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“Look, Jooyoung, it’s not necessary.” Sighing, Kyungsoo ran a hand through his hair. “I told you, the security detail we have is already more than sufficient. I don’t - I know it’s just for the public’s sake, but by God, man, there’s such a thing as privacy -”

Jandi crunched on a rice cracker, not even bothering to pretend she wasn’t listening in on her husband’s phone conversation from where she sat on the couch. For a man who had just blown up on every major newspaper’s headlines as the new hero of the election cycle, Kyungsoo didn’t seem particularly happy. Actually, he’d been increasingly agitated since they got back to the Capital that morning, perhaps because of the mob of campaign staff that had been waiting for him to return their calls the second he got home. I don’t know what he expected, really. He pulls something like that for publicity and then isn’t happy when his campaign team wants to jump on the opportunity?

“No more than two,” Kyungsoo said firmly, ignoring his head of security’s annoyed buzzing on the other end. “Two is already ridiculous. How am I supposed to cultivate an image of being a man of the people when I’m constantly being trailed by two town cars full of gun-toting guards?”

Involuntarily, Jandi shuddered. Being watched by random passerbyers wherever they went was bad enough - an of armed guards was bordering on nightmarish. Besides, wasn’t the whole point of Kyungsoo’s maneuver to show that he cared more about spending time with his constituents than his own bodily safety? Either that or to push forward some stupid, brutish machismo sentiment? At least, those were the two angles the media had adopted in reporting the Yosei shooting - Do Kyungsoo, unfaltering man of the people, or Do Kyungsoo, manly man of the manly men.

She took another bite of her cracker and eyed her husband as he hung up the phone and sank into the couch with a groan. More like Do Kyungsoo, lying liar of the lying liars.

Said lying liar caught her eye. “Can you pass me the crackers, please?”

She swallowed, staring down at the bowl of crackers, then back at him. She held out the bowl. “Here.”

Grabbing a handful, Kyungsoo crunched into a cracker with a mumbled “thanks” and curled back up on the couch. Jandi swallowed again. Was it terrible of her that she both found him absolutely adorable as he sulked with his fistful of rice crackers and infuriating for the never-ending lies? It was always a sliding scale with him between those two poles, and it seemed like every time she settled on one feeling, the scale would flip, then off she’d slide in the other direction.

Another day, another face of Kyungsoo. Always an irritatingly handsome face, but that’s besides the point. Jandi grimaced to herself. Kind of.

“So how many town cars did you manage to talk Jooyoung down to?” she asked, desperate to distract herself. It was a fair question, in her opinion - she had a right to know. It wasn’t just Kyungsoo who would be suffering an invasion of privacy with the increased security detail.

Swallowing, Kyungsoo finished off his handful of crackers. “Two.” He frowned again. “I know it’s for safety and for the campaign, but I still don’t like it.”

“How is it for the campaign? I thought the whole point of… of it,” she said pointedly, remembering Kyungsoo’s warnings about ears everywhere in the Do mansion, “would be rather contradicted by an increased security detail.”

He made a face. “Jooyoung’s worried there’ll be a copycat incident, or that some of my opponents will expect me to decrease my security detail to keep the public momentum going and take advantage of it.”

Take advantage? “You mean he thinks your opponents might send somebody to kill you if they think your security is more relaxed?” Jandi’s voice squeaked at the end, and she struggled to regain control over her voice. “Kyungsoo, you think somebody’s going to actually try to assassinate you and you are against having more guards for privacy’s sake?”

“Jandi, one of my major contenders is the president of a munitions development conglomerate with definite connections to underground crime networks,” Kyungsoo said drily. “As long as I was a foreseeable opponent, assassination would have been a possibility anyway.”

“But it’s a much more likely possibility now, isn’t it?”

He shrugged, reaching over to grab another cracker. “You could say that.”

Jandi set the cracker bowl down with a clang, and Kyungsoo looked up, eyes wide. “I could say that? Are you hearing yourself right now? Do you actually want to die?”

He swallowed, almost choking on a bit of cracker that went down the wrong tube. Jandi bit down a vicious swell of pride at how alarmed he looked. “It’s not that I want bad things to happen,” he said slowly. “It’s not that at all.”

“Then why are you so nonchalant about attempts on your life?” Not to mention arranging attempts on your own life, she added.

“It might be a bit of a defense mechanism,” Kyungsoo admitted, lifting one shoulder in a half-shrug and avoiding her gaze. “I get stressed a lot, and stress is easy to rationalize and defuse, but fear is… It’s not as easy.”

Jandi bit her lip. As much as she was enjoying her righteous wave of anger, she thought she might be able to understand her husband’s feelings in that respect. Growing up in an environment like the Capital with a father like Mansoo, Kyungsoo must have always had people telling him that men could feel stressed or angry, but never afraid. This whole media manipulation fiasco predicated on that exact emphasis on machismo culture, after all.

“Fear isn’t bad, though,” she said carefully. “Being fearless all the time isn’t good, or strong, or manly. It’s just… stupid.”