"Thank, God, you're okay. I tried to chase, but Sehun was too fast. My car couldn't keep up..."

Upon hearing to Sehun's name, Yeonhee buries her face on Yixing's shoulder to hold back another bead of tear at the tip of her eyes. No wonder Yixing couldn't catch up with Sehun at that speed, let alone to match his Audi, she just can't blame him. But she's too tired to react, she doesn't have more energy to tell him what happened for the last five hours so she just sighs.

"I want to lie down," she says, and Yixing hurriedly pulls away.

"Yeah, yeah, sure."

Yixing puts his arm around her shoulder and takes her to her room. He just let go of his hand as soon as Yeonhee its on the bed.

"Take some rest, call me if you need anything," he tells her as he bends down in front of her. And then he rises, and Yeonhee grabs his wrist, holding him back from leaving.

"Can you stay?"

It takes about a minute for Yixing to think about the request before he gives her a nod, he makes a turn and climbs the bed from its other side. He takes Yeonhee's hand lie next to him and pushes her head to rest on his chest while they lie on their sides.

"Sleep," he whispers on her ear and gives her a kiss light on her forehead. He then wraps his arms around her, and that's how he starts to shut her eyes, trying to get to sleep.

Silence.

Yeonhee doesn't realize how long the clock has been ticking, but the day is getting brighter outside. The sunlight peeks out from behind the window curtain, it seems like an hour has passed but Yeonhee is still awake. She has tried to close her eyes, but she fails to clear her head. Looking up, Yixing is sleeping soundly and Yeonhee can understand that. Just like her , Yixing certainly hasn't slept all night, coupled with super busy days at the hospital, he really lacks sleep.

Not wanting to disturb his deep sleep, Yeonhee moves his arm slowly from her waist. She turns her body around carefully as she slides off the bed to get her dress changed. She takes a quick warm shower and takes a sip of water before she gets back to her room. A quick glance, her eyes now lay on the bookshelves. She stands by her bedside for a few moments, thinking that it is about time to read her mother's diary, hoping that it will give her some lights to her questions.

She pulls out the book from the bookshelf, and she settles herself half-sit on the bed next to Yixing, resting her back on the headboard. Yixing shifts a bit to rest his arm around her waist, and Yeonhee runs her hand to his head before she opens the journal with a long inbreathe.

It really takes a lot to read her mother's book. Previously she had never dared to touch it into thinking what kind of truth lies inside it, she was never ready to find out. But today she just does. The fear is still there, to be honest, but after what had happened all night, she feels it is time to unravel everything. It's enough to play dumb with herself, she knows that her life isn't as easy as she thought so far. There are just too many secrets, and she needs to know.

And her mother's journal, Yeonhee isn't sure how to react. It fazes her to know how hard it was to be her in the past, but she has an idea about some of them that it doesn't give her so much of a surprise. Her mother doesn't write routinely, the scale starts every week until a few months. But everything is dark. From her journal, she finds out how afflicted her marriage life was.

It was an arranged marriage that united them. She knew that this man didn't and wouldn't love her, but they still proceed with the marriage for the sake of his political benefits. And their lives after the wedding were truly unhappy, it was filled with quarrels that she almost thought of doing an abortion when she bore her, but for some reason, she didn't do it. One of her best friends whom she called Eunmi managed to convince her (Yeonhee has to stop for a moment here to remember who Eunmi is called here. And it takes her about a few minutes until she remembers Yixing had mentioned that name before. It's that nurse from the ICU, the chief of surgery's wife) to keep the baby with the hope that it would make the relationship with her husband better. Which actually did, at least for several months.

Her father always wanted a son. When she was born, it did soften his heart a bit to have a child of his own, despite the fact that she's not what he wished to be. Her mother wrote in her journals that the baby blues were getting worse, that she thought of killing her baby and herself. She wrote there that she went to a psychiatrist to help her struggle with depression, especially once she found out that her husband had started seeing his ex-girlfriend when her child was about a year old.

She didn't write as frequent as before after that, and it's more filled with short sentences, like,

'it's tiring,'

'Seungwoo is seeing that woman again, should I confront him about it?'

'Yeonhee saw me cry. She held me for half an hour and I had to lie to her. She didn't deserve this, she deserves a better father.'

Her interest is piqued once her mother started talking about this project that her father initiated after some pages later. She was fifteen at the time, and according to her mother, it was the start of everything.

'Seungwoo said some investors have agreed to finance the construction of this research center. But this is wrong, as much as how great the plan sounds, he just begs me to do this because he wants that parliament's chair so much. It will popularize his name among the party, he doesn't even care about it... should I go with his wish? Why do you only come to me when you want something from me, Seungwoo?'

Yeonhee scoffs while reading how her mother told her father's ambition to be able to sit in parliament. She knows how his father's temperament is, but she didn't expect that he could be that petty, to actually influence her mother to cooperate with him. He even convinced her by promising to use her name at the research center.

The thing that is a bit surprised her is the fact that she herself knew about the plan. Her mother didn't write in her journal how she found out about this project, but it was mentioned there that she came to her while looking upset and said that she didn't want them to build the research center. When she turns the page, a year had passed.

'I can't believe that I just fell into his trap. He put me into a restraining order for my own child ...
I'm so sorry, Yeonhee. Mom didn't mean to do all that for you. This is my fault ... '

She flips the page to read another entry, but there is no writing afterwards. She frowns in disappointment knowing that it was her last writing at her journal. Just like that? She has many questions, hoping that this book has something that can answer it. But once she knows that this is all she can get, she almost curses.

Yixing stirs from his sleep, looking disoriented as he looks around the room, then takes a glance at his watch to hide that awkward move as he pulls out his arm from around her.

"Just have more sleep, you look exhausted," Yeonhee tells him once he shifts to sit next to her.

Rubbing his face with his hands, Yixing shakes his head, "I'm fine," he claims, "Did you get any sleep?"

Yeonhee's response to the question by shaking her head, "It's too full in here," she taps her temple with her forefinger, and Yixing lets out a thin smile as he takes her hand to his and holds it firmly. It's at the same time as she flicks through the journal's pages that she suddenly find some other entries almost at the end of the book. Her mother skipped a lot of pages to write the new one, which was written about four years ago.

"Did you find any interesting thing from your mother's journal?" Yixing asks when she's reading her mother's writing, he tilts his head to get a peek on what she reads. And knowing what he's trying to do, Yeonhee offers the journal so he can read what she just did a moment ago.

'That woman told me that Oh Sehun is Seungwoo's son. I've been confiding my daughter to her own brother all this time, and they both have no ideas. I don't even know if I should laugh or cry to it...'

Yixing gasps and snaps his head at her, hand in his mouth, totally bewildered.

"Yeonhee? You don't look surprised." he half says and questioning, as if confused which surprised him more; the fact that Sehun is her brother, or is Yeonhee's lack of emotion with the reveal.

"It's what caused Sehun's outrage. I wasn't supposed to hear this," she confesses.
 
"Oh, . So it's ... really?" He flips the page to see if there's another writing, only to find nothing. And he sighs as he rests his head by the wall, looking at the ceiling while he's lost for words.

For a few moments, they just stay there in the same position. Yeonhee turns her head sideways to see Yixing looks like he's thinking, but she has no idea what it is inside his head, and she hates not knowing. So she asks,

"Penny for your thought?"

Yixing lets out another sigh, gives her a short glance,

"I feel so bad for him," he returns, "I confronted him so many times, thinking that he had feelings for you. I've been so disrespectful."

"Well, you're not the only one." she adds, "I've treated him worse."

Yeonhee regrets what happened to them. Even to this point, he still feels guilty to Sehun for all the wrath she'd been flaunting him with. If only Yixing knew that what he thought was nothing wrong, that Sehun does keep those feelings for her, those romantic feelings that he strives to bury after knowing the truth. How he'd been shutting her down for weeks just to kill these feelings, and how hard it was to be around her during the struggle because all he wanted was taking her and running away. When he told her this, she broke down.

On a side note, she can't imagine what might have happened if she had read this journal long before she met Yixing. Yeonhee is actually relieved that it turns out this way. She's thankful to have Yixing by her side, because she can't imagine how her heart would be after knowing that someone who she's has been in love with for years turns out to be her brother. She's relieved that she has Yixing because it doesn't hurt that much when she found out.

But her heart breaks for Sehun, because he has to take all the bad side of this. He's been trying to let his feelings go for years already and she has no idea if he's fully over her.

"Did your mother say anything else? Did you get an answer to your question?"

Yeonhee shakes her head again, "This journal would be something big if I read it a month or a week ago. I still don't know who is behind the kidnapping, I still don't know what happened."

"Then what are you going to do?"

"My mother didn't write about this in her journal. But she gave me the idea where to go to find this out." turning her head sideway again, Yixing is looking at her with his typical confused face. And to answer him, she returns to a page where her mother talked about her best friend, she hands him the journal to let him read it himself.

"The chief?"

Yeonhee nods. "His wife was a nurse who took care of me when I was treated after the accident. She might know something."

"I'll try to reach her and see if we can talk to her today," Yixing says, immediately sliding off the bed to go back to his room without further ado.

Three hours after an hour of sleep with a round of breakfast and a deep deep conversation later, Yixing pulls off his car in front of the house in this elite residential area. He opens the door to take her hand, that Yeonhee gives reluctantly as she gets down from the car. She looks around the high wall along the road, which covers the residential area with their exclusivity. And she takes another deep breath once they stand in front of the gate, lets Yixing push the bell for her.

"It's Zhang Yixing with Kim Yeonhee," Yixing speaks at the intercom as the maid asks, the gate opens a second later.

Her heart pounds as they step in climbing the stairs at the garden to the front door. Her grip at Yixing's hand tightens, and Yixing gives her a nod for support as he walks with her to the living room.

The maid tells them to wait while she calls for her employer. And Yeonhee rises from the couch to look at the pictures that are hung at the wall and placed on the cupboard. More or less the pictures there give her information about the house owner. The chief and his wife have two children, one of them has a family of their own. The newest family portrait shows the two families together, with their two baby grandchildren, while the youngest is still a single man.

Yeonhee shifts to look at other pictures, showing the couple's activities while traveling to several countries while on vacation. She stops midway when she finds a picture where the chief's wife took a picture with her mother and herself, who seemed to be around six or seven. They took this picture on the beach, where she stood in between the two women with a wide smile decorating her chubby face. A thin smile grows as she takes the picture and holds it in her hand; the mix feelings bother her seeing the same wide smile's shown by her mother's face, but anyone sees this might see that the smile hides so many miseries in it.

"We had a very fun trip that day." Yeonhee rips her eyes from the picture to the face of the old woman whom her mother had kept mentioning at her journal. She has met this woman twice at the ICU, but she never really recognized her during the visit to check on her seniors and attending patients.

"It was the end of summer," the old lady moves on with the story, "And the air was chilly, but you couldn't stop running while playing with the sand and looking for jellyfish. You said you had this friend who kept saying that you could find one when you went to the east sea,"

"I said that to her,"

She snaps her head to Yixing when he says that, surprised to the confession. She's had the idea that she's known him since junior high, but she didn't expect that they've actually been friends for a lot longer.

"I know, she told me."

Yeonhee watches the woman chuckles and takes a seat at the armchair across the table, she walks back to where she sat before, next to Yixing when the woman inv