Chapter 26
'Golden Mary'
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Perhaps he was busy thus unable to make it. It had been unexpected, but couldn’t be helped. Seohyun was ready to leave and apologize to the waiter for taking up his time. Digging into her purse she decided to leave a tip for him, however, the heavens seemed to be playing with her senses. For as soon as she rose to her feet, the door opened and Siwon appeared. The smile that spread across her face was probably the most relieved, happiest smiles she’d ever experienced.
The waiter who’d been serving her led Siwon over.
“I was feeling sad you’d have to eat alone,” the waiter winked, “how may I take the king and queen’s orders?”
Fresh, hot, steamy plates of their ordered dishes arrived one by one at their circular table. The waiter from earlier smiled at them as he set down their plates and refilled their glasses before kindly bowing before making his exit. After taking a quick shot at their food Seohyun raised her eyes to smile up at Siwon, who she thought wouldn’t come. It was the first time in her life she had almost felt utterly disappointed. Who knew, that after her parents, there would arrive someone equally as important. Or perhaps even more.
“I’m sorry-” Siwon started.
“It’s not important,” Seohyun cut him off, “I’m just glad you came. I really appreciate it.” She softly bit her lower lip before saying, “You don’t need to make time to see me in the middle of the day during your work hours. I don’t want to get you in trouble at work or rather become a burden for you. I know how that is. Why don’t we meet up after your shift ends or when you don’t work?”
Siwon, feeling deflexed at her words, was unable to smile back or utter back a reply of politeness.
Another glance at him made her feel a bit of wavering uncertainty about her feelings toward him, and his as well. To make things hard for him, to purposely go out and see him, Seohyun only felt she was getting in the way of his hard work. Perhaps she was allowing her feelings to get the better of her, unlike Victoria who always had control in her hands. And there was Victoria working hard for the ‘Golden Mary’ while she was busying herself with a man who wasn’t on her top priority list.
There were so many ‘firsts’ that day. So many rational thoughts and troubled feelings flowing back to her since the longest time. Had she been so inhumane the last few years as to have warded off these worrisome sensitivities?
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Donghae had opted out of joining the couple for lunch and headed off to have another cup of coffee. He wondered what Victoria was doing now. Wearily dropping his head to the feet propped out of the shade, he knew then what was going through her mind. Victoria was brooding over Siwon, his lunch with Seohyun, and the gun he’d raised to her face. How stunned she must have been to see that. How shocked and bewildered she must have felt to realize the cops have been called on her. He felt sorry, sympathetic towards her, so much that he’d give anything to give her a hug. Donghae knew, though, that Victoria didn’t want his arms around her.
He took a sip of his mocha and stared around the window shops surrounding him. There were displays of advertisements, clothing on sale, neat home accents, and old antiques that were most likely rip offs. Turning away from the shops he looked at the people walking by so neatly dressed in the latest trends, the people themselves advertising the new fashion in the industry. How much money each of them made for a living was probably worth more and more acceptable than what usually did for a living. Donghae believed, though, that none of them were living with someone else’s identity.
Heaving a sorrowful sigh, he glanced at the black shoes he simply wore, new and fresh out of a high priced store. Then Donghae wondered again why Victoria had been in the home of Cha Tae Sung’s if she hadn’t been there to break-in.
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She knew she shouldn’t have done it, but she did it anyway. She shouldn’t fret over the point that Siwon had raised the gun to her. Policemen did it as a sign of warning, to threaten criminals. And Victoria had been made a criminal after kicking that old man. No, she’d become one after stealing into houses like a thief. A thief…like Donghae.
Clamping her eyes shut from the reality she was beginning to loathe she hoped that the darkness would bring it all away. However, when she opened her eyes she was met with the old apartment and the roaring silence she often listened to. Victoria knew she had to accept it that she would never be able to see Siwon in the same light as he would become suspicious of her if not at all. There was no chance in her book now that he would be the knight riding on a white horse who would rescue her from turmoil.
Her fascination over him was only too much for her to handle. Choi Siwon would have to become another treasure hidden away within that deep chest of hers. Victoria ran a hand over her face in hopes of calming her trembling heart filled with an ache she’d never known herself to feel. How much longer would she continue to hurt, brood over this man she barely knew? This man that captivated not just her, but her friend as well.
The more she stayed in, the more her thoughts exhausted her. Sore and weary of her bothersome feelings, Victoria stepped out. A misty cool night air brushed by once she stepped outside the building, the door clamping shut behind her with one smooth swing. Feeling the money safe in the pocket of her ped sweater she pivoted to her right ready to start off into the night for a few drinks that would wholeheartedly calm her nerves. However, instead, she was brought to an abrupt halt when she saw Donghae leaning against the building in a model like pose.
With large eyes beaming under the moonlight she started, “Wh…what are you doing?”
He slowly turned to look at her before showing her a nice smile of sincerity, “I just came to see you.”
Victoria stared at him dumbstruck.
His eyes lowered to the hand in her pocket and asked, “Where are you going?”
She averted her eyes debating if she should share with him her plans. Did she want company and be annoyed or would she rather have a silent drink all to herself? Then she recalled the cake from yesterday…
“It’s your birthday, right?” she asked. “Happy birthday.”
Obvious surprise lit up his face before his face beamed with a bright smile. “Thanks.”
“How about we go have the drinks we couldn’t last night?”
And that was how she found herself sitting in a tacky, small newly owned drinking restaurant with a dish of peppers, a plate of chicken, and some cold soju bottles on their small round table. The chatter around was a bit loud, maybe a little burdensome on the silence Victoria had been imagining, but she couldn’t mind. Wherever she went with Donghae would always be full of busy people.
A group from behind her expressed their bliss with a loud shout after a, “Gan bei!”, clinked their shot glasses before pouring the liquor through their busy mustaches and into their mouths. With elbow against the stubbly, rough round table, she raised a hand up to cover her ear and took a sip of the soju glass in front. So far, she’d drunken at least three and a half soju bottles by herself. Donghae, on the other hand, had barely drank 3 shots.
“Not good with drinks, are you?” Victoria questioned after setting the bottle down with a loud clank.
“I have to stay sober at least,” he tried with a smile, “who’s going to bring you back if you get drunk?”
“Tsh…” her buzzing mind brought a criss-crossed smile to her face, “well…we’ll manage.”
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Donghae continued to watch her drink away filled with the urge to find out why she was drinking and if she was bothered by the day’s earlier events. He didn’t know whether to ask away or not. In such a state as she was in, would she get angry and start scolding him madly right away, or would she remain her calm self, oblivious to it all?
Victoria let out a loud burp before him and slightly punched her chest a few times before getting up. He watched her stagger toward the door clumsily grabbing hold onto the shoulders of a few random customers and tossed some money onto the table. Racing after her in case she lost her way out on the streets, he came to a fast pause behind her when something clicked loudly, Victoria wobbling in front of him back and forth. Everything ceased to fall into his head as he listened to the soft rain drops fall from the roof of the tacky, small restaurant. Pitter-patter it went. Pitter-patter before the shriek of a nearby woman nearly deafened him, and the fat sized bald man in front of Victoria let out a calm gasp. The sturdy black hand gun with his finger sliding through the trigger hole becoming apparent in Donghae’s eyes.
“Where’s Luhan?” he asked.
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Staring at Seohyun, whose back was turned to him, only meant one thing possible, and that was that she had something on her mind she couldn’t get off. Treading forward he pulled a chair out and watched her turn around, lifting her long arms off the tabletop as she did the particular move. Her eyes, it was all in her eyes. Something she was thinking about long and hard.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked.
Seohyun looked at him candidly and he felt she might ask something sarcastic, like, “Wow, you’re interested?” Instead, she turned her side profile to him and half stared out the window. The blackened sky did seem so dark all of a sudden that white moon’s glow didn’t seem powerful enough to light up the whole world.
“Do you believe that a person can become so ostracized from the rest of the world that they’re no longer compassionate?” Seohyun asked quietly, her voice lost in a sense of melancholy. “Is it terrible for a person to become like that?”
He blinked at her. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“I think,” she began before carefully inhaling, “I have become exceedingly numb to all life. I only realized it today, how far off the course I’ve fallen.”
“What are you talking about?” Luhan wondered unable to make sense of her messy descriptions.
Seohyun lowered her head a little as if to avert her eyes away from the dark, dark sky.
“Victoria and I came here with a job in mind,” Seohyun started, “the job is…was most important to me when we first arrived in the suburbs of Seoul, but now…compared to everything else on my mind, it’s just another job I have to do. How useless I am, I can’t do a thing right. Honestly, just as I had been to my parents, I don’t want to become to Victoria….or anybody else…”
In her dry voice he spotted misery, insecurity. Victoria and this somebody else she spoke of, he was sure was none other than Choi Siwon. The first time Luhan had been introduced to this handsome man, Seohyun had been ecstatic. So in the end, Seohyun was really crushing on him.
Returning back to the present, Luhan gently laid his eyes on her. “Become what?”
She was quiet for a long time, a few minutes, maybe five at most. He’d lost track of it before she answered.
“A sack of burden.”
His pursed lips fell apart. So, after all, Seohyun was worried she was getting in the way, that she couldn’t meet up to expectations, that she would become a nuisance. Why? He would ask but it wasn’t a question, he understood, that Seohyun needed to answer at the moment.
“It isn’t possible for one to become numb to all else when that one person is worrying about becoming a mental weight of stress,” Luhan told, “there is no correct course, but there’s always ‘that’ exit you can take to return. Pencils come with erasers for a reason.”
Seohyun turned to him with a slow smile.
“Me talking to you won’t help, but maybe if you keep my words in mind, you’ll feel better,” Luhan tried, “if you don’t want to become a burden, the only thing you can do for yourself is keep smiling, but you have to keep smiling because you’re doing what you want to do, and wholeheartedly too.”
“Thanks,” Seohyun’s eyes shone in a lighter hue, “Luhan.”
And that was the first time ever since the rumor that he’d heard her say that.
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A buzz vibrated inside her head, a gulp dying mid-way in . The dark hole from where the bullet would come flying intensely stared Victoria in the eyes, yet she made no notion to move or run even as the dying bellows of a woman nearby echoed through the city. Victoria’s mind was spinning and she was dizzy, that was all she was aware of.
“Get out of my way,” she shoved the gun aside with her hand, Donghae watching with bulging eyes.
The man in front of her, whose face she couldn’t even make out, stared at her astonished and offended.
“Hey! I asked you a question!” he shouted, swerving back to her.
Without warning, Victoria spun around and grabbed the gun from his hand. In one blow she kicked him to the ground immediately stepping on his chest with all her weight and pointed the gun down at him.
“Victoria, stop!” Donghae called from the side.
“I’m going to shoot! I will!” Victoria screamed shaking the gun up and down.
“Victoria!” Donghae screamed again.
When she declined to listen, he reached his arms around her, and fought to get the gun out of her dangerous grasp because he was sure she would shoot. Staggering back with her unsteadily, he succeeded in raising her aim up into the sky.
“Victoria! Let go,” he muttered through almost clenched teeth.
A loud sting repulsed through their hands and the gun fell to the concrete as they both shot back in shock and pain.
“Ahh!!” Donghae moaned from beside her shaking his hand and looked back to the stranger when he heard another click of another gun.
Victoria, who was now seemingly dancing along the unbalanced ground, did not seem to take notice of anything happening. The next she heard before she was whizzed off was, “” from Donghae. She fought hard to keep her balance and shook her head, closing her eyes to reopen them, but it didn’t help bring her dizziness away. For now, nothing else would make sense.
The relentless heavy footsteps from behind them ceased to stop as Donghae scurried through the pits of the alleys with her.
“Woohoo!” Victoria screamed into the air, fists in the air.
Spinning around to take a quick look at her, Donghae whispered breathlessly, “Can you keep it down!?”
Opening wide, Victoria screamed again with a laughter that echoed across the streets. All Victoria remembered was gripping onto Donghae’s warm hand as he led her down the street and away from the man who was going to shoot them if he ever caught them.
At last Donghae pushed open the doors of a particular building that smelled of perfume and cologne mixed together. If was an unfortunate smell that forced Victoria to press a hand against her lips in order not to vomit.
“Hey! You can’t just take a key!” a woman shouted.
Victoria narrowed her eyes as Donghae pulled her to a stop, struggled with his wallet, and tossed something to the woman before rushing her through the bright hallway. Again, laughter and screaming bellowed from her lips.
“Victoria! Aish…can’t you be quiet!?” he whispered still pulling her faster and faster down the long hallways now smelly with leftover cigarettes.
Donghae finally pulled her into a room, closing the door behind them quietly, and as he did so Victoria giggled so hard at the foot of the room that Donghae really felt like he was going insane.
“Victoria! Get a hold of yourself!” he grabbed her shoulders and shook her lightly, glancing toward the door in the dark.
“It’s so fun! Lets do it again!” Victoria loudly shouted.
He immediately clasped his hand over her lips to silence her, but even so Victoria’s muffled talking wasn’t quieted at all. Feeling nauseated she started to push him away suddenly feel weary and energy-less. Misunderstanding her actions, he refused to let go further pushing her back. Unable to discover her knowledge of speech, Victoria only muttered and stumbled over her alien language. The gibberish all ended when she fell back onto something not too soft nor hard.
A soft thudding of her heart vibrated through her chest, her palms up against the bulges in his arms. For the first time that night, Victoria felt a tremor of anxiety float around her. She gulped as she stretched the toes in her shoes, her eyes sparkling in the dark as she continued to stare up at those hypnotizing eyes. The weight above her seemed irrelevant to all else.
Slowly shutting her eyes along with the flow of it all she soon felt warm lips purse themselves against hers. Tender, moist lips bit into hers and she alluringly drew her own open only to immediately lock them with his. The moment seemed so special that she stopped for a few seconds and even sunk her head back into the pillow before opening her lips then locking them again with his. She felt the soft tip of his nose wind itself into her face before she heard loud footsteps in front of the door.
A shock split through her so hard that she intensely pushed him and sat up, her mind suddenly clear of its dizziness. The white moon shone into the hue casting a natural spot light upon them. Her eyes wavered around the unmakeable darkness before the footsteps shuffled pass. Pressing her lips together, Victoria very slowly raised her eyes up to meet with the flash of bewilderment in his large eyes.
What just happened?
The question flew through her mind and she found herself unable to juggle her own language into a sentence. What Victoria found most amazing that night was that she was unable to avert her eyes. Donghae, who was before her, whose shoulders her hands rested upon, out of all moments, appeared so much more handsome than before. He, she comprehended, was stunning in appearance. For the first time since she’d met him, Victoria saw an aura of his handsome nature.
His steamy breath falling against her face brought her back a dizzy haziness. Victoria, found, that in a second she began to drift closer and closer to him. Before all else made sense she clamped her lips gently around his bottom lip and kissed away at the man sitting upon the bed unknown to her.
***Seohyun is in love, Luhan is being sought after, and HaeToria love line is finally beginning ^^
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