It was probably destined from birth that she would grow up and continue her father’s line in the fifty years and on-going business that he had kept running, as she was the only child his first and last wife had given him.

Jiyeon was beautiful, intelligent, an ideal candidate for a daughter-in-law, and so preparing her was no problem; all Jiyeon needed now was to touch up on her reputation through education and marry into a wealthier and more capable family. Only then would she be able to have the power and support to succeed the line, as girls didn’t usually run the businesses. That was all Jiyeon had ever remembered her life being about. And of course for all those years, Jiyeon’s father only ever had his eyes on one boy; the son of the owner of the biggest trading business centre in Seoul, Lee Jeongmin.

The stress mounted with each year, but she persevered, knowing that she had had to look presentable through every single record in Korea before being able to represent proudly her father in business when the time came. It wasn’t what she wanted, in fact she never thought about it in all those years of her adolescent-hood. She took it that she had no choice, reluctantly living by these rules that life had so selfishly set for her. But all that stopped when she met him. She started caring. From their encounter onwards, when Jiyeon had grown mature enough to digest why her education had always been in first priority, and why it was necessary she lived by the standards of her father in this big, bad world, she wondered everyday why her mother had not taken her away with her when she had left.

Sometimes, Jiyeon had the urge to give up, but she abandoned any thoughts of escaping when she learned that she hadn’t the power to refrain. Her father was no man to be messed with, and the departure of her mother had set wood to the fire, leaving all the smoke in Jiyeon’s place to consume for herself. As for Jiyeon’s mother, who left in the middle of the night claiming she had an errand to run, she never came back once to see how she or her father was going. This was when Jiyeon truly knew that her mother hadn’t cared for her anymore. She told her a few times that she looked just like her father, and what a relief that had been, but those were all just lies now. The only news that had reached their family a month after her sudden leaving was that she had remarried and flew to settle with her new family somewhere far, to a  place that even Jiyeon, as intelligent as she was, had never heard of before. And if Jiyeon’s mother had truly died, like what the rumours said later that year, then Jiyeon and her father would have no knowledge whatsoever on how, or why.

//

But, just to go a little back on track, all it took for all that to change was one evening. At the park amidst the one of her several evening walks she took, a bloodied figure stood waiting for her on the other side of the playground, or so she thought. Of course, she screamed. The next thing Jiyeon remembered after that was how he had limped up to her, and with his injured hand, brought it up from the side of his torso which was still trickling with blood, and closed . He fell in her arms then at the sudden astonishment of her stillness, beauty perhaps, and fainted in her arms probably from the driving pain of all the bruises he was bearing that night, if not from blood-loss. He was so weak he weighed no more than a feather in her arms.

Jiyeon washed over in a frantic fumbling for her mobile phone in her pocket as the boy with pure, light lemon-coloured hair laid almost dead in her arms. When she found it though, the boy croaked out a few words from his blistered lips, and it had stopped her from dialling for help.

“Don’t… Hospital… I can’t…” and then he blanked out.

Jiyeon was scared at first, but that was no way to handle an injured person. So she took some time to take in a few deep breaths–and look, she was right. In just that one moment, when she had calmed down and realised the warmth she had felt cradling him in her arms like that, she looked at the boy as a pitied soul in her protection, and not as the blood-waging prison breaker she thought she had seen. Moving swiftly to the Tunnel with the boy still in her care, a long tract of land sheltered by a huge unused water tunnel where no one ever visited anymore, Jiyeon looked after him there. She ran a few metres, kilometres even, to retrieve water, bandages, anything she needed–all on her own. Jiyeon was a smart kid, you see, and she had connection even when away from home.

And when she was confronted again by the same boy who had come to the coffee shop she was working at a few mornings after the incident and confessed his love for her with a bouquet of flowers and a huge teddy bear, with a gang of four others behind him rooting for him as he stood unmoving in his underarm crutches, you would have no idea how much Jiyeon’s heart had softened at his words. She never knew the boy had fallen in love at first sight with her that same night she had nursed him at the Tunnel. It was the first time someone took notice of her, cared for her, not because of her chaebol status but because they truly loved her. They met when they were only twelve years of age, but by the time two weeks was up, L.Joe had already completely won over her heart.

♕ ♕ ♕

a/n: omg i am so bad at expressing deep and vehement feelings through stories, dramatic much akdsjkasjdisjdijdkn. OOHHH, and for serious readers, be sure you guys don't skim, because you never know, missing out on the smallest detail can make you go 'HUUHH??' later on. xD But anywho, OMG GUYSSSSSS THANKS FOR READINGGGG AND SUBSCRIBING /happy author over hereeeee :D Just, no silent readers, please? -__- makes me feel like i'm writing for no one :c. continuation of filler and chapter 4 to be continued very soon~

hyukxin ©