Song inserted in this chap: Kiss The Rain by Yiruma (credit to owner)

Min Ho pulled the handbrake, stopping the car in the basement before turning to Shin Hye who was sitting in the passenger seat.

“Are you sure you really want to go back to your apartment?” He paused as he glanced at the elevator before looking back at her. “He might be waiting for you up there.”

Shin Hye’s head was facing down and her fingers were playing with the soft fabric of her skirt mindlessly. Of course she knows Jong Suk might be waiting for her in the apartment. He has been keep calling her since she disappeared from the church just now. But except from coming back, she really doesn’t know where she could go. Min Ho did offer to bring her back to his apartment but there would be the last place she wants to go now.

Min Ho inhaled a deep breath when he didn’t get any reply from her. “Did he know your apartment’s passcode?” He asked.

Shin Hye nodded softly.

He sighed. “Then he might really be waiting inside your house now.” He paused and pursed his lips. “Do you want to see him? Are you ready to see him now after what happened today?”

Shin Hye slowly lifted her head up and turned to him. “Even if I could avoid seeing him today, sooner or later I’ll still need to face him, right?”

Min Ho was speechless and just looked at her without knowing how to answer her.

She smiled slightly. “No matter what, I still need to talk to him.”

Letting out a deep sigh, Min Ho grasped her hand and looked at her. “You need to talk to me too. Our conversation was cut off because the columbarium was closing just now and we had to go. If you really need to talk, I think I should be the first one in the list.” He sighed again when she just looked away and keep quiet. “I could understand why you hide it from me in the past but since I already know about it now, as…” He paused and bit his lip before he continued. “… as the baby’s father, I think I have the right to know what happened 3 years ago.”

Shin Hye looked back at him with a hurtful gaze. “I did tell you. Although I didn’t tell you directly but I did text you.” She said defensively.

Min Ho creased his brows in confusion. “What text?”

Shin Hye closed her eyes briefly, enduring the pain that hit her chest thinking back about that morning when she was waiting anxiously for his reply before the surgery. “The next morning after you left me in the apartment and went to the airport, I went to the hospital for the surgery. Before I was brought to the surgery room, I sent you a text message begging you to come to the hospital. I told you I was pregnant and will be undergoing the abortion in the text message.” She paused as she inhaled deeply. “But you didn’t come. You didn’t even reply the message.”

Min Ho widened his eyes and looked at her in shock. He grasped her hand and turned her to him, forcing her to open her eyes and looked at him. “What message? I didn’t receive any message. I was in the airport the whole night with Secretary Kim and my phone…” He paused suddenly and something crossed his mind. “My phone… I left my phone at home that day.” He looked back at Shin Hye in total shock. “That was how Jong Suk know about your pregnancy. He was the one who saw the message.”

Shin Hye breathed unevenly. “What are you talking about?”

“That night after I left you at the apartment, I went back to my parent’s house to take my passport. I left my phone at home. I only realized about it in the morning.” Min Ho explained. “But when I rushed back to take my phone, there were no messages in there. Nothing.” Clenching his jaw tightly, he looked at her. “Jong Suk must have deleted the message. That was why I didn’t see it.”

Shin Hye’s face turned pale as tears glistening in her eyes. She slowly looked back to the front as her back leaned tiredly against the car cushion. “He knew it was me when he first met me in New York. He knew our relationship and all this while he just pretend that he didn’t know.” She closed her eyes as she gasped, struggled to breathe. “When three of us met in your parent’s house, when three of us met in the hotel restaurant, he was aware that both of us knew each other.” She said as the tears slowly ran down her cheeks.      

Min Ho felt a sharp pain in his chest when he saw her tears. Everything was his fault. He was the one who dragged her into all this mess. If he didn’t force her to sign the contract with him, Jong Suk will not know about her and hurt her so deeply now. She was hurt so badly by him in the past and now, she was once again hurt by his brother.   

He sighed softly as he tightened the grip on her hand that he was still holding. “Let’s go. I’ll send you up.”

Shin Hye fluttered her eyes open and quickly pulled her hand away from him. “It’s okay. I can go up myself. Thank you for sending me home.” She said but before she could open the door, Min Ho grasped her hand again, stopping her from going out.

“We need to talk.” He said firmly, looking at her with his sharp gaze.

“We can talk again next time. Jong Suk might be waiting for me up there. I don’t want to see both of you fighting again.” She said as her eyes scanning at all the fresh bruises and wounds on his face.

“If he is really up there in your apartment, do you think I will let you stay there with him alone?” Min Ho asked in a slightly angry tone.

Shin Hye sighed deeply. “He won’t hurt me.”

“Are you sure?” Min Ho couldn’t trust his brother anymore. After what happened today and what he did in the past, he just feel like killing him with his own hands. Without waiting for her to reply, he opened his door and walked towards the passenger’s side. He opened the door for her and gently pulled her out from the car.

“Y-Yah…” Shin Hye tried to pull her hand away from him but it only make him tightened his grip even more. Ignoring her protest, Min Ho pulled her towards the elevator. “Lee Min Ho…”

He pushed her into the elevator when the doors opened and turned to her. “Which floor?”

Shin Hye let out a helpless sigh. “I can go back…”

“Which floor?” Min Ho cut her off and this time his voice was stern.

She pursed her lips and held his intense gaze for a second before she let out another defeated sigh. “7th floor.”

Shin Hye could feel her heart thudding at an impossibly fast rate when they reached in front of her apartment’s door. Her hand was trembling and struggled to punch in the passcode. She almost jumps when Min Ho suddenly broke the silence behind her.

“I promise you if he is in there, I won’t fight with him. I’ll leave in peace, okay?” Min Ho assured her.

She hesitated for a moment before she nodded softly and punched in the passcode. A sigh of relief escaped her lips when she opened the door and find the lights were not turn on. Nobody was in the apartment.

“What is your passcode?” Min Ho asked after she switched all the lights on.

“Meo?” Shin Hye asked in confusion.

“I need to know your passcode.” He said.

“Wae?” She asked again.

Min Ho inhaled deeply. “I need to change the passcode for you.”

Shin Hye raised her brows. “Wae?”

Min Ho crossed his arms around his chest with his back leaning against the wall, looking at her. “I need to change the passcode to prevent your boyfriend to barge in when I’m talking to you later. I don’t want anybody to disturb my conversation with you.”

Shin Hye bit her lip. “890914.”

Min Ho clenched his jaw and his mood turned sour immediately. The passcode was Jong Suk’s birthday. He exhaled sharply before he moved to the door excess system and changed the passcode.

“What is the new code?” She asked, looking at him.

He turned to her and looked sharply into her eyes. “870622. My birthday.” He said grumpily as he took his shoe out and walked straight into the living room, throwing himself on the couch.

Shin Hye could only looked at him helplessly before she took her shoe out too and walked to the kitchen. After a while, she came out with two cups of hot tea and placed it on the coffee table. Looking down at his face that was bruised quite badly, she walked to the cabinet near the TV and took a medicine box out.

Taking a seat beside him on the couch, Shin Hye opened the medicine box and handed him the bruise relief cream. “You should take care of those bruises. It will be worse tomorrow if you just leave it like that.”

Min Ho turned to her and glanced at the cream she was holding. “You expect me to apply the cream myself?”

Shin Hye looked at him for a moment before she sighed in defeat. She took a cotton bud and smeared some of the cream on it before she looked up at his face. Her brows creased when she saw the dried bloodstain at the corner of his lips and also some at his forehead. She sighed softly before she put down the cotton bud and stood up of the couch.

“Where are you going?” Min Ho asked.

Without replying him, she walked to her bathroom and later came back with a wet face towel in her hand. Sitting down beside him again, she brought the face towel to his lips and gently wiped the bloodstain again. She stopped moving when she heard Min Ho winced. “Did I hurt you?” She asked worriedly.

He shook his head slightly. “It just… a bit sting.”

“I’ll be more gentle.” She said as she moved closer to him and continued to wipe the wounds very softly. After finished cleaning the bloodstains, she put the face towel on the coffee table and took the antiseptic cream from the medicine box and started to apply at the corner of his lips and forehead before she applied the bruise relief cream around her cheekbones and jaw. When she saw his face twisted in pain, her heart was naturally clenched in pain too. “I thought you have change after so many years but until now you still couldn’t control your emotions. Not everything can settle with violence.”

Looking at her with such a close distance, Min Ho felt his heart hammering extremely fast against his chest. He could clearly feel her soft and sweet breathing fanning against his face. It took him a lot of strength to control himself not to lunge forward to kiss her senseless.

“He really got on my nerves when he said something like that just now. He was lucky that I didn’t kill him.” He said with his eyes looking straight into hers.

Shin Hye sighed again. “It still wouldn’t solve anything with both of you hurting each other like that.”

Moving another inch closer, he looked deep into her eyes. He could feel her body tensed immediately. “Are you worried about him or me? Your heart is aching for him or for me?” He asked with his deep husky voice.

Tightening her grip on the cotton bud, she slowly looked down to avoid his intense gaze. She doesn’t know how to answer him. Her heart was indeed very painful. But she doesn’t even sure it ached because of him, Jong Suk or herself. It was so painful that she couldn’t possibly breathe normally now.

Min Ho took the cotton bud away from her hand and threw it to the side. He gently tilted her chin up, forcing her to look back at him. “Tell me what happened. What happened to our baby?”

With the mention of the baby, Shin Hye’s eyes instantly reddened and welled with tears. She gasped painfully and let the tears slowly escaped her eyes. “One week before I left, I found out that I was pregnant. That night when I cooked for you…”

“When you vomited and not feeling well, you were lying. It was not intestinal infection. It was because you were pregnant.” Min Ho completed the sentence for her.

Shin Hye nodded her head softly.

He inhaled sharply and felt another wave of pain hit his chest. “You didn’t tell me because of the damn thing I talked to you that night.” He still remembered each and every word he said during the dinner.

Trying to sniff back her tears, she nodded again. “You said So Ra love children. No matter how many kids she wants in the future, as long as she is the mother of your child, you will give her.”

Min Ho moved his hands to her cheeks and caressed it softly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were…” He bit his lip, unable to continue his sentence.

Shin Hye took a deep breath before she continued again. “On that day before you left me in the apartment, after we talked on the phone in the afternoon, I had a sudden sharp pain in my abdomen and I was bleeding. The staffs in the shopping mall sent me to the hospital right away.”

Creases formed on Min Ho’s forehead. “Did you have a miscarriage?” He asked cautiously.

She shook her head with tears streaming down like raindrop. “The doctor told me the baby was conceived outside the uterus.” She paused as her body started to tremble. “The fertilized egg stayed in my fallopian tube and the doctor said it was a ectopic pregnancy. There is no way to save the baby and it wasn’t viable no matter what. The only way to save me and avoid my fallopian tube to be ruptured and internal bleeding, I have to take the baby away. I have to abort the baby… our baby.” She cried sadly.

Min Ho’s eyes reddened as tears gathered in it, blurring his vision. He moved his hand behind her neck and pulled her into his arms, hugging her tightly against him. His chest was rising up and down unevenly, trying to catch his breath. “Why didn’t you call me?”

Shin Hye bit her lower lip hard and more tears wet her cheeks. “I did. I called you a lot of times but you didn’t pick up. I was so lost and keep calling you in the hospital.”

He closed his eyes and tightened his arms around her. She was right. She did call. Kim Ji Seok came to see him that day and told him about So Ra’s news in Brazil. She kept calling him and he just ignored the calls.

“When I went back to the apartment, I thought I could tell you about it but then…” She paused and inhaled deeply, feeling the pain again when she recalled what happened that night. “… you was already packed and was about to leave for Brazil. I know everything was over when you said So Ra was in Brazil. How can I compete with her? But as if the baby was telling me that he needs you to be there with us, I wanted to try even the chance is very slim. So begged you to stay.”

With his eyes tightly closed together, his breathing shallow and rapid.

“You know it will end one day.”

With all the pain she had gone through that day, that was the damn words he said to her. “I’m sorry…” Except sorry, he really doesn’t know what else he could say. Now he could finally understand why she decided to run away from him and hate him so much. She should hate him because he hates himself too. It was his fault. Everything was his fault. If he could understand his feeling earlier, if he made the right decision at the right time, if he didn’t left his phone at home, everything wouldn’t turned out to be like this.

Shin Hye buried her face in the crook of his neck, shaking and crying harder. This secret has been concealed in her heart for a long time. It broke her apart to open up her unhealed wound once again.

Min Ho doesn’t know how much time has passed but his eyes slowly fluttered open when he felt her body relaxed against him and she has stopped crying. her head gently, he pressed his nose into her hair, inhaling her sweet scent. “I didn’t go to Brazil.”

Shin Hye’s eyes opened slowly too, waiting for him to continue.

Tightening his arms around her even more, he continued. “I changed my mind at the last minute. My head was keep thinking about you and I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to see you again if I really go to Brazil. I realized I don’t want to leave you alone here.”

Shin Hye’s heart raced as her hand fisted in his shirt upon hearing what he just said.

“I don’t want to lose you.” He said softly into her ear.

--------------------------------------------------------------

3 years ago…

“Please don’t go. You said I’m precious to you. You said you like me. You said you didn’t want to end the contract and want to stay like this with me. You said we are the painkillers for each other. You promised that you would bring me to New York to see the Statue of Liberty.  Don’t leave me, please…”

“Please stay. I know I have no right to make this request but please don’t leave. I really need you.”

“Once you found her, you will never come back again.”

“Sajang-nim? Sajang-nim?”

Lee Min Ho was completely lost in his deep thoughts when Secretary Kim’s voice brought him back to the reality. He looked up at him in confusion. “Yes?”

Secretary Kim sighed softly. “Are you okay?” He asked cautiously. Since Min Ho started work in Lotte, he has never been so distracted before, not even when So Ra disappeared.

Min Ho rubbed his nape and took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. What were you saying again?”

Secretary Kim looked down at the file he was holding and continued. “I have noted down all the changes that you want to amend in the contract. I’ll inform our legal department to take care of it. ACE representative will come over by this week to discuss about the contract. But since you are going to Brazil and might stay there for quite some time, should we inform President Lee. The collaboration with ACE is a big project.”

Min Ho shook his head. “Don’t inform him. I don’t want my family to know about the news yet. I’m not even sure I could find So Ra in Brazil or not. I don’t want to give them hope and then make them disappointed again.”

Secretary Kim hesitated for a moment before he decided to ask. “Is Park Shin Hye-sshi aware that you are going to Brazil to look for So Ra agasshi?”

Min Ho looked at his secretary and sighed deeply. “Yes. I told her.”

“She is okay with it?” Secretary Kim asked again.

Pursing his lips tightly together, Min Ho averted his gaze. “Even if she is not okay, I still have to go. So Ra is my fiancée and she is just…” He paused and bit his lip. “… she is just a contract. When I found So Ra, we have to end it anyway.”

Looking straight at his boss, Secretary Kim couldn’t shut his mouth anymore. “Have you ever thought that So Ra agasshi might leave you for a reason?” A reason that he suspected when he saw her with Jong Suk at home few months ago. “I mean So Ra agasshi has been missing for half a year now. If she really wants to see you, she should have come back to you already. And…” He hesitated but decided to say it anyway. “And do you think it’s fair for Park Shin Hye-sshi? Maybe sajang-nim will not be happy for me to say this but as a bystander, I can see how much you care for her. It doesn’t look like she is just a contract to me. When she was missing on that day her grandmother passed away, you were so worried. You even stay by her side for a week after that and didn’t come to work in the office. This has never happened before even when So Ra agasshi was missing.” Looking at Min Ho’s face that was slowly turned pale, he inhaled deeply. “Of course you still love So Ra agasshi but I’m very sure the feeling you have for Park Shin Hye-sshi is not just a contract. It’s definitely more than that.”

Min Ho’s breath hitched in his throat as he looked away. He doesn’t appreciate his secretary to tell him the fact that he was refusing to admit all this while. He hates himself for being so weak. He can’t accept the fact that his heart wavered when So Ra was only went missing for 6 months. It was a mistake of bringing Shin Hye into his life. He should have stop himself and stay away from her when he knows she have such a big effect on him. But it was too late now. His heart was already stolen by her.

Just then, Secretary Kim’s phone rang and shook him off from his deep thoughts.

“Yoboseyo.” Secretary Kim answered the call. He nodded as he replied. “Okay. Thank you very much for your assistance.” He then ended the call and looked up at his boss again. “We have manage to get you a seat in the first class. You can proceed to the VIP counter to check-in before 7am later.”

Min Ho glanced at his watch and it was already 4am. They still haven’t finish discuss about the ACE project yet. He needs to concentrate his mind into his work and stop himself from thinking about Shin Hye. He inhaled a deep breath before looking down at the contr