She didn't even look up at first.
She didn't have the strength.
But the voice…
That voice.
Deep.
Slow.
Irreversible.
— Get in.
An order.
Not a request.
Not a question.
An order that pierced through the fog she was dissolving into.
She finally raised her head.
And her eyes met his.
Jeon Sion.
Soaked as well, jaw clenched, golden eyes shining with a tension she had never seen before.
No smile.
No provocation.
No mockery.
Just…
A dark look.
Deep.
Something unsettling, inexplicable, unusual in him.
She didn't even understand why she obeyed.
Why her legs carried her to the car.
Why she got in without a word.
The ride was long.
Silent.
Suffocating.
The sound of the rain against the windows echoed like a heartbeat too loud, too heavy, too violent.
Nari stared straight ahead.
Her hands clenched on her knees.
Her lips trembling.
Her eyes empty.
Sion, meanwhile, kept throwing quick glances at her, looks he would never admit, looks that had nothing sexual, nothing dominant about them.
It was something else.
A mix of frustration, fear, curiosity, rage at something he didn't yet understand.
— You're in a pathetic state, he muttered, but his voice lacked its usual cruelty.
As if he didn't believe his own words.
She didn't answer.
She seemed…
Absent.
Defenseless.
As if the slightest breath could shatter her into pieces.
When they arrived in front of her building, he got out first, walked around the car, opened the door and grabbed her arm again — more gently this time, almost with a care she would never have imagined in him.
He brought her inside.
Closed the door behind her.
And the silence…
The silence in the apartment was so heavy you could have touched it.
He stood in front of her.
Without speaking.
Without moving.
Then, in a voice lower than he had intended:
— You planning on staying mute much longer?
She still didn't answer.
Her fingers were trembling.
He inhaled sharply, jaw clenched.
His voice cracked like a whip, harsh, brutal, instinctive:
— She never loved you, your mother.
Nari slowly raised her eyes, as if the sentence had slapped her.
— How… do you know that…?
He didn't lower his gaze.
He didn't look away.
He didn't step back.
— I know everything.
Your mother was a junkie. She let her guys touch you for money. She died without having looked at you once.
Then, in an even harder tone, too honest, too cruel not to be true:
— By dying, she set you free.
A scream ripped open her chest.
A wounded animal's scream.
A scream from a child who was never comforted.
— YOU KNOW NOTHING!
— YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO…
— YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO TALK ABOUT HER!
— SHE DID WHAT SHE COULD!
— SHE WAS ALONE!
— SHE WAS MISERABLE!
— SHE LOST EVERYTHING!
The words poured out, soaked in rage, shame, pain, guilt.
Each syllable an open wound.
She hit his chest.
Again.
Again.
Again.
As if she wanted to destroy the entire universe through him.
Her fists crashed against his chest, his arms, his shoulders.
She cried.
She screamed.
She was suffocating.
— I LOVED HER!
— SHE WAS MY MOTHER!
— MY MOTHER, DO YOU UNDERSTAND?!
She collapsed to her knees.
As if her legs had finally given in under the weight of all the years she had carried alone.
She sobbed.
Not small tears.
No.
Sobs that shook her whole body, violent, uncontrollable.
Sobs that came from far — too far — from the child she had been, from the broken teenager, from the woman who had never been allowed to fall apart.
And Sion…
Sion stood in front of her, motionless.
He felt something in his own chest — a pressure, a fire, a fear he didn't recognize.
Then, slowly…
Very slowly…
He moved closer.
Knelt down.
And wrapped his arms around her.
Not like a lover.
Not like a predator.
Not like a man who wanted to possess.
But like someone who, for the first time in his life, was facing a pain he didn't know how to put out.
She kept hitting his chest.
Again.
Again.
Her weak fists against his massive body.
— I hate you… I hate you… I hate you…
He didn't move.
Didn't answer.
He just held her tighter.
And the rain, behind them, kept hitting the windows, covering their breathing, their sobs, their demons.
He laid a blanket over her.
Time dissolved around them.
Nari stayed against him, her face buried in his chest, her sobs turning into jerks, then shivers, then tiny tremors — as if her whole body was trying to disappear into his, to hide inside him, to dissolve there.
The rain kept beating the windows like a heartbeat too regular, almost cruel in its normalcy.
Sion hadn't moved.
Not a muscle.
He just held her, awkwardly, intensely, his chin resting in her tear-wet hair.
He should have pushed her away.
Thrown a cutting remark.
Become the monster he knew how to be.
Torn himself away from her before losing control even more.
But he couldn't anymore.
Something in him — something he believed dead — was stirring.
An unease, a warmth, a rage with no target, a feeling too close to guilt.
He hated it.
So he tightened his arms around her.
Harder.
As if holding her closer could make what he felt disappear.
When finally the sobs stopped, she stayed still against him, breath short, eyes swollen, cheeks burning.
She didn't speak anymore, but her silence was worse than her screams.
An exhausted silence, emptied, broken.
— You need to sleep, he murmured.
She didn't answer.
Her gaze was lost, floating somewhere far behind him, far from everything.
So he lifted her.
As if she weighed nothing.
Like a child carried out of a fire.
He carried her to his bedroom — too big, too cold, too immaculate — and laid her trembling body on the sheets.
She curled up without thinking, as if the bed might devour her.
She whispered something.
Barely audible.
A breath.
— I… I hurt everywhere.
He bent down.
Slipped a hand under her shoulders, helped her undress, with a gentleness that had never belonged to Jeon Sion.
When he pulled the blanket over her, Nari lifted her eyes just a little — two red eyes, tired, still streaked with tears.
— Why are you doing this? she breathed.
— Because I want to, he answered simply.
She looked away, a tear tracing a salty line down her temple.
He placed his hand against her cheek.
His thumb wiped away a tear from her cold skin.
She closed her eyes — just for a second — as if that simple touch broke her even more.
Then she whispered, almost inaudible:
— Are you… going to leave?
He froze.
The question had nothing innocent about it.
It was a prayer.
A child's fear.
A plea she had never been able to say to anyone.
He should have said yes.
He should have left, slammed the door, protected himself.
It wasn't his role.
It wasn't his place.
But his voice came out before he could think.
— No.
She inhaled sharply — a tiny breath, a fragile hiccup, as if that word pierced her heart.
Her face tensed.
Her lips trembled.
— Okay… stay… just a little.
Just a little.
Nari never asked for more than that.
She had never asked anything of anyone, actually.
He sat on the edge of the bed.
His hand remained against her cheek.
She held onto it weakly with the tips of her fingers — an involuntary gesture, almost childlike, that made something tremble in his stomach.
The silence stretched.
Not heavy.
Not violent.
A rare, fragile silence, where nothing mattered except the trembling breathing of a woman who had just lost her last link to the world.
After long minutes, she murmured:
— Sion…
— Hm?
— Why did you… come get me?
He lowered his eyes, letting a raindrop still clinging to his lashes tremble there.
He didn't answer.
She looked at him as if he were a riddle.
She weakly grabbed his sleeve.
— Stay, she repeated, in an even softer voice, as if the world might tear Sion away from her while she slept.
He held his breath.
He would never have imagined that a single sentence…
A single word whispered by a broken girl…
Could crack through the tide of darkness he carried in his chest.
He swallowed.
— I'll stay, he replied.
He leaned in.
Placed his lips on her forehead — a kiss almost unnoticeable, almost accidental.
She breathed more calmly.
Her shoulders eased.
She fell asleep, finally, exhausted, emptied, burned from the inside.
Sion remained sitting beside her.
Without moving.
Without blinking.
He watched her sleep the way one watches the only fragile thing they never knew how to handle.
And in the darkness of the room, in the steady sound of rain against the windows, a terrible truth rooted itself in his veins:
He was screwed.
Because he had just grown attached to the one person he had no right to love.