A very small and weak
person, your love
Has changed everything,
all of my life,
all of the world

Jongin lies and almost crashes himself to a small creature also lying on his bed. He stares at the tiny puppy with curly brown hair walking in circles a few inches from his face in melancholic antagonism. He stares at the puppy and regrets that he could hold on so much to him and not to her.

If only, he’d just listen…

The puppy approaches him and Jongin’s cheeks.

Jongin chuckles halfheartedly. “Hey, are you kissing me?”

The puppy only him again and Jongin sits up, grabbing him and cradling him on his arms. Jongin pets his fur gently and kisses the puppy’s nose.

“Okay, then,” he says to the puppy. “We’ll be together forever from now on.”

He runs like he’s life is on the line because it is. About two dozens of thugs are running after him after he pissed off one of their brothers for protecting a brown puppy. He turns into a dark alley, not knowing where it’s leading him and forgetting the fact that it may actually lead him into a dead end where he’ll predictably get beaten up, if not dead.

But Jongin remembers her touch and he can still hear her words.

She walks towards him and holds his face, motioning him to look at her. “Jongin-ah, I like you.”

He stares at her hazel eyes, the beautiful color of fall turning winter, and blinks and blinks and blinks. How can he believe that she likes him? Kim Jongin is a delinquent, a first-class rule offender and an outlaw. And she?

Well, let Jongin say that she’s an angel in disguise – a fallen angel who might seem a little perfect for heaven that God gave her to the earth, for humans to look up and to love, to be their inspiration and to be their exemplary.

So how can she?

“Are you ing kidding me?” Jongin roars a mocking laughter, taking several steps backwards away from her. “Don’t ing joke around with me!” he shouts disgustingly.

Jongin turns into another alley that he isn’t familiar with, yet praying that it isn’t a dead end like the last one he has turned into and hoping that those thugs following him are as unfamiliar with the place as he is.

But apparently his luck ran out.

He looks back from his right and left and sees darkness. A huge wall is before him and those thugs are only a few meters behind him. There’s nowhere to run.

“Jongin-ah.”

He hears a whisper and how she ends up there, opening what seemed to be a locked door before on Jongin’s left, he doesn’t have any idea.

“Here, quickly,” she grabs his hand and once he’s inside with her, closes the door quickly.

“How did you end up here?”

She smiles and wipes sweat from her forehead. “I’d appreciate a thank you first.”

“It’s dangerous, don’t you know that?” he says just as loud as it won’t be heard outside, having heard a few rustles of shoes after the closed door.

“I could say the same to you,” she says.

He doesn’t know what to say. All this time, he’s been trying to push her away but all she does is pull him towards him.

“Let’s get out of here,” he says, holding her hand and almost running but her feet are glued to the floor, “What?”

She’s staring at his hand holding hers.

Jongin blushes, “Come on.”

After getting out of the building, the streets and the alleys are still unrecognizable for Jongin but he runs before he needs to get away. He doesn’t care if he’ll get beaten up or dead before but she’s with him now and all he wants to do is protect her.

“Kim Jongin!” a man wearing black leather jacket and holding a baseball bat blocks their path with several thugs. A few others of their kind blocks their way behind, their right and their left, leaving them no way out.

Jongin holds her hand tightly as puts her behind him. “Get back,” he says to her as he closes his jacket.

“Do you really ing think we’ll let you get away?”

In a split second, the man holding a baseball bat moves to strike Jongin and he punches that man’s face. They’re more than Jongin could handle alone and he knows that but he also knows that he needs to protect her and he’ll do that even if it cost his life.

“No!”

He hears her in a breaking scream.

It all became too blurred for Jongin but the next thing he realizes, her weight behind him is bringing him down. He turns around and sees the man with a baseball bat, his hands shaking as the bat falls on the ground.

“Let’s get out of here,” he hears the man say.

“Hey,” Jongin says to her, lying on his arms with her eyes closed. “Hey, wake up!”

She opens her eyes briefly and smiles at Jongin as she sees the little brown puppy Jongin saved from those thugs peeks his head from inside his jacket. “Cute,” she murmurs, barely audible for him to understand.

Then, she smiles at Jongin before closing her eyes forever.

“We’ll be together forever from now on.”

Five days before Christmas.